Sweet Pongal (Huggi)

One convenient reason why blogging makes it worthwhile for me is because I can refer to my own recipes online anytime for years to come. I know it sounds silly, but it is true.

A few days ago while contemplating what to make for dinner; it occurred to me that it had been a while since I made the delicious Cheesy Vegetable Pulav. I decided to make it that evening, but could not remember the exact ingredients that went into the masala and so I scrambled to check for the recipe in my old diary. I usually scribble down recipes on-the-go in my diary with a handwriting that could give even the most ‘competent’ doctors a run for their money. Anyway I froze when I realized that I had not penned down this recipe and I thought that I had lost it for ever. I was about to yell at myself but as eureka moment realized that I had blogged that recipe and that I could refer to it at my own site. Boy! It was a strange feeling but suffice to say that I was pleased with myself!

Anyway, the ‘moral’ of this episode was to keep a record of my important recipes be it online or my diary. I had prepared this recipe for Pongal January and was sitting pretty in the draft mode for way too long.

Anyway, this Sweet Pongal is a traditional sweet dish made with the combination of rice and moong daal. This is prepared during special occasions and also made during the festival of Pongal/Sankranthi along with the spicy khichdi/ Khara Pongal.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup rice
• 1/4 cup moong daal
• 1.5 cup jaggery
• 1 cup milk
• 3 cup water
• 1/4 cup dry coconut [use regular coconut if dry not available]
• ½ tsp cardamom powder
• Handful raisins
• Ghee
• cashews

Method:

• Cook the rice along with the moong daal by adding both water and milk. This should be mushy and liquidy.
• In a heavy bottom pan, melt the jaggery along with little water (1/4 cup).
• Then add the cooked rice daal mixture and stir well.
• Then add the dry coconut mixture and continue to stir until the water evaporates and the jaggery thickens up. If this is too dry, add little more milk to this.
• Add the cardamom powder, 2 tsp ghee, mix and close the lid and switch off the gas.
• In a separate pan add ghee and add the raisins and cashews. Stir until the raisins plump and cashews get a brown color.
• Add to the sweet rice mixture and close the lid.

Wheat Flour Laddos (Churmundo/ Atta Ladoo /Pitta Undo)

The package arrived from India without any problem and out came the treats one by one. There was Besan Laddoo, Chaklis, Tukdis, Atta Laddos, Sesame Laddos, Menthe Hittu etc all prepared and packed with love. It has been a field day for us here ever since we received the goodies from back home and we have been relishing them everyday with joy.

My mom made these Wheat Flour Laddos. She has a knack for making these and makes them delightful and yummy. These laddos are not very sweet with subtle flavor of the wheat and hardly any visibility of the ghee. These Atta laddos are a childhood favorite of mine and I prefer them over the Besan Laddos. Of course, it is a tight race and on some days I can be swayed one way or I cannot make up my mind. Needless to say these are happy problems and I am not complaining. I am glad that DS loved these as well.

I have made microwave version of these before. You can check them out here.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup atta (whole wheat flour)
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup ghee (clarified butter)
• 2 tbsp chopped nuts like almonds and raisins(optional)
• 1 tsp cardamom (elaichi) powder

Method:

• Put a kadhai (heavy bottomed vessel) on heat and add ghee. When ghee melts, add the atta. Turn the heat to medium.
• Roast the atta stirring constantly till a nice aroma comes out of atta and it gives a roasted appearance. Turn off the heat and take atta out of kadhai.
• Let it cool down and when it’s completely cooled, add chopped nuts, cardamom powder and sugar. Mix well with your hands.
• Then make lemon sized balls out of the mixture. Note: Add more ghee to the mixture and mix again, if the laddus do not hold their shape.
• When they cool down completely, store these atta laddus in an airtight container.

Milkmaid Laddoo/ Coconut Ladoo

Time files and how? It seems like only yesterday we wished each other for New Year of 2008, we watched Olympics, celebrated major festivals, endured the financial crisis, witnessed a historic election, shuddered at the Mumbai incident all this and more. What a year of ups and downs it has been! And now all that seems to have passed by at the blink of an eye and here we are at the dawn of 2009 celebrating the New Year.

