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Revision as of 05:09, 21 June 2009 by Radagast83 (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Sevai, Shavige or Santhakai is a type of rice noodles popular in Southern India, particularly Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Shavige is made out of other food grains like wheat, ragi, etc. also are increasingly becoming popular.
Sevai is distinctly different from its cousin idiappam in the sense of input material, making process, and post-extrusion recipes. Sevai is popular as a breakfast/dinner food and is considered easily digestible as it can be made with less or no oil, and it is steamed.
Making of Sevai
Sevai/Shavige is mostly made fresh starting from rice grains. It is also prepared from a dried Sevai packs (or rice sticks) like the instant ones in the Asian grocery stores. Traditionally, making of sevai at home consists of the following steps (with minor variations based on location and family customs):
- Soaking of parboiled rice in cold water for about 3 hours
- Grinding of soaked rice using a wet grinder into a fine paste
- Making of dumplings from the rice paste and steaming the chunks (at least three variations are known in this step as follows)
- Pressing of cooked dumplings into fine strands using a type of Sevai press
Composition of Sevai
Home made Sevai is often made from 100% rice (with water and salt, of course) where as dry rice sticks may often have some additives like tapioca, corn starch, etc.
Instant rice noodles like the MAGGI RICE NOODLE MANIA have other additives like Wheat gluten, Guar gum, edible starch, etc.
Other names of Sevai
Sevai is called Santhakai in the western parts of Tamil Nadu. it is called 'Shavige' in Kannada. People also loosely use the terms idiappam and semiya (vermicelli) for Sevai, even though these foods are different from Sevai in several aspects. In Tamil, these are written சந்தைக, சந்தவம், சந்தைவ.
Foods prepared with Sevai
Sevai is often flavoured with Lemon, Tamarind, Tomato, Coconut, etc. and tastes best when served warm. Popular accompaniments for plain sevai are sweetened coconut milk, more-kuzhambu, several vegetable kormas and mutton/chicken/fish korma.
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