It’s been one of my goals this year to expand my cooking horizons cuisine-wise, so I’ve been adding a lot of different spices and sauces to my pantry that span from around the world. This isn’t just an Asian/Western kitchen anymore, but it’s also South Asian, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and African. I’d been perusing multiple dosa (South Indian style rice and lentil-based crepe) recipes, and I finally stumbled upon one that seemed very authentic and doable… with a three-day process. And we can’t have dosa without having an accompanying potato filling, sambar, and coconut chutney, so I’m making those from scratch, too.

Today is day two of the process, and I’m already exhausted. I was thinking about this today while grinding lentils and rice with water in my blender: how the heck did Indians suddenly decide to start grinding rice or lentils with water and make them into a batter for a crepe, to then fill with potato? How would they have learned that rice and beans could be fermented? Dosa is actually a fermented food, which I never would have guessed while eating it in a restaurant. When I look back at the history of different foods and how they came to be, it makes me think that maybe way back when, people were extremely smart and inventive, and now, people like me aren’t that creative and we just rely on finding “new” things via the internet. There are pluses and minuses to everything, especially the internet.