Adai Dosa

Adai is a very popular and healthy breakfast item served in South Indian restaurants. It’s frequently made in most of the households too mainly for the ease of preparation, nutritive value and taste. Unlike the traditional fermented dosa, this can be made in less than 2 hours right from soaking of the ingredients to serving it. Adai tastes great when paired with tomato chutney or avial. But do not forget to have

some jaggery and a dollop of butter along with it.

There is really no hard and fast rule as far as the ingredients are concerned. You can use a handful of many pulses and soak them along with rice and then grind them together till you get a coarse batter. Add in loads of curry leaves, which is otherwise a bit difficult for us to make our family consume. Red chilies can be substituted with green chilies if you desire so. Do not skip adding the asafoetida as it really increases the flavour of these adai dosa. I prefer to use sesame oil for all my dosas. You may use refined oil if you like. Idli rice can be replaced with normal boiled rice. Also note that unlike normal dosa, the ingredients need not be soaked overnight or for 7-8 hours. Just an hour of soaking is fine enough. This ensure that you get a nice crispy and crunchy adai dosa. The remaining batter can be refrigerated and used the next day. However, the next day these adai would turn out a bit softer.

Ingredients:

• Idli rice 1/2 cup
• Raw rice 1/2 cup
• Chana dal 1/2 cup
• Green moong 1/2 cup
• Udad dal 2 tbsp
• Onion 1
• Dry red chilies 3-4
• Curry leaves handful
• Asafoetida 2 pinches
• Salt to taste
• Pepper corns 8-9
• Sesame oil as required

Method:

• Wash the rice and dal and soak them in water for 1-2 hours.
• Grind the ingredients into a coarse and thick batter.
• Add salt and allow the batter to rest for atleast half an hour.

• Adjust the consistency by adding water. It should be a bit thicker than normal dosa batter.
• Heat an iron tawa or skillet and pour a ladle full of batter into it.
• Shape into a medium thick dosa and drizzle liberal amount of sesame oil on top.

• Flip and cook the other side too. Drizzle some more oil if desired.
• Serve it hot with any chutney of your choice.

• Adai-avial is a classic combination in many south Indian restaurants which is served along with some jaggery and a dollop of fresh unsalted butter.

Notes:

• To make this dish more nutritive, you can add some fresh drumstick leaves in the batter.
• One can add other pulses like toor dal, horse gram, moong dal etc.
• You can refer the blog for a recipe of millet adai dosa.