Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

Note: This recipe does need to be started at least the night before.

Loosely based on this barebones South Indian Masala Dosa recipe, what Shannon and I did to it turned out really well. Here is our version; naturally you don't have to follow every idiosyncrasy (based in part on what we had on hand) directly.

Many of the ingredients (such as urad dal, mustard seed, green chili peppers, and curry powder) were bought at Natick Indian Grocery Story.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups sushi rice
• 1/2 cup urad dal
• Olive and almond oil
• Several small red potatoes, small white potatoes, and one large yam
• 3 medium onions (chopped); one of them was vidalia the other two yellow
• 1 or so teaspoons mustard seed (Note: none of these are measured at all)
• 1 or so teaspoons turmeric
• 2-3 small green chili, and a little bit of a jabeñero pepper went in there too
• As much oil as you need
• salt to taste

The original recipe called for "1/2 teaspoon yellow split peas" but they would have had to have been ground or soaked first. I put some in the food processor with some vegetable broth and actually may have gotten a half teaspoon of non-jaw-breaking pulp out of that.

Preparation

Dosa shell:

1. Separately soak rice and urad dal at least 6 hour or overnight in water.
2. Put both in the food processor to grind to paste, with some of their own water plus salt.
3. Leave in room temperature at least 8 hours.
4. Mix in one onion's worth of chopped onion and the green chilis.
5. Pre-heat olive oil in a cast iron frying pan.
6. Pour into large patties on the pan. Fry on both sides.

It was supposed to make a thin batter, but I food processed it for so long that it went from extremely watery to very thick. Added a little olive or almond oil there to reconstitute it just a little, and on the theory that it needed to avoid sticking to the pan anyway. It was surprisingly easy to mix in a bowl given its thickness.

The recipe called for spreading the mix on pan in circular motion to make thin Dosa.

We made thick pancake like dosa, and it was fantastic.

And I learned from Shannon that one shouldn't use metal utensils on a good cast iron pan (I had thought they were indestructible, fortunately the pan we used was still very good despite me).

The sushi rice may have made it extra sticky. Which was fine with us. It was probably Shannon's technique but it didn't stick to the frying pan at all, it just stuck together.

Spicy Masala Filling

1. Cut up potatoes into small chunks and bake in a toaster oven with olive oil and some garlic for 20-30 minutes.
2. Heat olive oil in a wok.
3. Start frying onions.
4. Add mustard seed.
5. Fry for about 5 minutes on medium heat until onions begin to turn translucent.
6. Add potatoes and cook some more
7. While cooking mix in plenty of turmeric, some curry powder, and soy sauce (or gluten-free alternative).

Instead of "Add filling inside Dosa and roll" we put it on the patty and ate it like that. We did serve hot with, if not whatever Indian chutney they wanted exactly, a fantastic Iranian chutney-like condiment.

The secret weapon was soy sauce. The recipe didn't even call for salt in the filling but it was clearly needed. This could easily be made celiac-friendly using gluten-free tamari sauce.