Masala Dosa

The dish that made Udupi cuisine famous globally — a thin, lacy, golden-brown crepe made from fermented rice-urad dal batter, cooked on a flat iron griddle in coconut oil until one side is uniformly crisp and the edges are almost translucent, then filled with a portion of batata palya (potato masala: boiled potatoes roughly mashed with mustard seeds, turmeric, green chilli, curry leaves, and a small amount of onion in the restaurant version) and rolled into a cylinder. The batter fermentation is the entire flavour of the dosa: no fermentation produces a flat, flavourless crepe; proper overnight fermentation produces the characteristic mild tang and the crispness that can be heard across a room. The Udupi masala dosa became the standard definition of South Indian breakfast globally through the mid-twentieth century network of Udupi hotels in Mumbai and beyond; no South Indian restaurant anywhere serves a menu without it.