Adai the very famous south Indian dish made of lentils. It’s a great source of protein. It goes well with Pudina chutney/Mint leaves chutney or anything that’s little spicy. This is one easy option for guests something special with great taste, easy to make. The specialty of this dish is that you don’t have to ferment it, usually the dosa mix has to be fermented before we prepare. But this one we can prepare as soon as the batter is ready. Once I ran out of Dosa batter and we got a guest who is from South India, people from south India would love dosa, so immediately I planned for Adai, and our guest loved it. Lets see how to prepare it.
Ingredients:
To Grind
Channa Dal/ Chickpea Dal : 1/2 cup
Moong Dal : 1/2 cup
Toor Dal : 1/2 cup
Urad Dal : 1/4 cup
Raw rice: 1/4 cup
Par Boiled Rice : 1/4 cup
Red Chilies : 3
Fennel Seeds : 1 table spoon
Garlic : 4 pods (optional)
Ginger : small piece (optional)
To use in batter:
Asafoetida -1/4 tsp
Salt : 1 table spoon
Oil for making the adai.
Red Onion – 1 chopped (optional)
Grated coconut – 1/4 cup (optional)
Cilantro Leaves – 1/4 cup finely chopped(optional)
Method:
First soak all the ingredients in to grind for 1 hr. The lentils would have soaked well after one hr and gets swollen. Now put them in a mixer and grind. You can do it coarse or smooth. I would prefer to grind smooth. Once the grinding is done, you can immediately prepare the adai. If you need to have it after some time, put the batter in fridge and take 10 mins before you need to prepare. Now mix the Asafoetida and salt in the batter.
Add onion, cilantro leaves, grated coconut in the batter, all these are optional.
Heat a griddle or a non stick tawa and pour a ladle of batter and spread it in circular motion. Add a tsp of oil around it. Let it get cooked. Then flip it over to the other side and drizzle a tsp of oil around the adai. Let it get cooked. Once both sides are cooked well, you can remove the adai from tawa and serve hot.
Malar's Kitchen 