Category: Flat breads

Aloo paratha

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 BM# 102 : Week 3, Day 1
Theme : Restaurant recreations

When we were growing up, the culture of eating outside wasn’t there. In fact, eating outside was considered as a last option when there is absolutely no other way out. There were two main reasons for this -1) there weren’t main clean and neat hotels then. 2) affordability. It was only after we got jobs and moved out of our home, that we started eating out.

My brother moved out when he got a job in Bangalore. The couple of times that I visited him, he had taken me to home style Punjabi dhabas near his place. The fare would be simple – couple varieties of parathas and maybe some curries. We have never looked at the Curries there. We would order aloo parathas most of the time and relish it with thick delicious yogurt and the pickle.

My husband wants a curry for parathas, where as I feel that the curry takes the limelight off the paratha. Aloo parathas are easy to make and there is no one single recipe to make this. Every household has its own variations but the end product is always delicious. If you are making parathas for the first time, it’s a good idea to watch some videos first. And also remember that rolling out rotis gets better with practice. So don’t be disheartened if the first few parathas tend to be a little difficult to make.

Read on for the recipe while.

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Ingredients:

For the dough

  • 2 cups whole wheat flour
  • 1 teaspoon oil, optional
  • Salt as needed
  • Water for kneading the dough

For the filling:

  • 4 medium potatoes, boiled and peeled
  • 2 teaspoons of oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped finely
  • 1 teaspoon ginger garlic paste
  • 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
  • 1 teaspoon coriander powder
  • 1 teaspoon aamchur
  • 1/2 teaspoon garam masala
  • Salt as needed

Method:

  • In a big bowl, add the flour. Add oil and slowly kneed together, adding water in steps to make a dough. Stop adding water when the dough comes together and kneed until it’s smooth.Set aside and let it rest for 30 minutes.
  • Peel and mash the boiled potatoes. There shouldn’t be any big lumps. Keep aside.
  • You can add all the masalas and the chopped onions to the potato mix directly, but I like to sauté the onions before that. It’s an optional step. Sauté the onions and ginger garlic paste in oil and once the onions turn pink, add the masalas. Turn off the heat and mix it in.
  • Add the mashed potatoes and mix everything well.
  • Take a lemon sized ball of the dough and roll it using a rolling pin into a 4″ size roti. You might have to use some flour to the rolling surface so that the dough doesn’t stick to it. Now Take a lemon sized ball of the filling and keep it in the middle.
  • Bring the edges together so that the filling gets enclosed inside the dough.

    • Seal the edges by pinching together so that the filling doesn’t come outside.

    Roll this again using some flour to a big paratha.

    Cook the paratha in heated pan and brush it with some ghee. While the paratha is cooking on the stove, you can start rolling and filling the next paratha.

    Once the bottom is cooked, flip it and cook the other side too. Brush with more ghee if you prefer. Take off the heat once it’s cooked and set aside. Repeat with the rest of the dough.

    • Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the recipe from other Blogging Marathoners.

    Sweet Potato chapati

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    1sweet_potato_roti

    BM# 97: Week 2, Day 3
    Theme : Vegan recipes

    I have been making a whole lot of Vegan recipes for this theme but unfortunately I don’t seem to be able to take pictures. The weather is now bad and before I know it, it’s dark outside and there is no light to take pictures. If I take pictures indoors, the colors don’t come out right. So that’s something I have given up doing a long time back.

    Initially i was planning to post the recipe of a vegan cake I had made sometime back. Unfortunately the frosting had butter in it. Coming to think of it, its easy to make a vegan cake, but vegan frosting can be much harder.

    Anyway I decided on this sweet potato chapatis for today. It’s been in my drafts folder for a while. My cousin has made this for us when we were in our Velacheri house. I still remember how soft and delicious it was. Mine didn’t turn out to be as good as hers but still it was pretty good. I forgot her recipe so this recipe is from the internet. These chapatis turn out to be very soft. The spice level can be adjusted to your preference. I like it flavored only with chili powder, but you can try adding whatever spices you like.

    Read on for the recipe.

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    Recipe adapted from: Archana’s kitchen

    Sweet potato roti:

    • 1 cup cooked and mashed sweet potato
    • 1 cup wheat flour
    • 1.5 teaspoon red chili powder, or per taste
    • Salt as needed

    Method:

      Pressure cook sweet potatoes. Once completely cooked and cooled down, peel and mash them. For every cup of wheat flour, add one cup of mashed sweet potatoes.
      In a big mixing bowl, add the mashed sweet potatoes, flour, chili powder and salt. You can add a teaspoon each of cumin seeds and ajwain(carom seeds) too, if preferred. Mix everything and make a smooth and soft dough, sprinkling water as needed to bring the dough together. Don’t add too much water in one shot, add a little at a time, mix in and add more if needed.
      Once the dough comes together and is soft and not lumpy anymore, cover the bowl and leave it to rest for 10-15 minutes.
      Make chapatis. I suggest watching a video in YouTube if you are not familiar with the making chapatis.Serve with pickle or a curry of your choice.

    Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing this BM#97

    Dal dhokli

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    There are many recipes from this space that I keep trying again and again. Yet I don’t try taking better pictures of some of the old favorites. Unless there is a push, I don’t think I would. So for this marathon, I had checked with Valli about redoing some of the old posts with new pictures. Dal dhokli was one of the posts I was planning to redo.