Wishing you all a Very Happy and Fun Filled New Year 2009. Hope the Year brings to you joy, opportunities and prosperity.

Hope you are all having a great time with your family and friends. We have a simple family tradition that we follow every year on New Year’s Eve. We stock up on varieties of cakes earlier in the day from our favorite bakery. Then at the stroke of midnight we relish while watching some countdown TV program. It is a joyous feeling to savor it while there are some fireworks in the background and lots of anticipation in the air. But best of all is in the knowing that the whole world is celebrating it with us.

I had the day off from work and so I took time to make these “Coconut Laddoo”. This is very easy to prepare and hardly takes time to put it together. They are a great piece of attraction for parties, functions or get-togethers.

Ingredients

• 2 ½ cup shredded coconut (fresh/frozen)
• 1 cup sweetened condensed milk [Use milkmaid]
• ½ tsp cardamom powder
• ½ cup coconut for garnishing/rolling the laddoo

Method:

• Heat a heavy bottom flat pan (preferrable non-stick) on low flame. Add the shredded coconut first and gently stir it for about a minute. This is to remove any kind of moisture from the coconut and also to bring out its nutty flavor. Be very careful as it gets burnt very fast. The coconut should have a very pale brown color; the aroma from coconut is heavenly.
• Next add the condensed milk and stir. Make sure that the coconut mixture does not get stuck to the bottom.
• Depending on the quantity it takes about 20-25 minutes to thicken up. Add the cardamom powder at this stage and mix well.
• The mixture also thickens up after it is cooled. After it is sufficiently cooled, taken small pieces and roll into balls.
• Garnish or roll this over the remaining coconut shredding. This makes about 10-15 medium sized laddos.

Microwave Wheat Ladoos (Churmundo, Churma Laddu)

With buildings, retail stores, restaurants, homes, palm trees sprawled on either side of the road the drive pretty much seemed the usual. The weather seemed perfect not too hot or too cold and the visitors scrambled along trying to make the most of this beautiful day. As we drove along the road for 5 more miles the dearth of the stores, homes, and people reduced while we saw big mounds of white sand with patches of dead moss and grass strewn all over.

It was still nothing out of the ordinary until we parked the car on one of the beach access roads. And then there it was! We saw with baited breath the much awaited and anticipated sight of the trip. Calm, mighty, pristine deep Blue Ocean with beautiful white waves right in front of us. This beach was so much different from the others, no scores of people, construction or tall buildings in sight just waves and occasional grazing pelicans. It was nature at its best and so far away from the human touch. It was a world away from the ordinary.

We sat on the beach in serenity gazing at the water, waves and the pelicans. The little one played in the sand to his hearts content. He must have been surprised with this type of freedom as he did not hear even one word of warning about playing in the sand from either of his parents. The rumbling in the stomach reminded us that we had been sitting there for hours. I could not help but think of my mother’s wheat ladoos ‘churmundo’ looking at the texture and color of the whitish-brown sand.

Even though I had never tried making this the traditional way, I got the idea of making them using Tee’s easy way for Besan Ladoo. Thanks Tee for sharing this and making our lives so much easier.

Need I say more that I did try the recipe after we got back home and have been very pleased with the results? However I had tad bit of difficulty making them into perfect round shape.

Ingredients

• ¾ cup wheatflour
• 1/4 cup besan/gram flour
• 1/4 cup ghee
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp cardamom powder

Preparation:

• In a microwave safe bowl, put the ghee and microwave until it is melted.

• Mix in the Wheat flour and Besan and stir thoroughly. Microwave for 4 minutes stirring every one minute, removing any lumps and changing the position of the container.

• The flour will change to dark color and have a toasted aroma. Allow it to cool.

• After it is cooled, add cardamom powder along with sugar. Run hands through the mixture multiple times, to remove any lumps and even out the flour.

• Knead well to mix and shape into laddoos. This makes about 10 of them.

Instant Carrot Laddoo in Microwave

Don’t you just love it when you see a ridiculously easy recipe, try it and with in no time produce the dish and finally much to your excitement find that there is no compromise on taste or appearance? I was beaming when I made this dessert for Dasara and could not help but wonder the amount of time saved and the ease with which it was prepared.

