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The other night, I made some curry. This is not particularly unusual, but ordinarily I make basmati rice on curry nights, and this time I felt very much that I would like some tasty breadstuff instead. So I rooted around in Madhur Jaffrey's World of Vegetarian Cooking and found a recipe for -- not uttapam, which requires soaking and grinding and fermenting rice overnight, but a kind of mock uttapam, which I then modified some more to accommodate the contents of my own pantry. The results were pretty much everything I wanted: chewy, flavorful, plentiful, and excellent for transporting curry from plate to mouth. They would make a nice snack on their own, too, and I think they would even do well made ahead of time and reheated, so don't be afraid of leftovers.
The proportions below make about 10 pancakes if you make the batter on the thin side and the pancakes about the size of a saucer.
INGREDIENTS
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon yeast
1 1/4 cup warm water
1 teaspoon salt
pinch sugar
a teaspoon powdered buttermilk (optional)
1 tablespoon oil
1 tablespoon mustard seeds
generous pinch ground fenugreek
TO DO
Mix the yeast, warm water and sugar in a large mixing bowl and let rest for five minutes. Stir in the flour, salt, and buttermilk powder (if you have some around -- or you could substitute buttermilk for some of the water) until just mixed. Let rest 1 1/2 hours.
Heat the mustard seeds and fenugreek in the oil until the seeds begin to pop. I find it convenient to use a metal ladle for this purpose. The oil and spices go in the bowl of the ladle, and then I swirl them gently as they heat, holding them about two inches above the surface of my gas burner. Dump the hot oil and seeds into the batter, and stir in, being sure to stir up from the bottom of the bowl.
Let the batter sit another 15 minutes. Turn the oven to some low temperature, just enough to keep things warm, and put a plate inside. Heat a nonstick or well-seasoned cast iron griddle over medium-high heat, and then make the pancakes: Drop about 1/4 cup of batter onto the griddle (which you can brush with oil first, if you like, and if you want crisper pancakes) and use the bottom of your ladle to spread it out thin, in a quick spiraling motion. You can thin the batter with more water if you want the pancakes to be more cakelike. When the entire top of the pancake has lost its wet sheen, turn it over. Cook, turning a couple of times, until both sides are speckled reddish brown. Transfer to the plate in the oven, and repeat until the batter is all gone.
Posted by redfox at July 02, 2003 09:58 AM (recipes)all breads | breakfast | dinner reports | drink | eating out | essays | etcetera | lunch | news | recipes | salads | snacks | soups | sweets | tips | travel | vegetables | weekly meals |
