Food historian Rakesh Raghunathan recalls memories of Pongal

The chef has fond memories of puliyodharai, and talks about his mother feeding him ghee-laden pongal before his early-morning tuition class.

Food historian and raconteur Rakesh Raghunathan, the host of shows like Dakshin Diaries and 100% South Indian, has fond memories of Pongal. “It is always around food, around people coming together,” remembers Raghunathan, adding, “We still celebrate Pongal in a big way.”

This year, Pongal kicks off on January 14. In an interview with Lounge, he talks about his fascination for puliyodharai, describes the food that was served at the festival and shares memories of his mother feeding him a bowl of ghee-laden pongal before his early-morning maths tuition class.

Rakesh Raghunathan (left); bowls of pongal.  

What is the most prominent food memory of your childhood?

I think it is the puliyodharai or tamarind rice. I have very fond memories of being in the kitchen and watching my grandmother and mother make this dish as a child. It was a laborious process. We always lived in a large joint family. We would use age-old heirloom traditional vessels that were really large.

Making the puliyodhorai involved a 3–4-day long process. It begins with getting the vessels from storage and polishing them. Another day, she would plan to fry something; the oil used to fry crisps or papad is used in puliyodharai since it infuses that flavour into the dish. Then, she would roast and grind the spices for the spice powder, make the tamarind concentrate, boiling it for hours into a molten mass. Even today, a whiff of those familiar smells takes me back to my childhood.

She would layer it like a biryani—add the rice first, spice powder, infused oil, tamarind concentrate, and nuts. As she was doing that, I would sit with her, taste every layer, and tell her whether it needs more concentrate, spice or salt. She would talk to me about her own childhood memories of growing up, how it was back then, how she liked cooking--all of that.

How was Pongal celebrated in your own house?
We lived with our grandparents in Chennai. We were a large family, and this would become a hub. All the other family members would end up coming here. The day of Pongal would invariably be only us—my parents, sister and I and my grandparents. Ven pongal, the savoury version of pongal, and sakkarai pongal, the sweetened version of pongal, was made typically. And any sweet to go with them. The dishes are mainly rice-based because it was the festival of harvest.

The day after, something called kanu is celebrated in some homes. It is essentially the sisters praying for the welfare of their brothers. All my aunts, my father's sisters, would come here.

On that day, they would make a lot of variety rice—coconut rice, tamarind rice, lemon rice and more. We would make chips at home—potato chips, sweet potato, and raw banana chips. There was also a particular bean-based kozhambu or curry called the avaramani kuzhambu paired with the tamarind rice. It is very peculiar to our household and the recipe's roots can be traced to our ancestral village Kethandapatti in Tamil Nadu.

The third day of Pongal is usually spent recovering from all that eating (laughs).

What is your most prominent memory of cooking or eating Pongal?
The month preceding the festival, margazhi, is believed to be the sacred month. Generally, women in the household—not to stereotype—wake up early, have a bath and put rangoli outside their home, placing a small ball of cow dung and a red pumpkin flower in the centre of it. My mother has been following this practice for a very long time.

She would then make ven pongal. She makes it every day that month and still does. When I was young, I had tuition classes very early in the morning. I would cycle and go to maths classes at 5.30 am, and she would insist that I eat this pongal and go. So I would wake up at 4.30, brush my teeth, have this pongal and cycle to class. So whether I learnt math or not, I got a lot of sleep (laughs). That is my memory of pongal: going to my tuition having this bowl of pongal filled with ghee and nuts.

What does using the clay pot for cooking do to the dish's flavour? Do you still use this for cooking in your home?
In terms of taste, one may not really know—unless you cook it on a firewood stove, the smoke kind of adds to it. The innate properties of the minerals used to make the terracotta ware is known to neutralise pH levels because the pots are alkaline in nature and therefore interact with the acidity in the food. My aunt uses traditional cookware to make pongal on the day of the festival. My mother, however, has found an easier, less messy option: the pressure cooker.

What is your comfort food and why?
For me, it is a good bowl of rasam-sadam. It may seem like a simple dish but making a good rasam isn't easy. It hit me in the US, where I studied when I was trying to cook it. I had everything—the tamarind, the rasam powder, the lentils—but to make it like my mother was very tough. I didn't know it was so complicated. Even today, people judge wedding caterers based on the rasam they make.

