Dosai can be super crispy or a little bit fluffy, and it is great for eating with curries and chutneys (chutney is a room-temperature sauce made out of coconut and other flavors, including mint and tomato).
When I first tried dosai, I was overwhelmed by how rich it was. However, now that I am able to make dosai at home, I can make it with less oil and ghee (similar to melted butter with a more intense salted butter flavor) and so it is not as rich. A good crispy dosai makes me very happy and is great when I need a break from rice. I am always happy to eat dosai, but I do have to be careful and use the dosai to tone down the spiciness of some of the sambars (a lentil-based gravy) and chutneys served with dosai.
There are two ways to get dosai batter: (1) grind rice into rice flour and dal and other ingredients and then mix them with water and let it sit overnight or (2) buy batter at the supermarket. Once you have the batter, you heat a flat pan on the stove. Take a scoop of batter in a flat-bottomed ladle and pour the batter on the pan. You then use the ladle to spread out the batter in a circular motion that leaves little stripes of slightly thicker batter in a spiral shape. This is tricky to master because it requires enough experience to know how to hold the ladle so that you make the dosai super thin and crispy but also avoid tearing a whole in the dosai. Once the batter is spread out, you put some oil or ghee on the dosai and wait for the dosai to start looking brown. Then, flip the dosai and let it cook for a few seconds before serving the dosai hot with chutney or sambar or masala potatoes. Yum!
