Long hiatus, mixed lentils pongal

I haven't been posting for the last year and a half due to various complicated reasons I don't want to get into. Hopefully 2012 is the year of food blogging for me. I will be posting GFCF recipes as that's what we are all eating these days.

Today was Pongal, the south Indian spring/harvest festival. I got really homesick, mostly because the hubby was away playing racquetball, and I talked to my parents (my sister & BIL were visiting them). I so wanted to be there with them. Nostalgic memories of past Pongal days flashed through my head. My sister and I never cared so much about the actual significance of Pongal but we sure did enjoy the food. :) I decided to make venpongal, only to realize that we were out of Moong dal. I did have this mixed lentil soup mix from whole foods. It has red(masoor), whole green(toor), black(urad), yellow(moong) and white lentils. Voila, here comes mixed lentil pongal -

Ingredients:

Mixed lentils as described above - 1 cup

Rice 3/4 cup

Whole peppercorns - 2 tbsps

Cumin Seeds

Cashew cut into small pieces ~ 1/2 cup

Ghee - Clarified butter. (See my note at the end about this).

Curry leaves - 4-5

Method:

• Mix the lentils and rice and let them soak for half an hour. Pressure cook, waiting for at-least 5 whistles to ensure soft texture.
• Mash half the peppercorns into a coarse powder. I just used a sheet of paper and a heavy porcelain cup to do this since I don't have a mortar and pestle. (Note to self - buy one :)
• Heat the ghee and add the peppercorns, cumin seeds and cashews, fry until the cashews are light brown. Ghee can burn really quickly so watch out.
• Add the curry leaves after turning your stove off. The heat from the ghee is sufficient to roast the curry leaves.
• Add the cooked lentils and rice mix, salt to taste.

We ate this with this tomato gojju on the side. I omitted the onions from that recipe since we were out of those as well.

* I should warn readers that this pongal looks strange, its mostly a grayish-green color because of the black lentils and whole toor dal, but tastes yummy! Hopefully, I'll get better with adding pictures to my recipes this year.

** Ghee is made from butter but does not contain casein. The process of making ghee, turns it into 98% fat. See http://www.gfcfdiet.com/bakingcanning.htm for more info.