Every few weekends, I haul out my biggest mixing bowls and drag the jumbo stone grinder to the center of the counter- it is time to do the ritualized measuring, soaking, grinding, washing up, fermenting, all in anticipation of the moment when the kitchen steams up with the aroma of idlis and the sizzle of dosas on the cast iron pan. I enjoy the process very much (and the product even more!) but it requires a certain amount of planning and blocking off time to do the grinding in between weekend chores and baby naps.
When the craving for dosa strikes in the middle of a week, I have been making something distinctly less authentic but just as tasty and satisfying- a quinoa dosa paired with all sorts of interesting non-traditional fillings.
I do soak the ingredients for a few hours and I do ferment the batter for a few hours as well, but the grinding (which seems to be the most time consuming and tiring part for me) is done in only a couple of minutes in a heavy-duty blender.
Quinoa dosa may sound like something with a health halo- a better-for-you but worse-tasting alternative to the original. And I'll admit that when I first made this, I thought I would be compromising on the taste of real proper dosa. With the first taste, I cheered aloud- quinoa dosa is full of flavor, crispy and wonderful. Both of my kids love it. We make a thicker dosa, smear it with ghee and tear it into bits for the baby to eat as a finger food. His big sister likes a crispy version of the dosa, rolled up with some filling inside, with plain yogurt as a dipping sauce.
SOAK: In a big bowl, soak together:
2 measures quinoa (I used tricolor quinoa because that's what I had on hand). By measure, I mean the rice cup measure, which is about 3/4 cup.
1 measure ural dal (I use skinned whole- gota- ural dal)
2 tbsp. chana dal
2 tbsp. raw rice
BLEND: After a few hours, use a heavy duty blender like the Vitamix to make a smooth batter, using water as necessary.
FERMENT: Ferment the batter in a warm spot for a few hours.
COOK: Make dosas on a cast iron skillet.
The traditional potato masala (filling) for dosa is marvelous, and I love riffing on the recipe to make all sorts of variations. One is the kale and butternut squash twist that I've posted before. Pictured above is a version made similarly, with a box of frozen chopped spinach (a pantry staple chez One Hot Stove) and a potato. Other vegetables that have worked spectacularly well as dosa filling: eggplant, cauliflower, and believe it or not, mushrooms.
I've seen off-beat dosas made with barley and oats and those would be nice to try.
What are your favorite variations of dosa?
Our Friday night family movie nights continue to be an enjoyable kick-off to the weekend. Last Friday we watched Hotel Transylvania 2 and it was pretty entertaining with Adam Sandler as the voice of Dracula. The week before that we watched The BFG, Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Roald Dahl's book- a heartwarming and enjoyable movie. We also watched Finding Dory, which was a bit depressing for me with the story line of animals in captivity- I absolutely cannot stand zoos and aquariums.
By far my favorite thing to watch lately with Lila is StoryBots Super Songs- they are so clever and funny and absolutely entertaining even for people of a certain age, shall we say, who are not particularly enamored of dinosaurs, vehicles and such. My favorite storybot songs: colors, dinosaurs, solar system and barn animals.
I'm always partial to British shows and with home remodeling/ decluttering/ design on my mind, I have been watching Grand Designs (about people's ambitious projects to build off-beat homes) and Escape to The Country (pretty self-explanatory: about people leaving behind city life to buy homes in the country). The latter is almost a travel show illuminating the geography, history and culture of the British countryside. Sticking with the British theme, I am enjoying the Father Brown mysteries featuring the intelligent and compassionate amateur detective Father Brown, although I haven't yet read the G. K. Chesterton books that the character is based on.
In a mood to watch something uplifting that celebrates the awe-inspiring side of humanity, I found two documentaries and highly recommend them. Cave of Forgotten Dreams has footage of some of humanity's earliest paintings, found in the Chauvet cave of France. It blew my mind that these 30,000 year old paintings looked so fluid, so modern, so skillful.
Man on Wire is the almost unbelievable story of a young Frenchman Philippe Petit, a tightrope walker who took the help of a few loyal friends to illegally rig a wire across the twin towers of the World Trade Center and walked/danced between the towers, a hundred stories above the ground, for over 30 minutes. Watching this documentary brought back a flood of memories. I was living in New York City on 9/11 and the weekend right before the towers were destroyed, I was sitting with my friends in their shadow eating bagels. The towers were office buildings, practically deserted on the weekend. We just stopped there for a snack before going on to other places around town, not knowing that something was about to happen there in 3 days that would change the world. Anyway, this tightrope walk happened in 1974, decades before that fateful day.
