When pongal?

Ven Pongal

When pongal?

Anytime!

Breakfast, lunch, tiffin, dinner, naivedya/prasad, picnic, party, convalescence, feasts… this simple but soul satisfying dish is versatile.

Ven Pongal is made during the harvest festival of Pongal in South India. Pongal comes from the Tamil word “to swell or overflow” which signifies the cornucopia post the harvest season.

In Maharashtra, a similar khichadi like dish is made on Bhogi, the first day of Sankranti, along with bajra bhakri with sesame seeds, with a dollop of butter or ghee and a side of lekurvali bhaji (literally bhaji with a lot of children!).

The entire menu for the Pongal/ Sankranti feast reflects all the seasonal produce that is harvested and that is good to keep warm during winters. The generous amounts of ghee and butter that are used are totally justified.

The skinned variety of moong dal is usually used in pongal, but I wanted a trade- off for the ghee, so I compromised with split whole green gram dal and didn’t regret it one bit. 

The dal with the skin added a lovely texture to the smooth rice whose flavour was enhanced when bits of chopped ginger and pepper, unexpectedly but delightfully, cropped up in a mouthful! 

Happy Pongal! Happy Sankranti! Happy Lohri!

Ingredients

1 cup Basmati rice, soaked for 30 minutes
½ cup split whole green gram dal, soaked for 30 minutes

1 tbsp Chana Dal

1 tsp Whole black pepper corns

Salt to taste
1 tbsp oil

For the tempering

2 tsps Fresh ginger, chopped 
½ tsp Cumin powder

A pinch of Hing
2 tbsp Ghee
8-10 Curry leaves

Garnish

7-8 Cashew nuts, fried

Method

Heat a heavy bottomed pan or pot and add the oil. Fry the cashews and keep aside. In the same oil, add the chana dal, peppercorns, drained soaked rice and split green gram dal. Roast the rice and dal for a minute and then pour 4 cups boiling water into the mixture. When the mixture starts to boil again, add salt to taste. Cook the pongal just as you would cook a soft rice dish. If required, add a little more boiling water. Cook covered towards the end.

In a small frying pan, heat oil and ghee and add finely chopped ginger and sauté till golden, then add the curry leaves, hing and cumin powder.  Pour this mixture over the pongal, mix well, adjust the tastes and cover again to rest it a bit.

Garnish with the fried cashew nuts and serve hot with a dollop of ghee and a coconut chutney and/or sambar.

Less is more, but it takes all sorts...

It’s a khichadi of all sorts!

(Photos by Apurva Nargundkar)

·         A rice dish with only five ingredients apart from salt, water and rice

·         Tasty enough to risk your reputation as a cook by posting

·         Innovatively presented

·         Photographed

·         Recipe written up

·         All done and dusted by the 25^th of July

Now that is a tall order for a dish in the Rice Bowl  Cookoff on my home food group!

It’s like participating in those team building games for survival where you are asked to pick up only 5 things in the event of an emergency and make a dash for your life. What should you take and what can you miss?

Or like the riddle of how a boatman who has to take a tiger, a goat and a bundle of hay across the river and can ferry only one of these along with himself.  How will he do this? If he takes the bundle of hay, the tiger will eat the goat, if he takes the tiger with him ....  okay, folks I think you get the drift!

From tiger to Tolstoy, what a ‘hotch potch’ or ‘khichadi’ of ideas and thoughts! How much land does a person need?  More is less or less is more? How much spice do we really need in life, er..., I mean in a dish? Do we have to smother dishes in spices and condiments and that anathema of mine- heat? Does food have to swim in artery-clogging oil, butter and ghee?

It was a very therapeutic exercise to be so disciplined. It was very excruciating to decide if the hing got the ditch, the bay leaf  was to be ignored (the chillies can sulk- I don’t care much about them anyway) but surely the pepper was disappointed at being cold shouldered like this!

A lesson in austerity and economy of ingredients surely brings out the real cook in all of us. Our habitual (or obsessive?) cluttering of the dish, the palate, the table, the party- gets a welcome break.

 From this churning or ‘Halaahal’ emerges a dish.  

Call it a khichadi (remember hotch potch?) or a pulao, this dish will stay true to its five ingredients.

And please welcome Sichuan pepper as my latest fad or fling!  

Sabut Moong Dal Khichadi

Ingredients

1 tbsp ghee

2-3 cloves

½ tsp Sichuan pepper

1 inch piece of stone flower

½ tsp of cumin seeds

2 cups basmati rice, soaked for 30 minutes

¾ cup unskinned green gram (sabut moong dal), soaked along with the rice

Salt to taste

Method

Heat ghee in a pot and add the masalas. Once they start spluttering, drained rice and sabut moong dal and toast for a bit. Add 4 ½ cups of boiling water. Add the salt. When the water reduces and the surface of the rice appears to have holes, cover the rice and reduce the heat. Check for all tastes and switch off the gas when the rice is done.

Serve with Tomato Saar or Kadhi and appalam or poppadoms the (poppadoms featured in the photo have been microwaved for 30 secs each)

This very healthy rice dish is doing the rounds of events-! It is my entry to Sangeeta and Vardhini's Show me your HITS event!