Today is Thai Pongal, which is a harvest festival equivalent to a thanksgiving event and is celebrated by Tamils across the world. Pongal in Tamil means “boiling over”.

The act of boiling over of milk in a clay pot is considered to denote future prosperity for the family during the ensuing year.

Thai Pongal is celebrated on the first day of the month of Thai of the Tamil calendar. The day normally falls between 12th and 15th of the month of January. Thai is the first month of the Tamil Almanac.

This Tamil festival of Thai Pongal is a thanksgiving ceremony in which the farmers celebrate the event to thank the Sun and the farm animals for their assistance in providing a successful harvest.

The usual custom is for every member of the family to get up early in the morning, finish their bath, put on new clothes and gather in the front of the house to cook the traditional Pongal (rice pudding).

The front garden is pre-prepared for this ceremonious cooking. A flat square pitch is made and decorated with kolam (Rangoli) drawings, and it is exposed to the direct sun light. A fire wood hearth will be set up using three bricks. The cooking begins by putting a clay pot with water on the hearth.

A senior member of the family will start by putting water in the pot and tops it up with milk. The fire is lit and the water with the milk begins to boil.
The water and milk are supposed to boil over to denote prosperity for the year for the family.

When the water has boiled the rice and roasted green mung dhal, which have been washed are added to the pot – after a member the family ceremoniously puts three handful of rice in first. Then the other members of the family follow suit.

The excess water is drained and only the correct amount of liquid for boiling the rice is left. When the rice and mung dhal have been cooked other ingredients such as chakkarai (brown cane sugar) or katkandu (sugar candy) dissolved in coconut milk are added and stirred well. Then chopped cashewnuts and sultanas are added and mixed well. When well-blended the pot is taken off the fire.

When the meal is ready it is served on a banana leaf and the family pray to the Sun God.
Then the family partake of the meal (Pongal) with fruits (banana and mango).
Later it will be shared with neighbours, friends and relatives.

Although each household prepare their own pongal sharing each other, Pongal is one of the important features of the event.

Some Hindu scholars believe that the rice is ceremoniously cooked on the Thai Pongal day because of its importance as a potent symbol of auspiciousness and fertility. The evenings are spent attending cultural events or visiting relatives and friends.

Thanksgiving Day

The day after Thai Pongal day is devoted to a thanksgiving to cattle. The farmers pay great attention to the animals which have ploughed the fields and drawn the carts throughout the year.

To show his gratitude for this invaluable service the animals are bathed, their horns are painted in red, blue, yellow and green. Their foreheads are smeared with turmeric and kumkum. Their necks are adorned with colourful garlands. Pooja is offered to them and Pongal is given in plenty. This is called Mattu Pongal.

Thai Pongal is an occasion for family re-unions and get-togethers. Old enmities, personal animosities and rivalries are forgotten. Estrangements are healed and reconciliation effected.

Indeed, Thai Pongal is a festival of freedom, peace, unity and compassion crystallized in the last hymn on unity in the Indian spiritual text the Rig Veda. Thus, love and peace are the central theme of Thai Pongal.

I am back after about three months’ break. In October 2009, I went to the US to visit my daughter and her family. It was a very lovely trip especially meeting with one’s family. Unfortunately we only went to New Jersey and New York as it was not school holidays. My husband I visited some of the museums in New York.

Then I was back in Perth on November 18 and then after a couple of busy weeks in Perth went for a trip to India. We arrived in Chennai on December 12 and transferred to a hotel for the night.

Next morning we flew to Cochin. We were checked in at a homestay in Cochin as I wanted to taste a proper Kerala meal. But I am sorry to say that I was disappointed. Maybe being a chef myself my expectations were very high!!!

Then we went sightseeing and visited a very famous church and a Hindu temple. Then later we returned to homestay and attended a cooking demonstration where again I was disappointed.

Next morning we left for Alleppey to embark a houseboat…

Houseboat in India

With the advent of roads, bridges and ferry services, gradually the kettuvallams went off the scene.
Now they are back as a major tourist attraction as a modern moving boat house. The houseboats vary in size.

Kerala house boats are fully furnished and have a crew of three – chef, driver and cabin assistant. The cuisine is traditional Kerala flavour with the local specialties; delicious local fish.
Kerala’s backwaters are spectacularly beautiful.

A Kerala Houseboats cruise along the palm-fringed waterways of Kerala in luxury houseboats is the most enchanting holiday experience in India today. In this world of simple pleasures, you will skim past ancient Chinese fishing nets, water lilies, lush paddy fields, coir villages, rustic homes, temples and coconut groves.

A guided tour down the backwaters provides you with a complete and most enchanting experience on the backwaters of Kerala and will also reveal to you some interesting facts about the life of local village people.
The trip on the houseboat was a wonderful experience.

But now I am back, refreshed, and ready to start a fresh lot of classes. So see you here!

