Pal Appam or Hoppers

Ingredients	Quantity
Rice flour	130gm
Toddy	100ml
Rice flour (coarse) or semolina (suji)	25gms
Water	200ml
Coconut (large)	½
Soda	A pinch
Sugar	50gm
Salt	to taste

Roast rice flour lightly without addition of fat in deep vessel. To the coarse rice flour, add 200 ml of water and cook to porridge consistency. Add this and the toddy to the rice flour and knead to a soft dough. Leave overnight to ferment. Grate coconut and prepare 150 ml coconut milk (3/5ths of a standard cup). Add the coconut milk, sugar and salt to the rice flour dough. Cover and let it stand.

Pour a spoonful of batter in a thick iron pan (well seasoned). Set for a minute and then take the pan with both hands and give it a circular twist till about 1 cm. more of the pan is thinly coated with the batter, which, when the hopper is baked forms a crisp brown border. The inside of the hopper pan should not be washed but greased with a mixture of melted butter and gingelly oil. If the hopper sticks to the pan, fry an egg in the pan, remove, tie in soft rag and use to grease the pan by dipping in oil and rubbing over the bottom of the pan. (Serve appam with chicken stew).