Masala Dosa - A Love Affair

Welcome 2010....bring some blessings with you..this is my husband's latest Skype Profile message. So true....We all need blessings of good health, wealth, prosperity, etc..all the more than the last decade, as we start yet an era of this new decade. most of all we need God's grace to go through each single day and live it with full diligence and dedication - remembering not to take anything for granted but to acknowledge God's provision and protection and giving HIM all the Praise and not ceasing from Praying. Wooow!!! being a pastor's wife at times I tend to preach too..

I was on a break for the last few weeks from my regular once a week post bloging..Christmas and the New year fever is down and life is busy catching up with work and other regular activities...not to forget food bloging in its pace. After two weeks I may take a longer break..as I have to be accupied with something more exciting and important coming up in my life..but will soon be back as I have lots of pictures in my drafts waiting to be published.


Coming to the love affair "Masala Dosa"..I call it so because
'Masala Dosa" has incredible childhood memories of visiting restaurants with family and enjoying a breakfast or a dinner. In those days families were more used to home cooking. So going to a restaurant was a definte treat. And mostly we would visit restaurants to have tiffins. Though there are a variety of tiffins available, no trip to restaurant is complete without ordering the king of tiffins 'Masala Dosa'. Somehow we South Indians just love the smell and taste of this Masala Dosa. The name Masala Dosa comes from stuffing the plain dosa or accompaning it with a blissful Potato Masala. A typical Malasa Dosa thali consists of a thin dosa stuffed potato curry, sambar and an array of chutneys like coconut, coriander, mint, ginger, onion etc..

The taste of Masala Dosa with potato curry, sambar and coconut chutney that I had in my childhood is still fresh and the longing to have similar one in this part of the world is still unfullfilled. As years passed by the authentic taste also is diminishing. Often in our households(back home) we make dosa and have it with chutney, sometimes we are blessed to have sambar too. Very rarely we have the combo of three, Potato curry, sambar and chutney. So Masala Dosa had become a restraurant fair for me.

Mostly the Dosa recipe is the regular mix of Urad Dhal and Rice in 1 : 2 or 1: 3 or 1 : 4 of depending on whether you want the dosa to be soft or crispy or paper thin crispy. The urge to get a restraurant style Masala dosa made me try a different recipe for Dosa this time. More over, couple of months back I saw a Masala Dosa post in Usha Nandini's blog which really duplicated the restraurant style Paper Masala Dosa, by adding Rice flour, Maida and channa dhall to the regular Urad Dhall mixture. I was excited when my dosas turned out to be Saravana Bhavan and Udipi style.

Recipe for Dosa:
Ingredients :1 1/2 cup Rice flour
1/2 Cup Maida
3/4 cup Urad Dhal
1/4 cup Channa Dhall
1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds
1/4 tsp Bi-Carbonate
Salt to taste
1/2 tsp Sugar
Enough oil to fry the Dosas
Method :Soak Channa and urad dal + fenu greek seeds separately in water 3-4 hrs.
Grind them together into very fine smooth paste adding enough water.
In a steel bowl ideal for fermenting the batter, add rice flour, maida, soda, sugar and enough water to make a smooth batter with any lumps.
To this batter add both dal pastes and enough salt to form dosa consistency batter.
Let the dosa batter ferment and raise overnight.
Once the Dosa batter is fermented and its time to make dosas, mix thoroughly to level the raised batter and add more salt and water if required to obtain the consistency which is right to get thin dosa(if preferred)
Heat a non-stick pan or tawa on high, spread oil to cover the whole pan.
When the pan really hot, pour a ladle full of dosa batter on it and spread with the bottom of ladle in spiral motion to form a circular and thin dosa.
When the bottom side of dosa gets golden brown, turn on other side for few more seconds.
In restraurants they usyally do not turn the dosa on the other side. The thick hot wide tawa they use helps in cooking the upper side of the dosa too, so once the bottom is golden brown they add a laddle of spicy Potato masala in the centre and roll the dosa to serve it with hot sambar and chutney.
Will publish receipes for Potato Masala, Sambar, and green chutney as a seperate posts coming up.

Happy cooking & blogging to all my blog friends in 2010 !!!

Cheers
Rina