As for movies, I enjoyed these two very much: O Brother Where Art Thou has George Clooney AND an amazing soundtrack. Something's Gotta Give is a fun romantic comedy with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson.
What are you watching these days? Got any movies to recommend?
When the craving for dosa strikes in the middle of a week, I have been making something distinctly less authentic but just as tasty and satisfying- a quinoa dosa paired with all sorts of interesting non-traditional fillings.
I do soak the ingredients for a few hours and I do ferment the batter for a few hours as well, but the grinding (which seems to be the most time consuming and tiring part for me) is done in only a couple of minutes in a heavy-duty blender.
Quinoa dosa may sound like something with a health halo- a better-for-you but worse-tasting alternative to the original. And I'll admit that when I first made this, I thought I would be compromising on the taste of real proper dosa. With the first taste, I cheered aloud- quinoa dosa is full of flavor, crispy and wonderful. Both of my kids love it. We make a thicker dosa, smear it with ghee and tear it into bits for the baby to eat as a finger food. His big sister likes a crispy version of the dosa, rolled up with some filling inside, with plain yogurt as a dipping sauce.
Quinoa Dosa
SOAK: In a big bowl, soak together:
2 measures quinoa (I used tricolor quinoa because that's what I had on hand). By measure, I mean the rice cup measure, which is about 3/4 cup.
1 measure ural dal (I use skinned whole- gota- ural dal)
2 tbsp. chana dal
2 tbsp. raw rice
BLEND: After a few hours, use a heavy duty blender like the Vitamix to make a smooth batter, using water as necessary.
FERMENT: Ferment the batter in a warm spot for a few hours.
COOK: Make dosas on a cast iron skillet.
The traditional potato masala (filling) for dosa is marvelous, and I love riffing on the recipe to make all sorts of variations. One is the kale and butternut squash twist that I've posted before. Pictured above is a version made similarly, with a box of frozen chopped spinach (a pantry staple chez One Hot Stove) and a potato. Other vegetables that have worked spectacularly well as dosa filling: eggplant, cauliflower, and believe it or not, mushrooms.
I've seen off-beat dosas made with barley and oats and those would be nice to try.
What are your favorite variations of dosa?
* * * TV Land * * *
Our Friday night family movie nights continue to be an enjoyable kick-off to the weekend. Last Friday we watched Hotel Transylvania 2 and it was pretty entertaining with Adam Sandler as the voice of Dracula. The week before that we watched The BFG, Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Roald Dahl's book- a heartwarming and enjoyable movie. We also watched Finding Dory, which was a bit depressing for me with the story line of animals in captivity- I absolutely cannot stand zoos and aquariums.
By far my favorite thing to watch lately with Lila is StoryBots Super Songs- they are so clever and funny and absolutely entertaining even for people of a certain age, shall we say, who are not particularly enamored of dinosaurs, vehicles and such. My favorite storybot songs: colors, dinosaurs, solar system and barn animals.
I'm always partial to British shows and with home remodeling/ decluttering/ design on my mind, I have been watching Grand Designs (about people's ambitious projects to build off-beat homes) and Escape to The Country (pretty self-explanatory: about people leaving behind city life to buy homes in the country). The latter is almost a travel show illuminating the geography, history and culture of the British countryside. Sticking with the British theme, I am enjoying the Father Brown mysteries featuring the intelligent and compassionate amateur detective Father Brown, although I haven't yet read the G. K. Chesterton books that the character is based on.
In a mood to watch something uplifting that celebrates the awe-inspiring side of humanity, I found two documentaries and highly recommend them. Cave of Forgotten Dreams has footage of some of humanity's earliest paintings, found in the Chauvet cave of France. It blew my mind that these 30,000 year old paintings looked so fluid, so modern, so skillful.
Man on Wire is the almost unbelievable story of a young Frenchman Philippe Petit, a tightrope walker who took the help of a few loyal friends to illegally rig a wire across the twin towers of the World Trade Center and walked/danced between the towers, a hundred stories above the ground, for over 30 minutes. Watching this documentary brought back a flood of memories. I was living in New York City on 9/11 and the weekend right before the towers were destroyed, I was sitting with my friends in their shadow eating bagels. The towers were office buildings, practically deserted on the weekend. We just stopped there for a snack before going on to other places around town, not knowing that something was about to happen there in 3 days that would change the world. Anyway, this tightrope walk happened in 1974, decades before that fateful day.
As for movies, I enjoyed these two very much: O Brother Where Art Thou has George Clooney AND an amazing soundtrack. Something's Gotta Give is a fun romantic comedy with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson.
What are you watching these days? Got any movies to recommend?