Are we going beyond the idli-dosa-sambar cliché? Do you feel the narrative around South Indian food is changing and what is driving it?
There has been a great shift. I think the micro cuisines of every region is catching on, particularly in South Indian food. Also, people want food presented more aesthetically, thanks to shows like MasterChef and so on. Otherwise, South Indian food has just been this huge mountain of rice with rasam and sambar or chicken or fish curry.

I remember curating a food festival for The Park called Annam to Arancini, which was about reimagining our grandmothers' kitchen, heirloom recipes presented in a very contemporary aesthetic way. For instance, usually, puliyodharai is paired with applams, avaramani kuzhambu and buttermilk. I made an arancini ball with the puliyodharai, coated it with applam and deep-fried it like a patty. I then put it on a bed on avaramani sauce, drizzled some buttermilk and put microgreens on it. When I served it to people they didn’t know it was—it looked very funky. But when they ate it, it took them to their childhood.

Raghunathan's recipe for ven pongal

Ingredients

1 cup rice 
Half cup moong dal
6 cups water
1 tsp ginger, chopped
2 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp whole pepper
Half tsp asafoetida
10 curry leaves
1 tsp oil
3 tsp ghee
Salt to taste
10 cashews

 

Method

1. Mix rice and dal together. Wash under running water and strain.
2. In a pressure cooker, add the rice dal mixture along with 6 cups of water.
3. Also add one teaspoon cumin seeds, chopped ginger, asafoetida, curry leaves, salt , oil and a tsp of ghee and pressure cook for four whistles.
4. Remove the cooker when pressure settles down.
5. In a separate wok, mix oil and ghee and heat until hot.
6. Add one teaspoon cumin seeds and whole black pepper. Allow to splutter.
7. Add cashews and roast till golden brown.
8. Add curry leaves and pour the tempering over the molten pongal.
9. Drizzle more ghee on the pongal. 
10. Serve hot with sambar and/or chutney.

(Source: Live Mint)

After six decades, Manipur’s Burmese Tamils get a glimpse of their ancestral places in Myanmar

Opening of the land border last year has enabled Moreh’s Tamils, who were forced to flee Burma in the early 1960s, to connect with their roots.

Since he was a little boy, M Mohan had “only two aims” in life: to go to London and to visit his “father and mother’s houses in Burma”. On December 23, he fulfilled one of those dreams. He finally tracked down the house where his mother grew up, in Bago, a town around 100 km to the northeast of Yangon. “It was the most sentimental day of my life,” recalled Mohan, now 40. “I took a selfie with the house in the background and updated my Facebook status.”

Mohan, a Tamil who can speak five languages fluently, was born and brought up in Moreh, a dusty, one-street town in Manipur on the Indo-Myanmar border where idli dosa shops jostle for space with Manipuri rice hotels, and local brews share the shelf with Chinese lagers in paan shops owned by Biharis.

Moreh's Tamils celebrate the Pongal festival in January.

His parents trace their roots to Myanmar, where the family had lived and worked for decades before fleeing in 1962 after a military junta took over. In spite of living a few hundred metres from Myanmar all his life, Mohan’s expedition took many years because land travel to the country through Moreh was strictly regulated. Indians required a special permit from the Myanmar government, in addition to a visa.

This meant flying to Yangon was, for all practical purposes, the only way to enter the country for Indian passport holders. “I have to go to Kolkata, and then from there to Yangon. How can a simple man like me afford all that?” asked Mohan, who exports utensils manufactured in Tamil Nadu to Myanmar.

In August 2018, though, things changed. Myanmar opened its land boundary with India in August and made Moreh a legitimate “port of entry”. Most major towns in Myanmar were now only an affordable bus ride away. “It was a momentous occasion for all of us Tamils in Moreh,” exclaimed Mohan. “All of us had harboured this dream of going to Burma at least once in our lifetime to see how our ancestors lived, and it was finally going to come true.”

For the Tamils of Moreh, the opening of the new road meant a chance to connect with a past they could never quite let go of. Almost all of them, like Mohan’s family, had lived in Burma for decades before abruptly leaving in the 1960s.

M Mohan fulfilled his childhood dream of going to Myanmar
in December. Photo credit: Arunabh Saikia

Tracing their roots
Indians started flooding into Myanmar after it fell to the British Raj in the 19th century, filling government posts, manning its ports. By 1931, there were over a million Indians in the country. Then, in December 1941, at the height of the Second World War, the Japanese bombed Rangoon. As British troops retreated from the country, thousands of scared Indians trekked down from Myanmar to India via Manipur. The Long March, as it is called, was the first wave of forced migration of Indians from Burma.

