On Jaeger’s first trip to India he encountered Dosas and became infatuated. Upon returning home he described them to me and I attempted to make some. Unfortunately, having never had dosas myself, I had only the vaguest idea of what I was doing. However, I found a recipe which made a huge amount of batter. This was fortunate as I wasted more than 1/2 the batter before I realized it was absolutely essential to use my cast iron skillet, not my non-stick skillet. However, I still had some trouble as my cast iron skillet has sides and is smaller than the traditional skillet for dosas. In spite of all this, I think I got the general idea even if it needed a lot of refinement.

Eventually, Jaeger found an establishment in Denver that served Dosas and took Calvin and I out to try them. They were pretty good. Then, a bit later, a restaurant opened up in Boulder that makes dosas so my enthusiasm for doing it myself waned.

Last year, we moved from Longmont down to Gunbarrel. Unfortunately, the stove that came with the house was a glass-top electric stove. I have not been impressed. It probably took me the first 6 months just to learn how not to burn pancakes. More disturbing, using cast iron skillets is not recommended for glass-top stoves. Up in Longmont I prepared more than half the meals we ate in my cast iron skillet and have profoundly felt the lack of it since. The one redeeming value the glass-top stove has is it’s attached to a convection oven that I love.

I did try to make dosas, from a pre-made mix, a couple of months ago and it was a disaster. I blame having to use my non-stick skillet. So, today instead of dosas, I made Masala Crepes. For some reason I can make crepes perfectly fine in my non-stick skillet, I’m not sure why. Maybe the egg makes it stick less? In any case, I used Jaeger’s mom’s crepe recipe and substituted some of the wheat flour for chickpea flour. I should have put some fenugreek in it too but forgot. Then I filled the crepes with “Mrs. Joshi’s Potatoes with a Fresh Coconut-Lime Sauce” from 660 Curries. It’s obviously not authentic but does provide the general feel of a Masala Dosa.