Of late the various exhibitions and haats at New Delhi make it much easier to buy bags of whole millets. Recently, I made multigrain dosa batter with whole grain millets instead of using the ground powdered flours that chakkis make available.
By multigrain dosas, one is not referring to the teaspoon of crushed grains that remain perched on the outer crust of brown coloured breads sold in stores. In multigrain dosas, what you get is a nutritionally viable apportioning of different grains. In fact, although white rice has far superior food value in comparison to white flour or maida, it is possible to make delicious multigrain dosas and use very little rice or none at all, depending on the emotional quotient attached to rice.
Inspired in all probability by Masterchef, I decided to choose a 'hero' (why can't an ingredient be referred to as a heroine, I wonder) for the dosa and settled upon bhindi or okra, also known as ladies finger. The gender of bhindi not withstanding, I fell back upon the old practice of getting maximum mileage out of the vegetable.
Conventional cooking tends to discard the heads of okra and sometimes the tails too. In fact, both parts are equally edible. I needed the okra slit in two for the sambaar, so I divested about six hundred grams of okra of its heads. Around two hundred grams of slit okra suffices for sambaar that can be eaten heartily by four to five people. The rest of the okra, I saved for traditional bhindi poriyal, where the vegetable is tossed into a mustard seed and green chilli garnish, cooked completely , seasoned with salt and adorned with two table spoons of fresh coconut scrapings before serving.
I ground the heads of the bhindi along with one cup of white double urad, one cup of red rice, one cup of jaun (barley or pearl millet) and one cup of mandua (ragi or finger millet), and one spoonful of methi seeds, all of which had been soaking for over two hours. This is ground to a fine consistency to get smooth batter. It also works if you soak the rice, millets and the lentils overnight.
Again, if you have only one millet in grain form and the other millet is in powder form, do not hesitate to add a heaped cupful of millet flour to the ground batter. In fact, it is also possible to grind only the urad daal and add one heaped cup each of different flours or three cups of the same flour to the lentil batter.
Add salt, asafoetida and chopped curry leaves to the ground batter and keep aside for about an hour, especially if the grains have not been soaked overnight. In fact while the batter is gathering itself up, it is a good idea to get the vegetable, the sambaar and the chutney ready.
Apply a thin coating of oil to the griddle and allow it to warm up. Check to see if the griddle is ready by sprinkling a fistful of water on to the hot griddle. When the water evaporates, pour out a ladle of batter and swirl it into a circular motion, keeping the ladle flat till you get a large circle of batter spread out to resemble the dosas you may have eaten. Allow it to cook, lower the heat and gently turn over.
This dosa tastes suggestively of okra, which provides vegetable nutrition, fibre and a gelatinous texture to bind the batter together, making it easier to roll out dosas by the ladle. Unless severely dosa- challenged, around twelve to fifteen multigrain dosas can be easily turned out on an ordinary iron griddle, with this quantity of batter.
Serve hot with okra sambaar, coconut chutney and gunpowder, and if you are daring enough, add a serving of the okra vegetable. Wash this down with buttermilk if it is close to lunch time. Otherwise there is always hot filter coffee.
By multigrain dosas, one is not referring to the teaspoon of crushed grains that remain perched on the outer crust of brown coloured breads sold in stores. In multigrain dosas, what you get is a nutritionally viable apportioning of different grains. In fact, although white rice has far superior food value in comparison to white flour or maida, it is possible to make delicious multigrain dosas and use very little rice or none at all, depending on the emotional quotient attached to rice.
Inspired in all probability by Masterchef, I decided to choose a 'hero' (why can't an ingredient be referred to as a heroine, I wonder) for the dosa and settled upon bhindi or okra, also known as ladies finger. The gender of bhindi not withstanding, I fell back upon the old practice of getting maximum mileage out of the vegetable.
Conventional cooking tends to discard the heads of okra and sometimes the tails too. In fact, both parts are equally edible. I needed the okra slit in two for the sambaar, so I divested about six hundred grams of okra of its heads. Around two hundred grams of slit okra suffices for sambaar that can be eaten heartily by four to five people. The rest of the okra, I saved for traditional bhindi poriyal, where the vegetable is tossed into a mustard seed and green chilli garnish, cooked completely , seasoned with salt and adorned with two table spoons of fresh coconut scrapings before serving.
I ground the heads of the bhindi along with one cup of white double urad, one cup of red rice, one cup of jaun (barley or pearl millet) and one cup of mandua (ragi or finger millet), and one spoonful of methi seeds, all of which had been soaking for over two hours. This is ground to a fine consistency to get smooth batter. It also works if you soak the rice, millets and the lentils overnight.
Again, if you have only one millet in grain form and the other millet is in powder form, do not hesitate to add a heaped cupful of millet flour to the ground batter. In fact, it is also possible to grind only the urad daal and add one heaped cup each of different flours or three cups of the same flour to the lentil batter.
Add salt, asafoetida and chopped curry leaves to the ground batter and keep aside for about an hour, especially if the grains have not been soaked overnight. In fact while the batter is gathering itself up, it is a good idea to get the vegetable, the sambaar and the chutney ready.
Apply a thin coating of oil to the griddle and allow it to warm up. Check to see if the griddle is ready by sprinkling a fistful of water on to the hot griddle. When the water evaporates, pour out a ladle of batter and swirl it into a circular motion, keeping the ladle flat till you get a large circle of batter spread out to resemble the dosas you may have eaten. Allow it to cook, lower the heat and gently turn over.
This dosa tastes suggestively of okra, which provides vegetable nutrition, fibre and a gelatinous texture to bind the batter together, making it easier to roll out dosas by the ladle. Unless severely dosa- challenged, around twelve to fifteen multigrain dosas can be easily turned out on an ordinary iron griddle, with this quantity of batter.
Serve hot with okra sambaar, coconut chutney and gunpowder, and if you are daring enough, add a serving of the okra vegetable. Wash this down with buttermilk if it is close to lunch time. Otherwise there is always hot filter coffee.
