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Dehydrated Onion Powder The name, if not the grain poha, came into my life a few years ago when a friend was testing recipes

for a cookbook she was writing with an Indian chef who lives and cooks in the United States. She phoned one day, positively

giddy, to talk about the fluffy grain she'd discovered. Like couscous, poha was fast and fabulous. Why, she wondered, hasn't

anybody ever heard of it? A few weeks ago I posed that question to Houston cookbook author Suneeta Vaswani. ``My dream is to

one day introduce Americans to the various hidden treasures of the Indian pantry, and this is one of them,'' she said. ``It

is something we absolutely adore.'' Poha resembles pale, elongated oats and is made from rice that is parboiled, pressed and

dried. I've seen it translated as "pressed rice" or "flattened, dehydrated rice" — descriptive but drab words that fail to

do poha justice. To prepare a common vegetable dish, the cook rinses the poha quickly under running water and drains it well,

then adds it to a sauté pan with spices, diced vegetables and a negligible amount of water, which makes it fluff up. Or she

may deep-fry it, which makes it puff up, or simmer it with milk and sugar for a variation on rice pudding. I had forgotten

about my conversation with Raquel until the book American Masala was published last year with two recipes for poha. I glanced

at them before the grain again fell off my radar. Recently I chanced upon big bags of it in the Indian section of a Fiesta

Mart. I hesitated momentarily — did I want thick or thin? I had no clue — before grabbing thick at random and heading for

the checkout lane. A lucky guess. To a woman, the cooks I spoke with preferred thick. With my first experiment, Potato and

Pea Poha from American Masala, I hit one out of the ballpark. The notes I scribbled on the recipe read, "Fluffy, easy, yummy.

Tastes very Indian. Delicious cold the next day, too." In addition to poha and potatoes, the dish called for mustard seeds,

cumin seeds, curry leaves and cilantro, all items easy to find at Indian groceries, as is poha itself. Turns out there are as

many versions of this dish as there are cooks in India, or at least Maharashtra, the state in western India that lays claim

to it, according to Vaswani. It's traditionally served for breakfast, at teatime or as a snack that schoolchildren pack in

their tiffins (lunch pails). Vaswani's version, from Easy Indian Cooking, adds grated coconut and cloves. The seriously

satisfying variation at Kiran's restaurant revealed happy surprises with every bite: carrots, green beans, cauliflower,

peanuts, pickled mango and the decidedly untraditional broccoli. Chef-proprietor Kiran Verma got into the habit of loading

her poha with vegetables as a way to encourage her children, then small, to eat more of them. But except for an occasional

appearance at brunch, don't look for it on the menu. Vegetable poha is homey, grandma-type cooking, not restaurant fare,

Verma explains. Ammini Ramachandran, the Dallas-based author of Grains, Greens, and Grated Coconuts: Recipes and Remembrances

of a Vegetarian Legacy (iUniverse, $24), adds that most Indian restaurants in the United States serve northern cuisine,

leaving poha off the menu. All the more reason to try it at home. I turned to rice pudding, another traditional use. My poha

rice pudding was soupy but scrumptious, and I had to restrain myself from polishing off a batch meant to serve six. In

Kerela, a rice-growing region of southern India, poha (or avil, as it is called there) is a festival food. Neither the rice

harvest (Puthiri) nor the New Year (Deepavali) festivals would be complete without it, Ramachandran writes. To the north,

it's key in chevra, a deep-fried snack mix. Pudding, fried snack and comfy rice and vegetable dish: those are the traditional

uses. But after she and I spoke about poha, Verma invited me to stop by the restaurant to eat fish with a poha crust of her

own invention. Beforehand, she sent her husband to the store. He returned with three bags, all labeled "poha." The first held

the flattened rice I was getting to know, the second flattened corn that looked like cornflakes, and the third — labeled

"sabudana (tapioca) poha" — fat, translucent ribbons. It's no surprise that the last two were new to me, but incredibly,

Verma was also mystified. Newfangled pohas are all the rage in India, her husband reported hearing from the shopkeeper. Verma

rose to the challenge. She made a traditional vegetable poha with the flattened rice. Also, she deep-fried and flavored some,

then showered the puffs over Chilean sea bass and served it with Indian-spiced beurre blanc. She used the corn poha as if it

were bread crumbs, adding a crispy coating to striped bass in coconut sauce. Finally, she deep-fried the tapioca poha, which

puffed up to look like pork rinds. Verma scattered the puffs with a heady mix of pomegranate seeds, sliced green chiles and

red onion. She added a squeeze of lemon and a dusting of cilantro, cumin, salt and mango powder. It was the best, most

addictive bar snack imaginable. In American Masala, chef Suvir Saran mentions that pea and potato poha was a favorite

childhood snack. "Now that I'm grown, poha is a staple in my kitchen," he wrote. "It's simple and comforting and, given the

chance, will become a staple in your kitchen, too."