DOSA!

Indian food can be delineated by the region from which it is born. Northern Indian, I think, is what is usually seen. Cream is used more often in this Punjabi or Kashmiri cuisine. Very good cream dishes. A lot more meat is used as well. I love Northern Indian but have an especially fond place in my heart for Southern. The cuisine of this region, also called Dravidian, is known as the spiciest of India. Overall it is a much more Vegetarian-friendly India. One of the items made and used most exclusively is the dosa, a spiced crepe made from lentils and rice. Incredibly nutritious and fabulously tasty, the dosa is eaten with a variety of different foods at all times of the day. It is usually stuffed with a sort of curry or masala (the one I get at the place around the corner is a potato masala), but can also be used to dip in chutneys or lentil soups. The possibilities are nearly endless. While I still had the Wild Fermentation book on loan from the library, I noticed a recipe for dosa. This is how I did it.

First, your ingredients:
- Two Cups Rice (brown works nicely)
- One Cup Lentils (any kind you want, I used red)
- One Cup Yogurt, Kefir or Water (I used yogurt)
- Some Cilantro and Fresh Ginger (for later)

The first step is easy. You put the rice and lentils into a big bowl with water to soak. You will want to put a bit more water in than rice and lentils because they will expand. Let this soak for eight hours or overnight. It will sour a little. This is good and natural.

After this soaking, grind or process into a batter with the yogurt, kefir or water. It should be smooth, not chunky, and barely pourable. Put this into a big bowl, if it isn't already, with room to expand. The fermentation begins. This can be left to ferment on your counter or out of the way somewhere for one to two days or more (if you like it more sour). Forget about it. Set an alarm on your phone. Whatever. It will smell more and more sour as it goes. That is wonderful.

This is what my batter looks like after two days of fermenting. At this point, after the waiting, you can add spices. The recipe called for cilantro, grated ginger and salt (teaspoon or so). You could also add fenugreek, cumin, curry leaves, curry powder, asofoetida (hing), cayenne powder, fresh peppers, turmeric, etc. It is your dosa, do what you want. But, ginger and cilantro are definitely good. I added a small bunch of chopped cilantro and about an inch of grated fresh ginger. You want FRESH ginger. Also, add enough water to thin out the batter. We are making crepes, not pancakes. Mix this through and find a good ladle. You got it? Great.

Heat the skillet or pan (cast iron works great, or a good non-stick pan) and add some oil or butter. I used butter because it is good. On the topic of butter, buy Irish butter. Kerrygold is good. It has a better stronger flavor and it is squeezed from grass-fed cows, which is healthier. Here is a site I found talking about the benefits of eating from pastured animals: http://www.eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm. Anyway, heat the pan with butter or vegetable oil and let it get hot. Keep it around medium heat. Then ladle your beautiful batter right in there, spreading it out with the bottom of the ladle until it is nice and thin. It will act like a pancake, bubbling up through the top and giving you some idea as to when to flip it. Flip it. Cook it until it is golden brown and make some more.

You may want to test it before you flip it to make sure it is holding up and cooked enough. If you are successful, it will look like this.

Yum. After you have cooked them all and turned off that hot burner, what will you do? Enjoy it with yogurt? Stuff it with some savory Indian fare that you either made yourself or obtained through a local Indian restaurant? Dip in chutneys? Fill it with eggs and potatoes and have a breakfast burrito? For my meal, I enlisted my friend, Lucas Cain, White-Boy-Indian-Food-Extraordinaire, to help with a decent accompaniment. This is the result.

I made the whitish potato dish (Potato and Spinach Coconut Curry) and Lucas made the reddish Paneer dish (Mutter Paneer in Tomato Curry Sauce). The dosa is located under the fork. Try this recipe if you dare. The hardest part is the wait. Really. Do it.

And now, some food poetry.

Ode To The Onion
by Pablo Neruda

Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency,
and as the remote sea
in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite
duplicating the magnolia,
so did the earth
make you,
onion
clear as a planet
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.

You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.