Pongalo Pongal

It was a sudden decision to try making Sakkara Pongal to celebrate the festival of Pongal. A quick chat with mom and an online recipe made me understand that I did not have the key ingredients (cashew nut, raisins etc) with me. But I had decided to go ahead and make whatever I could. The initial part of keeping rice with water and milk was too simple. Then came the tough part - powdering jaggery. With the rule in this country that not much of sound should come from the apartments, breaking jaggery with a mallet was not the best of options. Still I started doing it till I felt like I was hearing shrieks from the below apartment. Then sprung the ideas of cutting the jaggery with knife, using a can opener to crush the smaller pieces, using the fruit juicer etc. Ideas came and ideas went, and so did 1.5 hours. Tired of the effort I chucked the process and used whatever small amount of jaggery powder I could make till then. According to the recipe I was supposed to put 3 cups of jaggery for 1 cup of rice. Well, I had put half a cup of jaggery for 2 cups of rice. Hmmm, too much sweet is bad for health I added rice to the jaggery paste and then added some ghee and cloves. Voila, sweet pongal was ready. Just that it was too solid to be called pongal and had too less jaggery to be called sweet. Anyways, I did not indulge in finding a new name for my latest invention.

My apartment mate liked it and so did I. The sweetness was less but I preferred it that way. The thing that took 2 hours to prepare was over in 15 minutes. Yep, satisfaction!

Bhasky reminded me of the Pongal that we celebrated 3 years back in Indore. Nostalgia -> http://sbhaskar.blogspot.com/2005/01/happy-pongal.html