Pori Urundai - karthigai special

Pori urundai is yet another neivedhyam for the Karthigai deepam festival. Some families have the tradition of just mixing the jaggery syrup to the puffed rice, while others make pori urundais. Ideally, the festival urundais are made with nel-pori, paddy puffed with husk by roasting,(The husk is cleaned later.) or with aval pori where the poha or beaten rice is roasted to puff up.

Stores in Tamilnadu will stock these up for this occasion. In my small town, you may send the paddy or aval and get it puffed at special shops selling the puffed rice.

Outside India, I have been lucky sometimes to find them at odd times and stock them up. I have tried puffing the aval/poha for mixture. The thin variety poha is not good for this purpose. Here I had not found the thick variety, so had to feel contented with the puffed rice I buy in the Indian stores. So this Karthigai was with puffed rice urundai at our home.

These are very easy to make and are good to eat anytime.

Ingredients:

3 cups puffed rice

1/4 cup roasted dhal (pottukadali)

1 cup powdered jaggery

1/2 of a coconut cut in thin pieces

2 teaspoons dry ginger powder (sukku podi)

Ghee/coconut oil to grease your palms.

Clean the puffed rice by tossing around in a plate. Add the roasted dhal and coconut pieces to it.

Dissolve jaggery in some water, strain and remove the impurities. Add the dry ginger powder to it.

Boil the jaggery in a pan until the syrup is of a hard ball texture. (Place some of the boiling jaggery in a bowl of small amout of water, try to gather that in a ball. You will be able to form a ball with the boiled syrup.) This is urundai paagu in Tamil. This texture works well for any urundai made using jaggery syrup like the kadalai urundai, pottukadalai urundai, manoharam etc.

Mix well with the puffed rice, roasted gram and coconut pieces.

Allow to cool a bit and greasing your palms, gather the mix in balls of desired size.

Pori urundais are ready.

Offer on Karthigai deepam day and enjoy.