I did find my best friend again! Thanks to social networking sites. And, “No Kudos” for you all, who guessed she listens to my crap all day long!! I myself, am in sweet surprise that she still maintains our friendship fresh even after a decade and more absence of communication! Oh boy, I am blessed or what?! Well, she is one of my room mate from one of the hostel I used to stay several years ago!

When I spoke to her, people said…I glowed like 1000 volts bulb (here, this ‘bulb’ is in a good way)  and my big eyes dilated even bigger in sheer glee!! Yeah, it could happen to the best people when they haven’t interacted with anyone other than a garbage man for weeks. Actually she seemed equally desperate than me, which explains her enthusiasm to wake me up at 4.20 in the morning to chat. And, did I mention, that I made her call (by giving several offline messages)? Anyway…pretty soon, I knew we would get along.

So, this is a recipe from Pondy Girl, whom I love. Gosh, I thought…she would never cook! That’s a different story for some other time.

Recipe – Narrated by Chitra

Prepare a thick, very-thick rice batter, use minimal water for wet-grinding. As this is very important point to make this dish successful. Don’t ignore! And, probably you might have known that you should soak the rice well-ahead, don’t you! Add more jaggerry syrup to it. It should be so strong that the batter itself should  look dark, like Indian filter coffee! Then, add dry ginger powder, powdered cardamom seeds to it as well. Now, this is the batter for ‘olaiappam’. ‘Olai’ – the ‘o‘ in it is not kuril, its nedil (meaning stress the letter even longer)! Once upon a time…they cooked this in ‘Olai’ (a type of palm leaf), instead of idly ladle, hence the name! Okay, back to the story: Set aside about 2 tsp of ghee roasted moong dal and grated coconut. This is the toppings. Now, prepare idly using this batter and dust the items that mentioned for toppings. Steam cook briefly and when done, you know what to do, right?