After the initial excitement wore down, I couldn’t help but think about the times I spent celebrating Dasara with my family and relatives back in India. Two days prior to the celebration, the women would gather and prepare delicious deserts, all that and more in the traditional way. There were no shortcuts then; the food would be made in large quantities all from scratch and that too in the laborious, conventional way. The different tasks would be divided among them and there would be chatting, laughter, sharing ideas, giving opinions, praises, pampering etc and the tedious tasks would be over even without realising it or without any complaints from anybody. I would enjoy playing with other cousins, eat delicious food, enjoy the pampering, attention from the elders etc.

I realized that celebration of festival not only meant praying and thanking the Almighty but also keeping up the traditions, enjoying, sharing and passing it to our next generation.

This is also my contribution to Jihva Special Editon : The Festive Series for Dasara hosted by the wonderful Vee of Past Present and Me

Ingredients

• 1 cup packed Grated carrot (I use baby carrots and then run it through food chopper)

• ½ cup Ricotta cheese

• 1 tablespoon Butter

• ½ cup Condensed Milk (fatfree)

• 2 teaspoons Sugar

• 4 tsps MTR Badam Feast (or substitute with 2 tablespoon milk powder, sugar, cardamom)

• 5-6 chopped almonds

• Raisins

Method:

• Place the butter in a microwave safe bowl and microwave for 15 to 20 seconds.

• Add the grated carrots mix well and microwave for 2 minutes, until the raw smell of carrot goes away.

• Add the ricotta cheese, condensed milk, sugar. Mix well and keep it in the microwave for about 3 minutes.

• Next add the Badam powder, chopped almonds and microwave for another 3 minutes or until done.

• Let it cool a bit and then make ball out of it.

Place raisin in the middle of each ball. This makes about 7 medium ladoos.

Arusuvai: Broken Wheat, Coconut Ladoo (Dalia Coconut Laddoo)

The “Arusuvai Friendship Chain” was started by Latha and Lakshmi at The Yum Blog along with Bharathy of Spicy Chilly and Bhags of Crazy Curry. Latha from “Masala Magic” continued the Arusuvai friendship chain in USA. Thanks to you all for this wonderful idea.

The Arusuvai Friendship Chain is all about sending a surprise food ingredient to friends so that they can prepare something tasty with it, share the recipe and pass on the surprise ingredient to other people.

Thanks Seema for thinking about me and sending me this “Surprise Ingredient”. Seema had sent this to me promptly almost a month ago, in fact at the right time to participate in Sunita’s Think Spice… Think Star Anise Event. But I was not able to blog about this as the camera was not at my disposal and I was mainly working off of my draft section (err, that is a valid excuse isn’t it?). Sorry about the delay Seema. But I do have to mention that it was a very special and warm feeling opening the packet and the fine aroma of the surprise ingredient “Star Anise” that filled the room was just heavenly.

I was excited as I have/had never used Start Anise in my cooking before and so I dutifully googled for some recipes over the internet. I was looking for something that was sweet, easy, did not involve baking and had some Indian touch to it. But unfortunately did not find anything appealing and so came up with this idea of making laddos.

Please let me know if anybody is interested and I can send over the ingredient to them.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup shredded coconut (fresh/frozen)

• 1/4 cup broken wheat

• ½ cup sweetened condensed milk

• ½ tsp star anise powder (substitute with cardamom powder if not available)

Method:

• Soak the broken wheat in enough water for about 1-2 hours.

• Drain the water completely and spread it over some paper or cloth so that the remaining water content is gone.

• In a heavy bottom pan, on a very low flame first add the coconut and stir until it gets toasted and a wonderful aroma of the coconut fills in.

• Be very careful as the coconut gets browned very easily.

• Next add the condensed milk and broken wheat and mix well.

• Continue to mix for about 10-15 minutes until the mixture almost dries up.

• Add the star anise powder and allow to cool. Take a handful of the mixture each time and shape into laddos.

Sesame Seeds Balls (Til Ke Laddoo/ Tilgul Laadoo /Yellina Unde /Ellu Urundai )

Sesame Seeds and jaggery balls are traditionally prepared in India during Makara Sankranti.

