Something Different: Kichri

Have you heard of kichri? No? Yeah, that's not surprising, and not just because I'm imagining my imaginary reader to be far too sophisticated to ever eat kichri.  Unless you're Indian, like from the subcontinent, you've probably never eaten kichri.  It's not something they serve in Indian restaurants of any stripe.  It's simple food that you make when someone's sick or when you don't feel like cooking.

Kichri comforting my notebook.

Kichri is basically rice and {split red lentils, split yellow peas, split mung beans}.  (Did you like the quasi-set-notation there?  I did, too.)  I usually make it with mung beans, but split mung beans are hard to find.  But on Monday, one of my coworkers had the loveliest-smelling kichri for lunch.  He told me he made it with red lentils, using a pressure cooker.  I don't own a pressure cooker. because my mom told me that they explode and that I should never buy one.  But people swear by them.

Anyways.  

Monday night I went home and said to Spousal Unit, "We must have kichri!  I need kichri!  And let's make it with red lentils."  And we did.

Now, our kichri wasn't quite like my coworker's kichri.  First of all, we didn't have mustard oil, bay leaves or cardamom in the house so we couldn't put it into the kichri.  Second of all, we buy powdered spices rather than toasting and grinding our own.  And, finally, we didn't finish it with ghee or homemade yogurt, made with a starter obtained from the nearby Hindu temple.  We used unsalted butter and full-fat yogurt.  It was fine.  In fact, it was more than fine:  it was warm and spicy, and just as comforting as a big heaping bowl of mac'n'cheese!