Tamal Nadu Painting

Indian Noodles & Dumplings


India is not known as a land of noodles, but it has traded with the Middle East, China, Southeast Asia Europe and Africa for thousands of years, and been exposed to noodles from all directions. Indian noodles may be made of wheat, rice or millet. They are used in a number of dishes very popular in India, particularly for breakfasts and deserts. We are also including here some small dried "noodle-like" dumplings widely used in India.   Photo of temple painting from Tamil Nadu by Nireekshit, distributed under license Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike v3.0 Unported.

CG Home

Pasta mix
Pasta, Noodles

logo
Ingredients

SEARCH
Search
CloveGarden


SAFARI
Users


Sevai

  -   [009 Shyavige]
Sevai Rice Noodles 009 In southern India, particularly in Tamil Nadu, rice noodles are often made fresh. That's a bit of a hassle here, especially since the necessary wet grinders, while common in Indian households, are scarce and expensive here in California. A powerful blender could be used, but the result isn't quite the same. Here, we can just use easily available Asian dried rice noodles, available in numerous sizes. Also, fresh rice noodles in sheets and wider sizes are available in Southeast Asian and Korean markets.

The photo shows the thinnest (0.027 inch / 0.75 mm diameter), but thicker ones are often used in India. Just make sure you get rice noodles, not bean starch noodles - they look identical dried, but nothing alike when cooked. Rice noodles are often used for breakfast dishes, but can appear in other roles as well. They are often flavored with tamarind, lemon, coconut, and spices.

Seviyan

  -   [036 Xevaiyan, "Vermicelli"]
Seviyan 036 This durum wheat noodle is often called "vermicelli" in English, but differs from both Italian vermicelli, which is a little lager than spaghetti, and American vermicelli, which is a bit smaller than spaghetti. This pasta is more equivalent to Capellini (angel hair) in size (0.040 inch / 1.0 mm) and is identical in diameter to the "vermicelli" so popular in Armenia.

This pasta isn't much shipped from India, and why would it be when Capellini is so easily available in North America? In most Indian recipes, it is broken to 2 or 3 inches and roasted in oil with spices until a light golden color before adding liquids. In India it is also sold "pre roasted". It is used for breakfast dishes, usually cooked with water, and for sweet desert dishes, usually cooked with milk.

Wadi

  -   [339 Vadi, Bori, Bodi, Mungaudi]
Wadi 339 These dumplings can serve as a meat substitute in recipes. No, they're not just like meat, but can take it's place similarly to textured soy protein, and they are probably a lot healthier than the heavily processed soy. They are made of various mixes of ground pulses, and formed in various shapes. They are particularly popular in northern India, where they are made in the winter and sun dried for use the rest of the year. If dried in the hot summer sun they get too hard and don't cook right.

Those on the left are Chora Wadi, made from small dark green chickpeas (peeled), and those on the right are made are Moong Wadi, made from mung beans (peeled). Urad dal is also often used. The chana are about 0.55 inch diameter at the base, and the Moong about 0.63 inch diameter at the base. Both were purchased from a large Indian market in Glendale, California.

pa_india* 150403   -   www.clovegarden.com
©Andrew Grygus - agryg@clovegarden.com - Photos on this page not otherwise credited are © cg1 - Linking to and non-commercial use of this page permitted