Nel Pori - traditional neivedhyam - pori urundai - Vella seedai, vellai appam, milagu adai, pori urundai -Karthigai Deepam festival

Pori and Nel Pori are the two traditional neivedhyam dishes prepared on the auspicious occasion of Thirukarthigai/Karthigaideepam. Puffed rice mixed with jaggery syrup along with cardamom and coconut pieces, is a wonderful sweet dish. Apart from Vella seedai, vellai appam, milagu adai, pori urundai is an important neivedhyam for Karthigai Deepam festival.

Some of us have a tradition to make only  Pori urundai for Karthigai Deepam Neivedhyam, but Tirunelveli custom involves making Milagu Adai, Vellai Appam and Vella seedai also. The procedure given here is same for both Aval Pori and Nel Pori.  Happy Karthigai Deepam wishes for all of you!

Ingredients :

• Aval Pori 4 cups
• Jaggery 1cup
• Finely chopped coconut pieces 2 tablespoon
• Cardamom Powder 1 teaspoon
• Ghee2 tsp

Method:

1. Heat a pan and add the finely chopped coconut pieces. Dry fry them in low flame till they are dark brown. Dry fry them nicely so that they have no moisture. This will ensure the crispness in the pori urundai. So this is an important step. Do fry the the chopped coconut pieces nicely. You can see the pieces start bursting. Take these fried coconut pieces aside. In a pan add the grated jaggery.
2. Add  1/2 cup of water and when it dissolves, strain the jaggery water to remove dirt and sand
3. Again boil the jaggery water and keep stirring it until the jaggery comes to stone consistency. This means when we take a drop of jaggery juice and pour it in water, it should not dissolve rather we should be able to make a ball out of it. It should not be very hard as well. This is the right consistency. When you drop the stone ball of the jaggery syrup in a steel plate, you should hear the dropping noise.
4. When you take the jaggery syrup from the bowl, you should be able to roll into a ball and also when you drop it it should make a sound while hitting the ground / plate. This is the right consistency of jaggery syrup. Now remove the jaggery from flame and add Nel Pori / Aval Pori.
5. Mix the Aval / Nel Pori with the jaggery syrup nicely and rRemove this pori mixture and pour it in a plate .
6. When you are able to handle the mixed pori mixture in your hand, start making balls out of it. If you feel too hot or sticky, then you can dust your pamls with some rice flour and make balls out of the pori mixture. We can also make paruppu thengai out of the pori mixture as shown in the below picture.

Repeat the same procedure for the other variety of Pori.

The delicious Aval & Nel Pori orundai is now ready for neivedhyam.