Malayali dosa meets the Punjabi tadka!

Yesterday my closest friend of years, Ayesha came over for lunch. We've been together for donkey's years making through college, tuitions, pigging out sessions, sneaking out , summer jobs, cooking, movies, shopping, gossiping (this makes a huge chunk of our time together_..What not. A typical Girls-Duo.

We have had days where we baked our own cake and ate it too. Till the last morsel.

We have eaten a whole casserole of lasagna or spaghetti without a wink or fear of tomorrow.

Of course, things change with time. Now, we discuss more recipes on lighter side of the calorie chart. We discuss fruits, salads or juices. But, today we decided to have good old Dosa for Sunday brunch.

As I always love, doing things with a twist of Me. I decided to have the regular Masala Dosa-chutney with a ‘tadka’. Here is what smoked up my kitchen today:

The Tadka dosa: There are endless variations to this. I made one that is not too extravagant so that it goes well with the other side dishes. But, the one that is my favorite and pretty much self-sufficient on its own is;

Makes about 8-10 dosas

Ingredients:

Dosa batter about 300ml,

Oil, Salt, turmeric, chilli, jeera, dry chilli, garam masala, chutney podi, tamarind paste

1 cup chopped onions, Curry Leaves

Procedure:

Pour few spoons of oil in a pan.

- Add curry leaves and roughly broken dry chillies

- Add jeera (cumin) and 1 whole cup of chopped onions and sauté for a while

- When the onions turn brownish, add turmeric, salt to taste and tad-bit chilli

- Let the seasonings cook for a minute.

- Add a pinch of garam masala, chutney powder and a spoon tamarind paste( Yes! You heard me right, that’s chutney podi).

- Take this mixture off the flame.

- Mix this well with the dosa dough.

- Make dosas out of this dough. You’ll have wonderfully colored, chat-pata Tadka-Dosas ready.

As I said, the possibilities are endless. You can choose to add a paste of mint leaves to this instead of the tamarind. Add some ginger-garlic and Tada! You have lightly-flavored mint dosas for a sumptuous breakfast.

Alas! We finished the tadka dosa before I could shoot a click :( Nevertheless, I did capture the regular ones.

Since it was lunch for my dear friend, I had these additionally; The good old peanut-coconut chutney.And the Potato-stuffing, which I prefer serving on-the-side.