Pondicherry Paal Payasam - Cooking With Sapana

Our Food safari is now in the union territory of Puducherry/Pondicherry that shows French cuisine a strong influence on the area. Tamil cuisine is followed by majority of the people as it’s major population being Tamil. The influence of the neighboring areas such as Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala is also visible on the territory’s cuisine.Some favorite dishes include coconut curry, tandoori potato, soya dosa, podanlangkai, curried vegetables, stuffed cabbage, and baked beans,pal payasam .
I wanted to try something sweet for the state and ended up here to know about the use of pal payasam in the cuisine . It is something like our rice kheer but more rich and creamy with strong flavors of rice fried in clarified butter.So let’s start the recipe . Yum

Ingredients:
1/4 cup basmati rice
1 liter full cream milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon clarified butter
1-2 cardamom
10-12 almonds, sliced
10-12 raisins
10-12 cashew nuts , broken

Method:
Boil milk in a heavy bottom vessel till it reduced to half.Add crushed cardamoms in it.
Heat clarified butter in a pan (keep a teaspoon left aside )and fry the rice till fragrant.
Transfer the fried rice in the boiling milk and cook on simmer till rice are done.
Add sugar and cook for few more minutes. Meanwhile fry the almond , raisin and cashew nuts in the pan with a teaspoon of ghee and set aside.
Add the fried nuts in the payasam , stir and remove from heat.