A White Guy Makes Idlis

Tiered idli steamer 

I said last week that I'm trying to make more food in the coming weeks and months. I wasn't kidding. Since that post, I made butterscotch pecan ice cream to share with students and colleagues, used the rest of my brioche dough from last week's sticky buns to make "craqueline," had a cousin over for dinner, and today had more friends over for brunch. I'm not sure if this pace is sustainable, but you get the idea. And I will spare you a blog post on every single item.

One thing worth writing about, though, are idlis, which I made for brunch this morning. I discovered idlis when visiting my sister in Singapore  a few years ago. To refresh your memory, idlis are small, puffy, steamed pancakes made from a combination of rice and lentils. They are popular in South India, where they are typically served with chutneys and sambar (a soupy vegetable curry with lentils) for dipping. They are both healthful and delicious. When I was last in Singapore I bought a special idli steaming pan to replicate the experience at home, which I've played with a few times.

The first thing I learned about making idlis is that there are roughly a zillion different recipes, and the goal is for them to be very soft. If you google, you'll find a ton of different recipes, mostly involving skinned urad dhal (black lentils) and at least one product made from what seems to be a discrete type of rice known as "idli rice" (available as rice, rice flour or idli rava), plus maybe a few fenugreek seeds. Some also have puffed or flaked rice. Each recipe also promises idlis as soft as your grandmother's, and much softer than those awful idlis you get at <insert restaurant or grocery store here>.

You'll also realize that these recipes were mostly written by and for people who have grandmothers that actually made idlis. They tell you to put everything in your "wet grinder," to use salt "as necessary," to wait until the batter has risen "enough," and that the temperature should be about 30 C (86 F) for things to work out. But...what if you don't know what a wet grinder is or how much salt is necessary, have no idea how much rising is enough, or live in Chicago and it's November?

Making sambar to serve
with idlis

I did more research. One thing I learned is that you can buy already-made idli batter at Indian grocery stores. Given that my grandmothers were more likely to be making rugelach and matzo balls than idlis, that comparison case wasn't an issue. I tried this and the idlis were fine. But given all the hype (and variety in the recipes), I was hungry for more. And not just more idlis.

So I did more research. I found lots of recipes, but the most helpful description was in Sandor Ellix Katz's amazing new book The Art of Fermentation. He points out that idli batter is fermented using microbes naturally present in the ingredients and allowed to rise, and steamed once it is visibly rising (but before it is done rising so that the nutrients are not exhausted). Helpfully, he also notes that recipes vary widely in the ratio of lentils to rice, but this mostly just affects flavor and reflects the relative market prices of each item. Idlis can be made with ratios ranging from 1:4 to 4:1. And he says that, in colder temperatures, it can take up to 48 hours for the fermentation process to get going.

Idli batter

Armed with this information, I roughly knew that I just needed to find a ratio that worked, get my hands on the necessary products, and do some fermentation. Urad dhal is easy to find in Indian groceries. Idli rice is a bit trickier because there's the whole rice, rice flour and the rava (which I now know is "cream of rice"). I went with the rava, on the advice of the cashier at the Indian grocery store who said she had never actually made idlis from scratch.

After some more googling, I found a recipe that seemed to have good ratios (2 cups idli rava, 3/4 cup urad dhal, 7-8 fenugreek seeds) and to break the process into fairly understandable steps. First, I soaked the idli rava and urad dhal plus fenugreek seeds, in separate bowls overnight. Then I drained the water from both bowls and combined the wet dhal, fenugreek seeds and idli rava in the food processor. I ground them until the batter was smooth, and poured it into a large bowl. I then put the bowl in a warm spot to rise overnight.

Empty idli steamer.

They didn't rise a ton, but they did foam up a bit and it was time for brunch...so I couldn't wait much longer. Idlis are steamed in a special tiered steaming pot. There are 4 tiers of idli molds that sit atop boiling water. I sprayed each mold with a bit of non-stick spray, filled the molds up, and let them steam.

After 10 minutes or so, the idlis were ready. They look and feel fairly firm when ready, and a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center. They were pretty good. And I suppose softer than my grandmother's, so a win?

To serve alongside the idlis, I made sambar and cilantro/mint chutney from Maya Kaimal's Curried Favors. This makes for a tasty and hearty meal that is -- as my friends today pointed out -- a nice alternative to heavier, egg-laden fare that is so often served for brunch.

Making Sticky Buns

Fully baked buns

I've decided to do more cooking and baking. It's not that I wasn't doing enough before, but more that I get tired of staring longingly at these shelves full of cookbooks and coming up with reasons not to make new things (e.g., "Ice cream is bad for you. Don't make more." or "That recipe will mean a trip to the grocery store." or "I have enough to eat this week. What will I even do with more?"). So my local friends and acquaintances should get ready for more meal invitations and more treats in the office.

Having laid bare my inner überpragmatic psyche and my occasional desire to beat it down, I come to the topic of today's entry: sticky buns. A while back I wrote a post about the differences between challah and brioche. Another difference is that there are all sorts of things you can do with brioche dough, such as sticky buns or brioche au chocolat, that I don't often see people do with challah (though perhaps they do -- anyone?). In that post and for today's recipe, I used Joanne Chang's recipe from Flour, which remains my favorite baking book. She also claims that her sticky bun recipe won her fame on the Food Network. How can one resist such a post?

