Pongal recipe?

Well, you may be wondering why this girl (?) is posting on such a simple dish. Yes, it is simple, esp. for those south Indians who prepares it year on year during the Pongal festival, aka Shankaranthi aka Harvest Festival (wow, hail english!). May be it is a bit different for the north Indians who think pongal as a very luxurious item with lots of cashew and ghee... ok ok ok... and yes who will forget the margazhi masam (december month).

Coming back to the point... Before going further, let me brief my buying habit - it is to always buy stuff from Spencers or Reliance. For quicker service, we have this Ambika departmental store which is close by my house. All the stuff will have the peculiar store smell. The pulses will be broken inside the packet, and could see worms slithering through. So max. I avoid buying stuff here. But on this fine day, my Moong dal box (the small yellow one that you add for Pongal) was air tight - just empty. In spite of making attempts to go to the main shop, was unable to really step into the big shot dept. stores. What the heck I keep doing for my b'fast. Idli, dosa, noodles, uppma... who will fill the place of pongal?? so I decided to step into my local Ambika stores. I took 500 gms of dal - two packets, bought few other stuff like maggie, ice cream, biscuits, etc. (yeah, i dont like to step into this shop, but if I did, I will ensure to spend at least a 100 he he he)

Next day, I was in bliss. Preparing pongal will not take much time at all. Take 1 cup of Rice and 1 cup of dal (some will put less dal, but it is good if you have this combination also. Will be tasty with good aroma), pressure cooke them with more than needed water so as to get the stuff quite mushy. Meanwhile chop 1 inch ginger piece into small pieces. Keep aside 1 teaspoon of pepper corns and 1 1/2 teaspoon of jeera. You will need 1 to 2 tablespoons of ghee for this quantity of rice and dal. Put ghee in a tawa - I prefer a non stick pan. When it gets heated, put chopped ginger, pepper corns and jeera. Let the pepper corn splutter (yeah it will, but not as good as mustard) Then transfer the rice+dal from cooker to this tawa. Mix well. Add 1 tspn of salt, few pinches of hing. Most of the people will not add hing, but do try. You can add 1/2 tablespoon of milk for enrichment - optional. If you want more spice, grind fresh pepper corns and sprinkle. Mix well. When serving, spread a teaspoon of ghee. (Tip - you can reduce the ghee originally put in the tawa and compensate it by spreading a teaspoon of ghee just at the time of serving. This way you can reduce the ghee consumption). Serve hot with chutney.

Few chutneys that I know (quantity will suffice liberally for two) -
a) Tomato chutney - take 2 to 3 big size tomato. wash well and grind it in mixie along with an inch of green chilly and pinch of salt. Season with mustard and pinch of urad dal fried in oil.

b) Coconut chutney - take at least 1/2 of the coconut shell. grate it. Grind in mixie along with an inch of green chilly and pinch of salt. Season with mustard and hing. You can add 2 teaspoons of of roasted gram (pottu kadalai in tamil) while grinding.

c) onion chutney - take 1 to 2 size onion. chop it roughly. heat a drop of oil in a tawa. add the onion and fry until the raw smell goes away. grind in mixie just like tomato chutney. season with mustard.

Alternatively you can grind the chutney and then put it in tawa and let the raw smell go.

d) combination chutney - you can make combinations of the above three together or two at a time. (Tomato + coconut or tomato + onion)

d) My favourite chutney - you can take a teaspoon of channa dal, 1 teaspoon of urad dal, liberal curry leaves. fry them well in
oil until they turn crispy. then add tomato and onion, and fry until the raw smell goes off. let it cool before you run into mixie along with chilli and pinch of salt. Add water if required. take a little bit of oil in a tawa. Add mustard and let it splutter. add 1/2 teaspoon of urad dal. Let it turn red. add a pinch of hing and turmeric powder. pour mixture in it. mix well. Let it boil until the oil separates.

e) Peanut chutney - another one which is not my usual but tried sometime last week was this. Take 1/2 tablespoon raw peanuts.
heat tawa with a spot of oil. put the peanut and roast it until the skin peels off. Add a red chilli with it. Allow it to cool. take a small quantity of tamarind and mix everything in a mixie. add salt. It came very nice but was having a sweet-ishness which my family did not like.

I do not like Mint so I never go for that. very rarely I try out corriander chutney but again with combinations with tomato.

OK back to my pongal thing. I did on the very day but the dal was not blending with the rice. the aroma also never came as I did it in tawa. I was surprised. I added a spoon of ghee, yet nothing. The dal looked as if they were not cooked properly. I wondered if I should have separately cooked it without adding in the rice. anyway I closed it. While eating we found it not at all good. it was not tasty at all. The dal kept smudging in our tounge. I thought it was me who has not prepared the dish well!!

The next day I cooked greens (araikeerai) along with the dal, yet the taste was not good. I cursed the shop and said you should never buy from here as the quality is very bad, it is not cooking, and look at the very color of the dal.. it is not yellow at all but white colored, etc.

The very next day I thought I will do carrot koottu and took the dal in a cup. Again I was cursing the color of the dal. That is when I noticed the title in the cover as "URAD DAL". Gosh...... so for 3 days I had been replacing urad dal instead of Moong dal. No wonder the pongal was a failure!!!

So should I tag this post as "Recipe of the month - how not to do Pongal"