Davanagere Benne Dosa(DBD) from Karnataka!!!...Family Food Friday#3

In my last week's post I had asked you all to guess about my next post with the clues that I have given and many of you guessed that DBD would be a dosa.Though some of you were partially correct but the credit goes to two of our fellow bloggers who guessed it correctly; Vani being the first one to guess followed by Suma Gandlur.I intentionally did not publish their comments until today as I wanted to give others a chance to guess.Lubna pinged me in the morning and said that it flashed her mind last night suddenly what DBD stands for and yups she was also correct.I thank you all for responding to the guessing game I am overwhelmed with your response .

This post is very precious to me because it was sent to me by my sweet brother ''PRASHI''.I have already mentioned about his culinary skills in my earlier post here and if you have not checked it lemme tell you more about him again. He is a very good friend, advisor and a mentor to me from childhood.Though there are days we used to quarrel and not speak to each other for a few hours and with some fights lasting even a couple of days,ah! those days remain as sweet memories for me now.
Coming to his culinary skills, he started cooking only after he shifted to US on work and learnt everything on his own.At our house he boasts that he is a super chef . In-fact some of his dishes got appreciation even from his in-laws and the upma he prepares has a huge fan following in our family.One thing I hate about his cooking is the mess he creates while cooking and it takes more time for us to clean the kitchen than the time he takes for cooking.He behaves like a boss in kitchen and orders us to chop the vegetables and do all other things for him while he finishes off the main cooking part and takes the final credit of making that dish.Even while preparing this dish his job was to measure the ingredients and make the dosas, rest all things like cleaning,washing and grinding process was taken care by my S-I-L. You all know that I am a big fan of dosa and so is the case with my brother and niece.We three can 'Eat Dosa,Drink Dosa,Sleep Dosa' and can survive on dosa.My brother keeps experimenting in kitchen and that is how even this DBD was created. Once when my S-I-L was soaking the ingredients for Set dosa batter he interfered and wanted to give a try to recreate DBD and they were really happy and satisfied with the first attempt itself and from then they followed the same recipe for DBD.

During one of my usual chat with a friend,I was surprised to know that she had never tasted this famous dosa in Bangalore though she is from the same place.I always have a list of joints which I dont miss visiting when I go to Bangalore and this DBD is one of them.I absolutely love the breakfast delicacies in Bangalore and probably I can say that Bangalore breakfast Rocks!!!,it is just best in my opinion.If you are in Bengaluru or you visit Bangalore do try these famous breakfast joints in the city-have a look at this article which clearly mentions about the famous joints in the city and give a try -I am sure you will fall in love with the food.

Davanagere Benne Dosa in short form DBD is quite famous variety of dosa in Davanagere district located in the northern part of Karnataka. I have never tried the original dosa from Davanagere but I have tried it N number of times in Bangalore in a Davanagere Benne Dosa outlet which is famous in that area for its traditional taste of Davanagere food. Though there are many outlets of DBD in Bangalore, we love the taste of this famous DBD only in this particular outlet and we always stick to it. Along with DBD,there are many other famous items like kali dose,open masala dose, paddu, girmitt, mandakki masala,nargees which tastes superb.

DBD is quite different in taste when compared to any other dosa,though it is served with potato masala the combination is no where compared to the regular masala dosa.These dosas are not spread into large ones,they are of medium size,thick and crispy ones.The proportions used for the batter is quite different for this dosa which makes the dosa quite thick,soft and extremely crispy.The potato masala served with DBD is of pale yellow color unlike the deep yellow potato palya of masala dosa and is quite plain but very flavorful.The chutney is made extremely spicy to go well with the no spice potato masala and crispy buttery Davanagere Benne Dosa.

What makes DBD quite different from other dosas is the liberal usage of fresh and good quality white butter which makes the dosa extremely tasty and crispy.It is fun to see the way they place the blobs of butter here and there on dosa while they are frying it.In those DBD outlets they roast these dosas on thick iron tawas on the wood fire using a special variety of wood sticks which makes this DBD authentic in its taste.But at home as we do not make fresh butter it is easy to replace it with store bought one and anyways we cant think of making this on wood fired stove and so we should be happy with our regular stove.This is an attempt to recreate the famous Davanagere Benne Dosa and we claim that it might not be the most authentic one but we are happy with the taste which we were looking in DBD.

