Hoppers

Sri Lanka's fermented rice and coconut batter swirled up the sides of a small round pan, crisp and lacy at the rim and soft in the bowl

Origin: Anuradhapura, Colombo & Sri Lanka

From the journey of Rice.

A hopper, appa in Sinhala, is a bowl made of batter. Fermented rice flour thinned with coconut milk is poured into a small deep round-bottomed pan, which is then picked up and swirled so the batter coats the sides in a thin film; the lid goes on, and what comes out is a shallow bowl with a soft spongy base and a rim so thin it is translucent and shatters. Cracking an egg into the middle before the lid goes on makes an egg hopper, the single most photographed thing in Sri Lankan cooking. The fermentation is traditional and does two jobs. In the older method the batter is raised with toddy, the naturally fermenting sap of the coconut palm, which supplies both the wild yeast and a distinct sourness; yeast and a little sugar are the standard modern substitute and give a cleaner, milder result. Either way the batter needs a night to work, and a hopper made from unfermented batter is a pancake. They are breakfast and they are dinner, and the accompaniments differ by the meal: lunu miris, the fierce pounded onion, chilli, and Maldive fish sambol, at any hour; kiri hodi, a mild turmeric coconut gravy, alongside; and a seeni sambol or a fish curry for a fuller plate. The bowl shape is functional, since the point is to tear off the crisp rim and use the soft centre to carry the sambol. The word hopper is an English mangling of appa, arrived at through Tamil appam, and the two dishes are close relatives that Sri Lanka and Kerala make differently and claim separately. String hoppers, idiyappam, are an entirely different thing despite the shared English word: steamed nests of pressed rice-flour noodles, with no fermentation and no pan. The island's relationship with rice runs deeper than the dish. Anuradhapura's hydraulic civilisation built reservoirs and canals from around the fourth century BCE on a scale that supported irrigated paddy across the dry zone, and several of those tanks are still in use.

Ingredients

Batter

  • 300 g rice flour
  • 50 g plain flour
  • 1 tsp fast-action dried yeast
  • 1.5 tsp caster sugar
  • 150 ml warm water
  • 400 ml coconut milk
  • 1 tsp salt

To cook

  • 4 eggs, for egg hoppers (optional)
  • 2 tbsp coconut oil, for the pan

Lunu miris

  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 2 tsp red chilli flakes
  • 1 tbsp Maldive fish flakes, or dried shrimp
  • 1 lime, juiced
  • 0.5 tsp salt

Method

  1. Whisk the yeast and sugar into the warm water and leave for ten minutes until frothy.
  2. Mix the rice flour and plain flour in a large bowl, pour in the yeast liquid, and beat in about half the coconut milk to a thick smooth batter.
  3. Cover and leave at warm room temperature overnight, or for at least eight hours. It should rise, bubble, and smell distinctly sour.
  4. Next morning, beat in the salt and enough of the remaining coconut milk to bring it to the consistency of single cream. It must be thin enough to swirl.
  5. Make the lunu miris by pounding the onion, chilli, Maldive fish, lime juice, and salt to a coarse red paste.
  6. Heat a hopper pan or a small deep non-stick wok over a medium heat and wipe it with coconut oil. It should be hot enough that a drop of batter sets on contact but not smoke.
  7. Ladle in about 60ml of batter, then immediately lift the pan by both handles and swirl it in a full circle so the batter climbs the sides in a thin film.
  8. Set it back on the heat, cover, and cook for three to four minutes.
  9. It is ready when the rim is crisp, lacy, and lifting away from the pan, and the base is set and spongy with small holes across it.
  10. For an egg hopper, crack an egg into the middle immediately after swirling, then cover and cook a minute longer, until the white is set and the yolk still runny.
  11. Run a thin spatula round the rim and lift the whole bowl out in one piece.
  12. Serve at once with lunu miris, and with kiri hodi or a curry alongside. Hoppers do not keep and are made one at a time as people eat.

Notes

The batter must ferment: eight hours minimum, overnight for preference, and it should smell sour before you cook it. Consistency is the other half, and it wants to be thin, about like single cream, or it will not climb the sides when swirled. A proper hopper pan is a small deep round-bottomed pan with two handles and is cheap from any Sri Lankan or Indian shop; a small non-stick wok is the nearest substitute. Swirl immediately after pouring, since a batter left even a few seconds will have started to set. If you can get palm toddy, use it in place of the yeast and water for the traditional sourness. Eat them as they come off the pan, because a hopper goes soft within minutes.

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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