Chennai Mammam: Venpongal

Venpongal

Venpongal is a south indian rice and green gram based healthy and delicious breakfast recipe. It tastes best when eaten hot along with chutney and sambar combination.

Ingredients

1. Rice - 1 cup

2. split deskinned green gram or moong dhal or pasi paruppu - 1/2 cup

3. Cashew nuts - 10

4. Whole Black pepper - 1 tea spoon

5. Jeera or cumin seeds - 2 tea spoons

6. Ginger - 1/2 inch piece - finely chopped

7. Ghee or clarified butter - 1/4 cup

8. Curry leaves - about 10

9. Salt - 1 tea spoon

Procedure:

1. Wash the rice thoroughly with water, drain the water and keep the rice aside.

2. Heat a pressure cooker and dry roast the moong dhal or pasi paruppu till the raw smell goes off and the color just starts to change.A Nice aroma starts to come at this stage.

3. Add the rice to this and mix well for about a minute.

4. Add 4 cups of water and 1 tea spoon of salt to this and mix well. (you can adjust salt as needed).

5. Cook this rice dhal mixture for 6 whistles in the pressure cooker till it is well cooked and becomes mushy. Turn off the heat.

6. Once the pressure goes down, mix the rice dhal mixture well.

7. Now heat a pan, add 1 table spoon of ghee.

8. Once the ghee melts, add the ginger, cumin seeds, cashew nuts , pepper and curry leaves. Fry till the cashew nuts turn golden brown and the cumin seeds crackle.