Pongal

Pongal is one of the popular south Indian dish and in tamil is called Venn Pongal and its mostly served in breakfast time. Its very easy to make. Now lets see the ingredients....

Ingredients:

1 Cup Sona masoori rice

1/4 cup Moong dhal

1 tsp Black pepper(whole)

1 tsp Jeera

small piece of fresh ginger(chop like small pieces)

1/2 serving spoon ghee

1 tsp hing

1/2 tsp turmeric powder

5,6 cashew (optional)

1/2 serving spoon oil

4, 5 curry leaves

1tsp salt

                                                  

Method:

1. Wash rice and dhal together and drain nicely.

2. Add 4 cups of water, salt and pressure cooker it.

3. Try to over cook the rice. so that it will be easy to mash.

4. Open the lid, add ghee, turmeric powder and hing.

5.  Mix and Mash the boiled rice very nicely.

6.  Heat small frying pan, add oil and pepper, jeera, ginger and curry leaves.

7. Add this to pongal and mix it well.

8. Pongal is ready. Serve with sambhar or chutney.

Notes:

1. if you like, you can fry cashew separately in the small frying pan with ghee until its gets golden brown and add it to pongal.

2. Adjust ghee, oil and salt according to your taste.

3. One more way of making pongal . Heat the pressure cooker, dry roast the dhal and then cook with rice. My mother-in- law does that. she believes that it will give good taste to pongal. you can try this method also. because it was time consuming i am not doing that. ;)
4. You can also use Basmati rice, adjust the water accordingly

Thanks :))

Idli

I am so happy to write this because all of my friends like and they will ask for the receipe.

Ingredients:

To make batter:

3 cups Idli Rice

1 cup Urad Dhal

2 tsp(approx.) Salt

Whatever the cup you use the ratio is 3:1

1.   1. Wash the Rice 2 to 3 times and soak it for 3hrs. 1hr is enough for Urad dhal. Soak Rice and dhal separately.

2. First grind the dhal for 20- 25 mins( I used grinder, time differs for mixer/blender).
    You can see a small bubble appears on the batter, it means the dhal grinded into smooth and fine paste.

3. Take it out, and place the rice in the grinder for 20 mins. Before you take it out add salt and run it for 2 mins.

4. Now mix dhal batter and rice well.

5. Store the batter in air tight container and keep it aside in warm place for overnight for fermenting. (there should be some space in the container so that the batter gets fermented and it will rise next day morning)

6. It takes atleast 9-10hrs for fermentation.

7. Idlis/dosa are ready to be cooked when the batter is well fermented

Making batter is little big process after that you can enjoy idli or dosa..within few minutes.

Idli:

 you need idli stand.

1. Open the lid and don’t mix the batter…..nicely take the batter and fill ¾ in each space in idli holder. Usually some people will mix batter with water but i always use the fermented batter to make idlis.

2. Steam cook idlis on medium flame for 10 minutes or until done

3. Use the spoon to check .. take idli holder out and allow it cool down for 5 mins and use spoon to remove the idlis

4.  Serve it with sambhar and chutney

Hint:

you can also try 4 cups rice and 1 cup of urad dhal.
In winter season it takes more time for the fermentation, 
just got this idea from my friend, pre-heat the oven for few mins and switch off the oven and keep the batter inside so it will get fermented very nicely. but make sure that there is more space for fermentation otherwise it will overflow. 

Thanks for reading my receipe.

Good luck.:)

Have a nice day.