Pongal and Sankaranti Special

Wish you a very happy Pongal-Sankranthi.

Sakkarai Pongal

Ingredients:
Milk - 3 cups
Water -1 cup
Rice - 1 cup
Green gram dal (moong) -1/4 cup
Powdered Jaggery -1 1/2 cups
Cardamom - 6(powdered)
Cashewnuts -50 gms
Raisins - 50 gms
Ghee -2 Tbsps.

Method:

Wash rice and moong dhal together and let it drain. Boil milk and water in a thick bottomed pan. Add rice and dal and cook in low flame until smooth. Add powdered jaggery and let it blend with the rice and dal mixture. Add ghee and powdered cardamom. Stir well and remove from fire. Roast cashewnuts and raisins in one more spoon of ghee. Pour the garnishing on the hot pongal.Serve it with a dash of hot ghee.


Urad Dal Vadai

Ingredients:
Black Gram Dal (urad dal)-1 Cup
Fresh Ginger -1" piece
Curry Leaves -A Few
Black Pepper - 1/2 Tsp
Jeera -1/2 Tsp
Salt - To Taste
Oil - For Frying

Method:
Soak urad dhal in enough water for 25 minutes. Drain the dhal and grind it with ginger and salt, without adding water. Remove from the mixer. Mix in coarsely crushed pepper and jeera (cumin seeds),and finely chopped curry leaves. You can adds a spoonful of coconut gratings as well. This is optional. Dip your palms in cold water. Take 2 Tbsps of the batter and flatten on your palm. Make a hole in the centre and slide it into hot oil. Fry on low flame until crisp and golden. Serve hot with chutney or sambar.

Ellu Bella – Healthy Sesame Seed and Jaggery tidbit

Ingredients:
Ellu or Sesame Seeds - 2 Cups
Ground Nuts -1/4 Cup
Roasted Gram -1/4 Cup
Cube Jaggery – 100g
Diamond Sugar -1/4 cup
Copra - 1/2

Method:
Lightly roast the sesame seeds until you get a pleasant aroma. Roast and remove the red husk from the groundnuts. Break the jaggery into small squares. Scrape and cut copra into small pieces. Mix the prepared ingredients with roasted gram and diamond sugar. Serve ellu bella.

Morkali/Koozhu

It is a very traditional tiffin. It is mostly prepapred in the evenings since it is labelled as a ligh tiffin. It is known as Koozhu in Kerala whereas in TamilNadu it is called morkali.
It is an easy to make tiffin with simple ingredients.

Rice flour - 1 cup

Buttermilk - 1 cup

Water - 1 cup

Salt as required

For Seasoning

Oil - 1 tblspn

Mustard - 1 tspn

Chana dal- 1 tspn

Curry leaves- few nos

Green chilly (chopped) - 1 nos

Curd chillies (thayir molagai) - 3 Nos

Take a bowl. Add oil. Keep in MW for 30 seconds.

Add mustard and again keep for 30 seconds. When mustard splutters, add the rest of the seasoning and leave for 1 minute.

In another bowl, make a thin batter out of the rice flour, buttermilk, water and salt. Mix well. Pour the batter over the seasonings in the first bowl.

Cook in MW high for 4 minutes. Stir once in between.It will be cooked well.

If you touch with a wet finger, it should not stick to your finger.

It can be eaten as it is else can be cut in to pieces.

To cut into pieces,grease a plate with oil and spread the kali on it and level it with a spoon. Cut into squares and serve cool with pickle or chutney of your choice.

This can be cooked on stove top also. Now you can guess why I cooked in MW. Yes, this goes to Srivalli for her MEC-Tiffin, the theme for the month of January.

Kolli Vadam (Tapioca Papad-Sundried)

Once summer sets in, one can see plastic sheets with various type of karuvadams and vathals dried in front of the houses. This is a common sight in my village.

I started before the actual summer set in. Then I will have rush to finish the drying before it gets really hot. Now, I can be little late in starting with the drying work, since sun is bearable till around 10:30 in the morning.

This weekend I made kolli vadam. I have to prepare one more batch. May be in the coming weekend.



Tapioca powder (store bought) - 1/2 kg

Raw rice - 1/2 cup

Pepper powder - 3 tspn

Salt and Hing - as per taste

Oil - 2 tbspn


Wash and soak the raw rice for 2 hrs and grind it to a fine paste.

Allow it to ferment for 6 hrs. It should get a sour taste. I left it overnight.



Make a batter of the tapioca powder and the rice paste with water. Add hing and salt. The batter should be thinner than dosa batter.You measure the said batter. Water required is twice the measure of the batter.


Take a thick bottomed vessel big enough to accomodate the water and batter and some extra space. Once cooked, it will increase in quantity. I used the uruli. It is convenient to prepare karuvadam maavu (dough for sun dried fritters) in the uruli.



Add water. When water is warm, slowly add the batter without forming lumps. Keep stirring. When it starts to thicken, add 2 tbspn of oil and the pepper powder. Mix well. Make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan.



It took 10 minutes for me to get the glazy texture. May be it cooked fast since I used uruli. When it gets a glazy texture, you can switch off the heat. Keep it in the same vessel for 5 minutes before you transfer to another vessel.



When it comes to room temperature, drop spoonfuls on a plastic sheet and slightly spread them to the size of a puri with the back of the spoon. Don't make it too thin.

After 4 hours of drying in the sun, try flipping it over. It should get dried in 2 days if it is very sunny.