28 January 2022, Plava varusha, Thai-15, Friday ;
In ancient times, our ancestors used to follow a set of rules in everyday life regarding food habits. For every festival, they used to follow certain specified food items, like poli for ugadi, snacks, appam, seedai, poornam, kai murukku for Gokulashtami, sweet Pongal for Sankranti, sweet kozhukkattai for karadiyan nombu, peanut chikki for karthikai Deepam,etc.
First in the list, let us start with sweet Poli…..
Poli is a very famous sweet prepared during Bhogi festival and during ugadi. In many states in India, it is prepared for almost many festivals. Generally, Poli is prepared using Maida flour for making puri roll. Nowadays, as almost all the people across the world are health conscious, it is being prepared using wheat flour, substituting Maida. As festivals in Panguni month, tamil new year and telugu new year ahead, let us look back at our traditional dishes and get prepared for the old recipes with a new flavour.
Ingredients:
Channadhal- ¾ cup
Jaggery- 1 cup
Cardamom powder- 1 pinch
wheat flour
Ghee- 1 tbsp
STEPS FOR PREPARATION
HOW TO MAKE SWEET-STUFFING (POORANAM)
* Soak the channa dhal for about 30- 40 minutes to ensure easy cooking
* Strain the soaked dhal and ensure it should be dry.
* Heat a kadai and transfer the soaked dhal in it to cook. It could also be cooked in pressure cooker, but care should taken, so that dhal doesnot completely get smashed.
* Drain the cooked dhal and ensure it is completely dry.
* Transfer the cooked dhal to a pan and add jaggery to it.
* Heat the pan so that jaggery gets melted and get mixed with the dhal.
* Add cardamom powder to add aroma to the sweet.
* Mash the mixture so that there should not be any dhal left unsmashed.
* Let the mixture cook for ten minutes so that jaggery get mixed with dhal, till it becomes dry.
* Transfer the mixture to a bowl or a plate till it is completely cool to make poornam balls for stuffing.
HOW TO MAKE DOUGH
* Take the wheat flour into a deep bowl.
* Add ghee to make the dough softer.
* Add enough water to knead the flour and to make into a smooth dough.
* Let the dough be kept closed for atleast half an hour to 40 minutes.
* Dust the dough with enough wheat flour to rollout into a circle.
* Place the poornam in the centre of the circle .
* Fold the ends of the puri and press gently so that, the poornam does not squeeze out.
* Gently rollout the mixture into a circle like puri.
* Heat the tava, and place the stuffed puri on it and cook it on one side. Turn the puri upside down and apply ghee on both the sides while cooking.
* Cook till the colour of the puri turns light golden brown.
TIPS:
*Channa dhal should not be smashed too much. It should be cooked so that it could be smashed with fingers.
*While straining the dhal after cooking, it should be dry enough.
General guidelines for healthier food – Both body and mind:
- One should be thinking about Perumal (Nama Smaranam) while cooking, and the purpose should be to offer the preparation to Him.
- Once the food is prepared, it should be offered to Perumal first. While offering, one should make sure that the food is neither too hot nor cold. It should be offered with love and affection.
- Please do not offer either pre-cooked food bought from outside or any pre-consumed food.
- Please follow thiruvaradanam kramam as instructed by your respective acharya. (http://anudinam.org/2012/03/08/bhagavad-tiruvaradhanam/)
- Follow ahara niyamam as much as possible. Atleast make sure that onion and garlic are not used at all.(http://anudinam.org/2012/06/11/srivaishnava-ahara-niyamam/)
- Please ensure that food which are not prasadams are not consumed.