Sankranthi, or Sankranti is a festival that signifies the beginning of the harvest season for the farmers of Indian Sub-Continent. This is a harvest festival celebrated not only all over India but other South East Asian Countries as well.

In Maharashtra people exchange multi-colored tilguls made from til (sesame seeds) and sugar and til-laddus made from til and jaggery. While exchanging tilguls as tokens of goodwill people greet each other saying – ‘til-gul ghya, god god bola’ meaning ‘accept these tilguls and speak sweet words’. The under-lying thought in the exchange of tilguls is to forget the past ill-feelings and hostilities and resolve to speak sweetly and remain friends. (Source:Wiki)

Jaggery is a rich source of iron due to the process involved, using iron utensils. It is considered by some to be a particularly wholesome sugar and, unlike refined sugar, it retains more mineral salts. Moreover, the process does not involve chemical agents. Indian Ayurvedic medicine considers jaggery to be beneficial in treating throat and lung infections (Source:Wiki).

Indira has a wonderful article about Jaggery here

The traditional Til laddoo has jaggery, peanuts and sesame seeds. Addition of flax seeds and nuts is optional. I added it to incorporate more nutrition and power to the traditional laddoo. Also this is a good way to sneak in flax seeds to a laddoo. The taste or flavor does not change by adding any of these ingredients.

The taste of the sesame seeds laddoo is flavorful, but preparing it requires little bit of practice. Please read the Notes (below) before proceeding and take extra caution while making this. The hot jaggery is like a bubbling volcano and any oversight in handling can lead to mishap.

Notes:

• Some people use a special type of sticky jaggery called “Chikki gul” for making these. But I used the regular jaggery found in the Indian stores.
• Even if you require more than 15 laddoos, it is recommended to prepare the laddos in batches. Main reason being that it is difficult to handle a big batch of laddos.
• When the jaggery becomes hot and bubbly (depending on the quality), it behaves like a volcano and a bottom less pitJ. So be prepared to add more sesame seeds or peanuts as required.
• The mixture is very hot to handle, so gather as many people as possible to make the balls. The more the betterJ. Do not forget to grease your palms.
• If the mixture cools down then it is not possible to make it into balls. So reheat the mixture on low flame. The mixture begins to melt and then proceed to make the balls.
• Re-heating the mixture tends to change the sweet taste of jaggery to bitter taste. Hence make this in small batches and do not reheat as far as possible.
• Do not skip the ghee, as it adds flavor and also a shine to the laddoos.

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ cup sesame seeds (white/brown) (be prepared to add more)
• 1 cup jaggery powdered ( I used the regular one not the sticky one)
• 1/2 cup skinned peanuts
• ½ tsp powdered cardamom
• ¼ cup water
• 1 Tbsp ghee (clarified butter)
• ½ cup flax seeds(optional)
• ¼ cup powdered walnut, almonds (optional)

Yields:

· 15 medium size laddoos

Method:

• Take a heavy bottom pan and roast the sesame seeds over medium heat. Keep mixing well and when it turns light brown, remove and keep aside.
• Roast peanuts and crush into small pieces (slightly powdered texture). Keep aside.
• In that same heavy bottomed pan, boil the water. Then add the jaggery over medium heat and stir.
• After about 5-8 minutes the jaggery dissolves and blends to form a paste.
• After a while, it begins to bubble up and when you pull it up with a ladle (wooden) it forms syrup like consistency.
• Make sure the jaggery does not get burnt. Now add the sesame seeds in small batches, mixing in between.
• Only after the batch is dissolved, add more of the sesame seeds, flax seeds (optional), peanuts, nuts etc. Keep stirring as you go along.
• Add the ghee into it, the mixture at this point is sticky and thick. Finally add the cardamom power.
• Making balls: The mixture is extremely hot. So rub some ghee/oil to the palm of your hands. When the mixture is still hot, take some in the palm of your hands. Roll into ball.
• If it is too hot to handle, pour a ladle full onto a plate, spread it a bit and then take bits of it and roll into a ball.
• Similarly make the laddoos from the remaining mixture and let them cool. Store in an airtight container.
• If the mixture cools down then it is not possible to make it into balls. So reheat the mixture on low flame. The mixture begins to melt and then proceed to make the balls.