Thosai or dosas are a refreshing change from our usual staple of rice.
The recipe for making thosais or dosas has always been simple enough to remember – its just a matter of the ratio between the rice and the black lentils or ulunthu.
If you want a more sourish thosai, then the ration is 2 cups uncooked rice to one cup black lentils.
Getting it right: A flat, smooth griddle is a must when making thosai.
A tamer one is three cups of uncooked rice to one cup of lentils. The secret to a lighter and better thosai is of course, a handful of overnight rice into the mixture when you blend the ingredients together.
Have a flat, smooth griddle or a tawa pan, as most brands would call them or even use your frying pans or teppanyaki pans is all you need. It works, the thosai is not fussy.
For the health conscious, they insist on using the Indian gingelly oil, which emits a smell that may not go down well with the uninitiated but for the rest of us, your normal cooking oil or ghee works just fine.
Ensuring the pan is heated well is important if you don’t want to end up with unappetising and torn thosai. The pan must also be oiled generously at first to ensure the mixture does not stick.
Having had thosai for a better part of the writer’s life, makes it easy to spot good or well-made thosais or dosas and when it is a slip-shod job by restaurants.
Thosais, then come in many varieties and if you were to check it out online, you would be stumped by the fact that there are more than 20 varieties of thosais and every one of them is as good if not better than the ones you and I know of.
A favourite time and again, is the masala thosai, which is a filling meal in itself as the thosai comes with a spicy vegetable mix that is enclosed or wrapped within and eaten as it is or with just the coconut chutney, it is heavenly!
Then, if you want some bite, the rava thosai or semolina crepe is worth a try! It comes in a lacy-like circle and is padded with green chillies and slice onions and is definitely more filling than the ordinary thosai.
This is definitely sinful but a trick to reducing the extreme sourness of the thosai is definitely asking for a ghee thosai, where before the thosai is lifted from the griddle or pan, a dollop of ghee is put in the centre and left to melt and sink into the crepe.
It is a great way to enhance the taste of your thosai, honestly!
Other varieties of thosai consist of egg, where an egg is broken onto a cooking thosai and smeared over it. Then you have the onion thosai that consist of chopped onions, of course.
Thosai has also come a long way from being just an Indian crepe. (It has now been internationalised with cheese and now, there is even a thosai with Chinese noodles called Chow-chow dosa.)
Our Malaysian firm favourite right now, riding at the top is of course – the paper thosai, served often wrapped like Merlin’s hat with a sharp tip and it is one of the great moments when you can be a child and twirl your plate around as you tear off paper-thin pieces of this magically delicious hat.
Some of the best place to have thosai is of course your favourite Indian restaurant anywhere in the country, but there are many who will attest that only a handful are really good at this crepe.
One of the best in Kuala Lumpur is undoubtedly the vegetarian restaurant Lakhsmi Vilas in Leboh Ampang.
For years, their thosai have always come out soft and moist and remains so even after being packed for more than an hour. The other nice thing that this restaurant does is that it always wraps the crepe in a banana leave and when you unwrap the pack, it emits a nice, fragrant smell and the best part is that the thosai is still hot and tastes great.
Their best thosai is the masala thosai that has a delicious vegetable filling that can vary between cabbage and potatoes or on luckier days both with bits of carrot and onions. For indulgence request for naei masala thosai and it comes with a delicious dollop of melted ghee! Eaten simply with the coconut chutney, which is also good here, it is a fulfilling meal, whether for breakfast, lunch or even dinner!
Then, if you head out to Brickfields, you will find many Indian restaurants here and they too, try to outdo their competitors with their own brand of thosai and many of them are good like Naga’s and Gem’s.
The Lotus group of restaurants also make good thosais and they have a variety to choose from.
In Klang, the numerous Indian restaurants there, especially those that serve banana leaf meals, also do thosai and they too, do serve good ones.
While many would claim their favourite Indian restaurants serve the best, generally, most of the Indian food outlets along the west coast of the Peninsular actually serve very good thosai that is enjoyed by the multi-racial population in the country.
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