Discover the joy of eating plain rice through desi sushi

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

food? Indians are happily doing their own takes on sushi. Apart from using fiery Indian pickles, there are also reports of butter chicken sushi, biryani sushi roll and even sushi cakes made from large layers of cold-compressed rice with savoury fillings and toppings. An Instagram user displayed dal chawal sushi — rice rolled over sukha dal with onions and chutney and served with more dal poured around it.

This drives sushi purists nuts. How can sushi be shifted so far away from the original concept of cold-pressed rice lightly flavoured with vinegar and served with raw fish? But definitions of sushi have shifted over time and at its heart, it’s a quick to make and eat Japanese street-food snack and street-food vendors are adept at making something from anything. The Japanese are also happy to adapt recipes to suit their tastes.

They love Vermont curry, a thick, soupy dish with almost no spicing and a mildly sweet-sour flavour from honey and apple cider vinegar. It was inspired by a 1950s American doctor who promoted the benefits of honey and vinegar, both from his native state, but it is about as far from Indian curries as you can get. But what explains the new Indian love for sushi, especially when so many of the desi versions don’t even use fish? Perhaps it is helping us rediscover the plain taste of rice.

We eat lots of rice, of course, but as people become more prosperous, they change the proportions, using less rice and more dal or other dishes on their plate. The immense popularity of biryani means rice is also being eaten cooked with lots of other ingredients. Either way, the taste of plain rice gets lost We see poorer people eating large mounds of plain rice, but this becomes fur ther reason to distance ourselves