Bread Uthappam

Bread uthappam

I love the smell of freshly baked bread but am not a fan of bread itself. I do like a few types of bread but not the everyday loaf. However, for some reason I had been meaning to make bread dosa. I always keep a loaf of bread at home and more often than not, end up throwing it by the end of the week. My thinking was that if recipe worked then it would be a good way to avoid wastage. I fancied something hot so I added green chillies but you could skip it. It is not very dissimilar to rava dosa in terms of ingredients but it tastes different and importantly 2 of these are enough to fill you up. Ideal breakfast or dinner. I usually keep tomato thokku/chutney in the fridge so had it with the uthappam but any tangy chutney would suit I guess.

Recipe adapted from Manjula's kitchen

Yield: 3 uthappam

3 slices wholemeal bread
3 tablespoons semolina
2 tablespoons maida/all purpose flour
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
chopped coriander leaves
2 green chillies finely chopped
1/4 cup yogurt
Cooking oil
Salt to taste

Grind the bread to fine powder, mix all ingredients together and add little water to form a batter like dosa batter

 Heat a pan and pour ladleful of batter to make thick dosa. Drizzle oil around

Cook both sides like normal dosa and serve with a nice chutney

You could put all ingredients in a food processor and blend but I was lazy to take the bigger mixie jars out so ground the bread in small jar which is always on the mixie in my kitchen.

Soya Sooji Dosa

Soya Sooji Dosa

A jar of soya flour is lying in my counter as I have been forgetting to add it to the chapatti dough I normally prepare. I thought I should make an effort to use them and wondered if they will be a good ingredient in a rava dosa like dish. That is how, this recipe was put together. This can make a quick breakfast or a light and quick dinner. I chose to add methi because I like its flavours. You will see I rant less and less these days before getting into the recipe purely because of lack of time and sometimes energy but I will hopefully keep the recipes coming. Here is the recipe...

¼ cup soya flour

½ cup sooji

¼ cup rice flour

Handful of methi leaves/coriander or any other greens

Salt to taste

2 green chillies, finely chopped

Asafoetida

Bring all ingredients together and add water to make a runny batter

Pour a ladleful on hot tava and add some oil

Once the lower side turns golden, flip side and briefly cook second side

Serve with spicy and tangy chutney

Dudhi Dosa/Lauki Dosa

Lauki Dosa (Dudhi Dosa)

Bottlegourd aka dudhi is a vegetable that I include a lot in my diet these days. It is called lauki in hindi and sorakai in tamil. It is a bottle shaped vegetable which is supposed to be rich in fibre. It is also high in water content and hence is said to be good for weight loss. The cooked vegetable is cooling, sedative and is also said to give calming effect after eating. I have searched quite a bit for dudhi recipes but most of them return with kofta or halwa. Kofta is a bit time consuming and ofcourse, I like to avoid the deep frying and as for halwa, we are not so much dessert family so that would be wasted. It had been long since I made dosa and decided to make lauki dosa. It was a wholesome dosa and I made kadappa to eat with it, wow! Here you go...

½ medium lauki, peeled, cubed and ground to fine paste

¼ cup urd dal

½ cup brown rice

½ cup idli rice (par boiled rice)

1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds

Handful of beaten rice (poha)

Salt to taste

Cooking oil

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

Soak urd dal, both rice, poha and fenugreek seeds together over night. Grind to fine batter, not adding too much water and add required salt. Allow to ferment during the day. Just before making the dosa, add the ground dudhi to the batter and mix well

Add some oil and add the mustard seeds and after it crackles add it to the batter. The batter should be like regular dosa batter now. As grinding the dudhi would need some water and hence add water to the batter, I had said earlier that you not add much water while grinding the batter itself

(I am afraid I conveniently forgot the clicks! I promise I will upload them next time :) )

Heat a tava and spread a ladleful of the batter. Drizzle oil. Flip side once bottom is golden brown. Cook second side for a minute or so and it is ready to serve

Cornmeal Methi Dosa

Cornmeal Methi Dosa

I like to have cooked breakfast, especially when I have family here. While it has been hard to plan in advance for breakfast as we only managed to make something if we got time, otherwise it was oats porridge with a banana, I managed to make some instant dosa (crepes) on some days. This is one such recipe and to enhance the nutritional value, I added methi, you could skip it or add any other herb of your choice. To me, this is a very simple and quick dish that can help you keep going. Here is the recipe...

¼ cup rice flour

¼ cup rava (semolina/sooji)

¾ cup cornmeal

Couple of handful of chopped methi leaves

Few curry leaves

2 green chillies, finely chopped

Salt to taste

Cooking oil

Mix together the rice flour, rava and cornmeal and add enough water to make a thin batter and rest this for about 15 minutes. Add the curry leaves, green chillies, salt and chopped methi leaves and more water if needed

 

Heat a tava and pour ladeful of batter on it, best to start from the centre and work outward. You cannot spread this batter like regular dosa but it will be more like rava dosa batter, a bit less watery

Put some oil and flip sides once browned. It can come out quite crisp like rava dosa.

