The spiced Indian crêpe is a versatile and evolving handheld item
The on-the-go-consumer, who seems to include most consumers most of the time these days, is on a continual search for new and exciting things to put in their mouth, ideally while holding their meal in one hand and managing their busy life with the other. If the food has familiar ingredients but is a little bit different, that’s a bonus, and if it’s high in protein, gluten-free, and vegan, even better. If it comes from a trendy cuisine, you might very well have a winner.
All of that can be found in a dosa.
This southern Indian stuffed crêpe is made mostly from rice and lentils, plus a healthy amount of the spice fenugreek, which has a striking maple-like flavor with herbaceous qualities. All of that is fermented together until it swells into a bubbling batter, then it’s griddled. It’s traditionally spread with a little oil or ghee, dusted with spiced, powdered lentils, and often stuffed with spiced potatoes. It’s normally served with three different condiments, certainly on trend with consumers’ penchant for dipping sauces: Coconut chutney, tomato chutney, and a spiced lentil broth called sambar.
“I grew up on Dosas,” said Jay Kumar, chef and owner of Lore in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he offers global cuisine with a south Indian palate. He grew up in Mangalore in the Indian state of Karnataka, but worked in Switzerland for 30 years, so he offers dishes like fish and chips, for which the fish is marinated with spices from India’s Malabar coast; duck leg confit with turmeric, coconut, and tamarind; and a vegan mushroom ragout inspired by a Swiss veal-and-mushroom dish.
And he makes classic dosas by soaking, separately, a rice variety called sona masuri and skinless urad dal lentils for 6-8 hours. A substantial amount of fenugreek is added — Kumar’s ratio is three quarts of rice, one quart of lentils, and a cup of fenugreek seeds — and it’s all blended together until creamy and allowed to ferment in a warm place until it roughly doubles in size, which he said takes 6-8 hours in summer and 8-12 hours in winter.
“You see it bubbling. It’s so amazing, like there’s life in there,” Kumar said. “When you first blend it, it’s got this fresh smell of rice and lentils, but once it’s fermented it has this gaminess.”
He said that the fenugreek helps create the desired sourness in the batter and also makes the finished crêpe crispier.
Lore, in Brooklyn, N.Y., serves classic dosas, masala dosas, and uttapam, which is another term for thick dosas. Photo courtesy of Lore
He cooks it on a cast-iron griddle, which results in a “beautiful crispiness on the outside and the amazing softness on the inside.”
Once the edge of the dosa starts to turn brown, he brushes it with ghee or coconut oil and then dusts it with a spice blend that’s commonly referred to as “gunpowder.” Kumar’s version is made with dried chiles, dehydrated garlic, curry leaves, and five different types of lentils that are all toasted separately and then ground together into a powder.
Kumar also offers his guests the most classic form of dosa, the masala dosa, which is stuffed with spiced potatoes. His version is potatoes that are cooked, smashed, and mixed with onions, urad dal, garlic, ginger, mustard seed, turmeric, green chiles, and coriander powder.
The masala dosa at Lungi, a new South Indian and Sri Lankan restaurant on New York City’s Upper East Side, is somewhat different in that chef and owner Albin Vincent adds cashews to it.
“That’s an authentic way of doing it,” he said. “It tastes better … but a lot of people are allergic to nuts.”
He also serves a plain podi dosa, made by simply brushing the cooked crêpe with a gunpowder of roasted lentils, garlic, and red chile, and Rameswaram dosas, named for a town in the Tamil Nadu state in India’s southeast, which are thicker — more like pancakes.
Another term for thick dosas is uttapam, which Kumar serves at Lore dressed with his Swiss-inspired mushroom ragout.
Dosa at Lungi. Photo courtesy of Lungi
Dosas are spreading in popularity but still have plenty of runway, according to Technomic. They’re on just under 1% of menus, but over the past year grew by 15% on appetizer menus.
They’re going to be on the menu at Tapori, a restaurant slated to open in Washington, D.C., in January that will offer food inspired by the street markets of the Indian subcontinent, from Sri Lanka in the south to the Himalaya mountains in the north.
It’s being opened by restaurateurs Dante Datta and chef Suresh Sundas, who also operate Daru, an “Indianish” restaurant, as they call it, in D.C., where Indian techniques and flavors are used in dishes with global influences.
Tapori’s kitchen will be headed up by Babu Ram, who lives in Nepal but lived in South India, where dosas are from, for 15 years.
Ram takes a slightly different approach when making his dosa, par-boiling half of the rice before mixing it with the soaked rice and lentils. He plans on offering one with spiced potato and cheese, and another with curried crab.
Imran “Ali” Mookhi, chef of Shor Bazaar in Hawaiian Gardens, Calif., outside Los Angeles, said dosa’s popularity is spreading in India as well. Once confined to the South, it can now be found in the North, as well as in Pakistan, where Mookhi grew up.
“When I left Pakistan 25 years ago, I never saw dosa,” he said. “But now when I go back they take me out for dosas. … That’s how we came up with the idea of adding dosas at Shor Bazaar.”
However, he has noticed that his Pakistani customers order dosas as appetizers, whereas guests from southern India order them as a meal.
He offers traditional masala dosas, but also stuffs them with other popular Indian dishes, like butter chicken and keema, or ground beef cooked with onion, tomatoes, ginger, and garlic. He also offers an off-menu item for kids that is a dosa, minus the gunpowder, with Nutella, banana, and shredded coconut.
Kumar of Lore also has served a dessert inspired by a sweet that his grandmother made by spreading a dosa with ghee and then topping it with a South Asian brown sugar called jaggery mixed with coconut, powdered cardamom, and a little honey.
Although Mookhi grew up in Pakistan, his mother and grandparents are from South India, and he uses their recipes, which are a bit different from some others’ in that he lets the rice and lentils ferment for around 12 hours and then adds soaked and puréed fenugreek and lets it ferment for another four hours.
“That’s how they have been doing it back home,” he said.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected]
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