South Indian pancakes - paniyaram, unniyappam, paddu, etc.

I've read that the morsels in the title are akin to the Dutch poffertje and the Danish æbleskive, a bite-size wonder if you will.

However, calling up Udupi Palace and Sankalp, both in Schaumburg, yielded no results - neither serves any of the above, much less knows where to find them. (Still waiting for Priya to return my voice message.)

I suppose that a jaunt to Devon is in order, but maybe someone here can point out the whereabouts of these "Murugan munchies"...

Never heard of these and I have been to South India. What I know of is dosa, uppam or appam and idli. These are the so called pancakes of south india. They are made of ground rice flour and ground lentils. I can assure you they are nothing like Aebleskivers or dutch pancakes. first of all the south indian pancakes are savory not usually sweet although sometimes they are served with a smokey sweet coconut molasses like syrup that many Americans would not generally like. Masala dosa is by far the most popular and is served at Udapi palace. I do not remember if the others are. They are delicious.

Poffertje are sweet, however paddu are not, they are savory & nothing like this. Paddu is simply mini appam.

Paniyaram & unniyappam are also exactly the same thing i.e. paddu or appam, its just different language names & not necessarily the language spoken at these restaurants so they won't know what you are talking about, its not that they aren't available.

paniyaram is Tamil, unniyappam is Malayalam, paddu is what they are called in Kannada. Just ask for appam, that's the most common name, they should know what you are talking about. (Appam is the common Keralan name, its a short form of unniyappam).

Sadly- those dishes- and others are from The State of Kerala, and
only exist in home's of Malayalams (those being from Kerala) in Chicago.

My better 1/2 hails from there- and is always bemoaning the fact
that "INDIAN FOOD" sold in Chicago is primarily Northern Indian or Pakistani-
and other than the vegetarian restaurant mentioned upstream,
there are no places that serve the wonderful Fish Curry-(yummM!!)
or Fried Fish from Kerala- or nothing like her Mom's "Beef Fry", etc.

Being a very large country- each of the regions have a variety of dishes that are specific to that region/state.

Thanks for the clarification Athena. Masala dosa fairly easy to find but not the others. red fish curry I have not seen nor have I seen the fried fish. I had something called kermeen in south indian and it was delicious.

I think it's been years since I've posted anything on LTH, but I felt compelled to contribute to this thread, seeing that I'm of South Indian descent and my moniker is 'DosaGirl'

Athena, great explanation. I speak Tamil, and we generally refer to it as appam. I normally only get to eat these delicious treats during religious events, or if I demand that my mom make them for me. There are savory and sweet versions. The savory version taste like fluffier uthapam (thicker dosas with onion, ginger, green chili and cilantro) with bits of coconut. The sweet version is made with the same dosa base batter, but with the addition of jaggery, which is an unrefined palm sugar. In Tamil, we also refer to jaggery as velam.

Hombre de Acero, I absolutely share your better half's sentiment that it is difficult to find good South Indian food, and that North Indian/Pakistani cuisine seems to have the monopoly. I gripe about this constantly to my better half, who is North Indian

DosaGirl wrote:Hombre de Acero, I absolutely share your better half's sentiment that it is difficult to find good South Indian food, and that North Indian/Pakistani cuisine seems to have the monopoly. I gripe about this constantly to my better half, who is North Indian

Please note that she said it, not me