Tomato Onion Uthappam (along with Dosa batter recipe)

I guess everyone of us make dosa at home and most of 'em should be fed up with eating plain dosas right? At least, I donot admire dosas much if its gonna be routine. Hence, I thought of blogging an easy-to-make uthappam which is very filling n yummy! Now, for those unaware of what uthappam is, it can be considered as an extension of dosas, say a spicier version. Wondering what it is? Interesting part of the story is, you may not even need to prepare a curry or side dish for this version of dosa..easy job done!!!

I guess most of the neutral family guys buy the readymade dosa batter. Anyways, I'm jotting down the plain dosa recipe for all types of sweet families and also for those who wish to learn apart from buying the readymade version everyday.

Ingredients for the Dosa batter:

Raw Rice (Pachari) : 2 cups

Urad dal (Uzhunnu) : 1 cup

Powdered Fenugreek / methi seeds (uluva) : 1/2 tspn

Leftover cooked rice : 2 tbspn or curd : 1 tbspn

Salt : as required

Soda bi-carbonate (sodappodi) : 1/2 tspn

Ingredients for Uthappam:

Finely sliced tomato : 2 nos.

Finely sliced onion : 1 no.

Sliced green chilly : 3 nos.

Salt : to taste

Mix all the above uthappam ingredients with your hand and keep aside.

This is how we make dosa batter ; 

• Wash the rice and dal thoroughly.
• Add methi seeds to it and soak them in plenty of water and leave overnight or for 6 -8 hours for fermentation, in a warm place.
• Wash the mixture again and grind them using a mixie/ wet grinder to make a batter of thick to medium consistency, along with just the required amount of water.
• While grinding, you may add some leftover cooked rice/curd for the idlis / dosas to be too fluffy.
• Once you got a thick batter, add soda powder and required salt to the batter. Now, for that, take a spoon of the batter and mix the soda powder n salt thoroughly in that batter and then mix the same in the whole batter thoroughly.Check salt and add more if required.
• Keep the batter aside for about 1-2 hours again for the effect of soda powder to be visible in the batter; you can see that the batter fluffs up and thats the right time for making dosas.

The making of Uthappam : 

• Heat an iron griddle or non-stick tawa under medium flame. Once hot, pour a tspn of gingelly oil (nallenna) and grease the whole griddle with half an onion or a thick clean cloth or so.
• Pour a spoonful of batter and widen the circumference of the dosa by moving the spoon in a spiral manner. Donot make a too thin dosa for uthappam; like that of masala dosa or ghee roast, it should be thicker than that.
• Add sliced tomato, green chillies & onion above the dosa. You may add a little chopped coriander leaves also along with it.
• Pour some more dosa batter over the slices and then pour ghee over it. After about 1 minute, turn the dosa over and press it with the spatula (chattukam) and turn over again until both sides have been cooked and turned golden brown and shiny. Add more ghee or dalda for richness and crispiness. 
• Serve hot with sambar or chutney or just like that without any side dish.. trust me, its different and yummy!

Note: If the dosa/uthappam is not coming off smoothly or is sticking to the iron griddle and is messy, remove it and pour a little gingelly oil and grease the griddle with a little egg yolk and half an onion.

          You may also replace onion with shallots for the uthappam topping.