With Curd Rice, It Is WYSIWYG

What you see is what you get

Yes, some foods are exactly what you think they are. Curd rice is one such thing. What you see is what you get. No surprises, unless you count the garnishings and the additional flavors. But you just cannot take away the predominant taste of the curd rice.

Curd rice is cooked rice mixed with plain yogurt and is popular in South India. Tremendously welcome especially during the summer heat as it cools. In most Tamil brahmin houses, the lunch and dinner menu is never complete without curd rice to wrap up the meal.

It is my favorite comfort food. No letdowns, no pretenses. It is exactly what it says it is. Even today, no meal is complete for me without at least a little bit of curd rice.

One can simply mix the cooked rice with yogurt and enjoy. Or add a pinch of salt to taste. A lovely accompaniment is an Indian pickle, especially mango pickle or citron pickle. It is also perfectly fine to dress the curd rice by adding some freshly grated carrot, pomegranate, pieces of cucumber, ginger, curry leaves, thinly sliced green chilies, and chopped coriander leaves. Some people enjoy adding finely chopped onions to it. When ordered at a hotel, it is common to see the curd rice embellished with a seasoning of fried black mustard seeds and Bengal gram.

Throughout my childhood, my staple breakfast was curd rice before I set off to school. Leftover rice from the previous night would be soaked in water and kept overnight. This would be slightly fermented in the morning. The water would then be drained from the rice and then mixed with curds and a pinch of salt to make a delicious breakfast. Healthy, great for digestion and filling. Some days I would eat it with mango or lime pickle, and some days with a side dish of cooked veggies.

Later, when I worked in sales and marketing and had to constantly travel, I would safely stick to curd rice when I had to eat out. Yes, curd rice is an essential part of any buffet no matter what the cuisine is. Lucky me.

Curd rice is a great dish to carry while traveling. I have wonderful memories of train journeys when we would carry large tiffin carriers of food, usually comprising of tamarind rice, poori and potato curry, idlis, and curd rice. Somehow, we would be constantly hungry and finish off everything we carried!

Let me blind you with some curd rice science

Curd contains tryptophan, an essential amino acid that cannot be made by the body and must be consumed through our diet.

Tryptophan is the building block of a neurochemical called Serotonin, which plays a crucial role in learning and memory and various other things including digestion. It also regulates our mood, making us feel happy, emotionally stable, less anxious, more tranquil, more focused and energetic.

Serotonin has to be produced by the brain for us to feel happy. To do this it needs carbs. That’s where the rice comes in. So the tryptophan in curds and the carbs via rice come together to satiate us and make us happy.

When serotonin levels go low, it can lead to mood disorders such as depression.

Unless one is lactose intolerant, curd rice is considered a safe food with healthy probiotics that is easy on the stomach and of course, gluten-free. It restores the healthy microbial balance and helps to improve digestion. Besides this, it is the perfect food to eat when you have tummy issues as it is easy to digest. It is also supposed to help manage weight since it is low-calorie.

Most of all, it tastes great!

Thanks to Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她)’s prompt “Write about a food that is named perfectly for what it is, that the letters perfectly embody what flavours it holds.”

Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles ❤ Did you smile today?

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