Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Recipe: Cucumber Dosa

Dosa is dosai to the Tambrams. Sweet Dosai was an integral part of our Sivarathri festival. As the full fast on Sivarathri day meant abstinence from salt, people ate vella dosai (sweet dosa) and paruppu kanji after offering pooja in the evening to break the fast. The conventional Vella dosas are prepared from wheat flour and jaggery, the recipe for which I shall post later. As my (handsome and charming) son has developed gluten allergy, this Sivarathri I made a gluten free vella dosa.

To all of us who thought cucumbers are only for salads, it would come as a surprise that you can make yummy breakfast spreads also with cucumber. I know many people who cook cucumber into Majjige huli (morekozhambu) and Kootu. It also makes an excellent cooling drink for the summer months.

This vella dosa is made from cool cucumber, rice, coconut and jaggery and is a Mangalorean dish.Most of us have had cucumber only in salads and hence this sure is a different way of having that cool vegetable. I had only heard about them from some of my Mangalore acquaintances and hence the recipe is my own. This recipe will give a nice, soft and yummy vella dosa, though I cannot vouch for the originality of the recipe. Perhaps the original version is different.

Ingredients
Cucumber 1 (medium size) about 250gms.
Rice: 1 cup
Jaggery: 2 tbsp.
Grated coconut: 2 tbsp.
Salt a pinch
Oil to fry the dosa

Method

Wash and soak the rice in just enough water to wet the rice. Wash and grate the cucumber. Mix the grated cucumber with the soaked rice (cucumber juice will ooze out of grated cucumber and soak the rice well) and allow to soak for 3 hours. Grind the soaked rice, grated cucumber and all the other ingredients, except the oil, to a smooth batter.

Make dosas immediately. You need to use very little oil if using a non-stick tava. The vella dosa tastes yummy with a dollop of butter on top.

Njoy!

7 comments:

Janaki Gopikrishna said...

Even the jaggery has to be grated in this!!. So there is no preparation of paagu also (heating the jaggery)

Ammupatti said...

Hi Janaki

Yes, it is such a simple and delicious preparation.

Happy cooking

AMIT said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

what rice do you use, raw rice or idli rice, kindly clarify. can you also put a picture of the dosa. will kids only like it or adults too?

can the dosa batter be kept for next day?

Ammupatti said...

Hi Anonymous

Use raw rice. Anyone with a sweet tooth will love this dosa. The batter can be refirgerated and used the next day.

My photo of the dosa wasn't upto the mark. Next time perhaps.

Vinitha said...

This is one is Mangalorean? Cool I must really try this sometime and you have recipes for most of my favorite dishes like Kashi halwa etc..loved your blog :)

pooja said...

I tried it out. Loved the sweetish dosa! Thanks for the recipe Ammupatti :)