Sarogini

It will give you the pleasure of turning out a very appetizing and nutritious meal, satisfied with the thought that the least amount of time and cost has been involved.

This will also delight your family or friends to be served a hot meal.

The normal Asian meal will consist of a rice dish, a vegetable dish, a meat or chicken or fish dish and a salad or chutney.

There are so many variations to the dishes that you will not be bored cooking the same dishes again. These variations are what I teach in my classes.

The basic dry ingredients that you must always have in your kitchen are:

A good blend of curry powder
chilli powder
mustard seeds
fenugreek seeds
dhal
cumin seeds
cashewnuts
black pepper (whole)
cinnamon sticks
cloves
salt
cardamom pods (green variety)
ground black pepper
tumeric powder

Other ingredients you’ll need:

onions
garlic
curry leaves
fresh vegetables
fresh green ginger
fresh green chillies
meat/fish/chicken

All of the above can be bought in small packets of 150 or 200 grams and stored in small bottles with secure lids.

Some points to remember when cooking curries:

Rice should be cooked on the day it is being served

Meat and chicken dishes can be marinated the previous day, and cooked the previous day. But if the curry is to be prepared the previous day, make sure that it is cold before you freeze the curry. Cook the curry and leave it open until all the steam has gone before packing and placing in the fridge, otherwise they will sweat.

Curries that do not keep are: potatoes or curried beans.

Until next time!!!

On the 10th of March my husband and I went to New Zealand for a holiday after being in Perth for four years. It was like going back home.

Although I had always considered Sri Lanka as my home, going back to Wellington, the city where I had lived for 33 years, felt like home. It was nice catching up with old friends.
Time was really short and I had to run from one appointment to the other.

While we were there we also attended a wedding on the Friday. This, too, gave us an opportunity to catch up with friends.

The bride was an Indian Tamil Brahamin and the bridegroom was a Sri Lankan Tamil Christian. Both the bride’s family and the bridegroom’s family were friends of ours.

Usually when there is a mixed marriage there are two ceremonies. One a Christian wedding in a church and a wedding ceremony performed according to Hindu rites. But in this case it was a short ceremony at Kaitoke Gardens in Wellington with a combination of both Hindu and Christian ceremonies.

As usual, the weather in Wellington was a let down. It was drizzling and cold and all the ladies in their beautiful sarees were shivering as vanity took over and no one was wearing warm clothes. Nevertheless it was a beautiful wedding and the bride looked gorgeous and the bridegroom too looked good in his Indian costume.

The food was served inside and was delicious. Catering was done by the Hare Krishna Movement.

On the Sunday we attended a 40th wedding anniversary and the couple, friends of ours, renewed their vows. Their children organised the function and it was really nice. There were videos of how the couple had met.

It was an arranged marriage, the bride was a Gujerati Indian from New Zealand and the bridegroom was an Gujerati Indian from Fiji. It doesn’t matter whether it is a love marriage or an arranged marriage, it is life after marriage that matters!!
Then from Wellington we flew to Hamilton, where my son-in-law’s family live. From Hamilton we hired a car and drove to Auckland and met some of our friends there too.

Then we drove back to Hamilton and having spent two days there arrived back in Perth. When we arrived back in Perth, it was no time for resting as I had to get the house ready for visitors who were arriving from New Zealand.

My husband’s nephew’s son was getting engaged on the 29th of March. It was an arranged proposal and the couple will be getting married in August. And so there is another trip coming up!!

I hope you are trying out the recipes that are on my website. These are my own recipes which have been tried over and over again. I would like some feedback. Some of the recipes are so unique that you will not find them in any recipe book or will not be served at any restaurant.

Until next time!

Each year, on January 14, the island’s Tamils mark Thai Pongal – a harvest festival.

Pongal means Spillover. This festival is held in honour of the Sun for a bountiful harvest in the ensuing year.

Families gather together to rejoice and share their joy and harvests with others. An offering of “pongal” rice and milk is made.

The traditional way of cooking the pongal is the yard is cleaned and prepared days ahead and sweet snacks are prepared ahead.

On the day of the pongal, very early in the morning everyone has a bath and wears new clothes.

Then family members draw a decoration on the floor, usually in the front of the house, with white and brown rice flour.

This is known as a Kolam and defines the sacred area where the pongal is to be prepared. This area is set up in direct view of the Sun (East). Within this area, firewood is used to cook the rice.

The rice and milk when cooked is supposed to spill over – the spillover being a symbol of abundance.

Once the pongal is prepared it is offered to the Sun and everyone then partakes of the meal.

But this cake, also known as Rich Cake, is served at both weddings and during the festive season on the island.

The cake incorporates typically Sri Lankan spices, such as cardamom, cloves and cinnamon and nutmeg, and uses semolina in place of ordinary flour.

