Chettinadu Paal Paniyaram | A Diwali Special

I am typing this in a great hurry as I have a thousand things to do this week with family visiting us, trips to nearby places, visiting relatives etc etc, but here I am as promised with the Paal Paniyaram post. My blog would be really incomplete without Paal Paniyaram featuring here and what an auspicious day for it to make an appearance ;). Any occasion is incomplete for us without a chettinadu delicacy for morning palakaram and Paal Paniyaram as a dessert did complete justice to our Diwali breakfast today :).

A very happy and safe diwali to all of you!

Ingredients

Serves - 5
Prep Time - 30 min
Cook time - 30 min

For the Paniyaram

1/3 cup urad dal
1/2 cup raw rice
Oil - for deep frying the paniyarams

For the milk

Coconut grated - 1/2 cup
Elachi powder - 1/2 Tsp
Sugar - 1/4 cup
Milk - 1/2 cup

How do you do it

1. Soak the rice and dal in enough water for 1-2 hrs. Drain the water and reserve it. Grind in blender/mixie using the reserved water little by little. Add water needed only for your grinder blade to rotate smoothly, the lesser water you use the better. If you add too much water, the paniyarams will drink oil. Grind it to a very smooth paste, there should be no dal/rice particles left as such. Transfer to a container and keep aside. You can grind this the previous night and refrigerate to to use in the morning.

2. Take coconut milk out of the grated coconut, about 2.5 cups. Grind coconut for a few pulses in mixie and squeeze the pulp as much as possible to get the juice out. Take the pulp and keep it on a strainer. Pass hot water little by little through the strainer and squeeze the pulp to get the coconut milk from it , till you get about 2.5 cups of coconut milk.

3. Dilute half a cup of pure milk with 1/2 cup water, bring to boil, mix with the coconut milk, add the sugar, elachi powder and let it dissolve.

4. Keep 3 cups of hot water in a bowl. Once you fry the paniyarams, add them to this bowl, this will remove the oil from the paniyarams.

5. Heat oil in a kadai to deep fry the paniyarams. Spoon the paniyaram batter little by little into the kadai. Add till the kadai is almost full, fry in low-medium flame. When the paniyarams start to turn light brown, remove them and put them in hot water.

Note : The paniyarams will puff up as they get fried, so add a tsp by tsp of batter each time to fill the kadai, not more. We want small sized paniyarams. Make sure the paniyarams don't turn golden brown, you should remove it when its a very light shade of brown.

6. Remove the paniyarams from hot water after a minute and add it to the milk. Repeat step 5 and 6 till the batter is over. Let the paniyarams soak in coconut milk for an hour.

7. Yummy Paal Paniyarams ready to serve on a special occasion :)

Notes

Grind smoothly with as little water as possible. This is a very important step, adding too much water will make the paniyarams drink oil.

When adding the paniyaram batter to the kadai, add a tsp by tsp, to fill the kadai, do not add big spoonful of batter, they will puff up while getting fried , and you will end up with really big paniyarams. 

Do not fry until deep brown. When its a very light shade of brown, or when it starts to brown, remove them.

Fry in medium-low flame, do effective flame management to make sure the insides of the paniyarams are cooked well.