Somehow despite my love of flatbreads and South Asian food, I've never made parathas. Why I decided to finally get around to it late on Sunday evening before my first full week of school and work, I'm not sure, but luckily it turns out they are really easy as well as delicious.The recipe I used was from Mangoes and Curry Leaves by Alford & Duguid (as usual), and is particular to Rajasthan, though I am sure there are close cousins to the recipe all over North India. You make parathas using a basic chapatti dough, and aside from making the filling, they're not really more work than plain chapattis, so I predict lots of experimenting using leftover fillings from other projects. In this case I didn't have anything made, and so followed the spicy potato filling recipe (similar to the stuffing in a masala dosa).
Not having any atta flour on hand at the moment, I made my dough with a mixture of local red spring whole wheat flour and regular all-purpose. The recipe says that leaving the dough to rest for longer than the usual 30 minutes, up to 2 hours, will make it easier to handle. Luckily I was making an eggplant dish and a sprouted kala chana (black chickpea) dish at the same time, so I had plenty of resting time :PI made the potato filling by boiling potatoes, frying the spices in a little oil and then mixing in the roughly-mashed cooked potatoes. I added some coriander and mint at the end when the mixture had had some time to cool.
Assembly was easy and fun, the kind of work that makes me love making flatbreads so much. You just divide and roll out the chapatti as usual, but spread on some filling, roll up the dough around it, flatten it, and roll it out again. I experimented with a few different ways of spreading and rolling to try to evenly cover up the filling, but even where it poked through the end results were fine.I oiled a heated frying pan and cooked them for a few minutes a side, brushing more oil on as necessary. Et voila! They were incredible, with a crisp outer texture and soft very spicy filling.
I just ate the last ones today, a week later, and they were nearly as good as freshly made. I found that microwaving them was a bit of a waste as it destroys the textural contrast and affects the flavour a bit. However, just as with plain chapattis, panfrying them in a dry pan on each side till heated through revivifies them beautifully.
On the first day I ate them with eggplant curry and kala chana dal, but on later eatings I spread them with some yogourt cheese I pressed myself, and some homemade bean sprouts (I have recently become completely addicted to sprouting things) and rolled up, they made an amazing light lunch.
Viva la paratha!
