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Recipe: Simply Satisfying – Ven Pongal

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Here in Tamil Nadu, the harvest festival of Pongal has begun, and all over the state families are celebrating the occasion. Delicious, piping hot chakkara pongal is customarily consumed, but alongside it ven pongal (white pongal, made with freshly harvested rice) is also made. Oh, and let’s not forget certain creative yet authentic pongal renditions that are out there, such as this red rice and jaggery pongal. As you can see, there are many kinds of pongal, and this year, I thought I’d share with you a lovely savoury one.

Ven pongal is a traditional breakfast, one of my own favourites. It is a part of regular temple offerings too. This ven pongal is similar to a khichdi, which is a basic mixture of dal and rice. Unlike khichdi, it’s to be eaten with chutney or sambar. While khichdi is normally eaten for lunch or dinner but seldom for breakfast, with pongal it’s the reverse. As I mentioned, it’s a breakfast dish, and is rarely seen at other times of the day or night – except when it’s eaten for tiffin, which is what we call a late afternoon meal in this region.

Whenever I have breakfast while out and about in Chennai or elsewhere in Tamil Nadu, I always reach for the ven pongal. To me, it takes pride of place on the restaurant menu alongside its more famous counterparts, idli and dosa. The latter two are the “safe choices” that most people usually stick to, but I love ven pongal for breakfast and find it just as reliably made across the state. It’s very refreshing, filling, satisfying and healthy – and sees me through the day up until a hearty lunch.

The rice that I use in the pongal made on Pongal comes from our farm, and I observe a local tradition on this day. As is custom, this is when I store rice for the household for the whole year. The older it gets, the better it tastes. It is preserved well through a natural method: the raw rice is dampened with castor oil, and neem leaves are layered on it as I fill the storage barrels. This ensures that bugs stay away, given the humidity and the climate of this region. This raw rice is eaten throughout the year. When it is rinsed before use, the castor oil goes way, and any residue left is healthy for the body in any case. You can see a part of the process in the photograph below.

My love for this dish started in childhood. We had many Tamilian friends in our neighbourhood, so my familiarity with South Indian flavours and cooking began early. The house beside ours had girls of my age, and so we used to hang out together all the time. In those days, there were no TVs, computers or other electronic devices to keep us distracted indoors, so our hobbies were to run around, climb trees (eating fruits from them and being bitten by hairy caterpillars, as I’ve recounted on this blog before), play fun games that kids no longer seem to do and generally make a racket.

With these particular neighbours, we often spent the late afternoon together. I would go to their house at around 3.30pm, right in time for tiffin. We would sit on their front porch, enjoying leisure time together. My friends’ grandmother would oil, comb and braid their long hair and decorate it with jasmine. As she did, she would tell stories. I would watch their grooming ritual, listen to their Paati’s tales and enjoy the snack of the day. Very often, it was vada (savoury fried dough) or ven pongal, like the recipe I’m sharing with you today.

While I was growing up, my mother would sometimes make this too. This was because I would bring recipes back and forth between the different homes in our neighbourhood. Pre-blog and even pre-Internet, I already loved the exchange of kitchen techniques and secrets! South Indian families we grew up with also ate quite a bit of Gujarati food as a result. Of course, festivals meant gathering together and sharing meals too. It’s funny how connected we all were in that time before cellphones. I had such a lovely, inter-cultural upbringing – it contained food, heritage, granny tales and so much more from my family and well beyond. I feel like my children missed out on those simpler times, since technology began to dominate when they were little. I wonder how the generation of today fares, with even more at their disposal, and perhaps with even more disconnection in the world. What are your thoughts on all this?

Ven Pongal

(Yield: serves 3-4)

 

½ cup split mung dal

½ cup raw rice

3½ cups water to cook

2 tablespoons ghee

1 tablespoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon whole black pepper

3 tablespoon split cashews

2 teaspoons finely minced ginger

Salt to taste

A handful of curry leaves

 

Mix the dal and rice together and rinse well. Heat a pan and add the mixed rice and dal to it. Sauté until they release an aroma. Do not allow the grains to turn colour.

Now, add the water, salt and 1 tablespoon of ghee. Pressure cook until tender. This will take approximately 20-25 minutes.

In another pan, add the remaining ghee. Once it has heated, add the cumin seeds and pepper. Next, add the curry leaves and ginger. Finally, add the cashews. Once this tempering has turned golden, add it to the steaming hot rice mixture.

Mix well and serve warm. It can be eaten on its own, or with sambar or chutney.

Whether you’re having this as a festive dish, or just snacking on it at tiffin or breakfast, I hope that you find it as delicious as I do. If you happen to enjoy it while sitting on your porch or balcony with dear friends, as I used to as a child, I’d especially love it if you could paint me a picture of those special moments in the comments! Food is such an intrinsic part of bonding, is it not?

