Idli & dosa - Batter recipe

Being a Tamil girl, making Idli and Dosa are the basic foundation of cooking, as they are the standard and much loved snack of my hometown. As a kid, I have made the idli and dosa from dough a number of times, but have never tried the batter myself. Nor did I bother to find out the recipe for it. So when I finally tried for the first time, I had to call up my mom, bring out cooking books and Google loads of sites, to get the recipe. And with great enthusiasm, I started on the batter making process. soak all the ingredients, wait for 6-7 hours, grind them in blender, and then keep resultant batter near stove overnight for it to ferment.

Well the first attempt ended in disaster. Though the batter looked good when it came out of the blender, it never managed to get fermented. Ask anyone who has had a Idli, they can tell you that idli from a non-fermented batter is the worst thing that can happen to a person. So the attempt1 was chucked out. So was attempt2, attempt3 and attempt 4. Though I tried various combinations like changing the consistency, the ingredient quantity, keeping it inside oven; nothing worked. I got only the standard non-fermented batter. It drove me mad.

Finally, I decided to change somethings. 

One: I decided to use grinder (u know, the big heavy ones) instead of blender. 

Two: I decided to add lot of water when grinding the batter(forget what others say!)

Three: Soak the ingredients overnight

Four: I am not going to keep it in fridge until it gets fermented, let it take however long it wants :P

And viola, I had the most amazing batter ever. So fully fermented that, it had risen up, overflowed and covered up my entire stove. It was messy, but that didn't stop me from being happy, as I had finally gotten the batter right..!!!

Well here is the recipe:

1 cup of Black gram (urad dal, ulutham paruppu)

3 cups of raw rice (I used sona masoori)

Some fenugreek seeds (methi, vendayam)

Salt to taste

Tips:

1) Grind the urad dal first. Add lots of water (For the given quantity I added about 81/2oz of water) And grind it until is smooth. Might take around 30-40 mins.

2) Remove urad dal paste and then add rice and fenugreek and follow the same procedure as urad dal.

3)  Mix it together well. Do the mixing with your hands and do it for approx. 10-15 mins. This is so the batter gets very well aerated, helps in fermentation.

4) Keep it in the warmest spot of your kitchen overnight or longer time (mostly overnight should be enough if it is warm enough)

5) Once the batter has risen/fermented, punch down the batter to remove the air bubbles. Punch down until it comes back to the original quantity. There will still be lot of bubbles visible on the surface. Leave them be!! 

With the perfect batter at hand, I am already to make my Idlis and dosas. Will post the pics of them soon !! :D