    Dal dhokli is chapati dough seasoned with spices cooked in lentils. There are so many variations to this dish. My original post was an adapted version with a lot of vegetables. When I started cooking, I decided to make the original version and not redo my take on it before. So no vegetables and just dal with cooked dough in it. I went to the original source for my previous post and followed it for most part. I halved the recipe and added a handful of peanuts, but other than that, no changes.

    Read on for the recipe.

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    Serves: 4

    Recipe source: Flip Cookbook

    Ingredients:

    For the dal

    • 1 tablespoon ghee
    • 1/2 teaspoon jeera seeds
    • 1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
    • 3-4 dry red chillies
    • a good pinch of hing
    • 1 cup moong dal, cooked
    • 2 tablespoon toor dal, cooked
    • 2 tablespoon chana dal, cooked
    • 2 teaspoon coriander powder
    • 1 teaspoon red chili powder
    • 1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
    • handful of peanuts, optional
    • coriander leaves
    • salt to taste
    • lemon juice to taste

    For the dough

    • 1 cup wheat flour
    • 1/2 teaspoon red chili powder
    • 1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder
    • 1/2 teaspoon ajwain
    • 2 teaspoons oil
    • salt as needed
    • water to kneed into a dough

    Method:

    To make the dough, add the spices and oil to the flour and mix lightly using your hands. Then slowly add water, little by little and kneed into a soft dough. Cover the bowl and let it rest at least 20 minutes.

    Wash and pressure cook the dals together with about 4 cups of water. I did this in Instant Pot for 8 minutes in Manual mode. Once the dal is cooked and the pressure is released, lets start the tadka. Heat ghee in a pot big enough to hold the cooked dal. Add the jeera seeds, mustard seeds, hing and dry red chillies. Let the seeds splutter.


    Add the cooked dal, spice powders and salt as needed. Mix well and let it come to a slow boil. Meanwhile take a lemon sized ball out of the dough, pat it in some flour and roll it out into a circle. Cut out diamond shapes using a pizza cutter.

    Add the dough pieces into the dal and let it cook.  Keep adding the dough until you are done with the dough. You can add more water if there isn’t enough liquid. Let it cook for about 10-15 minutes until the dough is cooked completely. If you feel like, you can roast one handful of peanuts in ghee and add it to the dal dhokli as well. Take off the heat, add a handful of chopped coriander leaves. At the time of serving, squeeze some lemon juice if preferred.

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    Potato Kibbeh

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    For the month of February, one of the Blogging Marathon theme was ingredient swap. One of the ingredients I got was bulgur wheat from Pavani . I had prepared lentil kofte (or a version of it since I was short of all the supplies except bulgur :D), but I still had enough to try some other recipe.

    A generic search for vegetarian bulgur recipes landed me on this page and I was absolutely taken in by their baked version of potato kibbeh.  With pictures as good as theirs and clear step wise instructions, it was almost a crime not to prepare it :-)). Though I made it long before, it has been staying in the drafts section for way too long. Since this month’s theme is protein rich foods and this recipe has bulgur, chickpea and spinach as sources, it time for this recipe to join the virtual world.

    Kibbeh is a Middle Eastern dish prepared with bulgur and mostly meats. There are many variations to the dish right from shaping it to the method of cooking. It can be deep fried, baked or served raw and is shaped as a ball, patty or scored into diamond shapes. You can read more about this dish here.

    Read on for the recipe and pictorial.

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    Ingredients:

    • 1 kg (2.5 lbs) potatoes, cooked
    • 1 1/4 cups fine bulgur wheat
    • 1 big onion, sliced
    • 1 small grated onion
    • 1 teaspoon allspice
    • a pinch of cinnamon
    • 1/2 cup chopped parsley
    • 1/4 cup olive oil
    • salt and pepper to taste

    For the filling:

    • 1 medium onion, chopped
    • 1 red bell pepper, chopped
    • 1 orange bell pepper, chopped
    • 2 cups spinach
    • 1 cup cooked chickpeas
    • salt and pepper to taste

    Soak the bulgur in lukewarm water for 20 minutes. Drain and set aside. Cook the potatoes separately. Once its cooked, add to a bowl and mash well so that no lumps remain. Add the grated onion, salt, pepper, allspice, cinnamon, parsley and drained bulgur. Mix well using your hands until everything is uniformly spread. It will come to the consistency of a dough finally.

    For the filling, heat a tablespoon of oil in a pan. Saute one big chopped onion and one each red and orange bell pepper. Add salt and pepper to taste. Now add one cup of cooked chickpeas and 2 cups of spinach. I have used a small pack of frozen spinach here.

    Add the bulgur to the potato mix and mix everything well. Divide this bulgur potato ‘dough’ into two parts. In a baking pan, spread one tablespoon of oil. Spread a layer of thinly sliced onions from one large onion.

    Spread one half of the bulgur potato mix on top of the sliced onions. Spread all of the filling evenly on top of the bulgur mix.

    Once you have covered the entire surface with the filling, add the rest of the bulgur dough evenly on top of the filling. Cover it completely.

    Using a knife, score whatever patterns you want into the dough. The knife scoring go all the way down to the bottom of the dish. I cut it into wedges and then made not so deep circular patterns on top. Spread 1/4 cup of olive oil on top evenly and bake in a preheated oven for 40 -50 minutes at 400F. If the top is not browned at the end of that time, keep under broiler for a couple of minutes. Take off the oven and cut into slices once its cool enough to touch.

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