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Recipes

Recipe: Traditionally Tasty – Red Rice & Jaggery Pongal

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The revival of traditional ingredients and culinary methods is something very close to my heart, and you may have noticed this passion in everything from the cookware you see in my photographs to the recipes I’ve shared on this blog over the years. This is also the reason why I celebrate so many festive occasions, and believe in passing on traditions to my children, be they cultural (such as certain Diwali or raksha bandhan rituals) or sentimental (such as heirloom recipes). This return to a time-honoured way of life is very valuable to us. It was in this spirit that I accepted the opportunity to create a recipe over the Pongal festival for a special feature in The Hindu. Although Pongal has now passed, any time is a good time to try something delicious, and I hope you’ll like this recipe for traditional South Indian red rice and jaggery pongal.

When I discovered an organic store in Chennai, Spirit of the Earth, I really enjoyed looking at the hundreds of varieties of locally produced rice from around India. I especially love black rice, which has a nutty flavour and appealing colour as well as being nutrient-rich. As someone with Vitamin B12 deficiency, it provides a source of iron that I’m glad to incorporate into my diet frequently. It’s also a very versatile grain, and I enjoy using it in dessert, specifically in Thai-inspired sticky rice with mango pudding. The red rice varieties were also very intriguing to me, and one of them is the key ingredient of this recipe.

Having experimented with growing organic produce on our farm over several seasons now, I now truly understand why turning away from chemical-heavy and industrialised agriculture is good for us. What we do is on a small scale, and mostly for our own sustenance, although we do sell to selected organic stores as well. We cultivate traditional varieties of fruit, flower and produce, and the only kinds of rice and millets we usually eat at home are from our own fields. Among the produce we grow are: ragi, green moong, black rice, barnyard millet, samai and thinnai. Even taste-wise, I find that hybrid varieties of fruit simply don’t taste as sweet. The sight of blossoms like the manoranjitha, which I grew up with but hardly find in Chennai anymore, warms the heart.

It is deeply meaningful to me to be able to provide all these forms of a sense of belonging to my children, who are grown up and live in different parts of the world. They know that they have a home to return to, which will be filled with love and tradition, where meals will be served with ingredients we have carefully cultivated ourselves. When they are not here, they have the recipes on this blog, which will teach them (no matter what time zone they’re in!) how to whip up their favourite comfort foods for themselves. This was one of my core reasons for beginning this blog. While it may look like a motley collection of recipes, that is only because I want it to speak to many generations and tastes, and span influences that reflect all our travels and dreams. We are all multi-taskers with many interests, which is why I keep things varied.

Beginning with my love of cooking for others, I then also started taking photographs. After early trials and errors, I attended workshops to hone my skills, and practiced hard. I think the results of these efforts will be clear even if you look back at old posts. I am proud to have come a long way since then, and especially that I took the step to establish Nandi Shah Photography in 2019. I think it’s still early enough in the year to share again this calendar, which showcases the combination of two of my great loves: baking and photography.

Another very important component of this blog is the health aspect, and whether it’s vegan, Macrobiotic or simply a smarter ingredient substitute, I am always on the look-out for how to create the most nutritious recipes. This red rice and jaggery pongal checks all the boxes here.

Pongal is a traditional South Indian rice porridge, and red rice is a perfect substitute for white rice. I like using Onamatta rice in this recipe as it has a beautiful fragrance. It also tends to cook faster and is a soft rice variety. Originating in Kerala, it is also known as Rosematta rice. A highly nutritious and filling grain, it keeps you full for a long time, making it an ideal appetite-curbing dish during dieting or fasting. I find that red rice also has a way of uplifting the flavours of local vegetables and dhal. It tastes delicious with palm jaggery, which is great sweetener. I’ve had the opportunity to see it being made as well, and I highly encourage it as a sugar substitute. Jaggery has long been the traditional sweetener in Tamil Nadu cooking, and I believe that ancient pongal varieties would have also been made with millets and older grains.

What I am sharing today is a traditional recipe, relished for centuries. You’ll see why when you taste it.

 

Red Rice & Jaggery Pongal

(Yield:  3-4 cups)

½ cup red rice

½ cup jaggery

6-8 cashews

2 tablespoons mung dal

2 ½ cups water

3 + 1 tablespoons ghee

1 pinch of cardamom powder

1 handful of raisins

 

Roast the cashews in a ½ teaspoon of ghee. Add the raisins and roast until they bubble up. Set aside.

Roast the mung dal in a ½ teaspoon of ghee until it releases an aroma. Now, add the cleaned and washed Onamatta rice to it. Add water and allow the rice and dal to cook until tender in a pressure cooker on a medium flame.

In a pan, add ghee. Now, add the palm jaggery. It will begin to melt in a few minutes. Then, add the rice mixture and blend well.

Add the cardamom powder, raisins and cashews, mix well and top it off with a drizzle of ghee before serving.

