17) DOSA

DOSA

REGULAR RICE DOSA – A POPULAR SOUTH INDIAN BREAKFAST FOOD

Ingredients:

     1)    B.T. Rice (Fine aged raw rice/ Bombay Terminus Rice) – 600 gm.

     2)    Urud dal (Shelled black gram lentils) – 200 gm.

     3)    Salt – 2 tea spoons

     4)    Clarified butter or cooking oil – 100 ml.

To Prepare The Batter:

          Soak the rice and lentils in water for 3 hours. Rinse well until the wash water is clear. Drain. Use a 2 to 3 litre capacity wet grinder. If your grinder is smaller, grind in 2 or 3 batches. Grind to fine, silky, fluffy paste adding enough water from time to time to ensure smooth grinding. Stir occasionally to prevent whole grains from sticking to the sides. Touch and feel that the paste is not at all grainy. The process may take 2 hours or more.

          If you are using a food processor or mixie, the batter will heat up and will have neither the taste nor the fluffiness. So, as far as possible, you should use the wet grinder only.

          Put in the salt and stop grinding when the batter is really smooth. The consistency should be like that of pan cake batter. Let the dosa batter rest for 10 to 12 hours in a 15 litre vessel.

To Cook:

          Put a shallow and wide flat bottom pan on the stove. Grease the pan with clarified butter or cooking oil or refined vegetable oil. Stir the batter extremely well with circular and up and down movements with a ladle. Pour a ladle full of batter on the greased pan. Use the base of the ladle to spread the batter on the pan, moving it in a circular motion, starting from the centre and widening slowly to push the batter evenly to the edges of the pan to form a perfectly round paper thin dosa.

          Turn down the heat and cover the pan with a shallow cloche to steam cook the dosa for around 40 seconds (The cloche helps to make a softer dosa). Lift the cloche and wait for the dosa’s edges to turn golden brown. Using a flat triangular shovel headed trowel of thin steel, gently prise up the crisp dosa from the pan. Turn up the heat, grease the pan (you can use a heat proof brush or a spoon or a piece of banana leaf stem as is traditionally used to grease the pan) and repeat the process for the next dosa.

          You can also make pan cake type thicker dosas with this batter. In that case, when the bottom portion is roasted, pour a tea spoon of oil on top of the thick dosa and flip over to roast the other side as well.

          Dosas are traditionally eaten by south Indians as healthy breakfast food and are served with saambar and chutney (recipe given separately). You can also use mulakapodi, honey, ghee, pickles or butter to dip the dosas.

Dosa with saambar

Notes:

     1)    You can also use the dosa batter to make utthappams, ghee roast, masala dosa and kuzhiyappams.

     2)    Excess batter can be refrigerated and used over 3 or 4 days.