Rebecca’s Recipe of the Week: Buckwheat dosa with coconut chutney and greens | Canalside Community Food

Rebecca’s Recipe of the Week: Buckwheat dosa with coconut chutney and greens

Another easy and delicious recipe from Meera Sodha. She writes: ‘This dish consists of three separate elements: the dosa batter, the coconut chutney and the vegetable filling. . . The key to success is to make [the dosas] in a nonstick pan on a very high heat – it needs to be very hot indeed – and make sure you leave them to crisp up properly before even thinking about flipping them with a spatula. The first pancake will inevitably fail – such is the universal law of pancakes – so make it a small one, so as not to waste too much batter’.

Buckwheat dosa with coconut chutney and greens
Serves 3

Ingredients
100g desiccated coconut
Salt
180g buckwheat flour
6 tbsp oil, plus extra for brushing
12 fresh curry leaves
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 tablespoon black mustard seeds
3 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
2cm ginger, peeled and grated
1-2 green chillies, finely chopped (or to taste)
400g chard or spinach, leaves shredded, tough stalks roughly chopped
200g frozen peas

Preparation
Put the desiccated coconut in a heatproof bowl with a third of a teaspoon of salt, cover with 275ml boiling water and leave to soak for at least 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, put the buckwheat flour in another bowl with half a teaspoon of salt. Slowly pour in 450ml water, mix to a thin batter, then set aside.
Put the oil in a nonstick frying pan and get it really hot, then add the curry leaves, cumin, mustard seeds, garlic, ginger and chillies, and fry for two to three minutes, until the garlic turns a pale gold. Carefully tip into a jug to cool. Keep the pan for later.
When the spiced oil has cooled, stir two tablespoons into the coconut mix, and another two tablespoons into the buckwheat batter. Tip the coconut into a blender and blitz until really smooth (add a little more water, if need be).
Reheat the frying pan over a high heat and, when hot, add the rest of the spiced oil, followed by the chard or spinach stalks. Fry, stirring, for three minutes, then add the leaves and cook until wilted. Throw in the peas, cook for a couple of minutes, until everything is nice and hot, then stir through a couple of tablespoons of the coconut chutney. Scrape out into a serving dish, wipe the pan clean with kitchen paper and put back on the heat.
Once the pan is really hot, brush the surface with a fine layer of oil. Add a small ladleful of batter and swirl it into a thin layer – a few gaps and bubbles are fine, because they can help the dosa get crisp. Cook the dosa for two minutes, until the edges are visibly crisp and browning, then gently lever up with a spatula, flip and cook for a further two minutes on the other side, before turning it out on to a plate. Repeat with the remaining batter, oiling the pan between each dosa.
Stuff the dosas with the greens and serve with the remaining chutney on the side.

Recipe adapted from Meera Sodha, The Guardian, 13 July 2019.