Sugar Beet Dessert – Payasam

Are you one of those people who think that Beets are only useful for making sugar because of their high sugar content? If so, you have sadly underestimated this wonderful vegetable.

Beets contain a powerful cancer-fighting pigment called Betacyanin. In addition, Beets protect against heart disease, help lower cholesterol levels, especially triglycerides by nearly 40%, and because of their high folate content, help protect against birth defects. Eating folate-rich foods is especially important during pregnancy since without adequate folate, the infant’s spinal column does not develop properly and leads to a condition called neural tube defect. The daily requirement for folate is 400 micrograms. Just one cup of boiled Beets contains 136 micrograms of folate.

So here is your excuse for making this very tasty, calcium-rich, healthy, easy-to-make dessert. Try enticing your children with this payasam. They are sure to love it and ask for more. This is also a wonderful dish to make with your young children. Set them to work grating the red beet with a hand grater. They’ll love the mess of having the juice run down their arms and stain their hands! Beats finger painting with chemical paints hands-down!

Here is what you need:
1 large beet (peeled and grated fine)
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1 tbsp coconut powder (optional)

For the Garnish:
1 tsp cardamom powder
8 – 10 cashews (chopped)
handful golden raisins
1 tbsp butter

Here is how you make this:
Place the grated beet in a large pan. Add milk, coconut powder and sugar bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer until the beet is cooked soft and well blended. Remove from the stove.

In another pan, melt the butter. Add the chopped cashews and fry golden brown. Add the raisins and fry for about 20 seconds until the raisins puff up. Remove from the stove and pour the garnish over the payasam. Sprinkle cardamom powder and serve hot or cold.

Pongalo Pongal!

It is harvest time in India. A year of hard work has paid off in a golden harvest of rice. This is the rice that will keep the entire village fed for the next year. The paddy is harvested, hulled and stored with great care. And the entire village celebrates. So do the towns and big cities. It is Pongal time!

A time for abundance. A time when joy permeates. A time for celebration. A time to cook newly harvested rice with newly harvested sugar cane that has been made into jaggery – Pongal! The very word “Pongal” means to overflow in abundance.

In India, this is my favorite time of the year. The weather is cool’er’ and the urchins on the street are happier. The kids roll the old bicycle tire with a stick for entertainment and generally run around begging for bits of sugar cane to chew on. In return, they’ll run small errands for the teenage boys – pass the love note to the pretty girl next door with compliments from the “anna” (elder brother) who gave them the bit of sugar cane in exchange. The pretty girl takes the note, reads it, casts a sidelong glance and a shy smile at the pimpled teen boy while briskly shooing off the urchin to hide her embarrassment. Love is in the air! Joy is in the air. And Pongal is upon us.

This year, I decided to make Pongal with brown rice. I am guessing that in the ancient days they used to make Pongal with brown rice before the rich made it fashionable to eat refined white rice. My husband and I love the texture of brown rice. It certainly doesn’t hurt that it is an unrefined carbohydrate and known to be better for health than eating white rice. All in all, it is a happy addiction.

Here is my recipe – shout “Pongalo Pongal” as you make this, so the Gods shower you and your family with wealth, prosperity and good health.

Here is what you need:
1/3 cup split yellow moong dal
2/3 cup brown rice
1 1/2 cups powdered jaggery (available at any self-respecting Indian grocery store)
2 1/2 + 1 cup water
1/2 cup whole milk or 2% milk

To garnish:
3 tbsp butter
25 cashews chopped
25 golden raisins
1 tsp cardamom powder

Here is how you make this:

Heat a pan on medium to low heat and toast the moong dal until light brown and aromatic. Remove from stove and now toast the rice for about 5 minutes on a low setting. Remove from stove. Place the rice and dal together in a dish. Add 2 1/2 cups water and bring to a boil or pressure cook. Cook until tender and set aside.

In another pan, place the jaggery and 1 cup water and bring to a roiling boil until the jaggery melts and become syrupy. Now add the cooked rice and moong dal and 1/2 cup milk. Simmer.

Heat butter in a pan until melted and bring it to a boil. Now take off the stove and cool a bit for about 5 minutes. Place it back on the stove on medium heat and add the chopped cashews. Fry until golden brown. Remove from the pan with a slotted ladle. Now add the golden raisins in the same melted butter and fry for just about 20-30 seconds until they puff up. Remove the pan and pour the melted butter and golden raisins on the simmered Pongal.

Add the powdered cardamom and mix well. Garnish with fried cashews.

Spicy Tamarind Rice

The thought of Tamarind rice brings back nostalgic memories of long train journeys with my father, mother, two sisters and our dog. I used to love those train journeys, squabbling with my sisters for window seats, top berths, and whose turn it was to take the dog out for a run during a station stop. Best of all, the train journeys symbolized uninterrupted time for reading, dreaming, watching the urchins at the stations and zipping out to fill water bottles.

With journeys usually spanning a couple of days, if you wanted a decent meal while traveling, you were either reduced to ordering from the dining car or grabbing something that an urchin shoved at you while the train stopped for a few minutes at a station. The dining car experience was best avoided because it entailed a dubiously white-coated attendant bringing a grubby tray of cold rice, watery sambar, sour buttermilk and gooey vegetables at one of the train stations.

Succumbing to the urchins’ persistent sales tactics was an exercise in valor. You never knew what hygiene standards had been observed when the food was cooked and how many times the urchin had stopped on the way to the station to throw stones at stray dogs, while depositing the food on the ground.

Either way, you took your chances eating out while traveling. Or if you were lucky enough to have a mom like mine, you got to eat the yummiest home-made Tamarind rice and potato curry, in addition to devouring Enid Blyton books.

My mother would make the spicy tamarind sauce in advance – someday, I will post her recipe. Nowadays, we have an easier alternative to home made tamarind sauce - MTRs Puliyogare mix (dehydrated tamarind sauce mix). This is enormously quick and easy. You can get this mix in any self-respecting Indian grocery store.

Here it is – Spicy Tamarind rice made in just 4 minutes flat, if you have pre-cooked rice. I usually use brown rice and my family loves it.

Here is what you need:
1 cup cooked brown rice (you can also use white jasmine rice or white basmati rice)
3 tbsp MTR puliyogare mix
3 tbsp raw peanuts (you can also use cashews and raisins instead) (optional)
2 dry red chili (broken into a halves) (optional)
2-3 tsp olive oil

Here is how you make this:
Cook rice until tender and set aside.

Heat oil in a pan. When the oil is hot, add the dry red chili and brown for a minute. Now add the raw peanuts and fry until crisp. Add the MTR mix and immediately add the pre-cooked and cooled rice. Mix well.

Enjoy with yogurt and cucumber raita or plain yogurt.