So I tried to make something called “Idlis” today using this recipe:
Dutifully I soaked rice and lentils (green ones. no urad dal to be found) for six hours, then ground them up in a food processor, mixed ‘em up and left the result to ferment for roughly 40 hours.
Not having an idlis steamer at my disposal I then scooped the sour smelling batter into a muffin tin and baked the muffins for 45 minutes at 180 degrees centigrade.
The result were twelve gray, dense and fairly sour tasting muffins that were edible only if you were really, really hungry.
What went wrong? Wel, for starters I used parboiled rice instead of completely uncooked rice. That might have made a difference. Then I may not have left the batter to ferment long enough. Stephan does, after all, say “Fermentation time will depend on the ambient temperature” and ambient temperature (at roughly 10 degrees centigrade) may have been rather too low to get away with a mere 40 hours of fermentation (in my defense the batter had by that time lost its beany smell not to mentioned gained an unmistakable sour dough odor, so I thought it would turn out alright). Finally I think baking them instead of steaming them may just have been taking too much of a liberty: whereas steaming might have left the “idlis” soft and light, baking them in an oven caused the muffins to dry out and compact, yielding something that was almost to dense to eat comfortably.
Try again, I guess.