Serve with a nice hot and tangy chutney

Sprouted Bajra Dosa (Sprouted Kambu Dosa)

Sprouted Bajra Dosa
Bajra is a rather common type of millet, however I came across a few millet varieties that are much less common. They just seem to have not made their way out of the villages or farms in which they are grown. I tried searching for them online so I could buy, unfortunately they seem to be more readily available as bird feed than food for us. It is a shame that we do not appreciate the benefits of these ingredients and think they are rather for the birds. Hopefully one day I will get my hands on these goodies, for now it is back to the millet on hand. What is a good way of making them more nutritious, sprouting! I had sprouted bajra earlier but had left them a bit longer outside and they started rotting. So learning was that sprouted bajra does not last as long as mung sprouts. This dosa was really good and came out like hotel dosas. Main reason I like this recipe is because it breaks the myth that healthy dishes have to taste like mud. So, here you go, try it and get stronger!

½ cup bajra, sprouted
½ heaped cup idli rice
¼ heaped cup urd dal
Handful of poha
1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds

Soak idli rice, urd dal, poha and fenugreek together and grind to make a smooth batter along with sprouted bajra. Add required salt

Pour ladleful of batter on a hot tava and drizzle some oil and cook until golden brown. Flip sides so both are cooked

Serve hot with chutney and sambar

Sprouted Mung Bean Dosa

Sprouted Mung Bean Dosa


Sprouting beans is a great way to enhance their nutritive value however I noticed that not everyone likes to eat them straight away. I also struggle to just eating raw sprouts. I usually briefly shallow fry store bought sprouts if I was adding them to rice but whenever I sprout beans at home I normally find a recipe in which it gets cooked. That way, this dosa (savoury crepe) recipe is quite good because you will not realise that it has sprouted beans in it. I either read this bit of info somewhere or I am totally making it up – very young sprouts are more nutritive than mature ones (i.e. small budding sprouts are better than the long shoots). In order to increase the nutritive value, I added brown rice to the recipe. This increases the bulk and keeps one fuller for longer. Some may have noticed that when they consume protein rich food, it actually fills them up quicker than carbohydrates rich food. This dosa is quite filling and by the time I finished two normal sized home made dosas, I was full. For those who are calorie conscious, this is a great meal. I made egg curry to go with this as I did not want to go through the hassle of grinding a chutney as I had already lined up a list of things to grind. I would suggest that this be served with some tangy chutney or egg curry/kuzhambu.

1 cup mung bean sprouts
½ cup brown rice (or white rice)
½ cup par boiled rice (idli rice)
1/2 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
Salt to taste

Soak the rice and fenugreek seeds together for about 6 hours

Grind to batter along with mung sprouts and add salt. Batter should be similar to normal dosa batter consistency

Spread aladleful of batter on a hot tava, drizzle some oil, cook until bottom side turns golden then flip and cook until done

Serve with tangy chutney.

Bajri Dosa

Bajri Dosa

Like always, I got so excited when we went to Edinburgh as I usually get to do my Indian grocery shopping then. The shop that we go to is owned by either a north Indian or a Pakistani. So most of the items will be typical of the north Indian pantry but I would also get a lot of south Indian stuff there. When I went there sometime back, I was so excited to see the variety of cereals in flour form so picked a pack of barley flour, jowar flour and bajra flour. I will talk about the first two in a later post and for now stick to bajra flour. I was so ambitious in getting it and came home and tried bajra roti. As anyone who has tried it before may tell you that it is not the easiest roti to roll and it does not taste quite like regular roti. It was a definite no no from my husband but then I came up with the Aloo bajra roti which was very nice. However, I could still not make it a regular so was pretty much stuck with the flour. It then occurred to me that when I could make ragi dosa with the ragi flour, I could very well make bajra dosa as well. As I have said in previous posts, I am a fermented batter dosa lover and that is how I came up with this recipe. As I use brown rice and also par boiled rice along with bajra flour, this dosa is wholesome and is very nutritious. I would team it with a nice masala, sambar and chutney and would enjoy it. Bajra is a good source of a variety of amino acids (proteins), B vitamins and iron. It is also known as pearl millet and is called ‘kambu’ in tamil. My brother usually makes fun of me saying I make people eat what horses would eat but I would always say we are not as strong as they are so no harm eating these cereals. Also, I would say it is a fair point if they did not taste good, but these dishes are yummy so why would it hurt us to have healthy and delicious dishes? Anyway, enough of my rant, here is the recipe…

