Bhai-e Fred, there is something similar to nachni in Latin and select health food stores North Am cities...a nichni-like grain (not white or red like quinoa nor amaranth...which in the old days were known as food of the Inca Gods, Peru). Never tried it. If I remember correctly, its available in powered form as...likely to make tissan-like morning porridge -one can get jagger-like cakes from Mexico if one wants to make tissan. Nachnni are available at the Goi govment stores..Re 20-22 for half kilo if I am not mistaken?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinoa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranth In Goa, one makes baakri (instead of wheat flour baked with banana or jackfruit leaves like the traditional Goichi way), use nachni+jawar flour....with grated coconut jaggery (from Mupca market, genuine stuff...when buying, break a piece and if the insides are white, its not 100%), pieces of coconut, nutmeg/or cinnamon and a little organic turmeric (pure, from a farm store in Margao, available in the month of Jan-Feb-March). This accompanied with strong coffee (T-corner's ground coffee) brewed in Andra Dairy Milk (never Goi diary), maada-chem go'd and a liberal helping of aged rum.....woosh, what a fine breakfast. Its thick, creamy...... The traditional Goichi baakri is baked on a banana leaf and gives it a nice flavour. Banana leaves are sometimes difficult to find (one has to jump the neighbours fence to pick some....) so one can use jackfruit leaves, threateded together with a irr (off a coconut leaf) but the flavour ain't the same. On a side note: the coffee drink is inspired by the morning brew in Mexico....they drink a thick muddy chocolate, bitter as.....something like cusment....but muddy....and they sit motion-less in silence....not certain but I would like to think its some recovery scheme from the previous nights drinking. Incidentally, the mexican cocolate (cheap and widely available here North Am) tastes heavenly (dark haven) in a meat stew, ox tail in particular. Its what the spaneesh took back from down there.....aside from goold. There is one 'must-have' book for all things vegetarian....its called Laurel's Kitchen (published in 1976, now has a updated version on sale) and has everything you ever wanted to know about.....my copy is in Goa and will show (not lend, thanks). This has tables and calories and medical info even. This was put together by three Cali hippis and they even have some touches of Endia in there... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel's_Kitchen On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 5:35 PM, Frederick Noronha <[email protected]> wrote: > While passing by the Panjim municipal market the other day, I > came across the women selling traditional Goan products. > Along with the jackfruit (even the seeds are not wasted, but > sold!) and black-jaggery (of coconut), I saw neat plastic > packets of nachni. > > The problem with the packs of finger-millet is that it can be > quite a pain to grind the same (traditional-style, wet, or at > a flour-mill). Something made me inquire if it was available > in powdered-form. For Rs 20, I got a fairly generous plastic > pack, in a small merchant's shop, in the market itself! > > That took me down memory lane. Later that night, I tried to > get the kids to play "cooking". Unfortunately, there was a > shortage of the traditional coconut-jaggery at home, so it > didn't turn out as sweet! But there was some fun in preparing > it. Aren (7) was thrilled with the way in which the boiling > mix of finger-millet powder, water, a little milk and sugar > peaked into volcano-like "hillocks" in the pan: > > http://bit.ly/olD7Um > http://bit.ly/qLzkKk > http://bit.ly/pRaMub > > What exactly is nachni? >