When I was growing up on the tea estate in Hatton, this cake was a regular feature at Christmas time in our house.

My mother would supervise the making of the cakes in 10-pound quantities.

As I remember it, there were no electric mixers in homes and muscular male workers from the tea processing factory would be called in to do the mixing, beating the eggs and then mixing them into the fruit mixture in an enormous enamel metal basin, using their bare arms.

A far cry from the current day Kenwoods and Magi mixers!

An equally huge tray of the raw mixture would then be sent down for baking in the wood-fired oven of the tea estate’s bakery once the day’s bread baking was over and the oven had cooled down.

Sadly, when my mother passed away at an early age, I had not got her recipe, but later on when I was attending cookery classes in Sri Lanka I came across a similar recipe.

I combined this with one of my aunt’s and after much trial and error I got my current recipe – which is delicious!

So to everyone out there, please try your hand at making this cake (see the Recipes section) and have a safe and happy festive season.

Cooking until 1am I had to rise at 3am to catch my 5.45am flight to Sydney.  I arrived at the airport half asleep.   I boarded the plane and, much to my dislike,  was given a middle seat.

I got into my seat and made a comment to one of the people on the other seat and said that there was hardly any room, to which he replied “look at some others getting in”.

Coming down the aisle were two big – and I mean B-I-G – chaps. They went past me followed by  another group.

I presumed they were from America and thought they might have been basketball players.

I was so sleepy that I did not even notice that there were some women in the group as well.   Then without further ado I dozed off to sleep.

When we reached Sydney I was fully awake.  Our plane had to circle around before landing and I noticed the person seated next to me talking to some of the others I’d seen come down the aisle.

They were commenting about the plane going up and coming down in order to find a place to land.   This was going on for about 10 minutes.

I asked the person seated on the left of me whether they were a group who had come on a holiday and he said that they were a musical group who had come to perform in Australia and that having performed in Perth were going to Sydney to fly back to LA.

I asked to what group they belonged and he said “SNOOP DOGG”.

I asked him to spell it for me, little realizing what he would have thought of me.   I said that I had not heard of the group.   He said that they were a popular RAP Group.   He said that Snoop Dogg was seated in Business Class.

I saw Snoop Dogg when I got off the plane.   This shows my ignorance and gives my age!

Then I told him that I had a daughter in the US living in New Jersey and he said that that is where he was born and lived up until the age of 18.

During all this it never occurred to me that I should ask his name or get an autograph!!!   I guess this is how we miss out on our chances in life!!!

For more on the Dogg check out Snoop Dogg’s official website

My inspiration for conducting cooking classes stems from my deep desire to share my passion for Sri Lankan cuisine with you.

My unique style of cooking originates in the lush tea-laden hills of Sri Lanka, merges with the flavours and tastes of Indian and Malaysian cusines and blends with the vibrancy of contemporary dining in the West.

I have come a long way since 1974, when my husband and I migrated to New Zealand along with our two young daughters. (My husband Kamal and I now live in Perth, Western Australia).

The change was a culture shock to our system. The weather was cold, but nothing a few warm sweaters and coats could not cure but the food… well that’s a different matter entirely.

No amount of hot sauce (if we could get it) could turn the bland food into anything that our taste buds could recognize. But little did I know that this frustration would in the end be the inspiration that would launch my future passion.

In those days (here truly, I am talking like a grandmother) the choice of spices was very restricted and it was a true test of my ability to be able to adapt and develop traditional Sri Lankan dishes using the spices available at that time.

The adaptation meant creating recipes using my own style of Sri Lankan and Indian cuisine and blending my own curry powder to maintain the authenticity of the dishes.

Now, even in the supermarkets one can get curry powder of many varieties, but I do not trust any of them as I like to prepare my own curry powder using fresh ingredients.

To my knowledge, during the 70s, there were no Indian restaurants or takeaways in Wellington. Chinese restaurants were a rarity.

My colleagues were curious about Sri Lankan food and before long and without much coercion I found myself preparing a Sri Lankan banquet and taking it to the office.

The meal consisted of festive yellow rice, eggplant curry (which in due course became my signature dish) dhal and a greatly toned-down chicken curry that would be easy on the unaccustomed palate of my adventurous colleagues.

My colleagues prepared desserts and brought the wine (something you could do in New Zealand!).

At the time I worked in a typing pool (a draconian vestige from the past), so the festivities were confined to just the ladies, while our male co-workers salivated through glass doors and of course went for the leftovers when we had finished.

This experience inspired my friends to want to experiment with my recipes at home, and were even able to convert the most ardent “Sunday roast and spuds” spouse to a new taste.

Thus began my first expose into cooking for an audience and introducing spicy dishes to the West.

I look forward to bringing you further tales of my cooking adventures as well as recipes, tips and tricks so you, too, can create your own Sri Lankan taste sensations.

Enjoy!

Sarogini