Christmas observed -- with Royal Family Dosa

We decided to have an early Christmas celebration because Janet is leaving town tomorrow, and I had promised to make my "famous" dosa while all the kids were home, so this was our opportunity. And we invited Granny to join in the festivities.

Dosa are those South Indian pancakes that you serve with a spicy soup/sauce called sambar, and they aren't so hard to make thanks to MTR (Pure and Perfect Since 1924, a company out of Bangalore) Instant Mix Rava Dosa. Like it says on the package, "Whether it's a snack or part of a meal, crisp golden dosa are now so easy to make."

What you need is a good hot cast iron frying pan filmed with a bit of oil, or in our case, three of them going at once. You mix the powder with enough water so that when it hits the hot pan it makes a great sizzling noise and creates bubbles in the batter, which is mostly semolina and rice flour. Before flipping the pancakes, you garnish with chopped onions, cilantro and thin slices of fresh jalapeño.

I had trouble flipping some of them because the dough broke apart, but the one in the picture and a few others came out perfectly. Dip them in the MTR sambar, which is redgram (lentils) and spices with added potatoes, and you have yourself a nice spicy meal. For a cooling balance, we also had Pam's new Mexican Christmas salad, with jicama, roasted beets, pomegranate seeds, pine nuts, lettuce and oranges.

That was fun, especially all the frenzy around the hot frying pans, but there was one incident. The raw jalapeños were pretty strong, and I was sweating pretty well from eating them, so I wiped my face near my eyes, but YOW! I was wiping with the hand that I used to sprinkle the peppers onto the dosa, and in about three seconds my eyes were blazing and tearing enough that Janet rushed to the laptop to seek remedies. She suggested aloe vera, so I cut a branch off a handy plant (thanks Sandra!) and everyone laughed at me as I swabbed my nose and around my eyes with aloe juice. Ahhh, what relief.

We opened our own presents and then Brian and Sheila and Erin and Adam and Grace stopped over and we opened a few more, all of us jammed into the kitchen because the rest of the first floor is out of commission due to construction. It was a fine pre-Christmas celebration.