Sunday, July 13, 2008

1001 Adai ( South Indian Pancakes)

Adai, (Savoury south Indian pancakes) is commonly eaten throughout Tamilnadu. These thick savoury pancakes are easy to make. Soak a cereal like rice/ wheat or pulses like chana dal / tuvar dal or a mixture of both. Grind them to a thick batter with some coconut, green chili and salt. Spread into thick pancakes on a hot skillet and cook till they are golden – your Adai is ready. A variety of flavourings and additives can be added to this batter, giving us numerous variations of Adai.

Any cereal / pulses can soaked, ground up and used to make Adai. However, Some pulses like red kidney beans (rajma) are toxic when uncooked and should always be cooked.

The Base: See column 1
A cereal alone can be used to make Adai like the Rice Adai.

A mixture of rice and lentils is used for the common Adai.

Use sprouted lentils and we have the Mulai kattya adai.

Use cooked rice and we have the Cooked Rice Adai.

Use yogurt for soaking instead of water and you get Yogurt adai.

A mixture of cereals and pulses can be used to make a cereal - lentil Adai

Finger millet is used to make the Ragi Adai.

Use semolina in place of a cereal and gram flour in place of a pulse and you have the instant Adai, the Rava Adai.

A pulse or a mixture of pulses can be used to make the Lentil Adai (Paruppu Adai).

Flavouring: See column 2
A wide variety of stuff can be used to flavour Adai. Ginger, garlic, curry leaves, red chilies & turmeric are commonly used. You can try any of your favourite flavouring agents in place of traditional ones. Though not traditionally cooked, you can try experiment with Rosemary / Sage / Oregano / Thyme or other herbs.

Additives: See column 3
A variety of additives as listed in column 3 can be mixed in the batter. Shallots, spinach, green chili, herbs are commonly used. Try experimenting by adding chopped nuts or any other edibles to cook your own adais.

And this goes to the Well Seasoned cook's Pancakes on Parade

2 comments:

Susan said...

Thanks for sharing this great "cheat sheet" for Pancakes on Parade. You've got a really helpful and fun blog. I'm glad to have found you.

Jane said...

I tried this last night with chana dal and rice base and they were excellent. I have learned a great deal from your recipes. Thanks for sharing!

Food Consultancy / Licensing / Crash Courses

Contact siramki@gmail.com for complete Food consultancy from concept to completion.

Customised one page cookbooks now available for pressure cooker / microwave / mixie / masala & other cooking product manufacturers. Replace bulky recipe books with easy to refer One page cookbooks and watch your sales soar !

Twecipies

Blog Archive

Cooking is fun - Duplication is a pain !

"It is extraordinary to me that the idea of creating thousands of recipes by mixing building blocks takes immediately to people or it doesn’t take at all. .... If it doesn’t grab a person right away, ... you can talk to him for years and show him demos, and it doesn’t make any difference. They just don’t seem able to grasp the concept, simple as it is". ( Thanks Warren Buffett !)

"What's angering about instructions in many cookbooks is that they imply there's only one way to cook a dish - their way. And that presumption wipes out all the creativity." Cook dishes your way - Download  1001 South Indian curries now and learn to cook, not to duplicate ! ( Thanks Robert Pirsig !)

"Recipe purity is no different from racial purity or linguistic purity. It just does not exist. Cuisines are alive and change all the time. What is traditional today was esoteric just a few decades back. So being a 'foodist' is as bad as being a racist !

About Me

My photo
Chennai, Tamilnadu, India
Okay, let me start from the very beginning. 1500 crore years ago, with a Big Bang, the Universe is born. It expands dramatically. Hydrogen forms, contracts under gravity and lights up, forming stars. Some stars explode, dusting space with the building blocks of life. These condense into planets, one of which is Earth. Over time, self replicating molecules appear, multiply and become more complex. They create elaborate survival machines (cells, plants, animals). A variety of lifeforms evolve. Soon, humans arise, discover fire, invent language, agriculture and religion. Civilisations rise and fall. Alexander marches into India. Moguls establish an empire. Britain follows. Independence. Partition. Bloodshed. The license raj is in full sway. I'm born. India struggles to find its place. Liberalisation. The Internet arrives! I move from Tirupur to Chennai. Start a company. Expand into Malaysia, Singapore and the Middle East. Poof! Dot com bust. Funding dries up. Struggle. Retire. Discover the joy of cooking, giving, friendships and the pleasures of a simple life. Life seems less complicated. Pizza Republic, Pita Bite and Bhojan Express bloom !

Looking for Treatment?