Paneer Parathas

I love stuffed parathas of all kinds. By far the one most loved by all in the family is aloo parathas. I remember going to Southall for Indian food. We used to eat the chats, pakodas, makki ki roti and saag but the eye was on getting a take away of a whole variety of stuffed parathas - aloo ones, methi ones, gobi ones and paneer ones. Now I cannot eat the gobi ones so paneer ones are the other choice after aloo. Eventually I learnt to make my own paneer parathas and after a couple of trials I think I have got the version that I am happy with.

Ingredients for Stuffing

• 300 gm of fresh paneer finely grated / crumbled
• 1 medium onion finely chopped
• 1 medium sized green chilli also finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon of whole jeera /cumin
• 1 table spoon of olive oil
• ¼ teaspoon of turmeric powder
• ½ teaspoon of chilli powder
• Salt to taste

Ingredients for Paratha

• 400 gm of plain wheat flour / chapatti flour and keep 100 gm of flour for dusting when rolling out the parathas
• Water about 225 ml
• 5 table spoons of olive oil

Preparing the Dough

Place the flour and 1 table spoon of olive oil in a bowl mix them together.

Then start adding water a little at a time while bringing the dough together.

Once all the dough is brought together knead it for a few minutes.

Finally take a teaspoon of olive oil in your hand and knead the dough to make it smooth.

Normally I set aside the dough of parathas and chapattis to rest for a while. Often I make the dough a couple of hours ahead and leave it covered with a damp tea cloth or an upturned bowl to keep it from drying out.

Preparing the Paneer Stuffing

In a medium sized saucepan heat the table spoon of olive oil and cumin.

As the cumin starts darkening add the onion and chillies and sauté them.

Once the onion turns translucent add the finely crumbled / grated paneer into it.

Add the spices and stir the paneer.

It will take a few minutes to warm through and get the spices incorporated into it.

Then put aside the cooked paneer stuffing to cool before you can begin preparing the parathas.

Preparing the Parathas

Divide the dough into 6 equal parts and give them a round shape like ball. Take one dough ball, press it between your palms to make a flat patty and dust with dry flour. This use of flour as you are rolling out keeps the dough from sticking on to the rolling pin or the surface you are rolling it on.

Place dough patty on rolling board and roll it out with a rolling pin into a thick circle of about 4-5 inch diameter. Put 1½ - 2 tablespoons stuffing in the centre, wrap it with sides of rolled circle, seal the edges and again give it a round shape like ball. I tend to have the centre thicker than the edges as when you pull the edges together you want it to be similar in thickness all round. If the side with sealed edges is thicker the paratha can split on its other side while rolling it out.

Press the stuffed ball flat and dust with flour and roll it out in to a 6 – 7 inches circle.

Put a flat griddle or tawa on the hob to get it heating. Have a small bowl with the rest of the oil and teaspoon to brush the paratha with oil as it is cooking. It is useful to get a foil ready to cover your parathas once they are done to keep them warm. 

Put on the hot griddle and wait for it to warm up and start to get cooked. Turn it over once and brush with oil. Then turn over again and brush the other side with oil. The cooked paratha will have some blistering and darkening patches.

These parathas can be eaten with raita or just some hot and sour pickle made from mango or chilli or lime.

Palak / Spinach Parathas

A few weeks back I saw a website that came up in my Facebook news feed about making different types of parathas. Since I know a few different recipes myself, I was intrigued to see what kinds were in this recipe link. Scrolling down the list palak parathas caught my eye. Now I do feel I should have more spinach in my diet but always find it difficult to think what I can make besides the moong dal and palak. Just realised, that I have not penned that one and will do so after this one. I am not very fond of palak paneer as the palak is gets cooked to a pulp.

The palak paratha recipe was to my mind very lengthy and it involved blitzing the spinach in a mixer and using the pulp instead for water to knead the dough. Of course various condiments and spices were to be added to this dough. This would provide nice green parathas. I did not want to do the additional blitzing of spinach which meant I would not be sure of how much dough I would eventually make and additional washing up. So I adapted the recipe and made these wonderful tasting parathas.

