Twist The Traditional - Pulihora (Tamarind Rice)

First of all, a big thanks to all of you food blogger friends for wishing my faster recovery. I really appreciate your warm wishes and here I am back with my next theme for the event Twist The Traditional.

I got good response for this event that I started last month with the theme being IDLI. I will post the round up tomorrow for sure. Promise. I am here to post the next theme for this event today. It is PULIHORA.

Pulihora is south indian delicacy which is very famous across India. The traditional pulihora (tamarind rice) as name suggests is made with tamarind pulp. It differs the way it is made based on the region again, like tamilians make it slightly differently to that of andhrites.

Here is how Pulihora is made in Andhra:

3 cups Rice
1/4 tsp Turmeric powder
Salt as per taste
3 lemon sized tamarind (soak in warm water and extract the pulp)

For Tadka:

2 to 3 tbsp Oil
8 Red chillies
5 Green chillies
2 tbsp peanuts/ground nuts
1/2 tbsp Channa dal
1/2 tbsp Urad dal
1/2 tbsp Mustard seeds
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
a dash of Hing
few Curry leaves

Wash and cook rice with 6 cups of water. In a wide dish sprinkle some turmeric powder and fresh curry leaves. Spread the hot rice on top of that. Drizzle little oil, about 2 to 3 tbsp oil (apart from what is given for tadka). Leave it aside.

Heat oil in a pan and add the tadka ingredients, except slit green chillies and curry leaves. When dals turn golden brown in colour then add the green chillies and curry leaves. Fry for a minute and pour tadka on to the spread rice.

In the same pan add the tamarind pulp and add salt as per taste. Let it cook until it slightly thickens and pour that too on the rice and mix thoroughly. Adjust salt as per taste. Leave it for some time aside. Some how tamarind rice always tastes better as it sits for long time.

My mom actually cooks tadka and tamarind pulp together that way, the chillies get cooked in the tangy tamarind and taste excellent. The method that I mentioned above is the way my mother in law prepares it. It depends when I follow which method on who is actually craving for some pulihora. This time it was my husband's choice to have pulihora so I made it my MIL way.

So thats it gals, please send in varieties of pulihoras for this event.

Here are the rules:

1. Previous entries (reposting) are not accepted for this event. It has to be new entry, as I believe we foodies can always come up with innovative ideas.

2. The procedure of making pulihora has to be followed like:
    a. There has to be a tadka, like I have mentioned above.
    b. The rice or any substitute has to be pre-cooked. Entry in which rice or any substitute cannot be cooked after tadka is added (like we do for upma)

You can substitute Rice or Tamarind with anything of your choice. Hope you understood, please drop me a line if you have any doubts

3. The end date for this event is March 15th, 2011 (sorry for the delay caused in posting the theme, but I think we have ample time to come up with an entry)

4. Send in your entry details without a photo to ysatyablog@gmail.com.

5. I haven't posted a logo previously for this event, call me lazy or whatsoever, but I thought that is cool. Just send in you entries linking to this post, thats it.

Looking forward for your lovely entries.