Sencholam Dosai

With a new found love for millets and while the enthusiasm lasted, I purchased a variety of millets, during my last visit home. I have been using them regularly and the possibilities seem endless. Those were days my mother and her maid were willing to experiment anything in her kitchen; my father's clients would bring for us some harvest from their farming lands and millets were cultivated widely around our area.
My mother often made these dosais and kuzhi paniyaarams and sometimes roasted, powdered and mixed in ghee porimaavu. When I was trying to cut down rice and switch partly to millets, I asked her for a few recipes. This dosai is one, she told me, that she made quite often; with the same batter, with a little more fermentation, it was possible to make kuzhipaniyaaram  with cholam. It works in my favour to grind one batter and make two dishes. Now with refrigeration, I hold the second dish off, for a day or two longer. It is so easy to grind the batter, whenever you are grinding for idli or dosa with rice and urad dhal, replace half the quantity of the par boiled rice with great millet/ shorgum which is sencholam in Tamil language.

I was picking up millets at my regular grocer's back home, in Namakkal, I asked for the ven cholam which is white and husk removed. The shop assistant, an elderly man who knows me for long, chided me and said while looking for healthy options, I should go totally, all the way. He packed me a kilo of the red variety of shorgum. The crepes and the kuzhipaniyaarams have a beautiful light red colour and that is quite appealing.

Sola Dosai - Jowar Dosa - Crepes with Great Millet/ Shorgum

Ingredients:
Makes 15 crepes
1 1./2 cup parboiled, idli rice
1 1/2 cup shorgum/ great millet/ sivappu cholam
3/4 cup urad dhal
2 teaspoons fenugreek seeds
Salt to taste
Oil for drizzling over the crepes

Method:
Wash and rinse thoroughly the rice and soak in water for about three hours.
At the same time, pick, wash in few changes of water the cholam. Soak separately in water for three hours.
Soak the fenugreek seeds separately.
Half an hour before grinding, wash and soak the urad dhal.
I use my wet grinder to grind the batter. You may use a heavy duty mixer grinder to grind also.
First, drop the fenugreek seeds in and grind them for a little while until they are very frothy.
Drain and add the urad dhal. Grind to a fluffy batter adding little water in increments. Transfer to a large mixing bowl.
Now grind the rice and cholam together adding sufficient water to a smooth batter.
Transfer to the mixing bowl and add the salt.
Mix well and allow the batter to ferment to about eight hours. Overnight fermentation is recommended.
Before preparing the dosai, give the fermented batter a thorough stir turning it well.
Heat an iron griddle or a non stick dosa tawa.
Pour the a ladle full of batter and spread it in a circle which is about 20 centimetres in diameter and 2 millimetres thick.
Drizzle a spoon of oil around the sides. Cook over a medium flame until the underside is done.
Flip to the other side, add oil if  necessary and cook this side also well. Remove from the griddle and place on the serving plates.

Serve hot with tomato and onion chutney and coriander chutney, milagai podi or plain coconut chutney. Choice is yours.
This makes a filling breakfast, a light night dinner choice and if made in small cute sizes can be packed in your kids' lunch boxes too.