After seeing dosa being made by 
I realized that I may or may not have had a dosa before. In Bangkok last winter, we went to a popular Indian restaurant that was known for having quite a few vegan options. They even had items marked "Vegan". The place was called Dosa King. You would think that if we went to a place called Dosa King that we would have eaten dosa. The thing is that we were so displeased with the service that we don't recall anything that we ate. I know there was some kind of bread, that could have been naan, or perhaps dosa. The food had a good taste but it was cold. The servers were extra terrible and made us feel like we were not welcome. This was unusual in Bangkok by our experience. We read the reviews. They were mixed. Some said it was the best place ever and others described the same experience as us. We told our friends about it and they said they had a bad experience as well. We thought perhaps they didn't like foreigners even though one of our friends was Thai and I am Thai in appearance.
I don't eat at Indian restaurants in this city because I don't trust that they will omit the ghee. If dining were permitted I would go and make the request but for take out, it's a no go for us. We have four Indian restaurants within three minutes walk from our apartment.
I decided to give it a go and make dosa for the first time. Please don't shame me. It was a fail if I were to be judge by an expert Indian cook, but for me it is the beginning of many possibilities in different foods of the world. I noticed in my research that there are so many variations of every Indian food and breads that I would have to study over two lifetimes to know everything.
Since I have little energy working late afternoons and evenings, I cut corners in order to experiment. I followed the basic guide lines. I omitted the yeast. I also did not get a good fermentation. It's still not very warm so it didn't really ferment. That was a fail. I used rice and yellow mung beans. It's what I had.
Apparently you only have to soak it for one hour but I left it overnight. Okay I kind of forgot it. The next day I blended it in a food processor and a blender. I have bad machines so it took a while to make it smooth adding a little water bit by bit. Finally it was smooth. I was super excited to try cooking this. I put it in a bowl and put it in my non functioning oven to ferment with pans of hot water in it. It did not do the job. Dosa fail.
I was not going to waste the effort, and besides it was an experiment. The next day was the moment of truth. It didn't look like the photos of other awesome dosas, however this was the first time in my life that I have made a pancake like this without flour of any kind. The excitement of this was worth the fail.
They were totally misshapen and made me laugh a bit. I added fenugreek seeds and carom (aswain) seeds to the mix before hand. Those are the spots.
The carom seeds I ordered online by accident a while back and I have them sitting in my cupboard. They taste a bit like oregano, but different.
I needed a filling and it seems potatoes are number one on the list even though I was scared of how filling it would be. I did my own rendition of the classics. I have certain items in my fridge. I also was strapped for time since this was breakfast before work. We have breakfast at around noon.
I won't give a recipe, as this is not an instructional post. I am mostly sharing my experiment and discoveries as pathetic as it may seem to some that are pros at this stuff. I will say what I put in.
Potatoes cooked and slightly mashed, carrots, onion, garlic, ginger, hot chili, cilantro, cabbage, tomato, dry chili, cumin, coriander, garam masala, mustard seeds.
I started with cooking the onions, then garlic, ginger, shallots and peppers. I added the rest of the ingredients along with the tempered spices ,cabbage and cooked potatoes. The tomatoes were from a can. I didn't have fresh ones at the time.
There was no time to make chutney so I put a dab of onion chili jam that was given to me. It was in a jar. I know this is so mish mosh and would be laughed at by the pros, but we thoroughly enjoyed this.
Marc didn't know that it was entirely gluten free and was blown away by it when I told him.
It is an endless journey to discover all of the foods that are consumed around the world. I should consider myself lucky that I have access to many things that are not available in some countries. I wish I had fresh tropical fruits and plants that are not to be found, but there are still enough things to work with here.
This is only the beginning of my foreign food journey. I have put another batch of rice mung bean mixture to ferment. I will not stop until it smells like it's fermented. So exciting.
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