Ingredients Raw Rice - 1 n 1/2 Cups Yellow Split Moong Dal - 1/2 Cup Brown Sugar/Jaggery - 1 Cup or More Cardamom Powder - 1 Tbsp Cashew nut and Raisins - 1/4 Cup Oil - 1 n 1/2 Tbsp to fry nuts (You can go for ghee instead)

Authentic Pongal Celebration The authentic Tamil Festival Pongal is very much expected in village sides, a month before the festival my mom start cleaning the house and they paint the house during that time or at least border the entrance with sunnambu (Lime) and make few pookolams. The cultivated rice/pachai arisi (free from machine process) is used to make pongal and agriculturist thank god (SUN). I pretty much grown in the village culture so i am sharing how my ancestors celebrate the vasal pongal. Usually the clay pot (??? ????) or venkala paanai is used to make this pongal. The whole pot is first coated with saambal/thiru neer + little water, also they tie manjal kothu/karumbu and they keep kumkum and santhanam before start making. Then the rice cleaned water is used to make pongal and 3/4th of the pot is filled with that water alone, once it foams, it is such an auspicious belief and make sound "Pongalo Pongal/??????? ???????". After that just remove/empty half of that water separately and add the cleaned raw/white rice in 3 additions, if needed add more water later for the venn pongal to cook well. Once done in the same heat they clean the pot by covering the pongal tightly with plate. This process is to easily remove the charcoal marks over the pot. After that they serve the pongal in ??? ????????/Banana Leaf with harvested items like Sugarcane, Manjal Kothu (Fresh Turmeric bunch), Coconut, Banana, Pan Leaves (????????)/Pakku, Country Vegetables like Avarakkaai, Poosanikaai etc with harvesting equipments ????????(Chopper). Also we keep ?????? (Comb), Mirror (???????), Kadhola Karukumani (????? ????????), Mykothi (??????) and lamp (?????)...So I drew few in the board with SUN, Moon and other above mentioned stuffs during this pongal, instead of manjal kothu i kept manjal pillaiyar (?????? ??????????) with some ??????????, also i replaced coconut with some fruits.How to start with clay pot Now coming to the recipe, nowadays it is rare to see people making plain white/venn pongl and most of them changed to sweet pongal. Many variations are there in sweet pongal as well with or without milk and moong dal. Today my recipe does not contain any milk. My MIL gave this clay pot during my last native trip and almost for 8 months I purposely kept unused and 2 days before pongal i took it and filled it with rice cleaned water to remove the mud/new pot smell. I kept 2 days like it as shown in the stepwise Picture 1 below, so whenever u buy new clay pot please do this process. Method Soak the rice and dal for 30 minutes at least. Add water (4 n 1/2 Cups) to the pot and keep in high flame (Pic 2) When it starts bubbling add rice and dal mixture (Pic 3). At one stage it foams (Pic 5), leave a bit to drop out (Pic 6), then stir on and off by reducing the flame. Once they both cooked well, just mash it with your fingers and check whether it cooked or not. Add (Pic 7) Cardamom powder and Brown Sugar/Jaggery (You can melt them with less water and strain the impurities before adding to rice). Keep stirring for few more minutes or until it thikens; finally add fried cashew nuts and raisins to it (Pic 8). The whole process may take 30-35 minutes. Allow to cool before placing in banana leaf, in the center add a tbsp of brown sugar (optional) and traditional to do so. Variations You can make the pongal in the same procedure in any utensil.