VENNA PONGAL

The name PONGAL will introduced to the great Tamilnadu.The dish is very traditional and popular in Tamil Nadu.The festival “Pongal” (Makarshankranti) is named only because of this dish but on the festival days the pongal is prepared by new rice and jaggery (gudh).


Pongal is prepared by two ways one is sweet and the other is salty. The salty pongal is called as Venn penal (the word Venn means white) and the sweet pongal is called as Sakkara (Sakkara means sugar or sweet) pongal.Sakkara pongal is prepared on festival days particularly on the day of pongal (Makkarshankranti) and the Venn pongal can be prepared on any day. In hotel of Tamil Nadu and other state in south India, it is prepared for morning breakfast, But it also makes good lunch and dinner.So here is recipe for Venn pongal:-

Venn Pongal

Preparation time: 5 minutes (Approximately)

Cooking time: 15-20 minutes (Approximately)

Serving: 4-6 persons

Ingredients

Rice-2 cups

Split Green Gram (Mung) Dal-1 cup

Milk-1 ½ cups

Crushed pepper Corn (Kali Mirch)-2 tsp

Cumin Seeds (Jeera)-2 tsp

Grated ginger-2 tsp

Salt-to taste

Clarified Butter (Ghee)-4 tabs

Cashew Nut-10-15

Method

• Wash and cook dal and rice together with 8 cups of water and salt.

• Once rice and dal is cooked then mash it by adding milk.

• Put crushed pepper corn, cumin seeds and grated ginger.

• Now heat a pan and add 1 tsp ghee in this.

• Fry cashew nut till it turns to golden colour.

• Now heat remain ghee in same pan and add to pongal and server with samber and Chutney.I serve this with tomato chutney

MY TIPS

• If you want cooking process to be early then soak rice and dal for 30 minutes.

• If you don’t like raw cumin seeds in pongal then fry cumin seeds in ghee and add to pongal.

• In my method of pongal, I add milk only for the richness in the recipe and if you don’t want milk to be added in the dish you can avoid it.

• Curry leaves will also give very nice flavour to pongal and if you want you can add it.