Coconut chutney

Here’s the easiest thing you can make to eat with thosai (or dosai, as they say in India), the recipe again provided by my friend Unaicy in Bangkok:

How to make thosai – or it is dosai?

I always wanted to know how to make thosai. Or, as my Indian friends from India (not from Malaysia) would say, dosai.

Living in Petaling Jaya in the ‘80s, this was one of my favourite dinners, if someone was driving over to Oldtown: wafer-thin “paper thosai” large enough to wrap your head in, crisp and golden with a filling of masala potato.

However, friends would always say, “Nah… too much work.” Indeed – why make it at home when you can go out for a nice fresh one, cooked by a specialist. So we always ate shop thosai, unless friends made us some at their home. But this was rare. Generally they would pop over to their local Indian shop for it too.

Recently, my friend Unaicy kindly provided a recipe. Making it wasn’t so hard – it just came down to a matter of timing.

Chicken curry is the foundation of adult life

When I left home, my mum wrote out this recipe for me. I’ve long since lost the original, but have cooked it so many times that I can write it down from memory. It is, give or take a little, a South Indian-style chicken curry*, and it’s what we made for any vaguely celebratory meal, along with an array of accompaniments of varying plainness or grandeur, depending on the occasion.