Celebrating Holi the Indian Festival of Color with Chai and Sabudana

This spring I was pretty busy, so I'm totally late in posting these recipes.  But even a busy spring requires some respite from work and a little play time.  In Alaska, I'm always looking for ways to celebrate and welcome springtime.

Last March when I was back in NYC for my brother & Janejai's wedding celebration, I picked up some Holi colors.

So this past March I invited a bunch of friends over for an Indian food potluck brunch to celebrate Holi.  All sorts of good food!  I made sabudana and chai for the brunch.

I had celebrated Holi with my friend Archana in the past, but this year she's been in NYC.  It sounds like she'll be back in Fairbanks at the end of the summer, so we'll have to have another celebration when she gets back!

Archana taught me how to make sabudana, a savory tapioca dish.  Well, it's not exactly a recipe since there are no set measurements.  It's more like guidelines for making sabudana.  I never seem to get the texture quite right-- my tapioca pearls always seem to clump, but it still tastes delish!  I also might be need to try larger-sized tapioca pearls to solve that problem.

Sabudana

Ingredients

tapioca pearls (~2 cups)
potatoes (5-6 small potatoes)
olive oil
cumin seeds (~2 tbsp)
jalapeño
roasted peanuts (handful)
salt
cilantro (small bunch)

Directions
 
Place the tapioca pearls in a bowl and add enough cold water to barely cover them.  Soak for ~ 4 hours.  Drain off the excess water.

Boil the potatoes until soft.  Remove the peels of the potatoes.

Dice the jalapeño (I remove the seeds to reduce the heat of it).

In a frying pan over medium high heat, add olive oil and cumin seed.  Once the cumin seeds begin to brown, add the jalapeño.  Once that is cooked, add in the potatoes, crushing them with your hands.  Fry the potatoes with the jalapeño and cumin seeds (you might need to add more oil at this point).  When the potatoes are a bit browned, add in the tapioca pearls to the mixture.

Continue to stir as the tapioca cooks. Don't cover the pan since trapping the steam will make the tapioca sticky.

When the tapioca is cooked (and looks translucent),  remove from the heat and place in a bowl.

Stir in chopped cilantro and roasted peanuts.

Chai

Ingredients 

5 cups of water
1.5 tbsp cardamom
1 tbsp whole cloves
2 cinnamon sticks1/2 freshly ground nutmeg seed
cut up chunk of crystallized ginger
1/4 cups of dark brown sugar (more or less depending on how sweet you want it)

2 tbsp loose black tea

Directions

In a large pot, simmer water and spices for 15 minutes.

Add brown sugar and dissolve.

Remove from heat and add tea leaves.  Steep for 5 minutes and then strain through a cheese cloth.

Add vanilla extra.

When ready to serve, heat equal parts of chai mix and milk together.  Alternatively, you can make a chai latte by adding warmed chai mix to steamed milk.