Okay, the secret's out. One of our main motivations for coming to India is to eat. We both love Indian food (along with the chai, music, incense, temples, many religions, and the swamis, sadus, charlatans and holy people that go along with all that.
Marty's favorite thing to eat in the morning is a masala dosa with sambar, and mine is an idly (thought I eat more than one, so they are called idlis) with coconut chutney. These two dishes are traditional dishes of south India states and are served in very few Indian restaurants in America.
Idlis are cakes are usually two to three inches in diameter and are made by steaming a batter consisting of fermented lentils and mostly rice. The fermentation process makes them easy to digest.
A masala dosa is a very large thin lentil-flour pancake rolled into a hollow tube stuffed with a small portion of spicy vegetable potato mixture. It's served with sambar, a very thin tamarind-based stew. In 1993, Marty first ate dosas while visiting a restaurant near Ramana Maharshi's ashram in south India and in fact, one time, along with his friends Mike and Janine and the young Swami Nityananda, he ordered a 6 foot long dosa at Tirupati (the most visited shrine in India dedicated to Balaji, a incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu.) Marty calls it a crepe on spicy steroids, and wishes I could learn to make them.
When I stayed in Ammachi's ashram in Kerala (a state in South India), I looked forward to breakfast (and every other meal of course) because I had discovered the idlis. Marty said they also served idlis at breakfast in Ramana's ashram.
No comments:
Post a Comment