The secret to a delicious dosa: Dunk your way through a journey of chutneys and dips
Annalakshmi, located at 10086 Hurontario St. in Brampton, serves up 50 types of dosas
It is my personal experience that every immigrant family has one dish that is revered, relished and celebrated.
It's often a simple dish that is cooked by a parent or grandparent that transports you back to another time and place.
For me, it's the dosa. It's the earliest food memory I have. The savoury South Indian crepe is an intrinsic part of our family.
As a kid in Colombo, Sri Lanka, I would watch my mother and grandmother scoop batter on to large cast iron pans called tawas, drawing circles with the back of tumblers to create these large savoury crepes. With lightning speed, the crepes would end up on plates along with a myriad of dips and sauces presented around them.
When we decided to move to Canada, my grandmother entrusted my mother with her tawa and said, "Keep it safe until I see it again."
The tawa is still around. We estimate that its now over a century old. The iron is flaking off at the edges, but it's still a workhorse. My mother continues the tradition of making dosas when I visit her for lunch.
Once the batter is ready, it's cooked like a crepe on a well greased flat top griddle or traditionally on a tawa. The batter cooks quickly, and a well seasoned pan is key to giving the dosa a delicately crunchy shell that maintains a dampness inside.
The fermenting process is key. It brings a slight sourness and bread quality to the dosa once it's finished. Dosas can be served a number of ways, but I think the simplest is best, the savoury crepe and an assortment of vegetable chutneys (coconut and pepper dips) and sambar (a stew of vegetables and dhal).
I first came across Annalakshmi during a food tour through Brampton. I was taking guests on a crawl through the city's hidden gems when I spotted the sign for the restaurant, located in an otherwise lacklustre industrial plaza.
I went back with friends a few weeks later to check it out. It was still under construction and service was a mess. We were three guests in an empty restaurant during the lunch rush, wondering if we had made the wrong decision. A few minutes later, a plethora of plates arrived with dosas in every shape and size. It is better than any dosa I have found in Toronto, Scarborough or Mississauga, cities filled with dozens of dosa houses.
"That rava dosa is magic. I could eat this all day," one of my friends said during the meal.
Since then, I've been back regularly and each time the dosas deliver all the nostalgia I would want: that familiar crisp, sour and spice experience.
Many months later and after a lot of pestering, I finally had the chance to step into the kitchen and meet the star of the restaurant, chef Manikandan Rengasamy. He hails from Tangore, India and has spent the last 15 years perfecting the art of dosa making. After cooking in a number of hotels and restaurants all over India, he spent some time cooking in Thailand before moving to Canada in 2005.
A few years ago, Rengasamy's friend Jay Rajan was looking to open a South Indian restaurant in Brampton. Rengasamy and Rajan have been friends since their early cooking days in India, and the partnership was an easy one for Rengasamy.
"He asked me to come and cook in his restaurant and I said yes immediately," Rengasamy reminisced.
"Jay has allowed me to showcase my dosas," he said.
Annalakshmi's dosa menu is extensive. There are nearly 50 types of dosas served at the restaurant with most of the variations specifying the type of filing you want in the dosa from a potato masala to a smearing of masala chili paste. Everything is vegetarian and vegan — Rengasamy doesn't use any butter — and deeply satisfying.
If you're overwhelmed by the menu, start simple. If you've never had a dosa, then order the rava dosa, Rengasamy's version is the best I have had. He mixes ground semolina into his dosa batter, and then throws curry leaves and herbs into the mix. While the griddle is hot, instead of ladling the batter on to the surface, he sprays it on.
He then tops the batter with cashews and cilantro and folds it once the shell has crisped.
"The rava dosa takes longer to cook because you have to mix the batters, and it gives it more crunch and it is very thin," he described.
The rava dosa is not as funky compared to the other dosas; it's all about the crunch, herbal and nutty characteristics.
For something a little funkier, go for the masala dosa. Rengasamy uses his eight hour fermented batter to create wonderfully thick dosas that have a golden crust, which he serves with a colourful assortment of Rengasamy's house-made dips.
"The sambar is my favourite. It's like a vegetable soup or stew and I take pride in making each batch," he said.
The soup-like sambar is one of the most addicting side dishes you will have at Annalakshmi; it tastes so good it should be served on its own as a soup.
Then there are the chutneys.
The coconut chutney is the least spicy, it's thick and has a hint of green chili and herb. The green chutney is made of chillies. It packs a punch, but it's softened by the dosa's sourness. The red one is made of tomatoes and is my personal favourite, reminiscent of a good tomato sauce with some heat.
The beauty of eating a dosa is journeying your way through each of these dips with each tear of the crepe, getting the hits of salt, sourness and spice.
For a truly tasty experience, tear off a piece of dosa, dip it into each chutney and then give it a generous dunk in the sambar before plopping it into your mouth.
That's how my mother likes to eat it.
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