Sakkarai Pongal recipe - Happy Pongal!

Happy Pongal everyone.  Here's one of my favorite recipes. It is easy too. I always used to wonder why my sweet pongal

1. Did not have the semi solid like consistency that it is supposed to have
2. Did not have the dark color 

I found the answers to both these questions

1. Need to add enough milk/water when boiling the rice and dal mixture
2. Need to use the darker jaggery

I got the answer to 1 from here.

Ingredients :

1. 1 cup rice
2. 1/2 cup yellow moong dal
3. 2.5 cups of milk
4. 2.5 cups of water + 1 cup to mix the jaggery
5. 1/4 cup ghee
6. A pinch of salt
7. 3/4 to 1 cup jaggery
8. A handful of cashews
9. A handful of raisins
10. 1 tsp cardamom powder

How I made it :

1. In a pan, heat a tsp of ghee and roast the dal till fragrant.
2. Soak dal along with washed rice for about 30 minutes.
3. Pressure cook the dal+rice mix with 2.5 cups each of milk and water with a pinch of salt for 15 minutes on low flame.
4. Grate or break jaggery into small pieces. The smaller the pieces, the sooner it will take you to get a golden syrup saving energy. 
5. Add 1 cup of water to jaggery and boil till all the jaggery has melted. 
6. Pass this through a strainer and keep aside.
7. When the pressure from the cooker has lifted, add the jaggery syrup and mash the rice and dal mixture. 
8. In a pan, heat the ghee, add the cashews and raisins and fry till cashews are light golden brown. Mix in the rice, dal and jaggery mix. 
9. Sprinkle with cardamom powder and serve.

I like this cold but it does taste good warm too. Add a little milk when heating up as it has a tendency to lump up absorbing all the liquid.

As it is the festival today, I also made the khara version from Nag's blog and served it with my mom-in-law's sambar.

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Thengai Poli/Ubittu

Whilst in Chennai, our company used to sponsor snacks, which used to be my dinner, for those staying back beyond 7pm at work. This was a real motivation for many to stay back until 7pm. One of my favorites was poli. Warm and sweet, these melt in the mouth stuffed rotis were never something that I stayed away from. I saw this recipe on Nag's blog and it reminded me of poli. I had some coconut on hand and so decided to make the poli with the coconut stuffing rather than the dal. This would also make Pras very happy as he is a keralite who loves his coconuts (wicked smile ;))

When I gave Pras the first one, he went "It tastes just like it does in the store brought ones." Well, what more would I want to hear :)

Ingredients (makes 5 polis): 

1. 1 cup of maida - you could use whole wheat if you like
2. 1/2 cup jaggery
3. 1/2 cup coconut grated
4. 2 pods of green cardomom crushed
5. Salt a pinch
6. 1 tbsp oil
7. 2 tbsp ghee
8. Water - 1/4 cup + enough to make a smooth dough

How I made it :

1. Add the pinch of salt to the flour and make a smooth dough. Ply the dough for about 2 minutes before letting it rest for about 1 hour.
2. In the meantime, use as little water as possible to melt the jaggery in. This can be done on the stove top with regular mixing. Cutting the jaggery into smaller pieces help this get done sooner. 
3. Sieve this melted jaggery syrup to remove any impurities.
4. Add the coconut to this and cook on the stove until the mixture becomes sticky and almost dry.
5. To this add the crushed cardamom powder.
6. Now rub some oil onto a plastic sheet. 
7. Take a ball of dough and flatten it out in your palm, making a well in the center.
8. Fill this with the coconut jaggery mixture. Try to put as much as possible. Don't be scared of it coming out as this will be a sticky mixture and wont ooze out or cause too much trouble when rolling out. 
9. Pull the ends of the dough so as to enclose the coconut jaggery mixture and roll this into a thin stuffed roti. You could alternately make it like making stuffed aloo paratha.
10. Cook on a hot tava until both sides brown. Apply ghee generously and take off the heat.

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Carrot halwa

Off late, due to the increase in percentage being taken by the food coupon companies, many biggies in the supermarket business have stopped accepting coupons. I was very worked up when I found a bundle of coupons for 4000 rupees lying in the back of my hubby's cupboard. Yesterday, while going for a walk, I found that a small department store near my place accepts the coupons. Hence, hubby and I went on a shopping spree :) I found really good delhi carrots as well as khova. Hence, I decided to make carrot halwa.

Ingredients

1/2 kg carrots grated

1/2 litre milk

100g khova

1/4 cup milkmaid

3 tablespoons sugar

1 elaichi powdered/smashed

3 tablespoons ghee

Dry fruits to garnish

How to make :

1. Heat the ghee in a pressure cooker. Add the carrots. Fry the carrots for about 3 minutes. 

2. Add enough milk to cover the carrots. 

3. Pressure cook on high for 5 whistles. 

4. Once the pressure releases, add the remaining milk and keep stirring. Add the elaichi.

5. After about 8 minutes, add the milkmaid and the khova. Continue stirring. Use a glove to protect your hands from the steam while stirring.

6. This takes sometime. You will need to keep stirring to ensure that it does not stick to the bottom. Once you feel that the halwa has absorbed all the milk, add the sugar.

7. Turn off heat once sugar dissolves.

This was the first time that I tried making carrot halwa and it was truly delicious.

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