Blogging Marathon #121 Week 2, Day 2
Theme : Thalis and spreads
For today’s (mini) thali, I have a meal that I prepared for Pongal this year. I have a couple of Pongal meals in the blog, but I don’t have a recipe post for sweet Pongal or ven pongal. So I thought of sharing the sweet Pongal recipe today.
I had not planned on taking pictures of this meal. It was an afterthought after getting the lunch ready. So when my husband came to the kitchen looking for his lunch, I was very quickly clicking a few pictures before handing over his plate to him.
The sambar here is an excellent tiffin sambar recipe. It’s from this YouTube video and I have made this many times now. It’s a detailed video, so do check it out if you have time.
The base recipe for sweet Pongal is from Chandra Padmanabhan’s book Dakshin. The Vada and sukiyan in the thali are ready to eat frozen ones. You can either microwave it or use an air fryer if you have one. The best part of stocking up on these frozen goodies is that you can have a single Vada whenever you feel like it – you don’t have to make a big batch and then finish it all on the same day. Anyway, this is an easy one for me since I hardly deep fry anything.
Read on for the recipe.
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup moong dal, rinsed well
- 1 cup rice, washed and rinsed
- 4 cups water
- 3 cups jaggery
- 1 cup water
- 4 tablespoons ghee
- 2 tablespoons cashews
- 2 tablespoons raisins
Method:
- In a pressure cooker or Instant Pot in sauté mode, dry roast the moong dal for a minute or two. Add rice, 4 cups of water and pressure cook for 8 whistles or 8 minutes in Manual mode for instant pot. Let the pressure release naturally.
- In a sauce pan, heat ghee and fry the cashews and raisins. Remove from heat and keep aside. In the same pan, add the jaggery and water. Let the jaggery melt mixing it in between. Remove from heat and Filter the jaggery if it has any impurities. Add this to the cooked rice and dal. Mix well with a spatula to uniformly mix everything.
- Now add the raisins and cashews and mix well. Serve hot.
My Kitchen Trials 
I have never made these combo of dishes together but each one is a favorite of mine. Sweet pongal is one of my favorite prasadams to eat and your pongal has a lovely color. We make it similarly but add chana dal instead of moong sometimes. I add a pinch of edible camphor and also throw in some grated coconut sometimes.
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Sweet pongal looks so yummy Rajani, this is exactly how I make pongal. I add some freshly chopped coconut too, gives a nice flavor and crunch to the dish.
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Delicious platter rajani! Sweet pongal looks totally scrumptious! Can’t believe that vadai and suzhiyan are frozen ones, that’s a great idea to use frozen snacks!
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The Pongal platter looks amazing and no one will say no to this most comfort food. The color of the sweet Pongal is exactly how we like it. We always complain when mom makes Pongal in light color due to the type of jaggery used. Love the idea of using frozen vada and Suviyam
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Love sweet pongal and the pongal platter is tempting and gorgeous with perfect sweet and savory pongal paired with vada and sambhar. Great pongal.
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Love the sweet pongal anytime. I mostly make sweet pongal with rice and chana dal. Butt he moong dal version tastes just as good. Love he homely setup there.
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