Ven pongal(White pongal)

What is a wedding breakfast without pongal-chutney as one of the items?? My father's eternal favourite.
At my place, I sometimes make it for lunch or dinner, light, easy and hearty.

This is how we make it. Pongal increases to many times its original volume. The below measures are for 4-5 people.

Ingredients
Rice 1 cup
Moong dal 1/4 cup
Jeera 2 tsp
Peppercorn 1 1/2 tsp
Curry leaves
Asafoetida a pinch
Cashew broken
Ghee 2 tbsp
Mustard seeds and red chillies (optional)
Salt to taste.
Water 5 cups.

Method

1. Dry roast the jeera and pepper corn. Once they cool, powder them coarsely. Keep aside.
2. Heat a kadai. Dry roast the rice and moong dal. Keep stirring. Dont let it burn. Let it cool once the rice starts curling up. Once its cool, wash thoroughly with water.
3. In a cooker, add the rice and moong dal, 5 cups of water, salt, asafoetida. Cook it for one whistle on high and one more whistle on low.
4. The pongal should be very well cooked.
5. Heat ghee. Add the cashew, curry leaves, pepper-jeera powder, mustard seeds, red chillies.
6. Add it to the cooked pongal and mix well. 

Serve hot with chutney and gotsu.

Besan ka dosa

I have a lot of besan at home, thanks to my over enthusiasm over some dishes. Now that the temporary insanity has blown over, I am left scampering with what I am to do with all this besan.

Got inspired by 'Besan ka puda' from Manjula's kitchen. Modified it to what I had in my pantry. So here goes.

Ingredients
Besan 2 cups
Rice powder 1/4 cup
Asafoetida a pinch
Onion chopped fine
Carrots grated
Green chillies chopped
Coriander leaves chopped
Salt to taste

Method
1. Mix all the ingredients well with water to a smooth batter. Take care to remove any lumps. Add water little by little so that you don't end up with too thin batter.
2. Heat a griddle and once hot, take a spoon of the batter and spread on the griddle. Take care to spread quickly, else it will stick to the griddle.
3. Add a few drops of oil/ghee around the edges. Cover and let it cook.
4. Turn the dosa. The cooked side should be brown. Cook the other side so that a few brown spots are formed.
5. Make dosas with the rest of the batter.

Serve hot with mint chutney and/or tomato ketchup.

I can think of more veggies to add in this - grated cabbage, grated tomato and so on.

It made for a quick, filling, healthy and tasty breakfast today.

Try it!