Recipe Savory and Vegetarian Uttapam Pancakes

[Mountain Cat]

Note: This is NOT a one-day recipe, but most of the time is taken up by soaking. I've made this three times - the second two times I served this to others and thus for that doubled or tripled the recipe - which still worked out ratio-wise. Actually , I've done the first soaking stage overnight as well - so time is flexible on that as needed. (I wasn't retired then... needed my beauty sleep rather than waking up at midnight to do a next step...)

Prep Time: Prep is not long, maybe 15-20 minutes. They need to soak for 4 hours, then ferment another 10 hours more or less.
Cook time: About 15 minutes.
Rest time: none.
Serves 3 to 4.
Cuisine: South Indian.
Leftovers: I saved leftovers as batter, and did the cooking part as needed over the next couple days.

Indian Uttapam Pancakes

• 1/2 cup rice — I opted for “broken’ rice which I found at my local Indian market. Figured this would save on my poor little food processor!
• a very generous 1/8 cup urad dal
• 1/3 teaspoon fenugreek powder
• 3 tablespoons rice starch. (I had brown rice starch in the house, so I used that.)
• a pinch or so of salt

For the savory toppings to cook in (you may need more, and you can play around with this! I knew I wasn’t going to eat all this in one meal, and indeed I chopped up enough that I will only want to add a couple more curry leaves from to tomorrow’s breakfast).

• 1 tomato, preferably Roma or plum, diced
• 1 small onion, diced
• 1 green onion, diced
• several fresh curry leaves, chopped. (Frozen works too, but add a few more.)
• Other ideas: cilantro, chili peppers (and yes, I’m also doing those for my leftover batter tomorrow)!

Optional condiments to add after cooking

• Ghee
• Chutney –loads of possibilities here.
• Sambar paste — the one from a company named MTR had ingredients I can definitely stand behind.

Soak the rice and urad dal (lentils) together in water to cover by at least an inch or so for around four hours. I ended up soaking them about 12 hours because, yes, I really was away at work/commuting for nearly that long.

Rinse and drain four or five times.

Run through a food processor, adding enough water to give you that wheat flour pancake sort of consistency — slightly thicker but not by much. Mine came out somewhat granular, but this turned out not to be a defect.

Add in the fenugreek and rice starch — adjust water if necessary.

Allow to ferment overnight in a warm spot in your home.

In the morning, for breakfast: chop up your toppings. Add the salt to the batter and mix. Set a skillet or griddle on your range top, and turn the heat to medium/medium-high. When a drop of water sizzles, add your batter — I opted to make small pancakes but you can go standard sized with a regular ladle if you wish. Reduce heat to medium.

Immediately, put toppings on the uncooked surface of the exposed pancakes. I gently pushed them in to the batter just a short way, without mushing down the pancake, as I didn’t want them to flop out all over the skillet when I flipped these.

Just as with pancakes you are probably already used to, air bubbles and holes will form at the top of the batter. I let these develop for a couple more minutes before flipping.

Cook on the other side about five or so more minutes, remove from heat, flip back so that the toppings really ARE toppings. If you want ghee, add a little ghee to the warm top surfaces of your pancakes — or to be strictly vegan (or dairy-free), that Sambar paste I picked up at the Indian market is awesome — a little DOES go a long way!)