Appam with stew

Before you start

• a blender
• started the night before — the batter ferments overnight
• an appam pan, or the smallest deep non-stick pan you own

Ingredients

Serves 2 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 120gidli rice — plain raw white rice — the same bag that makes idli
• 150mlcoconut milk
• ½ tspdried yeast — or three spoons of cooked rice, which does the same job more slowly
• 1 tspsugar
• 250gmixed vegetables — carrot, beans, potato, peas
• 1onion
• 1 thumbcurry leaves, green chilli and ginger
• 1 tspghee or oil
• 1 tspwhole black pepper and cloves

Method

7 steps

1. soak · 4 hours walk away

   Rice under cold water, four hours.

2. blend · 10m

   Ground very smooth with a little of the coconut milk, then the sugar and yeast stirred through.

3. rest · 8 hours walk away

   Covered overnight somewhere warm, until it has roughly doubled and gone frothy on top. Used straight from the grinder it makes a pancake, not an appam.

4. simmer · 25m walk away

   Stew: onion, ginger, chilli, curry leaves and the whole spices softened in the ghee, vegetables in, water to barely cover, lid on and left alone until they are tender.

5. fold · 3m

   The rest of the coconut milk into the stew off the boil. Boiled after it goes in, coconut milk splits and turns grainy and there is no way back.

6. fry · 15m

   Batter loosened to the thickness of single cream, a small ladleful into the hot pan, and the pan lifted and swirled once so the batter climbs the sides. Lid on, low, and not turned at all.

7. finish · 3m

   Done when the rim is dry lace and the middle is set and still soft. Stew ladled into the hollow rather than poured over.