Parippu Pradhaman

Parippu (green moong dal) payasam is one of the most common payasam served during any sadya (traditional feast) or marriages or festival like Onam or Vishu. As I always say I am not an expert in making sweet dishes, since folks at home are not at all sweet toothed. But I make this payasam during Onam and Vishu and distribute it to our neighbours. 
This year surprisingly hubby asked me if I can make some payasam for his office colleagues. I jumped up at the idea thinking that I will get a chance to make in bulk and no worries of how to finish it. So, this time its going to be one jaggery and coconut milk payasam (Parippu Pradhaman) and another one with sugar and milk (Paalada) and I get a chance to update both of these in my blog 🙂 (Thats what I ernestly look forward to these days).

This is a bit time consuming and laborious process. Not many shortcuts can be applied. It took almost 1.5-2 hours of constant stirring. 

Ingredients:

• Moong dal 750 gm
• Chana dal 200 gm
• Jaggery 1600 gm
• Coconut 5
• Ghee 2 tbsp
• Cashew nuts handful
• Kismis handful
• Dry coconut/khopra 2-3 tbsp
• Cardamom powder 1-2 tsp

Method:

• Wash and soak the chana dal for 1 hour. 
• Roast the moong dal till it is golden in colour. Take care not to make it over brown.
• Remove from stove and wash it well.
• Pressure cook the dal with some water. Or boil water in a thick bottom pan and add both the moong dal first. 
• When it is semi cooked, add the chana dal. Cook it well till the moong dal is almost mushy and the chana dal is soft and tender.

• Meanwhile melt the jaggery with little water and strain it with a sieve to remove any impurities.
• Now add the jaggery syrup to the cooked dal and mix well.
• Cook it till the jaggery gets completely soaked up by the dal. Keep stirring continuously. This will take around 45 minutes to 1 hour.
• The mixture will resemble a jam like consistency.

• Grate 5 fresh coconuts and extract milk with 3 different consistency. The first thickest, middle medium and the last more watery milk.

• Now add the third extract of the coconut milk and cook till the mixture becomes thick and the extra water in the milk is reduced.
• Now add the second milk and cook again till you get a very thick consistency. Add more jaggery syrup or sugar and adjust the sweetness.
• Keep stirring and make sugar the mixture is thick and smooth.
• Finally add the thick first extract of coconut milk and bring to a boil. Remove from gas.
• Heat ghee in a small fry pan and fry the cashews in it. Strain and remove. 
• Now add the kismis and repeat. Finally fry the finely chopped coconut/khopra. Add all these to the payasam.
• Now add cardamom powder and mix well.
• The payasam will thicken further as it cools. The consistency can be adjusted by adding a cup or half of hot milk.

Notes:

• For more details on how to extract coconut milk, refer coconut milk.
• You can use canned coconut milk or milk powder. But it will be nowhere close to the taste of fresh home made coconut milk.
• Some people add a bit of cumin powder and dried ginger powder in the end. I usually skip it because I personally do not like those flavours.
• You can very well halve or quarter the proportion of ingredients.
• I could make almost 6 litres of payasam with the above mentioned ingredients. 
• It took more than 2 hours to get it done. I did half of the work last night. Cooking the dal with jaggery was done yesterday.
• Today morning all I did was extracting 3 milk from 5 coconuts and adding it to the dal-jaggery mixture.