Khatta (sour) Dhokla

This is a Gujarati specialty which can be served as a snack or side dish or as a light dinner. Once you taste this, you will never be able to forget this dish. The tagline 'no one can eat just one' aptly suits this dish. This is the favorite of my family. Also, this dish can be made with many variations. The recipe I post is what my mom has been using for ages. But I will try to post as many variations I can here. And may be keep updating as and when I get the different recipes. It varies with every household. The taste would also alter in every home.

Ingredients: For batter

• 1.5 cups of rice
• 0.5 cup of urad dal
• 0.5 cup of SOUR yogurt (if the yogurt is not sour, you can leave it outside for 2-3 days in a cup and let it turn sour)
• 2 tbs ginger-garlic-green chilli paste
• 0.5 cup of finely chopped cilantro 
• 3 tsp ENO (fruit salt)
• 2 tbs oil
• Salt to taste
• Red chilli powder to sprinkle

Method

• Soak the rice and daal in plenty of water separately for 6-8 hours. Once soaked, drain the water. Grind the rice and daal separately by adding water only if required to make thick paste. Then mix the two paste and add little water. Mix well. This should have a consistency similar to that of idly batter.
• Add the sour yogurt and salt to this mixture. Let it ferment for 8 hours (overnight is fine too) depending on the weather conditions. 
• Once fermented, add the ginger-garlic-chilli paste, cilantro. Mix well. 
• Just before steaming, place the ENO salt (and not sprinkle) over the batter. Heat the oil and pour that over the ENO. This will create lot of bubbles. Now mix gently the batter so the ENO+oil is mixed into the batter.
• Grease the dhokla thali (if you do not have it, you can also use the idly maker) with oil.
• Add the batter to fill half the thali and sprinkle red chilli powder over it.
• Place the thali in the cooker (without whistle) and let it steam for 10-12 minutes. If you are using the idly maker, then you might have to adjust the timing accordingly.
• Once done, cut the dhoklas into diamond shape.
• Serve hot with cilantro chutney and oil.

Variations

• Chana dal - You can add chana dal along with urad dal. Then the ratio would be 2 cups rice + 0.5 cup of urad dal + 0.5 cup of chana dal.
• Another variation using chana dal is that if you do not want to grind the chana dal, then you can leave it as it and just mix with the batter along with other ingredients.
• Another variation is instead of red chilli powder, you can sprinkle black pepper.
• Also, instead of mixing cilantro in the batter it can be used for garnishing. Also, you can heat oil in a pan, add mustard sees, pinch of hing, curry leaves, red dry chilli. Once they crackle, drizzle this over the dhokla and garnish with cilantro.
• The ginger-garlic-paste ingredient is optional. If you do not like it you can modify (may be just ginger-chilli) or entirely exclude it.