Recipe- Healthy To Eat Ethakka Appam

Pazham pori recipe: pazham pori or ethakka appam is a Kerala snack where ripe banana slices are dipped in a flour batter and deep fried to get a crispy coating with softly cooked banana inside. Pazham pori, ethakka appam, banana fritters, whatever it is called holds a special place in the cuisine of Kerala.

It’s a quintessential Malayali snack and you get to buy it in every restaurant, roadside snack cart, train, hostel canteen, college cafe, etc! For making the perfect Pazham Pori, you need very ripe bananas (more on the banana used for pazham pori below) as this could really make or break the taste of your pazham pori.

Ingredients

1 Ethapazham / Nenthram pazham / Ripe plaintain (the riper and blacker the skin, the better)
1 cup all purpose flour or maida
1 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp baking soda
A pinch of salt
A pinch of turmeric powder
About ¾ cup water (more or less)
Coconut oil to deep fry

Method

- Place the flour in a wide bowl.

- Add sugar, salt and baking soda. I used brown sugar but white sugar works perfect too.

- Add about ½ cup water and adjust as you go, to make a batter that's slightly more watery than dosa batter. It shouldn't be too thin, otherwise, the appams will be too oily.

- Add in a pinch of turmeric powder. This is only meant for the colour bit and doesn't change the taste or flavour in any way.

- Some people add jeera to ethakka appam. I personally don't like biting into them but feel free to add it in if you want.

- Cut the plaintain into half and then slice each half midway vertically. Further slice each of the quarters into 2-3 thin pieces. Dunk these into the batter.

- Heat the coconut oil until its all bubbly. You have to use coconut oil for the authentic taste. Anything else is a blasphemy so don't tell me if you used vegetable oil or *shudder* olive oil.

- I used a super small kadai so that I need only very little oil and that reduces wastage.

- When the oil is just short of smoking hot, add in the banana pieces coated with the batter.

- Fry until golden brown and drain on paper napkins.

- Serve Pazham Pori hot with tea.