Thai Pongal Festival and Recipes

For Thai Pongal, first we need to get few important things from shop. We need flowers, coconut, betel leaves and nut, Sugarcane, turmeric plant (Manjakothu). We need to get 2 turmeric plants. One of the plant should have lots of turmeric and other should have nice big leaves which we can cut and wrap it in a plastic sheet and refrigerate and use it on Kanu.

In earlier days Thai Pongal is prepared in a hand made pot which is decorated fully with turmeric, kumkum and sunnaambu. we need to tie turmeric plant with leaves and turmeric around the pot. We can also make plain rice and sakkarai pongal in bronze vessel.  Nowadays we are preparing pongal in cooker and hence we need to decorate the pressure cooker accordingly. While we get the whistles, we need to tell “Pongalo Pongal” and pray to god.

We need to prepare the sakkarai pongal, vadai, plain rice for neivedhyam and we need to do the neivedhyam only at the time when “Thai” months begins.

We have to use broad beans, pumpkin, ashgourd, sakaraivellikizhangu, senaikizhangu/potato, raw banana and Lima beans vegetables on this occasion. With all these veggies and make Pongal Kootu. Traditionally we make big quantity of this kootu, aviyal and save some for the next day (Kanu Festival). Some of us have a practice of making Ericha kuzhambu which is made with the left over pongal kootu and aviyal. We need to add cook the leftover  pongal kootu with more tamarind juice, salt and sambar powder and keep in low flame till the whole kootu becomes very thick. Most of us eat this left over pongal kootu on Kanu festival because its a tradition to eat atleast a spoon of left over food on Kanu Festival.

Pongal Special Recipes: