Chettinad Kavuni Arisi | Sticky Black Rice Pudding | Karthigai Deepam Special 2013

Kavuni Arisi or Karuppu Arisi or Black Rice Pudding is a unique delicacy from the prestigious Chettinad Cusine. Black glutinous rice is a fibrous & highly nutritious grain, packed with all the essential amino acids, iron, zinc, copper, carotene and several important vitamins. I am sure it must be available in all Asian stores in the US but the best quality of this rice is produced in Singapore and that is where I get this rice from.

Any Chettinad feast is incomplete without this sweet. This Black Rice is cooked until soft and sticky and mixed with ghee, sugar, cardamom and coconut flakes. Once cooked the black rice renders a beautiful deep purple color to the rice and it looks lovely. Once you have this rice, making this dessert is extremely simple. To me this is the most easiest sweet that I can ever make. The soft chewy texture of the rice and the subtle hint of ghee and sugar makes this Chettinad sweet absolutely delicious. This is also a very different dessert to adorn your dinner table when you invite friends over. Do try this one out and let me know how you like it.

Today being Karthigai Deepam, decided to celebrate the occasion with this special dessert :).  We lit these candle lamps and few proper traditional agal vizhakus outside our door, in the balcony and several other places and the entire home looked extra beautiful today :). Hope you guys had a super Karthigai Deepam day as well.

Ingredients

Serves - 2
Cook time - 30 min

Black Rice/Kavuni Arisi - 3/4 cup
Sugar - 1/2 cup
Grated Coconut - 3 Tbsp
Cardamom powder - 1 Tsp
Ghee - 2 Tbsp

How do you do it

1. First wash and soak the rice in enough water for 3-4 hours. This makes cooking the rice quicker.

2. Once soaking time is over, dump the rice in a pressure cooker with the same water to retain its nutrition, [2.5 cups water needed for 3/4 cup of rice] and pressure cook in medium flame for 20-30 minutes. Switch off flame.

3. Once the pressure releases naturally and while the rice is hot, mash the rice roughly with a potato masher. Mix in ghee, cardamom powder, sugar and grated coconut and mix well.

Serve this in bowl and garnish with some grated coconut.

Notes

1. Once pressure cooking is done, check if the rice is cooked well, if not you can cook for some more time. The rice should be really soft and pulpy. If you have time, I would recommend soaking the rice for 6-8 hrs to reducing pressure cooking time.

2. If its cooked well already and there is excess liquid, you can drain the liquid alone. The above proportions of rice and water should work fine in most cases.