Aapam is a type of Indian rice cake with at least a 2 inch wide lace-like edge and a soft spongy center. Pronounced as “up-poam” (rhyming with ‘foam’), at least according to my family and the food stall vendors I buy it from back home, it’s spelling differs from one shop to the next. It is usually wrapped in brown paper with a generous amount of red sugar doled on to it. 

A decade before the brown paper, and stricter food laws on maintaining hygiene standards, these aapams were packed in week old  newspapers (sometimes even older) and lined with a plastic sheet or banana leaves. And you can bet that the vendor used his bare hands to touch the food. But I’m glad that none of us ever got sick from having eaten those aapams. In fact, they must have tasted exceptionally good.

Photo taken from zynamic-gala.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html

This is one of my daughter’s favorite start of the day foods. Her favorite part of the aapam is the crispy lace. Unfortunately, I have not been able to buy any from the restaurants here. I have been to many Indian restaurants but I believe I have never seen aapam served at any of them. Maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough, or maybe I was distracted by all the other delicious dishes lining the menu.  So the project for this week was to look up this recipe and try it out which was rather daunting to me. Why? Because I have never tried making this before mainly because it was so readily available at the Indian food stalls and it costs about 50cents a piece (which was a small price to pay for convenience!).

Now without the convenience, I trawled the net, searched youtube, looked at various discussion forums and finally mustered the guts to try it. Then came a quick visit to the Indian grocer’s to buy Urad Dhal and the Aapam pan. Probably the main reason I have gone the distance to search for this recipe is because I have not eaten this for the last 7 months! And I am glad I did because it was worth the effort.

Ingredients: (makes 15)

1/2 cup cooked rice
1 1/2 cup uncooked rice
1/4 cup urad dhal (black grams)
1 tsp methi (fenugreek seeds)
1/4 cup coconut milk + 4 tablespoons of water
3 tbsp coconut powder (optional)
1/4 tsp baking soda
salt to taste
1 tbsp sugar

Method:

1. Wash uncooked rice.
2. In a container, add uncooked rice, fenugreek and cooked rice. Pour enough water to soak all these together.
3. In a small bowl, wash the black grams (methi). Add water to soak it.After 2 hours you will see that the methi would have doubled in size.
4. When ready, blend the methi with some of the water it was soaked in until smooth.
5. Add the rice mixture to the ground methi. Add water from the rice so that the mixture can be blended into a smooth batter. The consistency should be thinner than pancake batter.
6. Pour the batter into a wide stainless steel container.
7. Leave it in a warm place to ferment.
8. Once fermented, add salt, sugar, baking soda, coconut powder and coconut milk. Mix.
9. Leave it aside for 10 minutes before using.
10. Put a little cooking oil on a piece of clean cloth. Use the cloth to grease a small wok.
11. Using a ladle, add slightly less than half a cup of batter into the wok. Swirl the batter in the wok twice around. Cover. Leave it on low heat for about 3 minutes.
12. The aapam is cooked when the sides turn a light brown and starts to peel away from the wok and the thicker centre portion has firmed.
13. Remove from wok.
14. Serve hot with sugar (to dip) or curry sauces like fish curry, dhal.

Tips:

• You can use any type of rice. However, the length of time to soak and soften the rice will differ.
• Soak both methi and rice separately for about 3 hours or until soft enough so that it can be ground to a smooth paste.
• You can put as little as one tsp of sugar or more depending on your preference.
• It was rather cold here, so I preheated the oven at 350F and then switched it off. Leave the door of the oven ajar for 10 minutes. When it feels lukewarm, put the batter inside. Close the door and leave it to ferment for about 8 hrs.
• If not using the batter after adding all the ingredients, leave it in the fridge until ready to use.
• When fermented, the batter would change slightly in colour, texture and smell.
• Coconut powder adds texture and enhances the look of the aapam. You can see flecks in the aapam and gives it a slightly crunchy taste.
• You can purchase a special aapam making wok from Indian stores. See below. (Makes life a lot easier)

This is what the package the pan came in looks like…in case you’re looking for one.

This is what the pan looks like. It’s like a wok but very shallow inside.