pongal
/ˈpɒŋɡ(ə)l
/noun
1The Tamil New Year festival, celebrated by the cooking of new rice.They celebrated Pongal by distributing sugarcane pieces and collectively bringing to boil the quintessential made of rice, milk and jaggery....
- Pongal is a popular harvest festival in South India.
1.1 [mass noun] A southern Indian dish of rice cooked with various herbs and spices.Over 2,000 people attended as families simultaneously boiled a total of 320 ceremonial pots of sweet rice, called pongal....
- There's some discussion about the menu: the consensus is on simple idli and various kinds of rice preparations (lemon rice, pongal, sambar rice, curd rice).
- They enjoyed the pongal, but not before offering prayers to the Sun God.
Origin
From Tamil poṅkal, literally 'boiling, swelling' (with reference to the cooking process of rice).