This morning, I saw the woman who is my absolute kitchen heroine deftly roll out the most amazing parathas. Here’s a confession — I’ve tried to make parathas, which are really rotis stuffed with stuff and fried on the griddle, with varying degrees of success. Rather, it would be more accurate to say, varying degrees of failure.
The process requires a level of skill that in my opinion comes from actually doing it for upward of 20 years. All champion paratha makers I have come across fit this bill. The younger ‘uns, not so good. Unless you are a professional chef and have already rolled out 20 years worth of parathas in a couple of years. Yes, there I’d concede you the point. But, there’s no substitute for sheer experience when it comes to coaxing gooey dough into crisp, even, no-stuffing-peeking-out, yummy parathas.
How did my heroine do it this morning? I can share the process, not the expertise.
Pull out balls of dough kneaded out of coarsely ground wheat flour and water until it is spongy if you poke it with your finger. Take one ball and roll it into a flat circle, using dry flour if it sticks to the rolling surface. Now, fill it right in the centre with a mixture of mashed potatoes, finely chopped onions and chillies, and salt, and any other spices you might find interesting. Draw up the sides of the rolled out circle so that they bunch up like a pouch with the filling inside.
Now comes the tricky part. Pat the fattened ball down and use the rolling pin to again roll it out into a circle. I can never get this step right, because the filling starts to leak out the moment the rolling pin presses down on the ball, and everything becomes a mash. The way my heroine did this was to put lots of dry flour on the board, and basically take enough dough right at the beginning so it doesn’t develop a very thin skin by the time the second roll occurs. And then, of course, there’s the 20-year-old-skill and chutzpah — you basically don’t care if some of the stuffing breaks through the skin, and just put it on the griddle with large amounts of ghee, and get the sizzle going!
FYI: If you are crazy enough to try this (without the 20 years of experience in already doing this — I know, I know, it’s a vicious circle — how do you get the experience without trying it and being bad at it), you can vary this primarily potatoes filling with crumbled cottage cheese, or finely grated cauliflower or radish, or even just onions. Serve hot with yoghurt, pickles and chutneys of your choice.
