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!

Oven Cooked Vegetable Pulav

Oven Cooked Vegetable Pulav


I am still debating whether this is really a pulav or briyani. Reason for that is I have used the help of yogurt mainly for the cooking process than for flavour and as yogurt is typically used in briyani, I am just wondering. We could remain neutral and just call it a delicious rice with a wonderful blend of spices. There are couple of reasons why I wanted to post an oven baked rice recipe (there are few more in the pipeline). Firstly, I know not all readers will have a pressure cooker at home so it may be a bit challenging to cook rice to the right consistency. Secondly, I love to have additional space on my hob especially on Sundays as I tend to fire up all four burners just to speed up my marathon cooking. I can get on with other stuff while the rice is cooking in the oven. I have used store bought pulav masala and it was good. Next time though, I may want to powder it further as I did not like to bite into the big pieces of spices. Alternately you could use whole spices like couple of cardamom pods, a cinnamon stick a bay leaf, couple of cloves and a star anise. Another option is to use garam masala powder. It is important to fry the spices in oil else the raw smell from them does not go away in the cooking process. Here is the recipe...

1 cup rice, uncooked
1-2 cups mixed vegetable
1 red onion, sliced
1 teaspoon ginger garlic paste (optional)
2 tablespoons yogurt/curd
1 teaspoon pulav masala or whole spices as suggested earlier
Cooking oil or butter or ghee
2-3 green chillies, slit
Salt to taste
Turmeric powder
Coriander leaves, chopped


Rinse and soak the rice for 15-30 minutesin an oven proof dish. I used about 1.5 cups water for 1 cup rice, you may need more or less depending on the quality of rice. Soaking process helps in keeping the cooked grains separate.

In a skillet, heat some oil/butter/ghee and fry the onions along with some turmeric powder, ginger garlic paste and green chilly and add the vegetables once onion turns soft. If using frozen, cook until it thaws fully and loses some water becoming tender. If using fresh, cook until they just become tender.

Heat little oil in the skillet and add the masala and fry until aromatic

Add this to the soaking rice along with the onion vegetable mixture and add required salt and yogurt

Mix well and cook covered in a preheated ven at 180deg C for 40-50 minutes and stir about twice in between.

Garnish with coriander and serve!

Butterless Ragi Peanut Cookies

Butterless Ragi Peanut Cookies


This is the 175th recipe on my blog and to me it is a nice milestone. My baking skills were not very great not that long ago and I was not quite experimenting typically baked items. However I am now proud to have come out of that shell to a stage where I have made abiscuit without any butter. The main ingredient in this recipe is peanut butter. Some may wonder that peanut butter is still fat in another form so there is no merit. I got some nutritional information from here so it becomes easy to understand relative merits of peanut butter over dairy butter. A cup of peanut butter is said to have total fat of 130g of which 27g is saturated fat and zero cholesterol. It also contains about 65g protein and 15g dietary fibre in addition to plenty of calcium and iron. On the other hand a cup of butter contains 184g fat of which 117g is saturated fat. It also contains 488mg of cholesterol, no dietary fibre and 2g of protein. It contains some calcium and Vitamin A. I am not an anti-butter person, infact I love it but I think the fat is worrying and where possible I would avoid it. I have added little milk in this recipe but am guessing it will be ok to add water instead. First time I made this, I used very little baking powder (about 3 pinches) and texture came out like store bought biscuits, very crisp. The second time I made it I added ¼ teaspoon baking powder and it came like cookie with a crisp outer and ever so slightly soft centre. Depending on your preference, you could vary baking powder quantity. I used crunchy peanut butter and I loved to bite into the nut. You can choose smooth version if you prefer. Either case the quantity of milk is only indicative as it depends how much moisture is there in the peanut butter. With all that build-up, here is the recipe...

¼ cup ragi, finger millet flour (replace with wheat or all purpose flour if not available)
¼ cup whole wheat flour
¼ cup all purpose flour
4-5 heaped tablespoons of peanut butter
¼ cup sugar
3 pinches or ¼ teaspoon baking powder depending on preferred texture
Few tablespoons of milk

Mix the flours, sugar and baking powder and add the peanut butter and mix well until well combined. You could use an electric mixer or your hand for the whole process

Add about four tablespoons milk and keep mixing so you make a soft dough. You may need more milk but add only one spoon at a time to avoid a runny dough. It should hold ots shape when you make a ball.

Roll the dough into a disc about 4-5 mm thick and cut to desired shape using cookie cutter. You may have to divide the dough into portions depending on how big your work surface is. Alternately, you can take small balls of dough and press between your palms to get a disc shaped cookie.

Place them in a baking tray lined with baking paper and bake in preheated oven at 150degC for 12 minutes or until edges brown.

(the hand shaped biscuits did not become round, this is another batch I made yesterday just shaping by hand)

Cool and serve!

I noticed that the version with just pinches of baking powder remained crisp for longer than one with more baking powder.