Ingredients

1/2 bunch of spinach finely chopped

2 cm piece of ginger finely chopped

1 medium sized green chilli also finely chopped

300 gm of plain wheat flour / chapatti flour

A teaspoon of salt

Water about 225 ml

5 table spoons of Olive oil.

Preparing the Dough

• Place the finely chopped spinach, ginger, chilli and salt in a bowl.
• Add the flour and 1 table spoon of olive oil next and mix them together.
• Then start adding water a little at a time while bringing the dough together.
• Once all the dough is brought together knead it for a few minutes.
• Finally take a teaspoon of olive oil in your hand and knead the dough to make it smooth.

Normally I set aside the dough of parathas and chapattis to rest but with this one I try not to keep it resting for more than 10 minutes as the palak can make the dough too soft.

Preparing the Paratha

• Put a flat griddle or tawa on the hob to get it heating. Have a small bowl of oil and teaspoon to brush the paratha with oil as it is cooking. It is useful to get a foil ready to cover your parathas and keep them warm.  Take a dough ball big enough to fill your palm. You should be able to make about 7 balls / portions from that dough.
• Flatten it a little and cover it with flour before rolling it out. This use of flour as you are rolling out keeps the dough from sticking on to the rolling pin (Gujarati word is velan) or the surface you are rolling it on. Some people can use the work surface tops or wooden or marble patlo (a Gujarati word for the surface you roll out your chapattis on).
• Roll out the dough to as about 2 mm thickness.
• Put on the hot griddle and wait for it to warm up and start to get cooked. Turn it over once and brush with oil. Then turn over again and brush the other side with oil. The cooked paratha will have some blistering and darkening patches.

I would recommend having these palak parathas with raita or moong dal or even just mango pickle.

Palak / Spinach Parathas

A few weeks back I saw a website that came up in my Facebook news feed about making different types of parathas. Since I know a few different recipes myself, I was intrigued to see what kinds were in this recipe link. Scrolling down the list palak parathas caught my eye. Now I do feel I should have more spinach in my diet but always find it difficult to think what I can make besides the moong dal and palak. Just realised, that I have not penned that one and will do so after this one. I am not very fond of palak paneer as the palak is gets cooked to a pulp.

The palak paratha recipe was to my mind very lengthy and it involved blitzing the spinach in a mixer and using the pulp instead for water to knead the dough. Of course various condiments and spices were to be added to this dough. This would provide nice green parathas. I did not want to do the additional blitzing of spinach which meant I would not be sure of how much dough I would eventually make and additional washing up. So I adapted the recipe and made these wonderful tasting parathas.

Ingredients

1/2 bunch of spinach finely chopped

2 cm piece of ginger finely chopped

1 medium sized green chilli also finely chopped

300 gm of plain wheat flour / chapatti flour

A teaspoon of salt

Water about 225 ml

5 table spoons of Olive oil.

Preparing the Dough

• Place the finely chopped spinach, ginger, chilli and salt in a bowl.
• Add the flour and 1 table spoon of olive oil next and mix them together.
• Then start adding water a little at a time while bringing the dough together.
• Once all the dough is brought together knead it for a few minutes.
• Finally take a teaspoon of olive oil in your hand and knead the dough to make it smooth.

Normally I set aside the dough of parathas and chapattis to rest but with this one I try not to keep it resting for more than 10 minutes as the palak can make the dough too soft.

Preparing the Paratha

• Put a flat griddle or tawa on the hob to get it heating. Have a small bowl of oil and teaspoon to brush the paratha with oil as it is cooking. It is useful to get a foil ready to cover your parathas and keep them warm.  Take a dough ball big enough to fill your palm. You should be able to make about 7 balls / portions from that dough.
• Flatten it a little and cover it with flour before rolling it out. This use of flour as you are rolling out keeps the dough from sticking on to the rolling pin (Gujarati word is velan) or the surface you are rolling it on. Some people can use the work surface tops or wooden or marble patlo (a Gujarati word for the surface you roll out your chapattis on).
• Roll out the dough to as about 2 mm thickness.
• Put on the hot griddle and wait for it to warm up and start to get cooked. Turn it over once and brush with oil. Then turn over again and brush the other side with oil. The cooked paratha will have some blistering and darkening patches.

