Gillian Cal­iste

The shy cousin of sa­da, paratha and dhalpuri ro­tis has been mak­ing its way in­to the hearts and stom­achs of T&T. The dosa, a tra­di­tion­al flat­bread from South In­dia, is tak­ing its place among lo­cal East In­di­an cui­sine thanks to the Chin­maya Mis­sion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

To­day, Oc­to­ber 16, from 11 am, the Mis­sion promis­es to take food lovers on a culi­nary jour­ney via their “Di­vali Dosa Day” where they will present 11 va­ri­eties of dosas.

Chin­maya Mis­sion's An­nu­al Veg­e­tar­i­an Food Fair fundrais­er on In­de­pen­dence Day at the Chin­maya Ashram has ex­posed the pub­lic to a wealth of in­ter­na­tion­al veg­e­tar­i­an dish­es for the past 19 years. In the Mis­sion's dis­play and sale of over 180 veg­e­tar­i­an items at each fair, dosas start­ed to be­come more pop­u­lar. Dosas gained even more promi­nence as part of the menu of­fered at the Mis­sion's Garam Masala In­di­an Restau­rant which was opened a few years ago. The Mis­sion start­ed spot­light­ing the dish through a Dosa day fundrais­er on No­vem­ber 14 last year in re­sponse to its grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty at their pre­vi­ous events.

“Per­sons from all over the coun­try join in. Just by word of mouth or from so­cial me­dia, or from the food­ie re­views that come in they'll hear of the Food Fair. So, Swa­mi and the vol­un­teers said why not have a spe­cif­ic day ded­i­cat­ed to dosa with all these oth­er unique fu­sion flavours,” Brah­machari­ni Kri­ti­ka Chai­tanya ex­plained to Sun­day Guardian re­cent­ly.

Chai­tanya is a Brah­machari­ni, one of the Brah­macharins or Hin­du monks, at the lo­cal arm of the glob­al re­li­gious and spir­i­tu­al or­gan­i­sa­tion known as Chin­maya Mis­sion. Start­ed by Swa­mi Prakashanan­da, the 25-year-old T&T arm has as its main teach­ings an­cient Hin­du phi­los­o­phy, San­skrit and Vedic chant­i­ng.

Sit­u­at­ed at Mc Bean, Cou­va, Chin­maya Mis­sion con­sists of a res­i­den­tial ashram and the Chin­maya Vidyalaya Trinidad and To­ba­go, its main ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tion. The Chin­maya Vidyalaya's sev­en cam­pus­es across T&T en­com­pass pre, pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools up to Form 5 lev­el which fol­lows a spir­i­tu­al cur­ricu­lum com­bined with a sec­u­lar cur­ricu­lum ap­proved by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. A Form Six lev­el was in­tro­duced for the Sep­tem­ber 2022 term. Re­cent­ly, the Mis­sion opened a $30 mil­lion-40,000-square foot-tech­no­log­i­cal­ly ad­vanced school, Sant Tul­si­das Cam­pus, across the street from their ashram. The school has the ca­pac­i­ty for 800 pri­ma­ry-and-sec­ondary-lev­el stu­dents and car­ries SMART tech­nol­o­gy in its state-of-the-art au­dio­vi­su­al ar­eas, sci­ence labs, li­brary, mu­sic and art ar­eas, phys­i­cal and men­tal well-be­ing spaces, SMART boards in­stead of chalk­boards and white­boards, and SMART locks.

Brah­machari­ni Kri­ti­ka, along with oth­er mem­bers, stud­ied un­der Swa­mi Prakashanan­da in the two-year Res­i­den­tial Vedan­ta Course, and teach­es in the ashram, at the schools, on­line, and at var­i­ous tem­ples and pri­vate homes.

De­scrib­ing dosa as a tra­di­tion­al south-In­di­an dish made from rice and dif­fer­ent types of dhal, she said it re­sem­bles a thin crispy pan­cake or crêpe. They use soaked and drained urad/ur­di dhal (split black lentils) and white rice, blend­ed un­til smooth and then fer­ment­ed for about 12 hours. (Dhal or dal in In­di­an cui­sine means dried split legumes or peas. It could al­so re­fer to the cooked legume dish sea­soned with spices). The fer­ment­ed bat­ter is poured to form a cir­cu­lar shape on­to a hot plate or tawa which is ide­al for cook­ing ro­tis, parathas, dosas and oth­er In­di­an flat­breads.

Brah­machari­ni Kri­ti­ka ex­plained that dosas were not as pop­u­lar lo­cal­ly per­haps be­cause most of the East In­di­ans who came to Trinidad dur­ing in­den­ture­ship hailed from North In­dia as op­posed to South In­dia, the birth­place of the dish. It was on­ly in the 70s that dosas start­ed to en­joy greater recog­ni­tion in North In­dia.

“Re­al­ly it's just a part of to­day's In­di­an gas­tron­o­my; one of the many dish­es that can be had for break­fast, din­ner or as a snack. You can buy it on the street or in a restau­rant in In­dia. Some­times they will just eat it plain with co­conut chut­ney, or you could add a fill­ing to it. It's a kind of dish that can be had in many ways,” she said.

Tra­di­tion­al dosas have a masala aloo fill­ing which is a side dish of boiled pota­toes cooked with

co­rian­der seeds, mus­tard seeds and turmer­ic, and sautéed onions, pep­pers and kara­pule leaves, or they can have a pa­neer fill­ing where the In­di­an cheese is scram­bled with spices used in the masala aloo. Af­ter the stuff­ing is added, the dosas are loose­ly fold­ed in­to three and end up as a long loose wrap. These are typ­i­cal­ly served with co­conut chut­ney on the side.

