Azhagar kovil is a vishnu / perumal temple located in Madurai (temple city). Azhagar kovil dosai is a popular prasadam offer to lord vishnu (kalazhagar), which is fried with lots of ghee. But I made few changes to the original recipe. I prepared as same as regular dosai with less ghee.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cup - Raw rice
• 1/2 cup - Black gram / karuppu ulunthu / black gram dal (half broken with skin)
• 1/4 inch - Ginger
• 1 tsp - Peppercorns
• 1 tsp - Cumin seeds
• 10 nos - Curry leaves
• Ghee to cook dosai
• Salt to taste

Preparation method:

1. Wash and soak raw rice for 5 to 6 hours or overnight. Same way wash black gram dal (do not clean the husk in the dal completely) and soak them for 4 hours or overnight.
2. Take a motor and pestle, add fresh ginger, peppercorns, cumin seeds, curry leaves and crush it well, keep it aside.
3. Grind rice to a slightly coarse paste in the blender. Same way grind black gram dal to a fine paste. Now, mix both the rice and dal batter together, add salt and let sit for 4 to 5 hours.
4. Once the batter has fermented, add crushed masala paste and mix well thoroughly. Heat a dosa tawa and spread the batter like we make for adai dosai. Drizzle ghee and cook on both the sides till golden brown. Serve hot with coconut or spicy tomato chutney.

Notes:

• Azhagar kovil dosai is prepared with lots of ghee to make it more crispy and tasty. I used less ghee in this recipe yet dosai was crispy and tasty.
• I used broken black gram dal with skin in this recipe, but original recipe calls for whole black gram dal with skin.
• If you are not using this batter immediately after fermentation, then store it in the refrigerator for later use.
• Most important thing is do not ferment this batter for overnight. This dosai batter takes very less time to ferment than our regular idly batter. So it is better to check the batter after 3 hrs.
• You can replace fresh ginger with dry ginger powder or sukku podi.