Masala Dosa

My husband is a big fan of masala dosa. There is a way side eatery just opposite my office and we frequent that shop just for eating hot masala dosas in the evening. This shop has a variety of dosas on its menu. I decided to prepare it for dinner yesterday.

Ingredients:-

Chutney spread for the dosa:
Small onion/shallots - 10 peeled
Garlic - 5 peeled
Red chiilies - 5
Kashimiri chilly powder - 1tbsp
Salt - to taste

Masala filling for the dosa:
Potato - 10 small or 4 medium
Onion - 1 large, cut into thin pieces
Ginger - 1 inch piece, peeled and cut into thin pieces
Green chillies - 3, cut into thin slices
Gram dal/Kadala paruppu - 1 tsp for seasoning
Mustard seeds - 1 tsp for seasoning
Refined oil - 1 tbsp for seasoning
Turmeric powder - 1 tsp

Preparation:-

Wash the potatoes and pressure cook them for 3 whistles with enough water. Once the pressure is released, throw away the water from the cooker and wash the potatoes in water inorder to cool them down quickly. If you have time, then you can leave the potatoes in room temperature to cool on its own. Once the potato is cool, remove the skin and set aside. Once you have peeled all the potatoes, mash them with your hand/spatula and set it aside.

In a kadai, add 1 tbsp of oil and when the oil is hot, add mustard seeds and gram dal. Once the mustard seeds splutter and the dal turns golden colour, turn the fire onto a low and add turmeric powder. Don't burn the powder, immediately add green chillies and ginger and fry them for a minute or until the raw smell goes. Ginger helps in digestion of the potatoes which can cause gastric problems. Now add the onion and fry them till it becomes translucent. Add the mashed potatoes along with required salt and mix it properly. Now the masala for the dosa is ready.

For the chutney spread, take the onion shallots, garlic, red chillies, kashmiri chilli powder and salt and grind it to a paste in mixie. Add very little water, spread should not be watery. Kashmiri chilli powder will give the red colour for the chutney and won't be very spicy. You can adjust the level of spiciness by adjusting the number of red chillies you use. Remove it from the mixie jar onto a small bowl. Garlic also helps the digestion process like ginger.

Potato masala and the chutney spread

Take a dosa tawa, when it is hot, spread little oil on top of it. Pour the dosa batter and spread it into a thin layer. It should neither be thick nor very thin. Thin dosas will tear apart when the masala dosa is rolled. Thick dosas won't cook faster. Remember, this dosa is not flipped over to cook on both sides. Once the dosa is cooked on the upper side that you see, add little oil and then spread the chutney on top of it at the center of the dosa. Take some potato masala and spread it on top the chutney. Just press once on top of this masala to bind them along with the dosa and the chutney.

Dosa with chutney spread and potato placed on the upper side

Take one side of the dosa with the spatula from the bottom and cover the masala and press it. Take the dosa from the bottom of the masala and again roll it to the other side of the dosa.

 Finally it will look as in the picture shown below.

Masala dosa

You can eat it as such or you can prepare coconut chutney or mint chutney to go with it. You can change the masala filling with different vegetables or paneer and every time you get a new masala dosa and you wont get bored eating this. Enjoy cooking and also eating.

Vegetable cutlets

My hunger is at its peak when I am home alone. I don't have much to do and my idle mind starts thinking about food. I decided to prepare cutlets as it was almost 3 years since I tried it. I had prepared soup the other day for my son and I had used up a small portion of a beetroot for that. The rest was just lying there in my fridge. So, I used that along with carrots, beans and potatoes to make this yummy cutlets.

Ingredients:-
Beetroot - 1 small, cut into small pieces
Carrot - 1 medium, cut into small pieces
Beans - 3, cut into small pieces(You need to process the beans the usual way. I hope it is known)
Potatoes - 2 medium size
Coriander leaves - 2-3 leaves finely chopped
Garam Masala - 1tbsp
Chilli powder - 1tbsp or to taste
Salt - to taste
Rava/Sooji - 2 tbsp(This is the one you prepare upma with)
Oil - 3 tbsp

Preparation:-
Wash the vegetables and boil them in pressure cooker. Add the vegetables in a bowl and keep the potatoes in a separate bowl with the skin on. No need to add water while boiling. The moisture in the vegetables that was present while washing is enough. Just pressure cook them for a whistle or two.

Once the pressure settles down, remove the vegetables and then grind them in a mixer. Transfer the ground mixture to a bowl. Do not add water while grinding. Peel the potatoes and mash them with your hand and add it to the ground vegetable mixture. Now add the coriander leaves and the spice powders along with salt. Mix it properly.

Take the rava in a flat plate. Make bowls out of the vegetable mix and roll it into cutlet shape. If you have moulds then you can use them to give cutlets a nice shape. I didn't have moulds, so I made them into small circular shaped ones. Grease your left hand palm with little oil and then take the mixture and shape it using your right hand. Coat this with rava by placing both the sides on the plate. Set this aside.

You can also use bread crumbs to coat the mixture. I didn't want to get a big packet of bread crumbs from the shop as I may not prepare this regularly. Whenever we get bread, I set aside few slices to prepare crumbs out of it, but most the times it stays in the fridge beyond its due date, just to be thrown away to the bin. Rava is something which is readily available in our house. So, I used it to coat my cutlets. It gives a nice crunchy taste to the cutlets.
In the meantime, heat a dosa tawa. When it is hot, add 1tbsp oil to it. When the oil is hot, place the cutlets one by one on it. Place the cutlets on the tawa where there is oil and then immediately drag it aside. Repeat this for the other cutlets. You can place any number of cutlets depending on the size of your tawa. You can also deep fry them, but there is a disadvantage of consuming extra calories :-). Once the sides are golden brown, flip them over and cook. Drizzle some oil on top of the cutlets before flipping. When both sides are done, remove it to a plate.

You can have this with tomato ketchup or any chutney of your choice. You will get around 10 small cutlets that will server a small family of two or three. Try this out and let me know how it came out.