Pongal - Software farmer's celebration

Pongal is one festival that people celebrate very grandly without basis of any religion. Though it would appear to be a Hindu festival if you are not clear of the history, a little knowledge would make you realize that it is a festival of the farmers for making a good produce in the last year. That is why it is also known as "Uzhavar Thirunal"(Farmer's day). And it is indeed a blessing that it is made a State Government holiday for all organizations even though its based on farmers only. This is mainly because Agriculture is considered the backbone of India; and it is true. But none of these mattered when you are a kid waiting for your dad to bring the long sugarcane that will lead to your mom shouting at you for leaving the chewed sugarcane bits all over the house.
Pongal in our home had always started with bitter very early morning wake up calls from my dad who says that we must be awake to greet the sun on the auspicious day. My answer is always to postpone the meeting for 5 more minutes and would get back to my sleep. But the lazy time will be over once we are ready for the prayers infront of the pot placed on the fire stove. With adding jaggery to the pongal and the pot overflowing like they show in our village movies, it would mean a fresh start of the busy day. The rest would go on with chewing sugar canes all day infront of the TV watching the special programmes in between the in-house fight for the remote. Honestly, Pongal is not an appealing one as food to me. I would prefer a festival on Dosa or Puri if we have to have Pongal(food), because the festival is named after that. (Or is it the other way around?). So the breakfast will include fights and cries for Dosa while my dad would be strict on making us eat Pongal only. But mom will always be there to help us out saying "He already had little after the prayers and that is enough.",(Little - Unquantified small quantity which might range from few rice grains to whatever fits in your finger tips.) and would start serving dosas to us.
This Pongal was a very different one though. With no one to command to wake me up, I said Hi to the sun when it was already up and was close to wishing "Good afternoon". But I had better plans for Pongal this time and decided to cook Pongal(food) in the evening. So when the evening came close, we got all the ingredients for making pongal and gathered a team of 5 including me. This includes Naren, Srikanth, Ajaz and Nimesh from the Track 3 team. Please be reminded that the team contains the building blocks of our project and any harm that my pongal might create would have a huge impact on the whole. So with much care, I(not WE) started preparing Pongal with the recipe from my mom. Everything was set and the cooker was kept on the stove and turned on(which I usually forget). The next step is to wait till the cooker whistles. But the wait turned out longer as the cooker being shy refused to make any whistles and hence did not tell us the status for a long time. With no prior experiences in cooking, we continued to wait with the logic that as the new cooker from Srikanth's home is double the size of our usual cooker, it might take double the time to cook. Though we are not sure whether we were dumb to wait double the time, it raised some doubts that the project is going to be a failure. Naren already started making curries separately as a backup. After a long wait for more than an hour and as the cooker was still feeling shy, we decided to make it whistle unnaturally by holding the vent-weight up to let the steam rush off. But I must say that the luck was on our side and when we opened the cooker atlast, the pongal looked bright and with jaggery and cashew added, the dish looked very close to the original Pongal and even the taste was certified to be very good by everyone. We even had fresh coconut slices to add special taste to it. Ajaz was very cautious though and waited 10 minutes after we have had my dish and checked if we are good and healthy before having for him. You can also find the recipe for the pongal(food) below which might be helpful if you are bachelor and have not had pongal in the recent past and might not be able to recall the actual taste.



Ingredients needed: (Serves 3 to 5 persons)

1. 1.5 cups of rice
2. 0.5 cups of split Moong dal(small light yellow colored)
3. 2 cups of milk
4. 5 cups of water
5. 4 tbsp (or about 1 cup) of Jaggery (You can add more if you like sweet)
6. 10 or more Cashews and raisins
7. 5 to 10 pieces of whole cardamoms
8. 3 tbsp(more if you like) of ghee

Step 1: Mix rice and Moong dal in cooker and wash it with water for two or three times.
Step 2: Once cleaned, drain the water away. Add 2 cups of Milk and 5 cups of water.
Step 3. Close the cooker lid and put on the vent weight and keep in the stove and keep the heat to high.
Step 4: Wait for a long whistle and then reduce the heat to minimum.
Step 5: Switch off the stove after 10 minutes.
Step 6: Once the pressure becomes low, you must be able to open the cooker. CAUTION: Do not open the cooker with force when the pressure is high. The cooker might blew up its contents and will cause serious injuries.
Step 7: Dissolve jaggery in little hot water separately and mix it well with the rice in the cooker.
Step 8: On a small pan, heat the ghee and fry cashews, raisins and cardamoms in it.
Step 9: Once it becomes hot, add the contents of the pan to the cooker and mix it well.
Step 10: Serve hot!

Phew! It is difficult to write the recipe without any silly jokes in it. Anyway, it is great to make a big social contribution to the bachelor community atlast.

HAPPY PONGAL!