Pulihara

2 cups Rice
4 Green Chilies
1/2" Ginger
Few Curry Leaves
Lemon size Tamarind
Cashew nuts or ground nuts
4 tsp Sesame seeds
1 tsp Jaggery

Dry fry 4 tsp of sesame seeds and grind to a powder.

Cook rice in a rice cooker with 1:2 ratio water to rice. Add turmeric and 2 tsp of oil to the rice before cooking. Doing this will help spread the color of turmeric evenly and the oil will give a certain fluffiness to the rice. Once rice is done spread on a flat basin and set aside.

Add water to tamarind and micro-oven it for a minute, let cool and extract the pulp, adding as less water as possible.

Take 3 tsp of oil in a small skillet and make tadka (poppu), fry 1 tsp of cashew nuts or peanuts according to taste, 1 tsp urud dal, 1 tsp channa dal, few mustard seeds, jeera, hing and 2 red chilies. Then add chopped green chilies, ginger and curry leaves.

Once they are all fried the next step can be done in 2 ways depending on the taste.

If you like the crunch of the poppu, remove the poppu from the pan with a spoon or strainer and can be added to the rice or it can be left in the skillet. Add tamarind pulp, salt and 1 tsp of jaggery and let boil till the oil separates.

To the rice in the basin add 2 tsp of raw oil (without heating),tadka (poppu) and 4 tsp of sesame powder. Mix all the above thoroughly. Check for salt and seasonings.

Green chili and red chili pieces in pulihara taste very good. They absorb the sour of the tamarind and that gives a special taste to them. Do try them.

This is a favorite telugu dish, mostly done during festivals.