COOKING

 

Palappam / Appam/ Kerala Palappam

Palappam or Appam is a classic traditional breakfast in Kerala. You may also call it as thin Rice pancakes with crisp lacy edges. Kerala style Palappam is a favourite breakfast item and renowned all over the world like Idiyappam, Vellayappam, Neer Dosa, Kallappam and Rice Puttu. Who can resist the lovely, mouth watering combination of  Appam with Mutton Stew, Duck Pepper Fry, Veal stew, Potato stew, vegetable stew, or Tharavu curry, Nadan Chicken curry, or Egg Roast, Nadan Egg Curry with potatoes or Fish Molee? Oh my! there are endless possibilities!!

Palappam / Kerala Style Appam is my all-time favourite dish. During my child hood, Appam, Vellayappam, Kallappam, Vattayappam were all special dishes made during festive occasions. We also make special Pesaha Appam on Maundy Thursday, and wait for Easter Sunday morning breakfast of Appam and Tharavu roast. For Christmas, it will be Palappam and Mutton stew/ Veal stew combination or kallappam with Nadan chicken curry. Yum! Now, making Palappam is not very hard like olden times and I make it at least once a week  You will be happy to see my recipe for Palappam without coconut – Palappam with Aval.and the soft Vellayappam recipe with sago.

I still remember my mom spending all her time mixing, preparing with great care to ensure that her traditional palappam is perfect. I always thought making palappam the traditional way was a tedious process, and when I started making Palappam I made it very occasionally and always tried to cheat with ready made  Appam mix, but then the taste was not okay and the coconut milk extraction and cleaning made me weary. Then Kochammu( that’s my darling Cheriamma, Rosammaunty) told me to grind the coconut with rice and found it so easy and tasty so said goodbye to the old traditional method. So after this easy Palappam recipe, you are going to love making yummy soft Palappams..Here is the recipe for Kerala style Palapaam.

Ingredients:

Raw Rice (Pachari/ Dosa rice)	: 2 ½ cups
Coconut scraped	: 1 ½ cup
Cooked rice	: ½ cup
Instant yeast	: ½  teaspoon
Sugar	: 2 tbsp
Water	: As required

Method:

Wash and soak raw rice in water for 4 – 5 hours.  Grind all the ingredients together with water to prepare a smooth batter of flowing consistency.  I add little of everything each time I fill the mixer bowl to ensure perfect mixing. Mix well and cover and keep for rising. For 4-6 hours. Once it rises, add enough salt and mix well. Heat the appa kadai and pour little batter and slowly swirl to make the desired shape. If you plan to make it for breakfast, soak rice and prepare batter just before you sleep and add only 1/2 tsp yeast and allow to rise slowly. Enjoy yummy palappam.

Tips:

• Add salt only after the batter rises.
• For best results, ask your mom to get you cast iron Appa chatti, although non stick versions are available which are easy to use.
• Surprise your husband and kids by making heart appams or flower appams or other desired shapes and relish the extra attention coming your way.

Ingredients

For Marination

You need three things for the marination – bone-in chicken pieces, salt, and lemon juice.

For spice blend

This style of chicken stew gets its flavors from my spice blend of the following spices

• Cardamom
• Cloves
• Peppercorn
• Fennel

For making the stew

• Coconut Oil
• Coconut milk (Both thin & thick)
• Bay leaf and Cinnamon – Whole spices are used to flavor the stew and can be easily taken out while having the stew.
• Onion – sliced and sauteed.
• Garlic & Ginger – Crush these in a mortar.
• Carrot – Cut into medium chunks.
• Green beans – Cut into medium-sized cubes.
• Green chili
• Curry leaves – it is added twice while making the stew. Recommend getting fresh curry leaves and not dried ones.

For final tempering

• Curry leaves again – Get fresh ones.
• Sambar / Pearl Onion – Known as pearl onion or shallots, these are less pungent. In India, these are referred to as Sambar onions. They are smaller and slimmer bulbs than regular onions.
• Cashew halves – Halves are preferred but full cashews are ok too.

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How to make Chicken stew in Kerala Style

Marinate Chicken

Add all bone-in chicken pieces to a bowl. Pour lemon juice and sprinkle salt over them. Rub them thoroughly so as to evenly coat the pieces with salt and juice.

Prepare the Spice blend

• Roast the spices – cardamom, cloves, peppercorn, and fennel seeds in a pan over medium flame until they turn aromatic. This should take 30 seconds.
• Place the roasted spices in a mortar and using the pestle, pound them until they appear coarse. Pounding using a mortar releases oil that adds flavor.
• Also, use the mortar and pestle again to pound the ginger and garlic into a paste. Keep it aside.

Cook the stew

• Over medium flame, add cinnamon, bay leaf, curry leaves, chili, and sliced onions. Sauté them until the onions turn a shade pink.
• Add ginger-garlic paste and sauté again until the paste loses its raw smell.
• It is time to add chicken pieces and potatoes. Potatoes shall get cooked along with the chicken. Wait to see if the color of the chicken turns white. The white color indicates that the chicken is cooked. Henceforth we just simmer the chicken for slow cooking.
• Add the thin coconut milk and carrots and sprinkle salt. Mix everything well. Cover the pan with a lid. Allow it to simmer for up to 15 minutes on low heat.
• Time to add the thick coconut milk and spice blend. Mix everything and the stew base turns brown. Add green beans next and close the lid again. Let it simmer for another 5 minutes.

Tempering and plate

• In a separate pan, fry cashews in oil until they turn light brown. Keep them aside.
• In the same pan, fry onions and curry leaves until the onions turn brown. This caramelizes the onions and makes them a bit sweet. Curry leaves fried in oil bring out the flavor in them and impart some to the fried onions too.
• Now you need to add the tempered onions, curry leaves, and fried cashews on top of the pan as a garnish.
• Serve the stew in a bowl along with your favorite bread, appam, or rice.

Tips

• Use bone-in chicken pieces. You may get curry-cut chicken pieces and take the bone-in pieces from that. Bone-in pieces have more flavor and cook evenly. The bones release juices and water and that flavors the stew a lot.
• Use crushed ginger and garlic rather than using ginger-garlic paste. It will have a huge difference in flavor.
• The order of adding vegetables is important. Add the toughest veggies first so that it gets more team to cook and the softer veggies towards the end of the cook. You should add potatoes and carrots first and beans later as they quick faster.
• Alternatively, you can steam the veggies separately and add them towards the end. This is one way to add veggies to the stew.
• My recipe gets amazing flavors from slow-cooking the chicken. You will come across many recipes for cooking the stew on high heat. Let the stew simmer on a slow flame.
• I have used thin coconut milk instead of water to simmer the chicken and veggies. It just adds more flavor and helps in forming a creamy base for the stew. You may use water instead if you cannot get thin coconut milk.