The problem with the sticky buns, though, is that the recipe makes 8 huge buns. And Chang clearly states that they are best served warm or within a couple hours of baking. Not exactly a solo baking/eating endeavor. So I waited until I was having some folks over for brunch. That was this morning.

Imperfectly rolled dough, spread
with filling.

Brioche, of course, is a yeasted dough. I've done a bit of dessert baking with yeast, mostly to make babka. The doughs I've used for that, though, are not nearly as rich as brioche (which the astute reader will recall is packed with eggs and butter). I wasn't sure what this would do to the experience, but my brioche dough was pretty easy to roll out and handle. The only slight hitch was that the assembled buns need to rise for 2 hours prior to baking, and then bake for 45 minutes. So it was an early morning. But my sleep habits lately are such that every morning is early, whether I like it or not. This wasn't a problem. (And gosh, I'm really revealing a lot in this post)

Not quite evenly
sized "log"

So to make the sticky buns, one rolls out the dough into a big rectangle. My dough handling skills have hugely improved over the past year or two. I'm proud of that. What this project taught me is that they have not improved enough. Here's why. After rolling the dough and spreading the filling (sugar, cinnamon, almonds) all over it, it gets rolled up tightly. Turns out that small variations in dough thickness get magnified in this process. Note the size variation in the photos. This was not intended to accommodate guests with varying appetites (though it did, so was fine in the end).

Sliced buns getting
ready to rise

The rolled "log" is then sliced into 8 not-quite-equal pieces, and these are placed in a baking dish containing what Chang calls "goo." The "goo" was basically a cooked concoction of butter, cream, sugar, and more almonds. These are then allowed to rise for a couple hours. And you can see that they got a whole lot bigger. Crazy, no?

Check it out-
They rose!

After rising for a couple hours they get baked, and then -- after cooling for a while -- inverted such that the "goo" becomes the glaze on top of the sticky buns.

If I may say so (and I suppose I can, because I didn't make up the recipe), these were really good. The outside was crispy. The inside soft and, well, gooey. And the whole combination was absurdly sweet and delicious. I'd like to make them again, but I might be too busy trying other new recipes.

I

Pear Cardamom Pop Tarts with Ginger Glaze

Finished product,
a bit messy looking

A couple years ago on this very blog I confessed that I liked Pop Tarts as a kid. And I described making Joanne Chang's recipe for a homemade (and much better) version of those delightful pastries. I also promised you, dear reader, that I'd experiment with novel flavor combinations. It took me a while, but I'm finally getting there.

Last week I faced the conundrum of wanting to take baked goods to some friends I was visiting. I recalled that I had brought them brownies last time, and we mostly wound up eating them for breakfast over the course of my visit. This gave me the idea that maybe I should make some scones or something. Or...better yet, finally get around to a novel Pop Tart. Ok, genre established. I just needed a flavor.

It being fall in the midwest, apples and pears are everywhere. There must have been quite a crop this year (I'm told this is true, but I don't have a source to cite), as prices have been as low as 39 cents a pound for apples! Edgewater Produce, my neighborhood market, had some really nice Bartlett pears for 69 cents. So I picked up a bunch and figured I'd do something with them.

Ok, back to Pop Tarts. Chang's book provides a recipe for an apple cinnamon filling. I figured I could adapt this by substituting pears for apples. And given cardamom's natural affinity for pears (it's magical, really), I figured cardamom would work really well as a substitute here. I also had a bag of green cardamom I picked up a while ago that I really need to start using.

I should also point out that I used a nifty little time management trick in getting these together. Pop Tarts are a bit daunting to bake, because you need to make the dough (and refrigerate it before rolling), a filling, and then assemble and bake them. With a bit of planning, though, this is easy because both components can be refrigerated. So I made the dough quickly on Monday while waiting for my dinner to be ready, cooked the filling on Wednesday in just a few spare minutes, and then I assembled/glazed them on Thursday before leaving. Easy.

Cooking pears

The dough for these is easy and described in my previous post. To make the filling, I peeled and sliced two large pears, and put them in a pot with half a cup or so of brown sugar. Meanwhile, I combined a bit of flour (1/2 cup), 1/2 teaspoon of freshly ground cardamom pods (sifted), and a bit of salt in a bowl. And cracked an egg. When the pears were soft and the sugar had melted, I poured everything together. And stored it in a plastic container.

Filling the pastries

Then the dough gets rolled out into rectangles, and the individual pastries are filled and sealed. This time I filled them directly on the cookie sheet, which works way way better than trying to lift them like I did last time. Plus an egg wash to make sure they brown nicely.

To glaze them, I originally considered a cardamom glaze. Rather than grind more cardamom, though, I decided to make a ginger glaze instead. Ginger plays nicely with both pears and cardamom; and this was super easy. 1/4 teaspoon or so (heaping, as I like ginger) of ground ginger stirred into a cup of confectioners sugar, mixed with a few teaspoons of water. This then gets brushed on the pastries once they're cool.

Before the oven.

The result was pretty tasty. My hosts seemed to like them (and let me pick at them as well), and the flavor pairings worked pretty well. The ginger in the glaze was subtle, but the flavors of pear and cardamom clearly came through. A win, I'd say.