This is number 5 in my week of international pancakes, and we are off (once again) to the largest continent on the planet. This pancake is probably the least known of all the pancakes I have presented this week, at least to my western readers. In fact compared to the similarly prepared Indian cousin Dosa, this southern Indian pancake is hardly a household staple even in India.

But I may be getting ahead of myself here. In case you don’t know Dosa are an Indian rice and dal pancake. It seems that a Dosa is often fine textured and thin like a crêpe. At least the Dosa I have eaten in restaurants.

This version is called Adai and as I said is a specialty of the southern regions of India. Just like a Dosa, Adai is made with rice and urad dal (which is nothing like the mash of spiced orange lentils you may be used to when thinking of dal, but more on that later). One difference is that the cooks in the south of India include another type of dal also called tuvar dal– which according to my research is a southern staple. As typical of southern Indian cooking, Adai is spicier and more strongly flavored with the addition of hot red chili peppers, kadi patta, and ginger.