Davanagere Benne Dosa(DBD):

Ingredients:

To soak and grind:
4 cups Long grain rice/regular rice
2 cups Idli rice
1/2 cup poha/pressed rice
1/4 cup urad dal
1 cup murmur/puffed rice
1 tsp fenugreek Seeds
6 green chillies
Salt to taste

To add before making dosa:
1 tbsp maida
1 tsp sugar
A pinch of soda

loads of fresh white butter for roasting the dosas

Method :

• Soak Long grain rice, idli rice, poha, urad dal, murmur, fenugreek seeds for 6 hours and grind it into uniform smooth mixture.
• Now add chopped green chillies and salt and grind again.
• Ferment it overnight or at least for 9-10 hrs.
• Just before making the dosa add maida, sugar and soda and mix well.
• Pour the batter on a hot tawa and quickly make a dosa of 6" diameter.
• Pour ghee or melted butter over the edges and do not pour butter on the top of dosa initially.Close it with a lid and roast on medium flame,after a minute open the lid and add the blobs of butter and let it roast until you get to see the edges turning deep red in color.
• If you add the butter initially it will make dosa soft and with white patches on it instead of beautiful brown crisp crust.This step is very important and crucial to get a thick brown crust.Increase the flame in the end and roast the dosa for few seconds.Reduce the flame,sprinkle some water and proceed making the remaining dosas.
  
• Fold it into half and place a dollop of fresh white butter

Serve it hot right off from the pan onto a plate with aloo palya and white coconut chutney on the side which made specially for DBD.

Important Notes to make DBD:

• Use a cast Iron tawa or heavy aluminium tawa instead of non-stick for better results.If you do not have them then go for the non-stick one.
• Pour melted butter(ghee or oil can also be used here) over the edges and do not pour butter on the top of dosa initially.Close it with a lid and roast on medium flame,after a minute open the lid and add the blobs of butter and let it roast until you get to see the edges turning deep red in color.If you add the butter initially it will make dosa soft and with white patches on it instead of beautiful brown crisp crust.This step is very important and crucial to get a thick brown crust.Increase the flame in the end and roast the dosa for few seconds.
• Reduce the flame,sprinkle some water and proceed making the remaining dosas.
• Be generous in adding the butter to the dosas forgetting the calorie intake for a day and these are real benne dosas.Even we need a treat once in a while right??

Aloo Palya:

Ingredients :
2 medium potatoes (skin peeled)
4 green chillies
1 medium onion (chopped lengthwise)
Salt to taste
1 Tsp oil

Method :

• Pressure cook potatoes with green chillies for 2 whistles.
• Once the cooker is cooled, mash green chillies with aloo and mix well. And keep the mixture aside.
• In a kadai heat oil and fry onions till translucent.
• Add salt to taste and mix well.
• Now add the mashed aloo mixture and mix it well.

Notes:
The addition of green chillies to the palya is optional,if you want it spicy then pressure cook the green chillies along with potatoes which helps the green chillies loose its color and not affecting the color of the potato palya.Do not add green chillies while frying onions otherwise the authentic look and color of the palya would be lost.

White Coconut chutney:

Ingredients :
1 cup freshly grated coconut
1/4 cup fried gram
1/4 tsp tamarind pulp (I used ready pulp)
6-8 green chillies
1/4 tsp sugar
Salt to taste

for tadka:
1 tsp ghee
1/2 tsp mustard

Method :

• Grind fried gram into a course powder.
• Add the rest of the ingredients and grind into a course mixture again.
• Heat ghee in a small tadka pan and crackle mustard seeds in it and add this to the coconut chutney and mix well.

I have been in search of good DBD for a very long time and tried many recipes and kept happy myself with them though I was not very satisfied.So when the recipe is from a trusted source how can I stop myself from trying it.As soon as I got the recipe for the post I headed to my kitchen to soak the ingredients and here is the outcome from my kitchen.Just loved the taste of it and it was a perfect treat for my taste buds which salivating for a good Benne Dosa.

Note:
Photos embedded in the recipe part are from my brother,rest of them from yours truly,ME.I could not stop myself from posting those pics,the recipe deserved more pictures.

This breakfast is going to participate in srivalli's 'Breakfast Mela' event