1/3 cup urd dal

2/3 cup brown rice (you can use white raw rice instead)
2/3 cup par boiled rice
¼ cup poha (flattened rice)
2/3 cup bajra flour
1 teapsoon fenugreek seeds

Salt to taste

Soak all ingredients except salt and bajra flour together for atleast 6 hours. Grind to paste and add the bajra flour and grind everything to fine batter. Add salt and allow to ferment for a day or night

Heat a tava, pour a ladleful of batter, spread thin to make crispy dosas and add some oil or ghee and once it browns, turn the side and cook about a minute (I also stuffed some vegetable masala to enhance the nutrition)

Serve with chutney and sambar

I stacked them up just to make it more presentable for my guests.

Mung Dal Dosa

Mung Dal Dosa

There are days when I just cannot be bothered standing and making the rotis although I have pretty much mastered it now and do it much quicker than I used to. On such days I usually fancy a quick South Indian dinner and resort to the wide variety of tiffin items. I wanted to make dosas but did not have the time or energy to make fermented batter as I only thought about it in the afternoon. If that is not enough, I had a Sunday afternoon nap, which by the way is such a great way to recharge for the week and decided I will make a dosa for dinner giving me limited soak and grind time. I have heard people mention pesarattu a few times but knew that is made with whole mung bean and would need to be soaked longer. I resorted to mung dal itself and soaked it for about 45 minutes. My husband had bought a 5kg bag of ground rice thinking it is the same as rice flour (and it is not) so I just started using it by adding little bit of it in this dosa. You can soak the rice along with the dal if you do not have ground rice. The best part about this recipe was that it is not only quick but also low in calorie (approximately 55 calories per dosa) and yet nutritious. If that is not enough, they are so filling that it will automatically limit your calorie intake. Just make a funky shape like a duck or elephant or a cat for your little one and get away with a one dish meal for the whole family. I added vegetables to the dosa itself and served it with tomato chutney.

1 ½ cups mung dal

¼ cup ground rice or raw rice
Salt to taste

Shredded/grated vegetable of your choice (I used cabbage, onion and carrot)

Soak the mung dal and rice for about 45 minutes. If you are using ground rice, you do not have to soak. Grind to fine paste and add salt. The batter should be to pouring consistency, like regular dosa batter

Take a ladleful of batter an spread into a thin dosa (crepe) on a hot tava, spread the vegetables on top and add few drops of oil and once it browns, flip the dosa and cook the other side for less than a minute (any longer will make veggies burn)

Serve with a nice chutney

Oats Dosa (Savoury oats crepe)

Oats Dosa

I am not usually keen on cooking breakfast because it just adds to the time I spend in the kitchen and I have absolutely none to spare in the mornings. I prefer to grab a bowl of cereal with banana and eat it in the living room watching my wee one play. However, not all days are the same and some days, I just cannot have cereal and want something cooked, delicious and substantial. Dosas being my favourite tiffin, instant dosa appeal to me and what better than adding as much wholegrains in them as possible. With a simple tangy chutney, oats dosa makes a perfect breakfast. If I make it for dinner, I would make sambar with loads of vegetables just to make sure we do not miss out on vegetables. As I am working on getting a sensible meal planner made, whenever possible, I am hoping to post calorie information and nutrition information as I realised there are online tools that could easily do it for me. The flip side is that I am relying on third party service and can only hope it is accurate but I think directionally it will help readers if they know calorie and nutrition information. Here is a simple, quick recipe…

1 cup traditional oats

¼ cup rava
¼ cup rice flour
1 teaspoon grated ginger
3 green chillies, finely chopped
Few curry leaves, torn
Salt to taste
1 teaspoon cumin seeds

Cooking oil

Roast the oats for about 3 minutes and grind to powder consistency

Mix all ingredients, except cooking oil together along with this powder and add loads of water. The batter should be very watery else the dosas will not be thin and crisp

Heat a tava and pour a ladleful of batter all over the tava. Unlike normal dosa where you start from centre and spread the batter outside by placing the ladle on the tava, you need to keep a ladleful of batter at a distance and pour all over the tava. Fill any big gaps while doing so but remember this dosa will have few holes in between. The method is similar to rava dosa.

Add some oil and once it looks set, turn side and cook for about a minute so dosa becomes crisp.

Serve with a tangy chutney

Serves about 12 dosas and calories per dosa is about 60.7 with about 35% of your daily manganese requirement, 4% of iron requirement, 7% of thiamine and phosphorous among others.

