Marichedutha Appam (Rice pancakes 1)

These are ver simple and delicious pancakes made of rice to go with many curries including Chicken curry, fish curry, prawn curry, prawn varattiyathu etc….And having a sweet tooth, I have it with sugar! I like it that way. I use to have this at home when my mom makes it for us either for breakfast or dinner. I am surprised that I never made them even once. I just forgot about it. Two days back when I was thinking what to make for dinner, Marichedutha Appam just popped into my mind out of blue, and since I had lots of leftover rice in the freezer I made them. My mom makes different kinds of stuffs like Ottil pollicha appam, mutta ssurkki, thenga pathal, kalthappam etc..out of the same batter. They are made with slight difference and yet taste so different. I think this name might be very new to many people as it is used colloquially in our place.

Marichedutha Appam
Serves 2-3

Ingredients:1½ cup raw rice (Pachari)
2 cups cooked rice
1 medium onion
3 cups water
salt as required
oil- as required

Preparation
1.Soak rice in water for a minimum of 1 hour.
2.Grind it along with coked rice and onion until very smooth and no grains of rice can be felt when you touch it.
3. Add enough salt and mix well. When u taste the batter, you must feel it a bit salty but again not too salty.
4. Heat a frying pan at high heat, add 2 tbs of oil and pour 2-3 ladleful of batter (1-1 ½ cups of batter) and just wobble the pan a little to spread the batter evenly.
5. Cover with a lid and cook until the bottom side is cooked and you can see golden patches here and there. The top part will be just getting set. At this stage, using a spatula, flip over the marichedutha appam. If you see that its breaking, and is difficult to turn, close the lid and wait for some more time until you can turn the appam easily. Cook the other side also in the same way until you get golden patches here and there. Keep turning a couple of time to ensure that it is fully cooked and edge is crispy. It takes a bit of time. May be 4-6 minutes to get one cooked.
6. Continue the same process with the rest of batter until all batter is used up.
Serve hot with its best combination King prawn varattiyathu, or even simple chicken curry or fish curry.

Notes1. I used 26” pan to make this. If you are using a larger pan, pour more batter.
2. My mom used to add half the amount of cooked rice to the raw rice. But she uses cooked long grain rice. I tried using the same amount with the cooked basmati rice, but my appams turn out very hard. So I increased the amount of cooked rice.
3. Even if it is cooked, the rice inside will be a bit sticky. It will get set once it is cooled.
4. The thinner version of marichedutha appam which uses only one ladle of batter and just a drop of oil or no oil is ottil pollichahu. But it tastes different and ofcourse takes longer than marichedutha appam