Why Do We Splash Some Water On The DosaKal?

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Dosai (or more popularly dosa as you'd say it if you were talking in English), is a wonderful dish. I haven't met a single person who hates dosas. There are so many varieties and variations that one can do with a dosa. It's one of those dishes that you'd never be tired of having daily. 

I can make decent dosas (quite well, actually). I have earned the badge of being consistently good at it, thanks to the critics at home- brother, mom and dad. My grandmother is a huge inspiration for me. She is the ultimate dosa master in our family, and she makes such wonderful dosas. I always aim to be as good as her, and that is why I think I have the interest and the motivation to try and make every dosa well. 

So, how do you make a dosa? You take a scoop of batter and pour it in the centre of the hot tava on the stove, and then quickly work your way in circles from the centre to the outer edge, spreading the batter to a thin, round looking sheet of batter. You put some oil on the edges, and then when the base is cooked, you turn the dosa over to the other side. That's it. Seems easy? Not that easy, though it will come to you easily if you have interest. 

Before making the next dosa, we usually sprinkle water on the tava(called DosaKal). I never understood this part alone. Why do we splash water on the DosaKal? When I asked my dad he gleefully pointed at the noise that the water makes on sprinkling on the tava, the famous whoosh that you hear when people make dosas. But is that the real reason? I did some googling to discover that people do it so that the tava doesn't get overheated. Now, this makes absolute sense to me. 

One of the most important things to successfully make dosas is to have the DosaKal in the right temperature range. It can't get too hot, and it can't lose too much heat- everything about the making the dosa is about cleverly managing the DosaKal! I felt really happy to understand why I was doing what I was doing. It makes so much more sense now. 

Everything that we do as a part of a process does have a reason. It is up to us to find out the reason before we conclude anything about it. The reason may be relevant or not in today's set up, but it is not without reason that something is/was followed. All it takes is a little interest to find out why!