Sweet pongal

This time when I made pongal for Sankranti it turned out just perfect, DH simply loved it and so I decided to record the recipe. Even though  it is from Chandra Padmanabhan’s Dakshin and I have this book, I like to write down what I did because I’m sooo going to forget how I made it when it’s time to make it next year!

The way to remember the proportion of ingredients in this recipe is to benchmark them with respect to the volume of rice. You don’t have to use 1 cup rice, you can use 1/2 cup rice and change the other ingredients accordingly.

I used 1/2 cup rice and it yielded enough pongal for around 4-6 people.

Ingredients

1 cup rice

1/2 cup split yellow moong dal

2 and 1/2 cups water

1 cup milk

3 cups jaggery and 3/4 cup water

cashew and raisin, in quantities you like

1-2 tbsp ghee for roasting the dry fruits

Method

1. Pressure cook dal and rice with the milk and water and without the weight. Remember to not put the weight, this is very important as using the weight boils the milk. I checked the cooker now and then to see if the rice and dal were cooked. Since we’re not using the weight, it’s easy to open the cooker again and again. Rice and dal should be cooked and should’ve absorbed the liquid. If it’s just moist then that’s not a problem but too much of liquid and you have a watery pongal.
2. Dissolve jaggery in 3/4 cup of water by cooking on low heat.
3. If you think your jaggery has too much of impurities, strain this liquid. I skipped this step.
4. Thicken the jaggery mixture a little. Add the cooked rice and dal to the jaggery and stir. If the consistency is like you want then you’re done otherwise you can cook it a little to thicken it.
5. Shallow fry the dry fruits in the ghee and add them to the mixture.
6. Delicious pongal is ready!