The war ended and Myanmar gained freedom in 1948, but the Indian community remained in a perilous position. Burmese administrators systemically persecuted Indians, denying them citizenship on racial grounds and forcing thousands to return to their country of origin.

When the dictator Ne Win grabbed power in the early 1960s, he actively pursued an anti-minority agenda, nationalising all their businesses and properties. It triggered a mass expulsion of Indians, till then a significant population group. Between 1962 and 1964, more than three lakh Indians were forced out of Myanmar.

The Indo-Myanmar Friendship Gate separates Moreh and the market township
of Namphalong in Burma. Movement is free between 7 am and
4 pm. Photo credit: Arunabh Saikia

Khwaja Moinuddin’s family fled in a ship sent by the Indian government to retrieve Indians expelled by the Burmese military. The ship took them to Tamil Nadu, where they stayed for a few years in a refugee camp in Tiruchirappalli. “But my grandfather and others could not adjust – the food, the way of life, it was all very different from Burma,” Moinuddin said. “So, they decided to try and go back, this time via road, but were stopped at Moreh by the Burmese Army.” The family has lived in Moreh ever since.

When Moinuddin’s aging parents heard the border where they were stopped 50 years ago had finally been opened, they implored their son to take them to the place they were born. “They are old, they want to see their home, their land one last time,” he said.

To Moreh via Madras
By local estimates, there are around 3,000 Tamils, Hindu and Muslim, in Moreh, a town of less than 20,000 people belonging to at least a dozen distinct communities, including the Kukis and the Manipuri Meiteis. While Meitei is the lingua franca, the town’s pluralistic character means most people speak at least three languages – it is common for people in Moreh to switch languages mid-conversation.

The Namphalong market is awash with Chinese goods and alcohol.
Photo credit: Arunabh Saikia

The Tamils are in a minority now but they were the largest group until as recently as the mid-1990s, said the residents. Almost of them share a similar backstory: expelled from Myanmar, ill at ease in their new homes in Tamil Nadu, and marooned in Moreh since. “Our people came to Moreh because they wanted to go back to Burma,” explained Mohan. “They couldn’t, yet they stayed back. But people started to leave in the 90s as Moreh has few opportunities for higher education and employment.” Most left for Tamil Nadu, he said.

‘The king of Moreh’
In spite of their dwindling numbers, Moreh’s Tamils continue to be influential in the town. They dominate the trade, which is entirely informal but amounts to over Rs 50 crore annually, as per estimates of the town’s chamber of commerce. The community also controls the big-ticket furniture business, which thrives on the popular Burmese teak brought in from across the border.

It is not surprising then that the town’s most powerful trade body, the Border Trade and Chamber of Commerce, is populated almost entirely by the Tamils. Heading the association is V Shekhar, who enjoys a singular position in Moreh’s power structure. Shekhar, who is also president of the local branch of the Tamil Sangam, no longer lives in Moreh and visits only occasionally. Yet, his legend endures. As Abdul Gaffar, who deals in Burmese teak furniture, put it: “In Moreh, there’s no one above Shekhar anna.”

A hoarding in Moreh depicts the leaders of the town's four major
communities. Photo credit: Arunabh Saikia

The testament to Shekhar’s authority in Moreh lies in his steadfast control over the local businesses even while ethnic militias warred over the years to take control of the border town, and the lucrative contraband trade route it sits on. His patronage, local community leaders claimed, is required for all significant cross-border trade. “Without the support and approval of Shekhar, you cannot do any big business in Moreh,” said a Kuki community leader who asked not to be identified.

In the 1990s, Tangkhul Nagas, organised under the banner of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muviah), tried to wrest control of the town from the Kukis and the Meiteis. A long bloody fight ensued, at the end of which the Kukis prevailed. Leading the Kuki charge was the Kuki National Organisation and its armed wing, the Kuki National Army. Ever since, the town of Moreh has been under the control of the Kukis, although Meitei nationalist groups continue to exert influence from their camps across the border. Yet, Shekhar never lost his control on the town’s trade.

Members of the Tamil community in Moreh. Photo credit: Arunabh Saikia

A leader of the United Naga Council, which was at the forefront of the Kuki-Naga clashes of the 1990s and is now the apex body of Nagas in Manipur, described Shekhar as “the king of Moreh town”. “He can manage all kinds of armed groups as well as the security forces,” said the Naga leader.

