Elaneer Appam | Tender Coconut Hoppers

Here is the recipe for easy and delicious appam made with the addition of tender coconut.

We will be using seeraga samba rice for making this appam today. This rice is very fragrant, very delicate and pairs very well with tender coconut meat. Any good quality raw rice can also be used if you cannot source seeraga samba rice.
Add little fenegreek seeds to the rice. Wash the rice and the seeds in water. Soak the rice and the fenugreek seeds in water for couple of hours.
After couple of hours, the rice should be well soaked. Drain the water and set aside.

We will be using the meat and the water from one tender coconut. Drain the water from the tender coconut. Break open the coconut after draining the water. Some coconuts have good amount of meat while some have very less. Mine has very less meat today. Its fine. Use whatever meat you have. I have about quarter cup of coconut meat here. If you have more, use it along.

Add in the drained rice mixture to a blender. Add in the prepared coconut meat. Add in the cooked rice. The rice will help in fermentation. Add in the tender coconut water. Add upto two cups of tender coconut water and grind this mixture to a smooth paste. Grind in batches if need be. The mixture needs to be ground to a really fine paste similar to the texture of paint.

To the ground paste, add in the salt. Add in a little sugar. Add in quarter teaspoon of yeast to the batter. Mix everything well to combine.

Cover the batter bowl with a lid and ferment the batter in a draft free place for about 6 hours. Overnite works fine too. If the place where you live is cold, you can ferment the batter inside the oven with the pilot light turned on.

After fermentation, the batter would have foamed up and smell very yeasty.

Lets make appam.
The appam batter consistency should be thin. Little thinner than the dosa batter consistency. Add water if necessary to adjust the consistency of appam batter.

Heat appam kadai or appa chatti until hot. Ladle some batter into the kadai in the middle. Slowly rotate the pan to make the appam batter adhere to all over the sides of the pan. Use your hands to rotate the pan in a circular motion and guide the batter to stick to all over the sides.

Cover with a lid and let it cook for a minute on medium flame. Appam cooks only on one side. Appam is done when the sides are brown. Remove the appam slowly with the help of a spatula.

Serve appam with sweet coconut milk and stew and it makes for a fantastic breakfast or dinner.