Beaten Rice and Tomato crepes ( Tomato Aval Dosai)

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In the past I have written about the large quantities of sugar that just one can of soda contains, but if you thought this would not matter because you would easily replace regular soda with diet soda than you may want to read on....... One of the side effects of diet soda seems to be weight gain, why ?? because studies show that artificial sweeteners added to diet soda actually cause us to gain weight rather than lose weight. Ironic isn't it that something that is called "diet soda" actually causes weight gain instead of loss. Here is one such study featured on the abc news site on this topic if you want to read more about this.

Moving on to the other purpose of this post....the recipe ! I was in a bit of a funk because I had not experimented in a long while in my kitchen and wanted to do something "different". My need for something different but something that was quick to make and good enough for a light dinner resulted in this recipe. Just soak, grind and make, simple ! The tomatoes I added lend a certain tartness to the dish making the process of fermentation of batter as is normally done for traditional rice+ lentil crepe (dosai) unnecessary. The idea behind adding barley simply is that I haven't used barley in a long while and I thought this may be a good dish to sneak it in and it was :-) The beaten rice lends a softness and texture to the crepe (dosai) that made me feel I need to use it more often in my crepes :-)

Click here for a printable view of this recipe

Ingredients and Method to make Aval dosai

1 cup beaten rice (aval / jada poha)

1 cup white rice

1 cup brown rice

1/4 cup fine barley

1/2 tsp fenugreek seeds (methi seeds)

2 medium tomatoes ( I used roma tomatoes)

3 green chillies (small Thai or Indian variety ) (or according to taste)

2 dry red chillies (or according to taste)

salt according to taste

a few drops of sesame oil to shallow fry the crepes

Mix together, white rice , brown rice, barley and fenugreek seeds in a large container. Wash all these grains and drain water. Fill container with plenty of water and allow grains to soak for at least 3 hours.

Grind together tomatoes, green chillies and red chillies to a smooth paste and keep aside.

Place beaten rice in a bowl, wash it in water, drain water and keep aside for at least 15 mins.

Grind the rice+ barley+ fenugreek seeds mixture in a blender/ mixer in batches until soft and smooth.Add a little of the beaten rice to this and grind again. Keep this ground mixture aside and continue to process until all grains and beaten rice are ground. The batter should be thickish a little like cake batter.

Add ground tomatoes+ chillies mixture to the batter, salt to taste and mix well.

Adjust water as required to achieve pouring consistency to the batter.

Heat a tawa/ griddle/ flat pan on medium to medium high heat. Pour a little batter in the center and quickly spread it out into a thin circle.

Pour a few drops of sesame oil on the top of the crepe. Turn crepe when the lower side is a little brownish.

Flip over and cook the other side.

Serve hot with chutney/ spice powder (molaga podi )/ spiced coconut powder

Yield will depend on size of crepes.

Notes

If you like a softer dosai make it thicker and more like a pancake.

If you like a crisper dosai spread the batter more to make a thinner and crisper dosai.

This crepe is off to Padma's Dosa Corner event