Preparing a traditional dish like this, no matter when, always has a comforting feeling to it. I truly believe in the adage “We are what we eat.” Food has a unique way of expressing this. Four generations of my family have lived in South India now, and it’s a part of who we are. This red rice and jaggery pongal is a beautiful way for me to honour that connection, as well as my personal appreciation for all things organic. I’d love to know what you think when you try it out!

 

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Recipe: Start The Year Sweetly – Chakkara Pongal

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Here in Tamil Nadu, while the Tamil New Year is still months away in April, we celebrate a festival full of joy, renewal and fresh possibilities – just like how the turning of the new calendar year feels. Two weeks into every calendar year, beginning on January 14, Tamil households everywhere observe a series of rituals. Like any Indian special occasion, food and bonding play a huge part of this festival.

Pongal is spread over four days, which when we were growing up meant… school holidays! Despite being a Gujarati family, our neighbours and friends would observe the festival with delight, which meant we too participated. For me, Pongal always brings to mind sugarcane. As a harvest festival, sugarcane is an important part of the décor at this time – but it is also exactly the kind of thing a child loves to eat! My mother encouraged this, as she said that eating sugarcane made the teeth stronger. Those of you who remember those simpler times will know just what I mean. There’s a technique to it. You peel the cane sideways with your teeth, then scrape the sweet juice from it. I loved the fleshier parts between the joints of the cane.

As this is the season to give thanks for the harvest all over India, similar festivals include Lohri and Sankranti. If we happened to visit Ahmedabad at this time of year, the lasting image I have of the celebrations is of seeing the skies fill with kites on the occasion of Uttaran, as people on terrace rooftops would battle to bring the others’ down, in order to be the owner of the sole reigning kite of Gujarat.

“Pongal” literally means “the boiling over”, and the festival is all about the spirit of abundance. The pivotal moment of the day is when a pot of milk, into which every family member puts three handfuls of rice, boils over. The milk spilling over the brim of the vessel is taken as a sign of auspiciousness. As this happens, the family shouts, “Pongal-o-Pongal”!

During Pongal, a dish bearing its name is also eaten. Chakkara pongal literally means “sugar pongal”, but it is jaggery that is used – and which gives the dish its rich colour. Chakkara pongal is also popular year-round as a prasadam  in temples, which is offered to the gods and then eaten by devotees. And the sweetest, tastiest chakkara pongal I’ve ever eaten has always been served on a banana leaf at a temple.

Chakkara pongal will taste different at each temple, and each home, that you eat it in. Like all traditional staples, it will contain the memories and idiosyncrasies of the hands that made it. How is tradition formed? One ancestor would have done something a particular way, and generations to follow then say, “Our family does this”. Whenever I cook something that carries cultural attachments, I wonder: if I don’t do it, will my kids?

As you may know from following this blog, millets and not rice are the original (and Macrobiotic) staples of this region. This is why a millet known as varugu, which you may know as kodo, is the main ingredient in my variation of chakkara pongal. Varugu is rich in protein and polyphenol antioxidants, and is a better source of fibre than both rice and wheat. It is also gluten-free, which makes it suitable for those with dietary sensitivities. Like all millets, its list of health benefits is long. But make no mistake, as wholesome as its ingredients are, this chakkara pongal is a sweet and sublime dessert.

 

Chakkara Pongal

(Yield – 5-6 servings)

Ingredients
3-4 tablespoons moong dal
½ cup varugu (kodo millet)
3-4 cups water
½ cup jaggery
1 tablespoon ghee
1 tablespoon cashew nuts
1 tablespoon raisins

The secret to chakkara pongal is simply allowing it to cook properly, with the occasional stir. It is a boiled dessert that is so easy to make that you’ll be preparing it from memory in no time!

Soak the moong dal for about half an hour. Meanwhile, wash the millets well and keep aside,

Add 2 cups of water to the dal and cook until par boiled. Now, add the millets and allow both to cook completely. This will take approximately 15-20 minutes. The boiled dal and millets will become and remain soft.

In a pan, roast the cashew nuts and raisins in ghee. For a vegan variant, substitute ghee with oil. Once roasted, add the jaggery, along with a ¼ cup of water. This will help the jaggery melt, releasing its flavours quickly into the pan.

Once the jaggery has melted into the concoction, add the soft mixture of millets and dal and stir well. Add some more water to loosen the consistency as you prefer. Pongal generally is not meant to be in too liquid a state. What you’re aiming for is a congealed texture. Serve hot as soon as it’s ready.

Glistening with ghee, sprinkled with cashews, glittering with raisins, and with a rich dark colour full of the goodness of jaggery… So simple to make, so good to eat. I hope you’ll enjoy a small bowl or two of re:store style, millet-based chakkara pongal with your family this weekend. As you do, just imagine us here in Tamil Nadu, doing exactly the same. Pongal-o-Pongal!

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