Bread Poha Breakfast

Bread poha breakfast!

In the Syrian Christian Mallu home that I grew up in, we were accustomed to a few breakfast staples - idli-dosa (or dosha, which is how we pronounce it at home) with coconut chutney and sambar, puttu pazham (shockingly, there is a wiki link on puttu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puttu!) and so on. Bread poha was not on that list.

Many years later, when I hijacked a friend's apartment when I was apartment hunting in London, I was introduced to bread poha on a lazy Sunday morning. I fell in love with it instantly. There are many ways of making bread poha. Conversations with my north Indian friends suggest that each household has its own tried and tested method. Some throw in a tomato, other's don't. Some like the bread in the bread poha as crispy as possible, others like it soft.

I tend to make my bread poha in a south Indian inspired style with a tempering of mustard seeds, fenugreek/methi seeds and curry leaves. The aroma is delicious and although the base is bread, it brings back memories of more sophisticated south Indian cooking, all of which tends to use the same sort of tempering.