Rye Dosa (Savory crepe with Rye)

Rye Dosa (Savory crepe with Rye)

Rye is one of those ingredients for which I have not be able to find the Indian equivalent name in any of the languages. Rye is a cereal grain closely related to wheat and barley. It is usually consumed as flour but can also be rolled like oats and eaten or rye berries could be boiled and consumed. Rye is lower in gluten than wheat and for this reason some people who cannot take wheat seem to do well with rye. It also has the benefit of being higher in fibre. There are so many such plus points but there is one minus point that it suffers from. Rye flour when used in rotis or bread tends not to rise. For this reason it is always best to combine it with all purpose flour or wheat flour and also used leavening agents so it rises ok. I did try a rye bread recipe from a website and it came out rock solid, even the birds would not have eaten it. Having got a packet of the flour, I cannot just waste it and somehow I could not accept that I was ineffective in using this flour. Inspired by my ragi dosa recipe, I tried rye dosa and it was very successful. I must say it pretty much tasted like regular dosa, however it was even more hearty and filling. Remember rye flour is whole grain flour afterall so it does come with its own benefits. I always prefer fermented batter for dosa and it suits me well because I try to plan the menu for atleast half the week so over the weekend I have all the preparation done. Here is how I made it and said quantity makes about 12 dosas, depending on the size…

¼ cup urd dal
¼ cup raw rice
½ cup par-boiled rice (idli rice)
¼ cup rye flour
2 tablespoons poha (flattened rice)
1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds (methi)
Salt to taste
Cooking oil/ghee

Soak the urd dal, raw rice, idli rice, poha and fenugreek seeds overnight and grind to fine batter. Add the rye flour and grind further so it combines well and add salt. Batter consistency should be like regular dosa batter.

Allow the batter to ferment for a few hours (it will rise) and pour a ladleful of batter on a hot tava to make yummy dosa. Add little oil or ghee to the circumference of the dosa and once bottom side turns brown and top side is set, flip to cook the other side.

You can stuff with masala of your choice (there will be a few variety of masalas posted soon) and serve with chutney and sambar! Plain dosa with chutney is very good too!

Brown Rice Vegetable Masala Dosa

Brown Rice Vegetable Masala Dosa


Right from my childhood I was brought up eating raw rice and same was the case for my husband. I would not even take even par-boiled rice except ofcourse when added to idli or dosa. You can then imagine how hard it must have been for us to try brown rice. Until now, I have not had the courage to replace white rice with brown rice in a dish like pulav or anything. However, as I am a very nutrition and health conscious cook, I knew I had to find them a place in our diet. The fibre in brown rice is said to help prevent colon cancer and gallstones. Brown rice has a lower glycemic index meaning it will release its caloric content slower and hence keeps one fuller for longer and also helps maintain stable sugar levels. For the world of benefits it offers I thought it to be appropriate to combine it with few other goodies. As everyone knows a meal is not balanced without vegetables. So this time rather than making masala dosa with usual potato stuffing I decided to add more veggies and left few potatoes chunky to make it look like regular masala. I also made coconut chutney as I did not have time for any other chutney that evening. Here is the recipe for dosa and vegetable masala.

For the dosa:
½ cup brown rice
½ cup par-boiled rice (idli rice)
¼ cup black lentil (urd dal)
¼ poha (beaten rice)
1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
Salt to taste

Soak all ingredients together overnight. Grind it together to a fine batter adding required water and then add water. The consistency should be similar to idli batter so you can add more water later.

Allow the batter to ferment overnight. I let it out for two nights as it was cold here and it needed a bit more time

To make the dosa, spread a ladle full of batter on a hot pan and add little oil around the dosa. Flip the side once the top sets and edge appear brown and cook for a minute or less

For vegetable masala:
2 small potatoes, boiled, cubed
1 cup boiled vegetables (I used frozen mixed veggies, carrot, peas, beans, corn)
1 tomato, chopped
1 onion finely chopped
2 green chillies, slit
1 inch ginger, grated
Some curry leaves
Turmeric powder
1 teapsoon mustard seeds
Asafoetida
Salt to taste
Cooking oil

Heat a little oil and add mustard seeds. Once it crackles, add onions, ginger, green chillies, turmeric powder, curry leaves and asafoetida

Once onion turns soft, add the tomato and a pinch of salt.

Once tomato becomes mushy add the vegetables and potato and mash it coarsely. I did not want them too mashed, especially the potatoes.

Add required salt and cook for a couple of minutes.

Once both sides of the dosa are cooked, please about a tablespoon of the vegetable masala on one side of the dosa and fold over. Serve with a nice chutney!

The dosas came out evem better than restaraunt dosas and I was delighted. It was indeed very filling. You can make around 10 dosas with the said quantity.

My wee one had a special dosa, cat again!

I am sending this to wholesome wholegrains event hosted by http://www.cookingwithsiri.com/2011/01/wwc-brown-rice-for-dinner-event.html. Here is the main event and this month Siri is hosting the event for wholegrain rice dinner recipes.