A tray of almonds is brought in. Srinivasa Chakrawarthy Ravuri and his wife Shyamala Devi urge me to give it a try. I take a couple of them and bite in, to be pleasantly surprised. These almonds aren’t roasted. Yet, they are crisp, crunchy and even bulbous, as though they’ve been soaked.
The almonds have gone through semi fermentation after which they were passed through a solar dehydrator. The process removes anti-nutrients that come in the way of nutrition assimilation. “Almonds are best consumed after being soaked to remove anti nutrients. But what does one do while travelling? This scientific process helps retain the nutrients,” says Ravuri.
Food science
arr
A nuclear physicist, Ravuri is the brain behind a four-year-old small enterprise called Sunplay. Custom-designed solar ovens, concentrators and dehydrators occupy the terrace of his residence in Sainikpuri. Ravuri designed dehydrators and ovens using teak wood and glass, ensuring no crevices from which the heat could escape. His ovens have reflective glass surfaces that help gather more sun rays. The heating is even, ensuring that food doesn’t get burnt.
Each of the double-glass surface dehydrators have in them grains like ragi, jowar and bajra — plain and sprouted. Once dehydrated, jowar and bajra will go into preparing rawa or flours while ragi may be made into flour or malted.
When Sunplay was in its early stages, the couple tested the market with packets of ragi malt at organic bazaars. Happy customers and organic farmers spread the word. Sunplay’s other products, like sprouted wheat and jowar flours, sun-roasted peanuts, raw banana and sweet potato flours, also have loyal takers.
On the day we meet, the couple is busy baking bread. Multiple flours have been knead together and left to rise using a delayed fermentation technique. Shyamala Devi places these loaves in solar ovens and says the breads should be ready in an hour or more. It was a scorching 43.2 degrees.
Solar baked breads
arr
Baking in solar evens is tricky, says Ravuri. He was inspired by city-based artisan bakers like Shipra Chenji (Light Green Oven) and Dhanesh (Terrassen Café) and pored over food blogger Sangeeta Khanna’s copious notes. “Baking bread in a regular oven requires 220°C. Our solar ovens go up to 170°C. So I wasn’t sure,” he says. Then, his innate scientific temper took over. “When you probe a thermometer into a loaf of bread that’s just about baked, it records 90°C. That’s when I realised we could do it,” he adds.
Winter, with its direction and concentration of sun rays, and spring-summer are busy months. “Moisture-laden monsoon days are holidays,” says Shyamala.
Sun drying grains is an old practice. One may argue that it would be a fool-proof method, provided the locality isn’t too polluted. Ravuri explains why scientific solar processing has an edge. “The grains need to be spread in a thin layer, unlike industrial stocking that can trap moisture and lead to fungal growth. Moisture deep within the grains should come out. This happens only when the dehydration is done well. Most of the moisture escapes in a couple of hours; the rest is a slow process. You need to know the end point in solar roasting.”
Solar dehydrators used here have a small fan to aid air circulation. The solar units at Sunplay are compact ones, unlike those used in industrial production. The Ravuris wanted to start small.
Ravuri is an alumnus of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. He completed Ph.D on Nuclear Structure Physics in 1996. He further pursued research as a Humboldt Fellow with Institute for Nuclear Physics, Cologne. He and Shyamala travelled where work took him — Germany, England and Canada (Vancouver). His research at Vancouver included experiments on long-lived Nuclear-isomers for energy release purposes.
Stress on quality
On returning to India, he was eager to start something on his own. There were many ideas and Shyamala suggested something to do with food. He was reluctant. “It’s a huge responsibility,” he reasons.
They don’t compromise on quality. There are times when they’ve returned grains to suppliers because they were old or substandard. “You can’t take chances with food and health,” they state emphatically.
The grains go through stages before they are floured. Ragi, for example, is washed several times to remove dust and husk and then sprouted, passed through dehydrators. The labour intensive process leaves Ravuri and Shyamala little time for anything else. As of now, the work is completely done by their family. “As the business grows we’ll hire help,” they state.
They are adept in cooking meals in solar ovens. “Solar concentrators of 4square metre aperture can cook five kg of rice in 15litres water in 40 minutes,” says Ravuri.
As we speak, the whole grain breads are ready. The texture and aroma are inviting. The crust isn’t hard like oven-baked ones since crusting requires a higher temperature.
It doesn’t matter. The bread is delicious and pairs well with home-made butter or hung yogurt dip.
What does Sunplay do? Sprouting, malting, fermenting and dehydration of grains and seeds. Sunplay makes ragi malt; rice, rava and flours of ragi, wheat and jowar; sprouted methi seeds, raw banana and sweet potato flours, sun-toasted almonds and peanuts, and powders of moringa, mint and neem leaves.
Their products are available at Good Seeds Organic Bazaar and weekly Sunday organic market at Lamakaan.
