Breakfast for Dinner

Had a craving for south Indian food this past week so decided to make a traditional south indian breakfast...for dinner tonight. Turned out quite well, even if I did cheat a bit on the Idlis.

What is it?
Two different kinds of chutneys - both delish - a coconut chili chutney with mustard seed and a roasted red pepper chutney with cashews.
Yogurt (actually not south indian - you don't find much yogurt down there, at least not in my experience which is admittedly quite limited...but we needed it cause everything else was pretty spicy)

and
Idlis - essentially cornmeal-texture muffins (although technically I think they are made out of ground rice...). Here is where I cheated. I used a mix. You mix the powder with yogurt and sauteed and chopped vegetables to make a batter and then steam them. They are also not the traditional idli shape, although fairly close...next time I'll try from scratch - I don't think they are that difficult. Need to find an idli steamer...

I remember the first...and second time I ate idlis. The first was actually in Singapore. A friend who I was studying with there (Amarpal) dragged me off to a food court to try them out (not much dragging was needed though). We were both sadly disappointed though. They were not fresh enough - idlis should really be fresh out of the steamer to be really good or else they have a tendency to get heavy. But the second time was another thing completely. We were travelling from Cochin down to Trivandrum by train. It was 6 in the morning and we had just landed the night before quite late. Had slept perhaps 5 hours and then it was time to get up and run for the train. After breathlessly grabbing a berth, we settled in for the 4 hour train ride and I realized we'd not had dinner the night before and breakfast/lunch was looking pretty far off. A guy who worked on the train asked if we wanted something to eat. (Of course we did!) and so on the next stop, he jumped off the train and bought us breakfast from a vendor working just next to the tracks. He brought us back Idli and Appams - both breakfast breads - with chutneys. So good.