Underneath the apparent chaos of Moreh, a symbiotic system coordinated by Shekhar keeps the town together, said an executive member of the chamber of commerce. “All of us, depending on the size of our businesses, pay a survival tax to the armed groups annually,” he claimed.

The office of the Tamil Sangam in Moreh.
Photo credit: Arunabh Saikia

A second home
This year, Shekhar was the chief guest at the Pongal celebrations held by the Tamil community. Many of Moreh’s Tamils still long for Myanmar, a place they call home. But over the years, they have fashioned a home out of Moreh.

Its youth club is one of the most active in the area, regularly organising sports and cultural programmes. A fire-walking festival organised by the community is one of the biggest events in Moreh’s cultural calendar, with people from all communities thronging it in large numbers.

Sri Angalaparameshwari temple in Moreh. Photo credit: Arunabh Saikia

In the late 2000s, the Tamil Sangam flew in workers from Chennai to build the Sri Angalaparameshwari temple, among the grandest religious structures in the North East. The temple sees devotees not only from elsewhere in India but also Myanmar.

Today, with the border opening up, the Tamils can finally get a glimpse of Burma, a place close to their hearts. As SM Ganeshan, the Tamil Sangam’s education secretary, who recently took the land route to Yangon to see his birthplace, said, “I went there as a tourist only, but it felt really good to meet my relatives there for the first time after I left as a child. Everything is so nice there, surrounded by nature.”

(Source: Scroll)

Three recipes to give the ‘Pongal’ a mouthwatering twist!

Ponga in Tamil means to ‘boil over.’ One of the most popular harvest festivals celebrated in South India, ‘Pongal’ derives its name from this very tradition of cooking the newly harvested rice until it overflows from an earthen pot, writes Jovita Aranha in The Better India. Read on:

Today marks the second day of Pongal, a day dedicated to worshipping the Sun God popularly known as ‘Surya Pongal.’

Cooked in a new mud-pot called ‘Pongapani,’ a special dish with sugarcane sticks is offered to thank the Sun God for the abundant harvest.

This dish is ‘Sarkkarai Pongal.’

Ponga in Tamil means to ‘boil over.’ One of the most popular harvest festivals celebrated in South India, ‘Pongal’ derives its name from this very tradition of cooking the newly harvested rice until it overflows from an earthen pot.

Relished across Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Sri Lanka, Pongal is cooked using various methods and ingredients.

The traditional Chakkara or Sakkarai Pongal, which is commonly offered as prasadam in temples and cooked in Tamil households, is made of rice, coconut and moong dal and sweetened with jaggery, to give it its quintessential brown colour.

Another variant, Venn Pongal, is made from clarified butter and is typically served as a special breakfast in South India and parts of Sri Lanka with sambar and coconut chutney.

Also, Melagu Pongal, a spicy variant, is made with pepper, rice and moong daal. Meanwhile, Puli Pongal, which usually isn’t associated with the festival, is made with tamarind and boiled rice and is often served for dinner.

But this Pongal, you can give this classic traditional dish your twist with some of these easy-to-make recipes:

Chocolate Pongal

Preparation time: ten mins

Cooking time: 30 mins

Total time 40 mins

Serves: 4

Ingredients
Varagu / Kodo Millet – 1 cup

Yellow Moong Dal / Pasi Paruppu – ¼ cup

Water – 2 cups

Cocoa Powder – ¼ cup

Jaggery – 2 cups

Milk – 1 cup + ½ cup

Cardamom Powder – ½ tsp

Ghee – ¼ cup

Cashews – 10

Raisins – 3 tblsp

Method:
Heat 1 tsp ghee in a pressure cooker, add moong dal and roast for 1 min. Add it to the Kodo millet and mix well. Add water, and 1 cup milk and pressure cook it at least for two whistles, simmer for five mins and turn off the heat. Let the steam go all by itself.

Now take the content in a nonstick pan, add in ½ cup milk, jaggery, cocoa powder and mix well. Keep mixing until it thickens.

Now add ghee little by little and mix well.

Heat some ghee in a pan, fry cashews and raisins till golden and add it to the Pongal.

Add cardamom powder and mix well.

Serve.

Brown Rice Pongal

For all you healthy people out there, who are vying for healthier variants of the classic dish. This is just the dish for you!

