Daring Cooks - Indian Dosas with Curried Garbanzo Filling & Coconut Curry Sauce

The September daring cooks challenge is hosted by Debyi from The Healthy Vegan Kitchen and the challenge is to make Indian dosas from the re-Fresh cookbook by Ruth Tal. Original recipes can be found here. When I saw her requirements clearly stating that it must be free of animal products which means, no cows milk, butter, meat, poultry, fish, chicken/beef broth, etc. I thought, oh my, the wild boar is not going to like this - he likes his meat. A lot.


Anyway, I went ahead and really enjoyed this month's challenge. The recipes were fairly simple and everything was super duper tasty especially the curried chickpea filling with fish cakes (oops! Sorry, I like my meat too =P). The coconut sauce was really delicious, I could eat it with just rice. We didn't really enjoy the pancakes, we had one each and ate the rest of the filling and sauce with rice - yummilicious! Nothing wrong with the pancakes, but we love our rice. The pancakes tasted different from what I'm used to. Firstly, we call it thosai in Malaysia and these pancakes are normally made with rice and black lentils.

Dosa pancakes

Ingredients: makes 8 pancakes
120g plain flour1/2 tsp salt1/2 tsp baking powder1/2 tsp curry powder1/2 cup soy milk3/4 cup water
Directions:
Mix together all dry ingredients in a mixing bowl.Slowly whisk in milk and water. Whisk until smooth.Heat up a non-stick pan, spray a thin layer of cooking spray onto pan.Ladle batter into the center of your pan. Tilt pan in a circular motion while pouring in the batter for batter to distribute and form a thin round pancake.When bubbles appear on the surface and it no longer looks wet, flip it over and cook for a few seconds. Remove from heat and repeat with remaining batter.
I used a metal ladle to ladle out the batter (1 full ladle for 1 pancake). 2tbs as stated in the original recipe was very little.

Curried Garbanzo Filling

Ingredients: serves 4-5
5 cloves garlic1 large onion - diced1 carrot - cut into small cubes1 bell pepper (any colour) - cut into small cubes2 red chili - minced2 tbs cumin powder1 tbs oregano powder1 tbs turmeric2 cans (480g drained eight in total) chickpeas in brine - drained and mashed1/2 cup tomato puree1 cup water1 1/2 tsp salt3 tsp sugar
Directions:
Heat up a bit of oil in a pan, saute onion until soft.Add garlic, fry until fragrant.Mix in chili, cumin, oregano and turmeric, stir fry until fragrant.Add carrot, pepper, stir fry until soft. I had to add a bit of water for the carrots to soften.When carrots have softened and all water absorbed, turn heat to low, stir in chickpeas and tomato puree. The mixture was very dry and hard to mix, so I added 1 cup of water to get the consistency I desired.Add salt and sugar to taste.
Coconut Curry Sauce

Ingredients: serves 4-5
1 large onion - diced2 cloves garlic1 tsp cumin3 tbs curry powder2 1/2 tbs plain flour450ml vegetable stock (low sodium)1 can (400ml) coconut milk3 tomatoes - coarsely chopped3/4 tsp salt
Directions:
Heat up a bit of oil in a saucepan, saute onions until soft.Add garlic, saute until fragrant.Mix in cumin and curry powder. Fry until fragrant.Stir in plain flour, mix for about a minute.Slowly stir in vegetable stock to prevent lumps from forming.Once the flour has been incorporated, add coconut milk and tomatoes.Bring to boil, lower heat to simmer until the sauce has reduced to 2/3 - 3/4 of its original volume (about 1 hr).