Give lemons a break and try this millet salad with orange juice dressing

The sky-rocketing prices of food items and improvisations in recipe go hand in hand. So, I decided to improvise my regular salad dressing, and used orange instead of a lemon. To my surprise, I was able to make a better dressing which has less tartness, more sweetness without additional sugar and the experiment worked for many other oil-based dressings too.
It may not always be how you improvise with the dressing, the recipe I am sharing today is more about the choice of the millet that would go with orange juice dressing. I tried this recipe with little millet and it will be equally good with barnyard, browntop or proso millet. But if you try the same recipe with foxtail millet or kodo millet, you might not like the combination. Understanding different millets and what flavours go with which millet is a different science altogether. Once you ace that, nothing can stop you in your millet journey; you can then practice, experiment, improvise and learn. Trust me, we don’t need an alien diet plan to help us with lifestyle conditions. All we need is to bring back our ancient grains in the most comfortable way. Each one of us is unique. So why follow the race of fad diets blindly.
I love adding podis to my meals, especially in summers; it saves a lot of my cooking time. This simple summer salad recipe was further improvised with the addition of podi (you may call it Indian dry chutney). Just go with flavours that suit you the best, this recipe is surely a keeper and you will be spoilt for a choice when it comes to improvising with its ingredients. Read more for the step step recipe.

SUMMER MILLET SALAD WITH ORANGE JUICE DRESSING

For the dressing:
Ingredients:
· Juice of one orange
· 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
· 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
· Pink salt to taste
· 1/2 tsp dried herbs

For the salad:
Ingredients: (serves 4)
· ½ cup little millet
· ½ tsp pink salt
· ¼ tsp turmeric powder
· 1 medium beetroot (steamed and finely chopped)
· ½ cup sweet corn (boiled)
· ½ cup yellow pumpkin (steamed and finely chopped)
· ½ cup cucumber finely chopped
· Fresh mint Leaves
· Dal podi (to sprinkle on top)
· Raw mango chutney (optional

Method:
1. Thoroughly wash and soak little millet for 7-8 hours.
2. Cook the millet with little salt and turmeric until it is soft and tender. Keep it aside to let the excess moure evaporates.
3. Add steamed veggies, corn, cucumber, mint leaves.
4. Mix all the ingredients of the dressing and whisk it well.
5. Pour orange juice dressing and mix it with the salad.
6. While serving, you can sprinkle your favourite podis generously. You can pair it up with any chutney of your choice. I had the freshly made raw mango salsa so I used that up.
Please note, unlike lemon dressings, you cannot preserve this dressing for days. It’s  better to make it fresh and consume the same day.
Shalini Rajani is a Millet Coach, the founder of Crazy Kadchi and holds innovative Millets Cooking Workshops and Gluten Free Sourdough Baking Workshops for all age groups.
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