Puliyogare(Or Chitranna) Gojju/Paste

My mom makes awesome Puliyogare powder from scratch, which I am too lazy to learn. In one of our conversations she told me that the major difference between puliyogare powder and rasam powder is indeed the addition of sesame seeds.. then it suddenly occurred to me why not put some sesame seeds to the rasam powder and make my own puliyogare gojju..

..and that’s what I did here.. 

The trick in bringing puliyogare gojju to a gravy consistency is addition of water, which lot of people miss out on. Even when I am making puliyogare from MTR dry powder, I put some water and boil it to a gravy consistency. Puliyogare comes out better this way and mixing also becomes easy. 

This gojju can be used as chutney with dosa, chapathi and also like pickle with curd rice. My mom used to take chapathi with this gojju for long travels. It has a pretty good shelf life... and can be stored even longer when kept in the fridge.. I’ve never stored this long enough to know exactly how many days it stays :)

When I proudly told mom about my “invention”, she said what I just did was chitranna and not puliyogare.. hehe.. 

It tastes awesome, whatever you call it :)

Do try!

Ingredients(all measurements are approximate for mixing with 1 cup rice)

Rasam Powder - 3-4 tbsp

Sesame Seeds - 1 tsp - either dry roast and powder and mix it with rasam powder or 

do I what I do and put lots of sesame seeds for the tadka :)

Tamarind paste - lots 

Jaggery - see notes below

for the tadka

Oil - preferably peanut oil /sesame oil - 3-4 tbsp (you can add more later while mixing the rice)

Mustard

Hing

Chana dal

Peanuts

Curry leaves

Red chili - 3-4 broken 

Method

In a bowl, put jaggery, tamarind paste, turmeric, rasam powder and water and mix it and keep it aside for 5 min(This is my lazy version instead of breaking jaggery into small pieces and directly adding it to tadka). If you are using tamarind(and not tamarind paste), you can boil tamarind in hot water and squeeze out the liquid, you need not add extra liquid.

In a pot(preferably deep pot, or a pan with a lid, as it can splatter everywhere), make tadka. Start with little more oil. Add mustard, as it begins to splatter, add channa dal, peanuts. Roast till the peanuts are almost roasted properly. Add curry leaves, hing and broken red chilli. Simmer the stove. Carefully add the mixed paste, salt(to taste). Add little more water if the paste is too thick. In a little while the paste thickens. 

Let it boil for few more minutes in low heat. Add desiccated coconut(optional). Let it boil for couple more minutes and turn off the stove. 

Save it in an air tight container. 

Notes - 

If you don’t like jaggery, you can skip it. 

If you plan to use this as a chutney or pickle add little more jaggery.

If mixing with rice, the sweetness tends to increase with jaggery, so use a lot less.

Recipe Source - Amma(Shrimathi Vasudeva)