Soaking time: 30 minutes

Preparation Time: 10 mins

Cooking Time: 30 mins

Total Time: 1 hours 10 minutes

Serves 4

Ingredients
1/2 cup brown rice

1/2 cup yellow moong dal (split yellow gram)

1/2 tsp roasted and crushed cumin seeds (jeera)

1/2 tsp crushed peppercorns (kalimirch)

1/8 tsp salt

Two tsp oil

1/4 tsp cumin seeds (jeera)

1/4 tsp asafoetida (Hing)

Four curry leaves (kadi patta)

Two whole dry Kashmiri red chillies, broken into pieces

One tsp finely chopped ginger (adrak)

Method
Clean, wash the brown rice and moong dal using a strainer and drain well.

Spread the brown rice on a dry muslin cloth and allow it to completely dry for 30 minutes.

Heat a deep non-stick pan, add the brown rice and moong dal and dry roast on a medium flame for 7 to 8 minutes.

Combine the rice- moong dal mixture, crushed cumin seeds, peppercorns, 3¼ cups of water and salt, mix well and pressure cook for five whistles.

Allow the steam to escape before opening the lid.

Mash it well using a spatula. Keep aside.

Heat the oil in a small non-stick pan and add the cumin seeds.

When the seeds crackle, add the asafoetida, curry leaves, dry red chillies and ginger and sauté on medium flame for 1 minute.

Add this tempering over the cooke+d Pongal and mix well

Serve immediately.

Banana Pongal

Cook a cup of rice and half a cup of moong daal with a few strands of saffron in a pressure cooker till soft.

Mash two bananas and add a cup of condensed milk to it.

Add the rice mixture and stir it in well.

Add nuts, raisins and cardamom and nutmeg powder.

Serve hot with cubes of jaggery on the side.

Makar Sankranti, the harvest festival

This is Sid's third Makar Sankranti. This is the festival which marks the shift of the sun into ever-lengthening days. Every year it falls on January 14, and very rarely on January 15.

We Hindus dedicate this to the Sun God and it also marks the six months of auspicious period known as Uttaarayana. Yes, it's the same period for which Bhishma in Mahabharata waited to die, as there is a belief that the gates of the heaven open during Uttarayana.

Makara Sankranti is believed to be a time for peace and prosperity. The day is regarded as important for spiritual practices and accordingly people take a holy dip in rivers, especially Ganga, Yamuna, Godavari, Krishna and Cauvery. The bathing in holy rivers is believed to wash away sins.

This is the Suggi or harvest festival for our farmers in Karnataka. On this auspicious day, girls wear new clothes to visit near and dear ones with a Sankranti offering in a plate and exchange the same with other families. This ritual is called "Ellu Birodhu".

The plate normally contains "Ellu" (white sesame seeds) mixed with fried groundnuts, neatly cut dry coconut and fine cut bella (jaggery). The mixture is called "Ellu-Bella". The plate also contains sugar candy moulds (Sakkare Acchu) with a piece of sugarcane.

We eat sesame and jaggery during this festival because the festival marks the arrival of sunny days. Our bodies require moisture and sesame seeds and peanuts which are rich in oil content act as moisturizers.

There is a saying in Kannada "ellu bella thindu olle maathadi" that translates to 'eat the mixture of sesame seeds and jaggery and speak only good.'

This festival signifies the harvest of the season, since sugarcane is predominant in these parts. Ellu Bella, Ellu Unde, bananas, sugarcane, red berries, haldi and kumkum and small gift items useful in everyday lives are often exchanged among women in Karnataka.

In some parts of Karnataka, a newly married woman is required to give away bananas for five years to married women (muthaidhe/sumangali) from the first year of her marriage and increase the number of bananas in multiples of five.

There is also a tradition among some households giving away red berries "Yalchi Kai" with the above.

We prepare Sihi (sweet) and Khara (spicy) Pongal as a naivedyam, besides vada and akki (rice) payasa. It was indeed fun to watch little Sid enjoying Khara Pongal for the first time, though he has tasted sweet pongal several times earlier.  

In north Karnataka, kite flying with community members is a tradition.

Drawing rangoli in groups is another popular event among women during Sankranti.

An important ritual is display of cows and bulls in colourful costumes in an open field. Cows are decorated for the occasion and taken on a procession. They are also made to cross a fire. This ritual is common in rural Karnataka and is called "Kichchu Haayisuvudu."

Happy Makar Sankranti to all!