Techniques

There are certain food items like ghee, paneer, idli/dosa batter; without which we cannot survive! Its difficult to find these in the foreign markets. And if you do, it will be costly, for sure!

So lets create some stuff at home:

Ghee

What you need:

1. Unsalted butter: You can get this in any foreign supermarket. 
2. Cooker base/pan: The thick base will help a lot.
3. A spoon

Technique:

1. Empty the contents of butter packet in the cooker base.
2. Heat the cooker on a medium flame.
3. Once the butter melts, keep stirring every time you see something sticking on the base.
4. You will see some white froth coming on the top. Its time to turn off the stove once you start seeing the melted butter(the froth will reduce slowly).
5. Let the ghee cool down to room temperature.
6. Store the ghee in a container.

You can test this technique on a small quantity of butter. Once you get a hang of it, you can make more ghee.

You can also make ghee from the traditional technique in case you have more time:

Milk > Malai > Ghee

Paneer

What you need:

1. Milk: You can get this in any foreign supermarket. A high-fat milk is preferable.
2. Lime/lemon: This is available in the grocery markets. 
3. Cooker base/pan: The thick base will help a lot.
4. A spoon
5. A thin cloth, string

Technique:

1. Boil the milk in a cooker base.
2. Add lime/lemon juice to the milk and keep stirring. You can slowly add the juice and decide when to stop once the milk starts parting.
3. There will be a point when you will see lumps.
4. This is tricky and needs care: Pour the liquid in a cloth. The liquid will drain off. Tie the cloth with a string on a handle of the storage cupboard knobs. Put a container under it to collect excess liquid.

You can try this on a small quantity of milk (around half liter).

Idli/Dosa/Dhokla/Handvo batter

What you need:

1. Long grain rice: This is readily available in the foreign grocery markets and really gives the best results. The rice grain is a bit thick and long. You can also use any other rice except Basmati.
2. Udad daal: You might need to get this from an Indian grocery store. But do check the local grocery stores. 
3. Menthi seeds: Around 1/2 teaspoon
4. Water
5. A metal container for fermenting(preferably thick metal like a cooker)
6. 2 metal containers for soaking rice/daal
7. Veg. Oil: 1 teaspoon. You can get this from a local grocery store.
8. Poha/Avlakki (optional): 1/4th cup. Mostly available in the Indian grocery store.
9. A cup for measurement
10. Mixer

Important Tip:

The trick lies in the paste consistency. If the water content in the paste is too high or too less, the fermentation won't be proper. How to achieve this? Well, its simple. After soaking, drain off all the water in a cup. Grind the daal/rice by adding water only if its required.

Technique:

1. Fill 3 cups of rice and soak it overnight in a container.
2. Fill 1 cup of udad daal and soak it in a different container.
3. Soak menthi seeds in the udad daal.
4. Next morning, soak avalakki/poha for 5 minutes.
5. Grind the rice and poha/avalakki. 
6. Pour the paste in the metal container (for fermenting).
7. Grind the udad daal with the menthi seeds.
8. Add the udad daal paste to the rice paste. 
9. Add oil to the paste and mix well.
10. Cover the container with a lid and place it in the sun for fermenting. In winter months, you can place the container in the oven. You can switch on the oven light. But, please do not switch on the oven!

The above technique is to make a general batter. You can add more udad daal (1/2 cup) to make it a dhokla/handvo batter.