Chin­maya Mis­sion has giv­en the tra­di­tion­al In­di­an dish a Tri­ni twist by in­fus­ing var­i­ous el­e­ments and in­gre­di­ents from oth­er cul­tures. Along with the tra­di­tion­al masala, pa­neer and plain dosas, in the past, they have of­fered Szechuan, ji­ni, cheese (piz­za), pesto, and even dou­bles dosas.

The Szechuan dosa is based on the bold, zesty Chi­nese flavour from red chilli pep­pers and is topped with cheese, while the ji­ni dosa has veg­eta­bles like toma­toes and cab­bage sprin­kled with spe­cial spices and cheese. A favourite among chil­dren, the cheese piz­za dosa con­tains a toma­to base and cheese. The pesto vari­a­tion is filled with the creamy Ital­ian paste made with in­gre­di­ents like basil, pine nuts, gar­lic, and In­di­an spices, while dou­bles dosas have the chan­na fill­ing and condi­ments, typ­i­cal of the cel­e­brat­ed Tri­ni street food. All va­ri­eties come with the op­tion of be­ing ac­com­pa­nied by an au­then­tic In­di­an co­conut chut­ney which is a smooth, spiced dip, in­fused with roast­ed chan­na dhal and gin­ger, un­like the lo­cal ver­sion which is chunky, with no dhal.

Made fresh with lo­cal cow's milk at their events, their pa­neer dosa has re­mained the favourite, Brah­machari­ni Kri­ti­ka in­formed.

“Pa­neer dosa has been pop­u­lar among all over the years and, of course, masala dosa is the au­then­tic op­tion,” she said.

This time around, Chin­maya Mis­sion is hop­ing to cap­ture taste buds with their new bur­ri­to, gun­pow­der and moth­er-in-law ver­sions.

In­spired by the Mex­i­can bur­ri­to, Brah­machari­ni Kri­ti­ka said the bur­ri­to dosa will con­tain sim­i­lar Mex­i­can in­gre­di­ents and will be wrapped sim­i­lar­ly.

“We've test­ed and ad­just­ed the flavours to add a lit­tle more of this and a lit­tle less of that. And so, it will have Mex­i­can rice and black beans, bar­be­cued chataigne, let­tuce, sour cream, home­made gua­camole, and the sal­sa that will have an In­di­an twist to it. You will get the In­di­an spice, but al­so the Mex­i­can flavour,” she said.

She would not give up the In­di­an spices which are a se­cret recipe, she laughed.

For the gun­pow­der dosa, a South-In­di­an spice blend is past­ed on­to the dosa. Cur­ry leaves, chill­ies, hing (asafoeti­da, which is re­lat­ed to the herb cel­ery), black pep­per and oth­er In­di­an spices will fea­ture in this dish.

Pay­ing homage to the spicy, chunky East In­di­an sal­sa loved by many in T&T, the moth­er-in-law dosa fea­tures a pep­pery mixed fill­ing of cu­cum­bers, car­rots, onions, gar­lic, chadon beni, lime juice, black pep­per and, of course, hot pep­pers that give it its beloved mind-bog­gling heat.

Dosas are prefer­ably eat­en while hot and while they are a fill­ing meal, they are al­so very light. They are con­sid­ered healthy as ur­di dal is high in pro­tein and eas­i­ly di­gest­ed.

Brah­machari­ni Kri­ti­ka shared that their In­di­an dish­es are made by their Swa­mi who stud­ied in In­dia for six years. He will be the main “chef” at to­day's event.

The Mis­sion will al­so show­case the au­then­tic In­di­an bev­er­age, masala chai, which is a spiced milky tea. Point­ing out that the word chai in it­self meant tea as many make the mis­take of call­ing the bev­er­age “chai tea”, she said con­sum­ing chai was part of the lifestyle of In­di­ans around the world.

She said rather than teabags, the Swa­mi boiled tra­di­tion­al chai leaves or pat­ta from In­dia, adding it to boil­ing veg­e­tar­i­an milk. Al­though spices like gin­ger and ely­chee (car­damom) are usu­al­ly in­clud­ed, he has a spe­cial “per­fect­ed blend” of strong In­di­an chai in­fused with Trinida­di­an flavour which usu­al­ly im­pressed palettes from all over. At their last an­nu­al tea fes­ti­val or Chai San­melan, usu­al­ly held on May 30, the Mis­sion sold about 2,000 cups of chai.

For to­day's Dosa day, all hands will be on deck since every­thing is made fresh in the morn­ing.

“It's one of our rules even for the restau­rant and at all our food fes­ti­vals. We don't pre-make items and freeze them to re­heat on the day. We don't even have mi­crowaves.”

They en­gage the com­mu­ni­ty who will­ing­ly lend their ser­vices in their var­i­ous ar­eas of knowl­edge or abil­i­ties.

To churn out the num­ber of dosas need­ed for the high de­mand, the Swa­mi and a few oth­ers from the ashram en­gi­neered their own gi­ant tawas. The two large rec­tan­gu­lar tawas can each make about eight ten-inch dosas at a time, Brah­machari­ni Kri­ti­ka said.

They will al­so of­fer the Swa­mi's spe­cial ice cream take on kul­fi, a tra­di­tion­al In­di­an frozen dairy dessert sim­i­lar to a cus­tard, usu­al­ly flavoured with car­damom and pis­ta­chio.

The funds raised go to­wards the Mis­sion's var­i­ous ini­tia­tives which ben­e­fit the Chin­maya Vidyalaya schools and the com­mu­ni­ty in gen­er­al.