Appam (Hoppers)
Appam is a kind of pancake made with fermented rice batter and coconut or coconut milk. It is a common food in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Srilanka too. Plain Appam are bowl-shaped thin pancakes and they derive their shape from the small appachatti (a sort of shallow kadhai) in which they are cooked. They are fairly neutral in taste and mostly served with some spicy curry. It is mostly served with kadala curry, vegetable stew or egg curry/roast.
Ingredients:
- Raw rice 2 cups
- Fresh coconut scraped 1 cup
- Fine semolina/rava/sooji 1 1/2 tbsp
- Salt as required
- Sugar 1 tbsp or more if you want it sweeter
- yeast a pinch ( optional )
Method:
- Wash and soak the rice for 4-5 hours. Take the rava/sooji and dissolve it in 1/2 cup water and cook it over stove top till you get a smooth sauce like consistency. This is called roux.
- Allow it to cool nicely. Grind the rice very well using a wet grinder or a mixer.
- Grind the coconut in a mixer till you get a smooth paste.
- Now mix the ground rice, coconut and rava roux along with salt, sugar and yeast. Allow the batter to ferment well for 6-7 hours or overnight.
- Make appams in an appam chatti. Pour 1 laddle batter to the chatti and swirl it to the sides, so that you get lacy edges and a slightly fluffy fat centre.
- Close with a lid till the edges become golden and the centre gets cooked. Take it out of the chatti and spread on a plate to cool.
- Enjoy delicious appams with vegetable stew, kadala (black chana) curry, sweet coconut milk, kurma, coconut chutney (1 & 4), egg curry, chicken curry, chicken stew or fish curry.
Notes:
- Use old raw rice to make appams. New rice will make your appam a bit sticky at the centre.
- Incase you don’t have an appam chatti, worry not! You can make it in a flat nonstick girdle or in an nonstick kadhai or a frying pan. Pour the batter, spread a bit, cover and cook. No need to invert and cook on the other side.
- You can add a pinch of baking soda or Eno instead of yeast.
- You can have a variation by cracking an egg in the centre of the appam and make egg appams.
