uthappam

This was fun and exotic, until I realized it was just a GF pancake.  The best discovery on this, is one doesn't need a sophisticated wet mill to get a nice result.  I mixed urad dal (20 g), basmati rice (80 g), a few seeds of fenugreek, water (150 mL), salt (ca. 1/2 t, 2 g) and let it sit an hour before pureeing with my immersion blender.  I cheated and added a touch of yeast.  Then, cooked 'em like any pancakes adding a mix of cilantro and green onion to the uncooked side of the pancake before the flip.

Try these, they're tasty at room temperature.  Fun snacks.

 Here's the batter after fermentation, about 8 hours after I added yeast.  All the fine particles of yeast and dal had degraded during the fermentation to give a soupy batter that doubled in volume sitting at room temperature.

I took a ladleful and cooked it on a non stick pan using some olive oil.  Just like a pancake, when the top surface gets the bubbles popping through it's time to add herbs/onions and flip.

Final pancake.  I left them out at room termperature for snacking.  They disappeared pretty fast.

more experimentation on fries

Heston Blumenthal does a triple cook on his chips (fries).  One boil until the potatoes are nearly falling apart, drying in the freezer, a double dip  in oil.  The drying in the freezer is what kills the method for me.  No way it's going to be easy to prep 10 lbs of potatoes with that kind requirement.

In order to dry them out, I took the boiled potatoes and placed them at room temp in front of a fan last night.  I may have overdone it.  A sample of potatoes indicated I had a loss on drying of about 50% (sample of potatoes went from 50 grams to 27 grams).  These were placed in a tub and I'll  fry them tonight for kicks.

Russets: soaked, rinsed, dried for 8 hours at room temp with a box fan.  I stored these at room temp in a plastic container, covered and will fry them tonight.  I fear they have been dried out too much.  For better or worse, I'll post the result, because I do not fear failure!

potato chips, another thing microwaves suck at

Food bloggers have a funny twitch.  If something can be done, it's a great method.

The other day I saw a microwave potato chip maker at the thrift store.  It was a round plastic carousel in which potato slices are placed and the loaded ring tossed in the microwave.  What emerges is a slightly colored, crisp chip - As Seen on TV.  There's a million posts about this method, without the carousel thingy.

A slice of raw potato and a piece of paper are similar; they are a hydrated (ligno)cellulosic or complex carbohydrate network.  When moisture is removed, the residual starch dries out, upon continued dehydration, it can ignite.  Igniting paper in the microwave is one of life's joys afforded only to the adventurous and drunk (similar to an exploding egg).

Still, intrigued by the idea, I had to conduct this one myself.  I would easily swallow my pride and fancy theories and happily eat chips if it worked well.  I sliced russets, rinsed them of residual starch, dried them lovingly, sat them on paper towels and tossed 'em in on HIGH.  And watched closely.  As the fine stream of smoke that precedes a fire started to rise from the chips, I stopped the microwave and rescued my starch nuggets from the (almost burning) microwave.

The chips had some reasonable color, were crisp but would not accept salt since they had no means to cling to it.  They were not objectionable.  A fun party trick at best. Real chips are deep fried.