Cucumber Dosai (No fermentation required)

A couple of weeks ago, a dear friend’s daughter got married. It was a beautiful wedding. Among the many events leading up to the wedding was the Mehandi and Sangeet evening. I volunteered to make food for this event. The bride wanted it to be a chaat party and they were expecting about a hundred people. My menu included dahi balla, ragada patties, jaal muri, and ras malai. They ordered samosas and dhoklas from a catering service.

The event went off well, but since it was my first time cooking for this big a crowd, and because I had grossly overestimated quantities, I ended up with a ton of leftovers. We were able to donate the leftover ragada and ras malai to temple nearyby. I froze the remaining patties, chutneys, the fresh cut onions, and tomatoes (from the jaal muri ingredients). I used up the boiled potatoes to make aloo bondas.

I had to come up with creative ways of using the cucumber. I did serve it as a salad for a few meals, but that was getting repetitive. I used it in dal (Vahchef has a nice recipe for cucumber dal), made another batch of jaal muri, just for us, and still had some left. Then I remembered a dosai recipe my friend Poorni had told me about.

This is a quick and easy recipe and the batter does not require fermentation. Dosas come out really well. You can adjust the consistency of your batter depending on how you like your dosas (crispy or soft)

Cucumber Dosai (No fermentation required) Prep. time: 2 hours (soaking time) Cooking time: 15 minutes Yield: about 8 - 10 dosas Here is what you need: 1 cup raw rice 1 cucumber, finely chopped (I used English cucumber and did not peel the skin) 1 tsp cumin seeds 2 - 3 green chilies ½ cup grated coconut salt to taste ¼ cup urad dal flour or rice flour (optional - see note) oil to make the dosas Here’s how I made it: To make the batter: Soak washed rice in water for a couple of hours. Drain the water and grind the rice with cucumber, cumin seeds, green chilies, coconut, and salt, adding very little water. Adjust the consistency of the batter by adding water if necessary. If the batter is too runny, either add rice flour or urad dal flour, till you get the desired consistency. To make the dosas: Heat a tawa or a griddle.  Pour a ladle full of batter onto the heated tawa and spread it out as thin as you can. If you don't like crispy dosas, you can make it slightly thicker. Drizzle oil around the dosa. Wait for a few minutes – maybe about 2 - 3 minutes and then carefully flip it over, using a flat spatula. Cook on both sides till the dosa is crispy. Serve hot with chutney, sambar or milagai podi Note: I added a little bit of urad flour to my batter because it became very watery. It is completely optional. I forgot that cucumber also had a lot of water content and did not reduce the amount of water I used while grinding.