Sweet Rice dessert – Thiruvadarai Kali

Hindus are probably neck-to-neck with the Greeks when it comes to worship. We love variety. So we designate a special God for every aspect of our lives – food, knowledge, wealth, beauty… In the interest of abundance, we also use the multiplier effect of reincarnation by having each God incarnate multiple times into different avatars. We end up with an exponential number of Gods, whose birthdays we celebrate unfailingly each year .  This is the way we keep God and spirituality in our daily lives. There is not a single month in a year when there is no celebratory event revolving around one of the Gods.  Each celebration involves cooking the God’s favorite food and distributing it to family, friends and people around. What a win-win! The Gods are happy and so are we!

This past Saturday was the birthday of Lord Nataraja, an incarnation of Lord Shiva. As Lord Nataraja, Shiva does the ‘Tandava’ or the divine dance of creation and destruction. This dancing God’s birthday is known as Thiruvadarai and tradionally arrives just before Pongal, the harvest festival.

I love the sweet rice dish that is made on this one day each year – it is called Kali – pronounced “ca-lhi”. Because my mother makes it so well, I have never attempted to learn how to make it until now. This year, my mother is visiting India but as luck would have it, my aunt and uncle are visiting their son and daugher-in-law in the US and my aunt too, is a cook non-pareil. She made the Thiruvadarai Kali on Saturday and invited me over so I didn’t miss my favorite dish this year too! I can definitely recommend this recipe. It tasted just fantastic. Kali is traditionally served with a “Kootu” or 7 vegetable stew. Picture shows Kali served with Kootu. I will post the Kootu recipe in another post.

This is the first of my series of posting recipes from my readers. This is also the first of my series of festival recipes. Here is my aunt Chandra’s, Kali recipe.

Here is what you need:
1 cup raw rice (she used white rice, but I will try this with brown rice and post that recipe too)
2 cups powdered jaggery (available in any Indian grocery store)
2 cups water
10 cashews (roasted in melted butter or ghee)
1 tsp cardomom powder
2 tsp ghee (melted butter)
1 tbsp coconut powder (available in any Indian grocery store)

Here is how you make this:
Heat a pan and toast the rice on a low flame until light brown. Remove from the stove and cool. Place the cooled toasted rice in a blender and powder coarsely to the consistency of semolina. Dissolve jaggery in water. Add the dissolved jaggery to the powdered rice and cook over medium heat until all the water is evaporated and the rice is cooked.

Add cardomom powder, coconut powder and ghee and mix well. Garnish with roasted cashews and serve warm.