Ani’s Kids Recipe,South Indian samayal & Tips!

Just to Share with you…..

Pongal celebrated through the first four days of the Tamil Month of Thai (Mid January to Mid February), is a popular harvest festival in Tamil Nadu. The word Pongal, which literally means ‘boiling over’, refers to rice cooked in milk and jaggery. Pongal is prepared in new big earthen pots called ‘Pongal Panai’ in the open and allowed to boil over signifying prosperity and bountifulness of crops. It is a festival honouring and giving thanks to the gods – especially the Sun God and Indra, the lord of the rains and the cattle for the plentiful paddy crops in the field during the mild winter months in South India. Two varieties of Pongal- the salty one known as ‘ven pongal’ and the sweet one known as ‘Sarkkarai pongal’ are prepared on the second day.

Today we are going to discuss the preparation of salty one which is ” Ven Pongal”. Venn Pongal, a traditional dish in South India is the equivalent to kichidi made in North India. It is basically a rice and moong dal that is over cooked and dressed up with spices. In kichidi, ginger and jeera are invariably used while in Pongal it is ginger,pepper and jeera that produce the glorious taste. ‘Venn’ is actually ‘vellai’ which means white in tamil.Since the end result is a nice creamy white rice with risotto like consistency, it is called thus.

In Tamilnadu Ven Pongal is treated as tiffin Item (especially for breakfast ,also one of the item in small occassions)Ven pongal and Urudal vada (http://ani-samayal.yoksha.com/ulunthu-vadai.html )are very good combination. This is a very popular South Indian recipe, often given at temples as prashad. Its easy to make and tastes great.

Since this recipe is not hot kids love this. Aslo main ingredient of this recipe is rice and dal(lentil) cooked together which is perfect for kids.

VenPongal

Ingredients 1. Raw rice – 1cup2. Moong dhal – 1/2 cup

For Sauting

1. Curry leaves as needed

2. Whole black pepper – 1tsp

3. Jeera – 1 tsp

4. Ginger finely chopped – 1/2 tsp

5. Cashnewnuts as needed

6. Ghee/oil – 5 tsp

Preparation

1. Cook and dhal together in Pressure cooker by adding little salt and 4 cups of water atleast for 5 whistles.

2. Heat 3 tsp kadai and pour oil/ghee.

3. Saute curry leaves,pepper,jeera & ginger and add to cooked rice.

4. Fry the cashewnuts in 2 tsp of ghee/oil and add to rice.

5. Serve with Coconut chutney.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 13th, 2007 at 10:46 pm and is filed under Rice, Tiffin, Vegetarian, kids recipe / children's recipe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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