Dosa delights: A personal journey through flavours and nostalgia

I have a weekly dosa ritual. Every Saturday, I make my way to a vegetarian restaurant for a ghee roast, vada, and filter coffee. I could have had anything — appams, puttu, or idli — but I prefer a dosa.

Why not masala dosa? Well, it used to be masala dosa, until my gut began to protest the spicy potato mix. So I switched to ghee dosa: just a crepe made of fermented rice and lentil batter. And ghee is clarified butter, in case you didn’t know.

Plain dosa has always been a favourite. The best dosas were made in my mother’s kitchen. Neither big nor too small, they were lovingly turned into perfect circles with the soft sweep of a ladle. Soft yet crisp around the edges, I like the ones with a golden hue and just a hint of red.

If it’s a dosa, it has to be accompanied by sambar. My mother made the best sambar in the world; my sister made the second best, and I could whip up a decent one. The sambar was so good that I didn’t even need the thega chammanthi (coconut chutney, to non-Keralites). In fact, I had an aversion to chutney for a long time.

Dislikes turn into likes when you live away from home. A long stint in Bengalore introduced me to the world of Udupi cuisine. I hated the Udupi sambar but took a liking to the peanut-based chutney. Soon I began to slurp the sambar too. By the time I left Bangalore after a decade, there wasn’t an ounce of sambar left in my bowl.

Sambar has weathered the ravages of time without surrendering much. The readymade sambar mix never quite levels the playing field — it lacks the body and character of a well-made sambar found in many homes.

Dosas weren’t as lucky. They lost the plot in the race to save time. After a stressful day at work, many women no longer have the time or inclination to make that perfect blend of batter. The answer to breakfast now lies in packets of batter from the neighbourhood grocery. This batter has battered the reputation of the dosa.

All dosas taste the same. Yours, your friend’s — they all may have come from the same grinder. They taste the same. The same tastelessness.

That’s why I switched to masala dosas, and finally to the ghee roast. I steer clear of sambar now; my acidity won’t permit even an occasional indulgence. The chutneys make up for it. Especially the tangy tomato chutney.

I can’t wait for Saturday. The only problem is picking the restaurant. Al Hamba is the quick stop — their sambar reminds me of my Bangalore days. For a change, I skip over to Sangeetha, sometimes Amrutha, or even Saravana.

Which is the best? I can’t make up my mind. They’re all good. But not a patch on my mother’s dosa.