Tappal Roti - A Maiden Recipe

I hadn't heard of the existence of such a dish until about 6 months ago when marriage took me to a new household. In my mind's eye, a new household was like looking forward to a whole new series on discovery channel. I am always in awe of the myriad flavors and tastes that "aunties" or "maamis" can concoct, with wonderfully simple recipes. Though most of them do fall under my so-called umbrella of healthy eats, there are a few irresistible ones which are a complete no-no in my health-eating category. Whenever the Mr. Hyde in me starts to crave for such dishes, I like to convince Dr. Jekyll that consuming them once in a blue moon will not make my cholesterol levels go sky-rocketing. Dr. Jekyll also makes sure I burn off those extra calories on the treadmill soon. Tappal Roti is one such dish which both V (my dear hubby) and I love. Of course, since it is my m-i-l's (who will be referred to simply as Amma here on, in this blog) recipe, he has been relishing it for quite a while. I took to it pretty easily and did try to reproduce what I had learnt from Amma in India. The outcome was good but not as perfect as hers was. The reason I attribute to a little excess water I inadvertently added in the batter but it was still delicious enough. The dish itself goes by the name of roti but the taste and texture resemble a hybrid version of dosa and idli together in the same package.

Tappal Roti served with idli podi in a thali style platter

Here's the recipe as sent to us by email -

Ingredients -
1) Raw Rice - 1 cup (I used Ponni Raw Rice from the Indian grocery store.)
2) Black Gram Dal (Urad Dal) - 1/4 cup
3) Oil - for frying the rotis

Method -
1) Grind the raw rice in the blender in its dry state till it reaches an idli rava coarseness.
2) Soak the urad dal in little water for an hour and refrigerate it for another hour along with the water.
3) Grind the dal along with little water so that it becomes a thick batter.
4) Add one cup of boiling water with enough salt to the rice rava and let it soak for 4 hours.
5) Mix the soaked rava with the ground dal batter. The resulting batter should be coarse and thick and slightly thicker than normal idli batter.
6) Heat a small deep curved pan and pour a ladle full of roti batter in it. Drizzle oil generously along the sides of the roti and cover and cook on a medium flame. (The "drizzling generously" is the sad part here and I couldn't get myself to be very generous I should say.)
7) Just pry the roti on the edges and check to see if it attained a reddish brown color. If yes, turn over and drizzle some more oil. If not, let it remain covered for some more time.
8) The other side will not turn completely brown but you will know if tiny light brown spots start to appear. (You can see these when you pry it again at the edges.)
9) Remove the roti from the pan and enjoy with home-made idli podi.

Note -
The cooking time of the roti after pouring into the pan can take up to 3-4 minutes depending on how hot the pan is. So this dish requires some patience.