Waffle

Gorgeous mornings call for waffles.

Waffles
Serves 3 - 4, depending on how big your waffle iron is. DO NOT MAKE THIS WITHOUT THE RESTING TIME.

SIFT TOGETHER
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup rice flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 TB sugar

WHISK
1 cup almond milk + 1 TB white vinegar
2 TB chia seeds, or ground flax seed
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup vegetable oil

SAVE FOR LATER
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda

Sift together the all purpose flour, rice flour, salt, and sugar. Add more sugar if you like a sweeter waffle.

In a bowl, combine almond milk, vinegar, and chia seeds. Whisk well, until the liquid gets frothy. You can use an electric beater, but it'll probably make a mess if you're not careful. Add the oil, and whisk it through.

While whisking constantly, add the dry ingredients to the wet. VERY IMPORTANT: LET SIT FOR 30 MINUTES AT LEAST. The rice flour needs time to hydrate. The chia seeds need time to swell up and stuff. If you're using flax seeds, they need time to hang out too. DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP.

Yes, you can combine all the things, and let it set overnight if you want. If you don't have almond milk, apple juice will do the job. Just cut back on the sugar.

When the batter has finished resting, measure out and sift the baking powder and baking soda over a piece of paper. Sprinkle it evenly onto the surface of the batter. Fold through with a spatula. Spray your waffle iron with oil, or brush it on, or do whatever you do to get the fat onto the waffle iron. Ladle on the batter into your waffle iron.

Mine took like 4 minutes or so. 

Yeast Belgian Waffles

Makes about 3 1/2 Belgian waffles

2 cups all purpose flour
3 TB cornstarch
1 cup water, microwaved for 1 minute
3/4 cups soy OR almond OR coconut milk, microwaved for 1 minute
1/2 packet (2 tsp) yeast
3 TB sugar
1/4 cup coconut oil
1 tsp salt

SET ASIDE
1 TB vanilla extract
2 tsp baking powder

In a bowl, combine the water, almond milk, and sugar. Whisk until the sugar is dissolved. If the liquid is body heat, whisk in the yeast. If it's too hot, add the canola oil, and then add the yeast. Either way, get the yeast dissolved. Then, add the flour, cornstarch, canola oil, and salt. Let set covered with plastic wrap for 1 hour, in a warm place (or over a bowl of warm water, if you don't have a warm place). The dough will have doubled in size. If the dough is not doubled in size, let it hang out a bit longer, until it is.

Once the dough is doubled in volume, heat your waffle iron. When the iron is hot, spray it with cooking spray, or brush on some oil. Then, dissolve the baking powder in the vanilla extract. Beat the slurry through the dough. Then, ladle on however much waffle batter your waffle iron needs. Mine needs about 3/4 cup. This will rise a lot, so don't overfill.

Bake on medium heat, if your waffle iron lets you set the heat. Serve piping hot.

These are very easy to split in half, and slather generously with jam, peanut butter, melted chocolate, or whatever combination you can come up with. Eat it like a sandwich. This way, the crispy part on the outside remains crispy, while the pillowy fluffy part inside gets soaked in delicious sweetness.

Adai

2 parts toor daal
1 part barley
1 part brown rice
1 part mung beans
1 part masoor daal
3 dried mulato chiles
3 dried ancho chiles
3 dried pasilla chiles
2 dried chile de arbol
1 TB fenugreek seed
1/3 part urad daal

Soak overnight. Using the soaking liquid, grind to an absolute paste along with 1 part grated ginger, a generous sprinkle of salt, and 1 part curry leaves loosely measured. Fry off in your favorite pancake skillet and eat with great gusto.

Chickpea flour pancakes

This morning was a little rushed, so I did a batch of mini Besan Puda. The recipe from Manjula's Kitchen is what I used as inspiration. I added lots of garlic (chickpeas love garlic), grated potato, and grated carrot. I used the smallest holes on the grater so that the veggies cook quickly.

Leftovers pancake

Last night, as I put away the results of a shopping trip to the Indian store, I was left with tiny amounts of each daal I had bought. I like to store my daal in glass bottles so that they don't get bigs. It means that I always have a tiny bit that will not fit into the bottle.

Instead of finding a bunch of tiny jars, I decided to soak them all overnight and make a batch of adai. This batch has toor daal, urad daal, mung beans, cracked barley, brown rice, poha, and masoor daal (red lentil) soaked overnight in cold water. The next morning, I ground it in the blender with salt, red pepper flakes, coconut, curry leaf, and some water.

They taste amazing.