India celebrates its 64th Independence day today. I couldn’t be any happier and feeling so proud to be an Indian. While I was in the kitchen I was struck with the idea of making a tricolor chutney which represents Indian flag. Luckily, I had all the ingredients to make the three chutneys. For green color, I first thought of making cilantro chutney and ended up making spinach chutney. This was the first time I’ve tried making spinach chutney, it tasted pretty good. For white color, I made coconut chutney which is a popular chutney in my hometown which is often served with Dosa or Idli. And for red color, I made my favorite tomato chutney which is also served with Dosa, Idli and rice.

Tricolor Chutney

Spinach Chutney

Ingredients:

To grind:

• Spinach- 2 cups
• Coconut, grated- 1/2 cup
• Green chilly, chopped- 1
• Ginger, chopped- 1 inch slice
• Salt- to taste
• Water- 1/3 cup

For seasoning:

• Oil- 1 tbsp
• Mustard seeds- 1 tsp
• Red whole dry chillies- 2 no’s
• Curry leaves- 1 sprig

Preparation:

1. Grind all the above mentioned ingredients to grind to a smooth paste along with water.
2. Heat a saucepan over medium heat, add oil when it gets hot, add mustard seeds, let it splutter.
3. Add dry red chillies and curry leaves, saute for a second.
4. Pour the ground spinach paste to it and let it come to a boil.
5. If the chutney is too thick add some water to thin it down.
6. Taste it and add more salt if needed.
7. Serve warm with dosa, idli, rice etc.

Coconut Chutney:

Ingredients:

To grind:

• Coconut- 1/2 cup
• Green chilly- 1
• Ginger, chopped- 1 inch slice
• Tamarind, fresh and pitted- 1 inch slice
• Water- 1/3 cup

For seasoning:

• Oil- 1 tbsp
• Mustard seeds- 1 tsp
• Red whole dry chillies- 2 no’s
• Curry leaves- 1 sprig

Preparation:

1. Grind all the above mentioned ingredients to grind to a smooth paste along with water.
2. Heat a saucepan over medium heat, add oil when it gets hot, add mustard seeds, let it splutter.
3. Add dry red chillies and curry leaves, saute for a second.
4. Pour the ground coconut paste to it and let it come to a boil.
5. If the chutney is too thick add some water to thin it down.
6. Taste it and add more salt if needed.

Tomato Chutney recipe

If you are in south India and if you haven’t tried Dosa, you sure is missing the most popular veggie delight. I don’t think anyone can ever miss this as this is seen on the menu of almost all South Indian restaurants. They even have a separate menu for dosas and when you go through it, you would get pretty confused on which one to pick. Some of the common varieties are Plain dosa, Rocket dosa, Masala dosa, Butter dosa, Paper dosa, Onion dosa, Open dosa, Mysore masala dosa etc. I could go on and on…

I still remember the first time I had Rocket dosa, when I was 8 years old at my favorite Arul Jyothi restaurant in Trivandrum, kerala. When the waiter heard my order, he actually stared at me for a while. I felt quite weird about his staring. But, when the rocket dosa was placed in front of me, first thing that came out of my mouth was: Oh My God! I literally looked around embarrassed and almost everyone in that restaurant stared at me astonishingly. Just as the name rocket, that dosa was around 5 feet long, not to forget this was ordered by an 8 year old. While ordering it, I had no idea how it would look and never thought it would be this huge. My parents started to laugh seeing my embarrassed expression on my face. Soon I overcame my embarrassment and started to dig in. I couldn’t even eat half of that dosa, let alone finishing it. It’s been several years yet the taste of that dosa still lingers in my mouth, it was crispy, thin like a paper, crunchy and absolutely delicious.

What is Dosa?

Dosa is a crepe made from rice and black lentils. This is the popular breakfast served in most of the houses in south India.

