Yummy Kerala food, recipe one: Dosa part 3

The dosa batter ought to have fermented after eight hours of warm rest. Here we pour portions of it on a hot griddle to make yummy dosa, and enjoy it with some fresh, pure coconut chutney!

In part two we prepared the dosa batter and left it to ferment in a warm corner of the house at 30 degrees Celsius. The best place for this is in the oven with the oven light left on. Leave the batter in the oven overnight. Do not turn on the oven though, otherwise you will prematurely cook the batter! The batter will rise, and smell different. It can smell foul if the fermentation got hijacked by the wrong organisms; this happens rarely. The normally fermented batter will smell rather sour and sharp, not like the sweet smell of bread dough. You can leave it longer if you are not convinced that anything changed in the batter. In any case, even if there is no fermentation, the batter can still be converted into dosa, but it will not taste yummy.

Adjust salt. If too thick to pour, thin the batter by adding some water. Get a decent griddle, a thick non-stick type is best. I normally use a cast iron griddle that is kept only to make dosa, so the surface has developed a smooth non-stick finish over the years, the result of washing it with only hot water and rubbing it dry. Horrible unhygienic practice is it not. You bet. In the video shown on the right I do not use this cast iron griddle but a thinner aluminium one. Heat up the griddle to a high enough temperature so that when you splat it with a few drops of water, they sizzle and steam off quickly. Smear a bit of oil (preferably sesame oil, but any oil will do) on the hot surface with a piece of cheese cloth tied around a chopstick or with a silicon brush. The cheese cloth gives finer control and limits the amount of oil; too much will make the spreading of batter in the next step more difficult. Pour out about 150 milliliters of the batter and spread it, starting from the center and moving out in a spiral as shown in the video at right. Wait for the batter to cook - the amount of steam coming off will gradually die down and the surface will not have any wet spots when done. Turn the dosa and cook the other side too. This is not strictly necessary but I find that the dosa is crisper this way. The video shows the making of one dosa, uncut and in real time, so you can get a feel for the process.

And there you are, one yummy dosa! Enjoy with some chutney, for which I give this recipe:

Simple coconut chutney, Kerala style

Get a whole coconut and break into two halves, then use a coconut grater to remove the pulp. Put the pulp, around two or three cups depending on the size of the coconut, in a food processor, and add six chopped hot green chillies, a teaspoon of grated ginger, and enough salt. Grind till semi-smooth. Transfer into a bowl. In a heavy but small casserole, heat a tablespoon of coconut oil. When it is hot and starts to smoke, throw in a sprig of currDosa step 1 - soaky leaves, a teaspoon of black mustard seeds, a quarter teaspoon of urad dal, and a piece of dried red chilli. Once the mustard seeds crackle and split, and the leaves shrivel and turn brown, pour the smoking mess into the chutney. This whole process of throwing and transferring should not take more than a few seconds, too long and you will carbonize the mix. Let the smell of crackling mustard in the oil and the frying curry leaves guide you. Mix it all up and the chutney is ready!