A recipe for instant gratification rava dosa
A dosa recipe for Doug who helped pull this recipe into existence!
As Nik Sharma, the former molecular biologist now award winning cookbook author says, ‘[dosa] does require some planning and practice, I promise you will feel the same level of elation once you conquer it.’
His mother couldn't make them, my mother never did. When you live in Tooting, or Harrow, near where I grew up, it is far easier to go to a small South Indian/Sri Lankan cafe and order a dosa than spend hours attempting to surmount the recipe.
There are possibly over a hundred different types of dosa, made with grains, lentils or beans which require soaking, grinding, and like sourdough, a batter that needs fermenting in order to achieve its foamy texture.
Don’t be fooled by the ‘Easy to make dosa recipe’ you’ll find on well known recipe sites and in glossy food magazines. Making a dosa can be a daunting endeavour.
However, there is a dosa recipe that doesn’t require an infinite amount of patience and offers almost instant gratification.
A dosa that can be made easily when a dosa pang hits and you’re desperate for a dosa fix. It can be made plain and simple, or loaded up with onions, curry leaves and spices.
This recipe almost never made it out of my recipe file where it had lurked for almost four years.
Only when I received an email from Doug about his trip to Sri Lanka, a chance to explore his heritage, sample food from roadside cafes and stalls and memories of dosa batter humming away did I decide to pull this recipe into existence.
This rava dosa batter doesn’t hum. And when you soak the semolina and rice flour in the water, and see it sink to the bottom of the bowl, you’ll question whether this could make any sort of dosa. Yet when mixed and ladled into a hot flat pan in concentric circles working from the outside in, a sort of culinary magic happens and the semolina, rice flour and water coalesce into a dosa.
Gently ease that dosa out of the pan and eat. Instant gratification achieved!