It's said if you are a South Indian you will always have a dosa batter ready in the fridge. I am a Maharashtrian which basically means I am a North Indian or South Indian depending on whether you are from Madras or Delhi. In the BC era which is before covid era, we made dosas once a week, typically for breakfast or my husband's dinner sometimes. The batter quantity was such that it lasted us for 2 meal times( 2 breakfasts, breakfast dinner etc).
It's now the AC era or the after COVID era. It's the era the transformed me from making doses once a week to having dosa batter ready for any time of the week. Dosa are my savior these days. Their best use to me now is as an ideal 6 pm snack. When you know it's going to be a long day , dinner will be post 9 pm; a heavy evening snack becomes essential. I had stopped making snacks due to lack of time but hunger won in the end. The advantage of having dosas as evening snack is that they can literally be made within no time. Take a tea break. One gas stove has tea and the other two gas stoves have dosa pans so that two dosas get made in parallel. So literally you can make 5-6 dosas within less than 10 mins. They go with tea or sambar / chutney whatever is available. I can truly say that Dosa batter has saved my life in these busy times.
But then having dosas of only the urad dal and rice batter mixture gets boring. So I have a variety of dosa batters /dhirda / ghawan batters in the week. Bhakti tai's theme on dosa and ghawan prompted me to write this and share what kinds of dosas I make
1) Regular dosa: Batter has rice to urad dal in 2:1 ratio.Soak overnight, grind and allow to ferment. I either make it or buy it depending on time and availability.
2) Onion uttapam- Add onions to this batter and make thick dosas, this makes onion uttapam
3)Wheat rava dosa - Wheat flour and rava in 2:1 ratio add salt and ginger green chilli paste make batter of dosa consistency. Advantage of this is it is instant , no need of fermentation
4) Moong dal chilla- Soak yellow moong dal overnight ,grind it, add rava, lal tikha, salt . No need of waiting to ferment
5) Moong dosa or Pesaratu- I have ready moong dal dosa powder to which I add salt, grated ginger garlic chilli powder and make the batter. If you want to make it at home, soak moong overnight and grind to paste next morning
6 ) Ghawan/ Rice dosa/ Neer dosa- Rice flour and salt make it as a flowy batter . I also use the rice dosa mix by taste for life. To that just add water and make the dosas . They go very well with coconut chutney
7) Ragi dosa - Ragi flour and urad dal in 2:1 proportion. Udal dal soak overnight. Grind next day mix with ragi flour allow to ferment and make dosas post that
8) Besan dhirda/ Besan ghawan/ Tomato omlette- Besan, Tomato chopped, onion chopped, lal tikha , ginger garlic paste salt. Make a dosa like batter.
9) Jowar ghavan- Jowar flour, chilli garlic paste, salt. Add some rava if you want.
10) Gulache pole/Jaggery pancakes- Wheat flour and jaggery in equal proportion. Melt the jaggery, mix with Wheat flour add water. Nice sweet dosas.
11) Mixed millet dosas- Mix various flours , add some remaining dal, gi ger chilli paste and you can have variety of flavourful combos. Adding sooji/rava to this gives a nice crunch
12) Amboli- An Amboli is a bit of a Konkan thing somewhere between a dosa and an uthapa. I make it using the ready Amboli mix. Tastes yummy.
I cannot believe I hardly have any dosa pics with meЁЯджЁЯджHence sharing the ragi dosa pic I have
-Dhanashree
