Sakkarai Pongal recipe - Happy Pongal!

Happy Pongal everyone.  Here's one of my favorite recipes. It is easy too. I always used to wonder why my sweet pongal

1. Did not have the semi solid like consistency that it is supposed to have
2. Did not have the dark color 

I found the answers to both these questions

1. Need to add enough milk/water when boiling the rice and dal mixture
2. Need to use the darker jaggery

I got the answer to 1 from here.

Ingredients :

1. 1 cup rice
2. 1/2 cup yellow moong dal
3. 2.5 cups of milk
4. 2.5 cups of water + 1 cup to mix the jaggery
5. 1/4 cup ghee
6. A pinch of salt
7. 3/4 to 1 cup jaggery
8. A handful of cashews
9. A handful of raisins
10. 1 tsp cardamom powder

How I made it :

1. In a pan, heat a tsp of ghee and roast the dal till fragrant.
2. Soak dal along with washed rice for about 30 minutes.
3. Pressure cook the dal+rice mix with 2.5 cups each of milk and water with a pinch of salt for 15 minutes on low flame.
4. Grate or break jaggery into small pieces. The smaller the pieces, the sooner it will take you to get a golden syrup saving energy. 
5. Add 1 cup of water to jaggery and boil till all the jaggery has melted. 
6. Pass this through a strainer and keep aside.
7. When the pressure from the cooker has lifted, add the jaggery syrup and mash the rice and dal mixture. 
8. In a pan, heat the ghee, add the cashews and raisins and fry till cashews are light golden brown. Mix in the rice, dal and jaggery mix. 
9. Sprinkle with cardamom powder and serve.

I like this cold but it does taste good warm too. Add a little milk when heating up as it has a tendency to lump up absorbing all the liquid.

As it is the festival today, I also made the khara version from Nag's blog and served it with my mom-in-law's sambar.