Yes, we Mallus aka Malayalis call it dosha. It irks me when people pronounce it incorrectly. But that is not the topic of discussion today. When it comes to cooking, I am a lazy cook, which means that I only cook those things which can be done in fifteen minutes flat. I don’t have the patience to stand in the kitchen for hours and make that recipe that takes an hour to cook and another hour to clean the mess afterwards. So, the things that I cook are the ones that require around 5 to 7 steps. That’s the best I can do.

Being a Mallu I love dosha, it’s my number one favourite thing to eat and beauty of it is that it is vegan. It is something that I can eat at any time of the day and many times on the same day too. If someone asks me my dying wish it would be to eat a dosha, that’s how much I love it.

Dosha with chutney is the easiest thing to make and a delicious thing to devour. But since I am a lazy cook, I have never made dosha batter in more than a decade of living by myself. I always go to the market and pick up the batter made by a sweet Tamilian uncle. Why spend energy when you get it ready made, right?

The twist in the tale came when the uncle shut his shop right after the lockdown. My craving for dosha led me to attempt to make the dosha batter. Of course, the packaged batter was available but I reminded myself that there might be a lockdown again and I wouldn’t want to miss eating dosha so I would be better off if I just learned to make the batter. So, I picked up the phone and called my mother. I asked her the recipe to make the batter. So, this is how the conversation progressed.

‘Do you have idli rice?’

‘Ah, I have normal rice amma (mom), the one I use to make rice every day.

‘That won’t work. You have to first buy idli rice and some boiled rice and urad dal.’

‘Oh. Okay.

‘Mix it in 1:3 ratio, that is one cup urad dal and 3 cups of rice. Add a bit of boiled rice to it and some fenugreek seeds. Soak it for 5 hours. Make the batter. Leave it overnight and the next day you can make dosha.’

That sounded simple to me. All I had to do was get the ingredients now. So, putting on my mask and pulling out my grocery bag I stepped out for what was going to be a little adventure. I stood in one of the circles painted outside the shop and waited for my turn. Finally, when it was my turn, I said, ‘Bhaiyya idli rice aur urad dal dena’ (Please give me idli rice and urad dal)

He came out with two types of rice.

‘Which one do you want out of these two?’

Both looked identical to me.

‘Which one is idli rice?’

‘People buy both, which one do you want?’

When I didn’t have an immediate answer, a lady standing behind me in the queue said, ‘Why don’t you call your mother, I will speak to her and tell you which one to buy’.

In the days of social distancing, it didn’t seem like a good idea to me. So, I thanked her politely and randomly pointed to one kind of rice and asked him to give it to me. Now armed with idli rice and other ingredients I reached home.

Finally, I was going to make the batter and maybe get certified by my amma as authentic Malayali after all these years after all. So, I soaked and made the batter exactly the way my amma had instructed.

The next day I woke up and ran first into the kitchen to see how the batter had turned up. It looked okay to me; it had fermented. I smiled for I could taste my amma’s dosha in my head. But sadly, it didn’t turn out that way. In my first attempt, the dosha batter stuck to the iron pan, the second attempt it didn’t stick but came out in three pieces and finally the third dosha came out in one piece. I ate all the pieces; I was okay with that. But it didn’t taste like my amma’s dosha.

So, I called her to complain. Her answer was simple, ‘Maybe you got the wrong variety of rice’. I frowned. I had made up my mind to learn the art of making the perfect batter, so I rushed out to buy the second variety of rice.

I did all the process again and the next day with bated breath waited to taste the result. Well, it didn’t stick…. yay….it looked like my amma’s dosha…. yayyyy….and finally when I put the first bite in my mouth, it tasted like dosha, but it didn’t taste like my amma’s dosha. I knew there was a secret ingredient that she was not telling me about.

I called her again. Her answer was simple again, ‘Keep changing the proportion a bit here and there, maybe put a little bit of extra urad dal and you will figure it out.’ Exasperated I thought I will try it again after a week. Maybe the weather would change, and I would finally perfect the art. And I did, a couple of times. Now my dosha turns out well, it tastes good too. But it still doesn’t taste like my amma’s dosha. I guess the secret ingredient is her love which makes it so unbelievably deliciously divine. Maybe I will get there someday or maybe not. But I will keep trying.

Click here to read more pieces on Food Writing.