Sunday, June 16, 2013

Oats Cheela / Oats Pancake




I love oats for various reasons. They are healthy, easy to prepare, taste nice - this is my description of the typical oats cereal cooked in water and add milk, honey, almonds, walnuts and raisins. Hubby dear is okay with this but to get my picky little ones to eat this is like climbing a slippery slope of a mountain.

While browsing I happened upon this yummy recipe for oats idli at : http://www.sailusfood.com/2012/08/22/instant-oats-idli-recipe/ . After attempting it last weekend for breakfast, the remarks from the family were encouraging.... So much so that I was motivated to experiment. This is my modification to make pancakes (or dosa or cheela). I changed the ratio to increase the amount of oats.

Ingredients:

Oats - 11/2 cups
Semolina - 1/3 cup
Onion - 1 chopped finely
Carrot - 1 grated
Turmeric powder - 1/4 tsp
Salt as per your taste
Yogurt - 1 cup or 
Buttermilk - 2 cups

For Tempering:

Mustard seeds - 1tsp
Udad dal (split black gram dal) - 1 1/2 tbsp
Green chilly paste - 1/2 packed tsp or 2 chillies finely chopped
Curry leaves - 7-8 leaves
Coriander leaves or Dried Fenugreek leaves - 2 tbsp, finely chopped
Oil - 1 1/2 teaspoon

Procedure:

- Dry roast oats in a pan till light brown. This removes the stickiness.
-  Grind into a powder.


- In a deep non-stick pan, heat 1 tsp oil. Add mustard seeds till they start spluttering then add udad dal.


- When the dal turns red, add the curry leaves and green chilli paste, tumeric powder and onions.
- Add the grated carrot and saute for 2 min.
- Add semolina and saute further for 4 min.
- Add the coriander leaves and turn off the heat (if using fenugreek leaves, crush them between your              hands before adding).
- Cool the mixture and pour in a mixing bowl and add the powdered oats with salt and yogurt. Whisk it while adding water gradually till the consistency is thin enough (like pancake or dosa batter)


- Put a few drops of oil on a non-stick pan. Use medium heat. Pour about 1/2 cup batter. It should spread by itself. Cover with a lid and lower the flame a bit. After about 3 min, remove lid and flip the pancake. Cook for about 3-4 min. Both sides should be slightly browned and a little crispy.

Serve hot with coconut, garlic or coriander chutney.


03 July 2013: Tweaked the recipe today morning abit. I was planning on making Oat Idlis and I have an idli stand which can make 12 small idlis at a time in the pressure pan. I decided to bake them instead so that I can use up all the batter at one go instead of 4-5 15 minute sessions with my pressure pan. I greased my muffin trays with butter and poured about 2.5 tbsp of batter in each slot and baked them at 370 degrees farenheit for 15 minutes. I also put a vessel of plain water in the oven along with the muffin trays to keep them moist.
Nutrition note: I added grated brocolli along with carrots for these.
Here is the result:

These are from my animal muffin tray. The kids took namkeen (salty) animal oatcakes for lunch today :) .

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks very tasty. I'm going to try it.

Sandesh said...

wow !!
Your experiments are encouraging....and they look yummy too !!
gonna try
Cheers

Sandesh said...

wow!! your experiments look interesting and yummy too.....bet ur 3 yr old loves them !!

Sandesh said...

wow....these look yummy.....am sure ur 3 yr old loves'em