Tekka Market Staple · Fermented Rice Crepe

Thosai (Masala Dosa)

Photo: mckaysavage / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0

The batter needs no baking powder or yeast at all — its tang and rise come purely from wild fermentation, the same process behind a crepe whose earliest known mentions turn up in Tamil Sangam-era literature around 2,000 years ago.

A batter of fermented rice and lentils is ladled onto a hot griddle and spread paper-thin until the edges crisp, then folded plain or wrapped around a turmeric-spiced potato filling for masala thosai, served with coconut chutney and sambar at Tekka Centre's South Indian stalls.

Why it's made this way: The crepe's Tamil roots run deep enough to appear in ancient Sangam literature, and South Indian migrant communities carried the dish into Singapore's Little India, where it remains a fixture of the neighborhood's banana-leaf and vegetarian restaurants.