Vegan Spelt Dosas With Curried Chickpeas

I posted last month about my first Daring Bakers challenge; this weekend I completed my first challenge for the Daring Cooks. This months Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Debyi of Healthy Vegan Kitchen. Debyi challenged us to make a vegan meal using recipes for dosas, curried garbanzo filling, and coconut sauce adapted from the cookbook: reFresh: Contemporary Vegan Recipes From the Award Winning Fresh Restaurants.

Cooking vegan isn’t really a challenge for me. Though I am an omnivore, I make many vegan/vegetarian recipes. What I appreciated about the challenge, though, is that it pushed me to make a dish I’d never made before, and which I absolutely loved!

I also ended up making an additional recipe that was not part of the challenge. It’s a simple mint chutney featuring fresh mint from my garden and you’ll find the recipe at the end of this post. This too is definitely something I’ll make again.

This meal consists of 3 parts: the dosas, the filling and the sauce. I made the dosa pancakes recipe exactly as given by Debyi, only I substituted coconut milk for the rice/soy milk and used a little coconut oil in the pan. The recipe is supposed to make 8 pancakes and serves at least 4 people; I made my pancakes pretty small, though, so I got more than 8 out of the recipe.

Spelt is a good substitute for wheat flour in recipes, but if you need or want to avoid gluten, you can try these with buckwheat flour, chickpea flour or rice flour instead.

Indian Dosa Pancakes

Dosa Pancakes Ingredients
1 cup (120gm/8oz) spelt flour
½ tsp (2½ gm) salt
½ tsp (2½ gm) baking powder
½ tsp (2½ gm) curry powder
½ cup (125ml/4oz) almond milk (or soy, or rice, etc.)- I used coconut milk
¾ cup (175ml/6oz) water
cooking spray, if needed- I used a little coconut oil instead

Dosa Pancakes Directions
Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl, slowly adding the almond milk and water, whisking until smooth.

Heat a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Spray your pan with a thin layer of cooking spray, if needed.

Ladle 2 tablespoons of batter into the center of your pan in a circular motion until it is a thin, round pancake.

When bubbles appear on the surface and it no longer looks wet, flip it over and cook for a few seconds.

Remove from heat and repeat with remaining batter.

Curried Chickpea Filling
I halved this recipe, but otherwise followed it pretty exactly (though I didn’t have tomato paste and instead added in some tomato chutney I recently made). If you do the whole recipe, you will end up with a lot of filling, but the curried chickpeas are really tasty as leftovers over rice or quinoa.

Filling Ingredients
5 cloves garlic
1 onion, peeled and finely diced
1 carrot, peeled and finely diced
1 green pepper, finely diced (red, yellow or orange are fine too)
2 medium hot banana chilies, minced
2 Tb. (16gm) cumin, ground
1 Tb. (8gm) oregano
1 Tb. (8gm) sea salt (coarse)
1 Tb. (8gm) turmeric
4 cups (850gm/30oz) cooked or canned chick peas (about 2 cans)
½ cup (125gm/4oz) tomato paste

Filling Directions:
Heat a large saucepan over medium to low heat. Add the garlic, veggies, and spices, cooking until soft, stirring occasionally.

Mash the chickpeas by hand, or in a food processor. Add the chickpeas and tomato paste to the saucepan, stirring until heated through.

Coconut Curry Sauce
I made a few changes here. I used 1 tomato, 1 lemon cucumber, and 1 purple pepper instead of the three tomatoes. I also decreased the broth and the coconut milk by 1/2 because I wanted a really thick sauce with just subtle coconut flavor. I cut my veggies, including the onions, into fairly large chunks; you might want to cut yours smaller. This is a yummy sauce and I think leftovers would be great over noodles, grains, or even steamed veggies.

Coconut Curry Sauce Ingredients:
1 onion, peeled and chopped
2 cloves garlic
½ (2½ gm) tsp cumin, ground
¾ (3¾ gm) tsp sea salt (coarse)
3 Tb. (30gm) curry powder
3 Tb. (30gm) spelt flour (omit if sensitive to gluten)
3 cups (750ml/24oz) vegetable broth
2 cups (500ml/24oz) coconut milk
3 large tomatoes, diced

Coconut Curry Sauce Directions:
Heat a saucepan over medium heat, add the onion and garlic, cooking for 5 minutes, or until soft.

Add the spices, cooking for 1 minutes more. Add the flour and cook for 1 additional minute.

Gradually stir in the vegetable broth to prevent lumps. Once the flour has been incorporated, add the coconut milk and tomatoes, stirring occasionally. Let it simmer for half an hour.

The mint chutney was not part of the challenge but I have a ton of mint in my garden, so I went for it.
Here is the recipe I used:

Fresh Mint Chutney
adapted from Joy of Cooking

Mint Chutney Ingredients:
2 cups packed fresh mint
1/4 cup water
1 shallot, peeled
juice from 1 lime
1 Tb. agave syrup or organic sugar
1 pinch sea salt

Mint Chutney Directions:
Blend all ingredients until you have a course puree. Taste and adjust seasonings, if necessary.

Debyi suggested serving the dosas topped with grated coconut and chopped cucumber. Since I made mini taco-like dosas, I topped mine with a bit of the chutney and used the coconut and cucumber as a garnish on the side.

Overall this was a fantastic Indian meal that I’ll definitely be making again- thanks to Debyi for a great challenge!