the september daring cook challenge – vegan dosas

My first month as a daring cook! I’ve seen references to the daring kitchen on various food blogs, but never really went so far as to actually see what it was all about. When a Michigan Lady Food Blogger mentioned it, I decided I would actually see what it was. Turns out it’s this really great online community of people who challenge themselves each month with a new recipe – a recipe they probably wouldn’t make on their own without being “dared” to do it. There is both a daring cook and a daring baker group – I joined both. All kinds of rules govern the group, such as how closely you must follow the recipe, when you can share the results with the world, and such, but really, it sounded like a fun thing to do. And how hard could it be to do? Except here I am, the night before the big monthly reveal, gathering the ingredients together and preparing the meal. Typical.

For September’s Daring Cooks challenge: dosas with curried garbanzo filling and coconut curry sauce. Wow. The host for this month’s challenge is a vegan (or at least writes a blog about eating vegan) and so the food was vegan. I had to go on the hunt for the almond milk and the spelt flour used, but really, everything else was pretty familiar. I did buy a coconut, husk and all, since I didn’t think sweetened coconut would really do the trick.

Some of that food is from our CSA share – those tomatoes, the peppers, the cucumber, the onions (that didn’t make the shot). Next time I’m at the farmers market, remind me to buy some carrots.

The host offered the helpful hint that this was going to take some time to make, but ever the daring cook, I disregarded that and started making dinner at about 6:30. Even with Karl taking over the making of the coconut curry sauce and the garnishes, we still didn’t sit down to eat until 8:00. The kids ate plenty of Pirate Booty and cucumbers while they were waiting.

Was the end result worth it? Most resoundingly, yes. Delicious aromas of cumin, garlic, onion, and curry powder filled our kitchen.  The food, when wrapped it up, looked uncannily like enchiladas and they actually tasted a little like it, too. I was expecting more savory crepe and ended up with tasty enchilada. Strange. Neither of the kids wanted anything to do with it at first, but after some cajoling, both of them happily ate up their tiny rolled up dosas, complete with coconut garnish. In the future (or if you are someone contemplating making this recipe), I would cut back the salt with everything. A tablespoon of salt in the curried garbanzo filling was about two teaspoons too much. The coconut curry sauce was lovely, creamy and sweet with the taste of coconut milk. Even that could have stood to have a little less salt, though. We were scooping up bits of that with the last of the dosas, though. Score one for the Daring Cooks (and for me and Karl). I can’t wait for the Daring Chefs September reveal!