Recipe: Cucumber Dosa

Dosa is dosai to the Tambrams. Sweet Dosai was an integral part of our Sivarathri festival. As the full fast on Sivarathri day meant abstinence from salt, people ate vella dosai (sweet dosa) and paruppu kanji after offering pooja in the evening to break the fast. The conventional Vella dosas are prepared from wheat flour and jaggery, the recipe for which I shall post later. As my (handsome and charming) son has developed gluten allergy, this Sivarathri I made a gluten free vella dosa.

To all of us who thought cucumbers are only for salads, it would come as a surprise that you can make yummy breakfast spreads also with cucumber. I know many people who cook cucumber into Majjige huli (morekozhambu) and Kootu. It also makes an excellent cooling drink for the summer months.

This vella dosa is made from cool cucumber, rice, coconut and jaggery and is a Mangalorean dish.Most of us have had cucumber only in salads and hence this sure is a different way of having that cool vegetable. I had only heard about them from some of my Mangalore acquaintances and hence the recipe is my own. This recipe will give a nice, soft and yummy vella dosa, though I cannot vouch for the originality of the recipe. Perhaps the original version is different.

Ingredients
Cucumber 1 (medium size) about 250gms.
Rice: 1 cup
Jaggery: 2 tbsp.
Grated coconut: 2 tbsp.
Salt a pinch
Oil to fry the dosa

Method

Wash and soak the rice in just enough water to wet the rice. Wash and grate the cucumber. Mix the grated cucumber with the soaked rice (cucumber juice will ooze out of grated cucumber and soak the rice well) and allow to soak for 3 hours. Grind the soaked rice, grated cucumber and all the other ingredients, except the oil, to a smooth batter.

Make dosas immediately. You need to use very little oil if using a non-stick tava. The vella dosa tastes yummy with a dollop of butter on top.

Njoy!