September 23, 2010

Signature dish – Baked idlis

How I love surprising myself! Who knew one could “bake” idlis in a traditional oven? I for one didn’t. Haunted by the excess batter sitting in the fridge (in spite of making idlis 2 times and dosaismasal dosai included,  three times), I decided I was going to exhaust it or waste it trying. Fair enough? Now, since it turned out to be a pretty unexpectedly great-tasting treat, I am going to raise my own collar for my innovation. Here’s the first sneak peek..

IMG_8548 Baked idli cake. Garnished with fresh carrot, coriander, curry leaves and tempered with mustard seeds, sesame and urad dal.

So? Whad’ya think? Different? Interested? Intrigued? Go on…

Recipe

image  Left over idli/dosai batter                                   +                         Seasoning (carrots, green chillies, salt)

That’s it!

1. Preheat your oven for 5 minutes at 175°C.

2. Grease your baking dish with oil and pour the mixed batter contents into it.

3. dump the dish into the oven for ~17 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, prepare the tempering and the seasoning. In a teaspoon of oil, allow 1 teaspoon of mustard seeds, 1/2 each of sesame and urad dal to sputter. Mix in some fresh curry leaves.

5. Garnish with freshly grated carrot and fresh coriander along with the tempering.

And you have yourself a sumptuous yet refreshingly different rice cake -

IMG_8553 Baked idli rice cake – ready to be served.

And serve with any chutney or pickle of your choice! Frankly, it’s delicious all by itself as well!

IMG_8558 You are served.

Bon Appetit! Enjoy :)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did it completely bake in 17 min? I tried the above steps and the top layer had a crust but the idly was uncooked in the middle :-(

Anon

Jaya said...

Oh oh! I am sorry to hear that. I can't think of any good reason but the following are a possibility -

1. You kept the oven dish too close to the heat source (hence the crust). Maybe I should've mentioned that I kept it on the second level from the heat source (which is bottom for my oven)

2. If your heat source is on top, then it would possibly broil.

3. There was too much "maavu". So the layer it formed was too thick to be able to cook through.

I am terribly sorry it didn't work out for you. But it did work for me and if you see the last picture, you can see the porous holes in the center as well that show that it cooked through. Plus, a knife that was inserted to check it came out clean.

Thanks for trying and reporting back! Hopefully some of these tips on top might solve other problems if someone else encountered something. Sorry about this one but please keep trying the other recipes I post :)

Anonymous said...

You could also try cooking at a lower temp for longer. That may do the trick.

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