We can eat this Thengai Sadam recipe for for breakfast, lunch and dinner

If the gloomy skies ready to wreak havoc have got you feeling down and drowsy, a steaming hot bowl of coconut rice, or Thengai Sadam is the fixer upper your spirit needs. Follow the recipe below.

Thengai Sadam

Ingredients: rice – 1 cup, white urad dal – 1/4 cup, grated coconut – 1/2 cup, salt to taste, ghee – 1tsp; to temper — coconut oil or ghee – 1tbsp, cashew nuts – 6, red or green chillis – 4, curry leaves – 1 sprig, hing – a generous pinch

Method: Soak your urad dal for at least an hour and cook the rice with 1:2 water ratio — around 3 to 4 whistles on the pressure cooker should suffice. To the steaming hot rice, add a teaspoon of ghee and salt to taste and proceed to fluff it. Coming to the urad dal, drain the water and dry roast it in a pan until its turns golden brown and properly aromatic. In case you are short on time you can skip this step and add the urad dal during the tempering step too, but make sure to adjust the coconut oil (or ghee) ratio accordingly. For tempering, heat the pan with the coconut oil or ghee, and go in with the cashew nuts, chillis, curry leaves and hing, in this exact order. Now add the coconut and roasted urad dal and just give this a stir for about 30 seconds. Add the cooked rice to this and mix well again. Top this with some more ghee and a generous drizzle of coconut oil.

Things to keep in mind: Spend a good amount of time in making sure that the urad dal is roasted thoroughly — if left partially cooked they will turn chewy. While ghee will of course do for this recipe, using edible, virgin coconut oil really gives the rice an elevated flavour profile, also significantly helping with aromatics. All in all about 3 tablespoons of coconut oil should suffice — adding more oil also ensures that the rice lasts longer; note that this isn’t a calorie-counters friendly recipe. Use a wooden spoon or silicone spatula for mixing the rice together — DO NOT use your hands as the rice tends to get spoiled rather easy.

(recipe from Raks Kitchen)

Coconut (and carb) cravings be gone!