'I have not heard from you for so long...., are you ok?' 
Messsage I received from an old friend of mine, who lives on the other side of Australia.

It was Divali.

I made a mental note the night before that I must send her my best wishes on Divali. And so I did... hence the message above.

I remember celebrating every Divali with her and her lovely family when we were in Malaysia. I remembered that she too remembered that I love her tosei (dhosa) and her mutton curry. And without fail, these two dishes would be served as soon as I sat at her dining table.
Needess to say... I'd reached  out for these two dishes before any other dishes or sweets that were served on that day.

Even when I visited her in her home across the Tasman overlooking the gorgeous snow-capped mountain and beautiful blue lake ever... despite her hectic schedule, she made sure I had my tosei and chicken curry fixed :D.

I planned to have just that ... tosei with condiments. I soaked rice grains and urud dhal for 2 nights. And it was about time to blend, this was where everything started to go downhill for me...

I successfully blended urud dhal, then proceeded with rice grains using the same method, but unsuccess... still grainy. Time to swap to another gadget...this time I use my super good (so they say) for super smooth liquid result ~ NUTRI-BULLET.
However it failed to live up to its expectation, not only it did not pulse it to smooth rice liquid but I broke the whole damn cover cum blade in the process... it had super burnt-out issue around the blade.
Not wanting to bite into bits and pieces of broken burnt plastic from the broken Nutri-bullet, I was left with no choice but to throw the lot. Instead of soaking, blending rice grains again.... a packet of rice flour saved my day! Mix it with water into smooth urud dhal paste...and started my fermenting process.
It was a yay moment :D

The mixture was good... has that sour-ish tosei taste.
We fired up the BarBie... oiled the hot plate, I was excited, finally I could have a piece of nice warm tosei :D.... but lady luck was not on my side. I had trouble with everything, from trying to make crepe-like tosei, I ended up with a blob of mess :(.
Mixture is too thick, fire is too strong, hot plate is too oily were among our grouses.
Change method of cooking again... making tosei in a frying pan on induction cooker, yield much better tosei than the BarBie but still not quite the same.

I gave up...

What we had for dinner was something that tasted like tosei...but look nothing like one :(

Fortunately my potato masala and coconut chutney (next post) saved the day :D

Spiced potato/ Potato Masala

serve 6

1 kg baby potatoes - washed, peel and cut into bite size
20g garlic
20g ginger
250g brown onion - sliced
10g cumin seeds
5g dried chillies - deseeded and cut into 1/2 inch
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1/2 teaspoon black mustard seeds
3 stalks curry leaves
1/2 cup chopped fresh coriander
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoon canola oil

1. Wash, peel, cut into bite size and microwave***. 
2. Set aside to cool. 
3. Pound in pestle/ mortar garlic and ginger into a smooth paste. 
4. Add turmeric and chilli powder. 
5. Heat up wok, add canola oil. saute cumin, mustard seeds until fragrant. 
6. Add sliced onion, curry leaves and chillies, sweat onion and saute until onion changes colour to golden in colour. 
7. Add pounded ginger and garlic mixture. 
8. Cook for 5 minutes. 
9. Add potato. 
10. Add salt. 
11. Stir to mix well. 
12. Cook for further 10 minutes until potatoes are cooked through. 
13. Sprinkle with chopped coriander.

***Place potatoes in a microwave-safe dish. Cover and microwave on high for 9-11 minutes depending on your microwave. Otherwise, just steam or boil until just cook.