Sunday, February 24, 2019

Puliyogare Gojju(Iyengar style)


Preparation Time - 15 mins
Cook Time           - 45 mins to an hour

Measurements & Ingredients:

For basic gojju


  • Tamarind - a generous handful 
  • Black sesame seeds - 1/3 cup
  • Jaggery - depends on the sourness of the tamarind
  • Rasam powder - 4 to 5 tbspn
  • Salt
  • Oil - 3/4 cup
For powder to sprinkle at the end
  • Kadele bele/Bengal gram - 2 tbspn
  • Menasu/Black pepper       - 1/2 tspn
  • Jeerige/Cumin seeds        - 1 tspn
  • Rasam powder                 - 1 tspn
For seasoning
  • Oil                     - 3 tbspn
  • Mustard seeds    - 1 tspn
  • Split black gram - 1 tspn
  • Curry leaves       - 1 sprig
  • Peanuts              - a handful
  • Hing
Other
  • Dry shredded coconut(optional)
Preparations:

Soak the tamarind in about 1/2 ltr of water for either a few hours OR if you don't have time warm the tamarind and water bowl until it is hot and cover and leave for 15 mins.
Meanwhile, dry roast the black sesame seeds.  Once cool, powder it and keep it aside.
Coming back to the soaked tamarind, squeeze the tamarind water to extract the juice from the tamarind.  Once extracted, keep that extract in a different bowl and again pour some water to the already squeezed tamarind and squeeze the juice from it.   Repeat this for a few times until you see there is no more juice which can be extracted.

Method:

In a pan, take the tamarind juice which is extracted and let it come to a boil.  Make sure the heat is not more than medium.  Once it starts boiling, lower the temperature to low medium and add let it reduce to half the quantity.  Once reduced, add rasam powder, salt and boil for about 5 minutes.  Then add the jaggery and black sesame seeeds powder, mix and let it boil for a couple of minutes.  By this time the consistency would be turning to a gojju consistency.  Now add the 3/4 cup oil.  Mix well and let it cook till it reaches a paste consistency and you can see the oil absorbed and a shine is seen in the gojju.  Switch off the heat when you see this and let it cool completely.  Once cooled, you can store it in an air tight container.  

For the spice powder, dry roast bengal gram, cumin seeds and black pepper.  Then grind all these along with rasam powder.  This is the powder to be sprinkled when mixing the gojju with rice.  Store this also in an air tight container.

For seasoning, Heat oil.  To it add mustard seeds, split black gram, hing, peanuts and curry leaves.

Making the Puliyogare:
Add the needed amount of gojju, the spice powder, dry shredded coconut and oggarane/seasoning to rice.  Mix it and enjoy!

Notes:

  • It is suggested not to replace Black sesame seeds with white ones.  That being said, adding sesame seeds is highly recommended and I suggest not to skip it.  For any reason you have to skip black sesame seeds, I would say use the white.  Something is definitely better than skipping!  But I recommend the black sesame seeds.
  • The rice should not be mushy.
  • I have not tried with store bought tamarind pulp, so not sure how it would be if you use that.
  • If you feel the spice is less when you mix the rice, add a little more of the spice powder.  So, the more powder you add, the more spice the puliyogare will be.
  • Make sure to stir in between while making the gojju.

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