Dosa is made rather small in houses. But in restaurants they make it huge and paper thin with different stuffings inside it. I am still unsure about how they make super crispy and super thin in restaurants. It seems it’s a secret known just to them. I need to bribe a South Indian chef to reveal this secret of making crispy dosas

Hot dosas with chutney or sambar along with filtered coffee, Gosh! even the mere thought of it makes my mouth flood like crazy.

I don’t make this quite often, hence on the days I make dosa, I devour it until my stomach can hold any further. My favorite way of having dosa is with Tomato chutney, which my aunt used to make often.

Tomato Chutney:

• Recipe courtesy-My dear Aunt

Ingredients:

• Tomatoes, chopped – 4 nos
• Small onion, chopped – 10 nos
• Garlic, minced – 1tsp
• Cumin seeds- 1 tsp
• Chilly powder – 3/4 tsp
• Salt – to taste
• Oil – 2 tsp
• Tamarind, fresh- 1 inch slice soaked in 1 1/2 tbsp water

For seasoning:

• Mustard seeds – 1 tsp
• Dry Red whole chilly – 2
• Curry leaves – 4 – 5 nos
• Oil – 1 tbsp

Preparation:

• Heat oil on a wide pan, add onion and saute till tender.
• Add the tomatoes, cumin seeds, garlic, chilly powder, salt and saute until the tomatoes get mashed up.

• Remove from the flame and let cool down slightly.
• Grind this to a smooth paste and pour it into a bowl.

• Soak tamarind in 1 1/2 tbsp warm water.
• In the same pan, heat 1tsp oil, splutter mustard seeds, add dry red whole chilly and curry leaves to it.
• Pour the ground tomato paste to the seasoning, add the tamarind juice to it and let the chutney come to a slight boil.
• Taste it and add more salt if needed.
• You could even sprinkle chopped cilantro over it.

Dosa:

Ingredients:

• Raw Rice, ponni rice or sonamassori rice- 2 cups
• Black lentil or Urad dal- 1cup
• Chana dal- 1/4 cup
• Fenugreek seeds- 2 tsp
• Water- enough to make the batter
• Ghee

Making the Dosa batter:

• Wash the rice, lentil and chana dal well.
• Soak rice, lentil, chana dal and fenugreek seeds in water for about 6 hours or overnight.
• Drain all the water from the rice and lentils and grind it to a smooth paste by adding little water to it.

• Pour the thick batter into a large bowl and add enough water to thin it down.

• Keep the batter aside in a warm place and allow it to ferment, which will take 6 hours or so.
• During summer the batter will ferment faster, so you could keep it on the kitchen counter top.
• During winter it takes a long time, so keep the bowl with the batter inside the oven this will speed up the fermentation.

Making Dosa:

• After the batter has fermented, take as much as batter as you want in a separate bowl and refrigerate the rest which will last for few weeks.

• Add little salt to the batter and combine well.
• Heat a non-stick pan or cast iron over medium high heat.
• Spread little ghee on the pan.
• Fill the ladle with dosa batter and gently pour the batter onto the center of the pan till the ladle is empty.

• Now begin to spread the batter in circular motion till it forms a thin round shape.

• The dosa will start to develop tiny holes at this time.
• Drizzle little ghee over the dosa and lift the pan and swirl so that the ghee will spread all over the dosa.
• When the top part looks cooked, flip it to the other side.

• The bottom part will have a golden brown color and let the both sides turn light golden brown.
• Remove from the pan and keep aside.

For making Tomato Dosa:

• Spread the prepared tomato chutney over each dosa and fold it.

• Serve this with tomato chutney on the side.

Tips:

• Serve dosa while it is hot.
• You could keep the dosa batter in the refrigerator, it will last for few weeks.
• For making crispy dosa: increase the amount of Rice.
• For making soft dosa: increase the amount of Black lentil or Urad dal.
• You could increase the size of the dosa accordingly, for making huge rounded dosa you need huge pans.
• Make dosa on a cast iron, this will give better results.