FISH WAFERS
Dried, ready-to-fry-and-serve wafers, employing carbohydrate as main base and incorporating salt and several other ingredients with or without spices are very popular. Such products are known by different names in different languages as 'Kondattam' in Malayalam. 'Vathal' in Tamil. 'Sandings' in Kanarese, 'Odiyalu' in Telugu and 'Tikaya' in Bengali. Recipe for such a product enriched with fish protein.
* Homogenize the processed fish meat with 1 litre of water for 10 minutes in a mechanical grinding machine.
* Add the cornflour, tapioca starch and salt and rest of water and blend the whole mass for one hour.
* Spread the homogenized mass uniformly in aluminum trays in a thin layer of 1-2 mm thickness and cook in steam for 3-5 minutes.
* Cool to room temperature.
* Cut the cooked material into desired shapes and dry under sun or preferably in artificial dryer (at 45oC to 50oC) to a moisture content below 10%.
* Pack suitable lots of the dried product in sealed polythene bags or glass bottles and store in cool and dry place till marketing.
Note
The product can be stored in good condition for two years.
Permitted colours can be incorporated, if needed, at the time of mixing the other ingredients with the processed fish meat in order to get desired colour.
Generally, this type of product is used as side dish after frying in oil.