Quinoa Dosa

Yessss, I did it, finally! I managed to successfully make quinoa dosas! They turned out real good!!

Ingredients: 

1. Quinoa- 3 measures

2. Split urad dal (white gram)- 1 measure

3. Fenugreek seeds- 1-2 tsp (good for tummy)

4. Chana Dal- 1-2 tbs (I assume for color...?)

5. Water to soak, and then water to grind

6. Oil

7. Salt per taste (to be added in batter) (Optional)

Method: 

The procedure is exactly the same as you would follow for regular dosa batter. See Dosa 1 and Dosa 2.

1. Soaking: Add ingredients 1-4 in a container, and rinse with cold water 2-3 times. Then add water so as to cover it all, and set aside for minimum 2 hours.

2. Grinding: After 2 hours, the above mixture is ready to be ground/blended into a nice batter. Blend/grind everything into a pancake sort of consistency. I noticed that grinding quinoa+dal is way faster than the traditional rice+dal. So that's good! ;) I add salt per taste while grinding. You can skip salt, if you are watching your salt intake......

3. Fermenting: After the batter is ready, I like to stir it all up well with a ladle. The idea is to well-aerate it, in order to aid fermentation, and the dosa will turn out better. So if you live in a nice hot sunny place, you will have lovely fermented batter, all ready to go in under 6 hours. But if you live in Seattle or Alaska (yay!), better to resort to the good old oven. I just keep the container with the batter in my oven, with the light on for warmth, overnight. Next morning my batter is good to go!

P.S.: I noticed that quinoa dosa batter actually fermented a bit faster as compared to the traditional dosa batter. Either that, or well, guess it is summer here after all! ;)

4. Make the dosas! Get your pan going on the stove, spread out the dosa batter with the help of a ladle. Add a few drops of oil to the circumference of the dosas, and in about 2-3 minutes, you'll have yummy quinoa dosa ready.

Quinoa Dosa cooking

Quinoa Dosas ready! 

Serve with chutney, or just a good pat of good old butter, or both! YUM!

Observation:

1. Quinoa dosas seem to brown up quite quickly, so gotta be careful not to burn 'em.

2. Couldn't get them to become crispy as I'd have liked- perhaps because of the lack of rice....?

3. To the novice tongue, this might taste slightly bitter..... but don't worry, you'll get used to it. ;)

Healthy Ideas:

1. Use oats to make dosas! Or combine oats and quinoa.

2. Make pancakes with quinoa flour instead of all purpose flour! Bet that'll be good.

French Toast- Indian twist

Who doesn't know how to make french toast, right? You take some bread, dunk it in eggs whisked with vanilla essence, fry till golden brown, and then drizzle maple syrup or honey, and eat away. That's the sweet version. I like the savory version too- where I add salt and pepper to the eggs, and the rest of the process is the same. Except, instead of syrup or honey, I use ketchup. And to kick it up a notch, usually on the weekend, I add a couple extra ingredients and I call it my Desi French Toast- i.e. french toast with an Indian twist.

Ingredients: 

1. Bread- stale white bread would be perfect, but you can use any kind, I'd say

2. Eggs

3. Finely chopped onion- I like to use 1/4 of an onion for 2 eggs

4. Finely chopped green chilies (per your heat tolerance!) 

5. Salt per taste

6. Freshly ground pepper 

7. Cumin seeds- 1/2 tsp

8. Fresh coriander leaves, or parsley 

9. Cooking oil- a few teaspoons

Method: 

1. I like to cut the bread (2-3 slices per person) into triangles.

2. Whisk up some eggs (2 eggs per person), add ingredients 3-8 into this, and give it all another whisk to get everything rolling.

3. Get your pan going, with a few teaspoons of cooking oil. Dunk each slice of bread into the egg mixture, and fry both sides until golden brown.

It is almost like bread and omelette in one shot! Pretty neat, I think, and it is super delicious all by itself. I like tomato ketchup on the side.