Vellaiappam

After my trip to my hometown, I was waiting to indulge into the blog world but soon I realised that my internet connection is acting funny and is getting disconnected the moment I tried posting a new recipe. My net is working now and is back to normal, but I have got such a huge pile of "to be posted recipes" by now!! Lets see how fast we can catch up!!
Appam is one of my favorite Kerala Breakfast. Very light and ummmmm so delicious. This Onam when we went to Kerala, I made sure that I bought an Appam Chatti which is an utensil used to make appams - its either nonstick or traditional iron ones, which i call as stick stick pans.
Before bringing home this possession I used to make my favorite appams on a flat non stick pan by smearing it like dosas. Though the appearance wasn't any great it did taste heavenly. After our trip from Kerala I tried out my same old recipe in my new appam chatti and here is what I got. Yummy appams but I realised that I need to master the art of swirling the Appams to perfection. The sides of the Appam should be thin with lots of tiny holes, which reminds me of some one who said that the sides of a perfect appam should resemble a brides veil - white, thin and netty!!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup - Raw Rice, soaked for 6 hours
• 1 ½ cup - Grated Coconut
• 3 tbsp - Cooked rice (Kerala, boiled rice)
• 2 tsp - Sugar
• 1/4 tsp - Yeast
• 1 tbsp - Warm milk
• 1 tsp - Sugar
• Salt to taste
• Oil (if required)

Method:

• Mix yeast, warm milk and 1 tsp sugar and keep for about 10-15 minutes.
• Grind the soaked rice and the cooked rice into a fine paste with sufficient water.
• Grind the coconut to a fine paste. Mix this to the rice paste and blend once again. Add 2 tsp of sugar and mix well.
• When the yeast gets froathy, mix with the batter and keep overnight or till it rises(atleast for 4-6 hours). I also understood that by keeping the batter overnight esp during summers) makes it sour by the next morning. So it would be good if you could grind the batter by around 4 in the evening and let it rise and refrigerate it overnight and use in the morning.
• In the morning mix the batter with required salt. Heat the appam chatti. Smear with oil if not using a nonstick chatti, pour a laddle full of batter and swirl it around. Cover and cook for 30 seconds on low flame or till cooked. Remove when done and repeat the process for the rest of the batter.
• Serve hot with vegetable/chicken stew or Chicken curry or egg curry.

For recipe of Vegetable Korma: http://yum-world.blogspot.com/2008/08/vegetable-korma.html
For recipe of Chicken curry: http://yum-world.blogspot.com/2008/07/chicken-curry.html