Kallappam/Palappam/ Laced Rice and Coconut pancake

The Kerala breakfast consists of puttu and payrau, dosa and chutney, idly and sambar and Kallappam/palappam with potato stew etc. If you are non-veggie, there will be meat dishes. Look closely at all these dishes, and you can find amazing combination of balanced carbohydrates and protein contents. Puttu and idly are steamed dishes, where as Dosa and kallappam are crepes and pancakes. 

As typical of a south Indian home, I usually would have dosa/idly batter in stock in my refrigerator. My little one loves Dosa but is not too fond of Idly. Amma used to makes dosa or idly every day and puttu and appam on weekend. I don’t have that luxury, so I make it whenever I get some time. I was planning to make this kallappam for long time, and finally made it for our dinner. Next agenda is to make famous vattayappam/ Steamed sweetened rice cake. 

Kallappam means pancake made from Toddy/ Kallu in Malayalam. Here getting “kallu” is not possible, instead I used yeast to help fermentation of pancake batter. I also used fresh coconut and coconut water along with cumin, cooked rice and some red onion. Usually shallots are used instead of red onion, which I didn’t have in my hand. When you give some job to yeast, if it likes it will work at its maximum ability and final product will be delicious laced pancake. Now I think I am establishing some friendship with yeast. Some places in Kerala this kallappam is also called pallappam, however amma make a different method for palappam using raw rice, some semolina, grated coconut and yeast. I used the kallappam recipe from this blog. You need a spicy curry to go along with it. I depend on my same old faithful chana masala you can try any curry you want. Here goes the recipe.

What you need

Raw rice: 2cups (soak the rice for about 6 hours or overnight)
Cooked rice: 1 cup
Grated coconut: 1 cup ( I used fresh )
Cumin seeds: ½ teaspoon
Red onion: 1 tablespoon (use shallots if you have in hand)
Yeast: ¼ teaspoon ( I used active dry yeast)
Salt: ¼ teaspoon
Sugar: 1 teaspoon (if you want sugar add 1 more teaspoon)
Coconut water: 1 cup ( if you don’t have in hand, substitute with water)
Water: 3 tablespoon+ 4 cup water for soaking the rice



How I made

Soak the raw rice for 6 hours or overnight.

In a small bowl add 2 tablespoon of luke warm water, sugar and yeast set aside. 

Grind all ingredients expect salt, sugar and yeast into a fine paste.  To this add yeast sugar mixture and set aside for fermentation about 8 hours.

When you are ready to make the kallappam add salt  and set aside for 5 minutes.

Heat a griddle or skillet over medium low heat  until a drop of water sizzles when added. Then add  or brush the skillet with   one teaspoon oil  ( if you adding oil, you need to swirl the skillet to make it spread uniformly) to  prevent pancakes from sticking to the bottom. Using a ladle pour the batter into the pan.Cook the pancakes on 1 side until they are set by covering  with lid, after 1 ½ minutes flip the pancakes and cook until golden on both sides it takes another 1 ½ minutes. Transfer pancakes to a plate while you make the rest.

Enjoy with any spicy curry

Preparation time: 1 hour and 10 minutes+ 6 hour soaking time+ 8 hours fermentation time.
Yield: 18no
Verdict: Tasty
Will you make it again: yes I will


Swathi