Rava Pongal

Thanks so much for all your lovely comments and wishes you had left in my previous post. I'm doing fine. Yet, I know I'm late for my next post :) But, it was not because of mere laziness or procrastination, but actually I had to travel out of town for official reasons and my kitchen was "officially" closed last week. Though I had some marvelous food during that time, I sure was missing home food and I'm so glad to be back home and enjoy my favorite comfort food.

There's nothing like having the time to sit down and have a good breakfast. I wish I had the time to have a relaxed breakfast every morning. But so far its been just a big daydream for me. My mornings are typically - "take a bite, do this; take another bite, do that" type of mornings. I actually sometimes skip breakfast to avoid morning rush. I hope someday I'll get into the routine of calm and relaxed mornings, may be a BIG hope! But to recompense this, I prefer to have a relaxed breakfast atleast in the weekends. I mostly prepare a proper traditional breakfast atleast for one morning in the weekend, and also often we go out for breakfast too. My day starts fresh when I chit-chat with a cup of coffee and good breakfast.

This weekend we enjoyed our favorite breakfast - Pongal with chutney and sambar. To me, one of the intimidating tasks of getting married is making the food your spouse grew up with. Mom cooks pongal for a little extra time so that the rice and dal are blended well, but my mother-in-law makes a version that's similar to pulav consistency. I like both versions, but prefer mom's way of making pongal, may be because thats the one I loved and grew up with. And my hubby prefers his mom's version, probably for the same reason. I learnt making his mom's version in a hard way. I still remember a day after we landed in the US, and while I was still almost zero in cooking, my hubby once wanted me to cook his mom's version of pongal. He had no idea of what he was getting into :) I made it and it was a disaster. It came out too stiff and no where close to pongal. I managed by adding more water and re-cooking it, but still the consistency was messed up. Well, after a lot of practice I can now say that I'm far better in making pongal, both versions.

Rava pongal is a totally new version of pongal to me. The recipe for this is from a booklet that came with a rava packet! Its interesting to me when these tiny pamphlets have some really delicious recipes and also very unique recipes that are not popular in other cookbooks. I made this the first time this weekend and just loved it. It came out pretty good and I'm sure I will try this often from now on. Goes well with chutney/sambar.

This entry goes for Aparna's WBB:Grains in my breakfast Event.

Ingredients:

• Rava - 1 cup
• Moong dal (pasi paruppu) - 1/2 cup
• Milk - 1/2 cup
• Cashew nuts - 10
• Pepper corns -1 tsp
• Cumin seeds - 2 tsp
• Ginger - 1 inch (minced)
• Ghee - 1 tbsp
• Oil - 2 tbsp
• Curry leaves - a few

Procedure:

• Pressure cook the dal, strain and save the stock and set aside the dal.
• Roast the rava in a tsp of ghee and set aside.
• In the same pan, add the remaining ghee and oil and season with pepper corns and cumin seeds.
• Then add the cashews, ginger and curry leaves and fry until cashews turn golden brown.
• Add two and half cups of the following mixture - water, milk, the strained water from dal.
• Add salt and let the mixture boil. Then add the roasted rava and stir in medium heat until the rava is well cooked and reaches a semi solid consistency.
• Now add the cooked dal, mix and cover in low heat for 5 mins.
• Add some ghee on the top and mix well.

Serve hot with coconut chutney, sambar.