Indian Cooking Challenge : Vennai Puttu

It's the Indian Cooking Challenge time. This month's challenge was truly a challenging one for me... It isnt easy to make Indian sweets perfectly and this month I had to make a Tamilian sweet... PHEW.. tufff...  But I wanna thank Srivalli for this month's choice as it pushed my out of my comfort zone and surprisingly I managed it well :))


This month's recipe is VENNAI PUTTU .. contributed my one of fav bloggers... Priya... It is her grandmom's recipe..  traditional and healthy..


We would need
Rice - 1/2 cup
Grated Jaggery - 1/2 cup
Chana Dal - 2 Tablespoons
Cardamom Powder - a pinch
Fresh Coconut Pieces - 1 tbsp (I used grated coconut)
Ghee - 1 tsp
Ghee for greasing.


Preparation
1. Soak Rice for 3 hours. Then, grind the soaked rice with 1/2 cup water into a paste.
2. Pressure cook Chana Dal till soft (3-4 whistles approx)
3. Prepare Jaggery Syrup by boiling 3/4 cup water and grated Jaggery together.


Cooking

In a heavy bottom pan, boil 2 cups of water. Add the rice paste to boiling water and stir and stir and stir... till the paste mixes well with the water and cooks well. (this may take around 15 minutes.. please DO NOT stop stirring)

Next, add the Jaggery syrup, cooked Chana Dal & Cardamom powder to the rice and stir well.

Keep stirring till the mixture thickens and gets off the from the vessel. Remove from fire and finally add Ghee & grated Coconut. Transfer the mixture to a greased bowl/ tray and let it cool.

We could slice it and serve or just take a spoon and enjoy it :))