Pongal

Pongal is a very important festival for the south Indians. You can learn all about pongal here. Actually, I made this in eleventh hour for the RCI event: Festival foods hosted by Viji who is the owner of a great blog Vcuisine.

I have posted 2 types of pongal here. Sakkarai pongal and ven pongal. My sakkarai pongal does not have that deep color as I used the light colored jaggery . Usually, I get the dark brown jaggery but I couldn't find it in the store this time.

Sakkarai Pongal:

Ingredients:
Raw rice- 1/2 cup
split moong dal- 1/4 cup
water- 2 cups
milk- 1/2 cup
jaggery- 3/4th cup elachi- 2 (crushed)
cashews- 4 (broken)
raisins- 7 or 8
coconut scrapings- 1 tbsp
ghee- 1 tbsp

Procedure:

Wash rice and dal together. Add water,milk and pressure cook for 1 whistle. Meanwhile, melt jaggery with little water and allow to cool. When the pressure is off, open cooker and mash the pongal. Add jaggery syrup to pongal according to your taste level. Heat ghee in a pan and fry elachi, cashews, raisins and coconut scrapings. Fry them and add to pongal. Steaming hot sweet pongal is ready.

Ven Pongal:

Ingredients:

Raw rice- 1 cup

split moong dal- 1/2 cup

water- 3 1/2

milk- 1 cup

salt - as reqd

cashews- 5 (broken)

jeera seeds- 1 tsp

peppercorns- 1 tsp

ginger- 2 " (crushed a little)

curry leaves- few

Procedure:
Wash rice and dal together and pressure cook it for 1 whistle with milk, salt and water. When the pressure goes off, mash the pongal. Heat ghee in a pan and fry cashews, jeera-pepper mixture, ginger and curry leaves. Add this to pongal and mix well. Serve it with sambar and coconut chutney.

Here a plate for all of you to enjoy. See you gals. Have a great weekend!!!