Chakkarapongal
You need
- Raw Rice/Pachharisi - 1/2 cup
- Moong dal - 1/4 cup
- Jaggery - 1 cup
- Boiled Milk - 1/2 cup
- Ghee - 2 tspn
- Cashew - 10 nos
- Raisins - 10 nos
- Cardamom powder - 1/2 tspn
Method
Roast rice and dal separately. Pressure cook with 2 1/2 cups of water. Melt jaggery with 1/4 cup water. Filter to remove any impurities. Bring jaggery syrup to boil and stir in the cooked rice and dal. Cook on low flame till the jaggery is well absorbed by the rice,dal mix. This will not take much time and will get done quickly. Do keep stirring to avoid the mix getting stuck to the bottom. The color of the rice and dal will change to brown on cooking. Finally stir in the milk and cook for a minute or two for it blend well and remove from fire. Don't cook for longer time once the milk is added to avoid curdling.
Roast cashew nut and raisins in ghee and add it to the pongal. Finally add cardamom powder.
VenPongal
You need
- Rice - 2/3 cup
- Moong dal - 1/3 cup
- Turmeric - a small pinch
- Hing -1/4 tspn
- Water - 3 cup
- Ghee - 2 tblspn
- Cumin seeds - 1 tspn
- Peppercorns - 5-8 nos, crushed
- Few curry leaves
- Cashew nuts - 10 nos (optional)
Method
Dry roast rice for less than 5 minutes or so. Roast moong dal till you can smell the aroma of roasted dal and the dal would have turned light brown. Wash rice and dal together. Add 3 cups of water to rice+dal mix. Add a pinch of turmeric and hing to it. Pressure cook till it is soft. After pressure cooking, the rice and dal would have cooked soft with no traces of water in it.
Mash it lightly with the ladle.
Mix well and serve hot. Coconut chutney goes well with pongal.
I shall post the vadai recipe in the next one. Until my friend, who is a follower of this blog, messaged me that she was expecting a post on pongal recipes, I didn't realize that I haven't posted the recipes here. Thanks Anu, this is specially for you.
Wishing all my readers a lovely day of celebrations with friends and family.