I would recommend having these palak parathas with raita or moong dal or even just mango pickle.

Mooli Parathas (white radish flat bread)

In the years gone by when I lived in UK we used to visit a small restaurant in Southall which was a family run place. They used to do a lot of different stuffed parathas like aloo (potato),  gobi (cauliflower), mooli (white radish / daikon), methi (fenugreek leaves) and paneer (soft cheese). I have also come across onion parathas, peas  stuffed parathas too recently. While I am good at making aloo parathas and make them more often now that I am able to use my hands more, the only other one I have tried is methi parathas or shall I say the Gujarati version of methi thepla. 

The couple of times I have tried making mooli parathas turned out to be a stressful disaster. The first time I just grated the mooli and mixed some spices like salt, red chilli powder and turmeric. Then I rolled out the chappati dough into a small circle and put a spoonful of the prepared mooli in and made a ball before rolling it out again. Now the mooli is full of water and that it releases the water when it is grated. This made the rolling out a disaster as the dough kept getting wetter and breaking up. The second time I looked up a recipe and saw that you needed to grate the mooli and squeeze out the water by hand. Then temper it with some oil and cumin, add salt, chilli and turmeric powder and cook it. Once cooled, you can go about stuffing as before into the rolled out dough. It seems I really did not get all the water out of the mooli as this still lead to a wet gloopy disaster when rolling out the paratha.

Then a friend told me of a different approach and I also saw it on the Panjabi episode of Madhur Jaffery’s Curry Nation. It suddenly looked doable to me and so the next visit to the green grocers I bought a mooli. Now it was huge but I thought if all goes well loads of parathas or else I can pickle some and add to salads.

·        Ingredients for the dough

3 packed cups of grated mooli (measure the mooli after the water has been squeezed out)

3 cups of Plain wheat / chapatti flour

2 table spoons of oil (vegetable or olive oil)

3 teaspoons of salt

4 medium sized green chillies finely chopped

Oh yes I get very confused when I read the measurements in cups without any indication of the amount in the cup. My cups hold 225 mls of liquid.

·        Preparation of the dough

Grate the mooli ( I know the amount seems a bit vague but seriously I was experimenting and I would expect a whole mooli would be adequate) I only measured the amounts I had after draining the water. Mix the salt in the grated mooli and place in a colander over a bowl. Leave it for a half hour at the most and you will see that the water is dripping out of the mooli into the bowl. Now you will need to manually squeeze out the water from the mooli and place it in a different plate. Once all the water has been squeezed out you need to save the water as it can be used for kneading the dough. Since there is salt in the water you would not need to add more salt to the wheat flour. Indeed the mooli water adds extra flavour. To the flour add 1 table spoon of oil and mix it. Then add the mooli and the green chillies and mix it well… only then you will have an idea of the amount of water to add to get a medium consistency of dough just as you get if you were making plain parathas or chapattis. Once the dough comes together take the other tablespoon of oil in your hands and knead the dough nice and smooth.

·        Preparing the parathas

Do not leave the dough for a long time as more water can get released from the mooli and then you will have to remedy the situation by adding more flour. This makes the amount of mooli sparse in the paratha.

Put a flat griddle or tawa on the hob to get it heating. Have a small bowl of oil and teaspoon to brush the paratha with oil as it is cooking. It is useful to get a foil ready to cover your parathas and keep them warm.  Take a dough ball big enough to fill your palm. Flatten it a little and cover it with flour before rolling it out. This use of flour as you are rolling out keeps the dough from sticking on to the rolling pin (Gujarati word is velan) or the surface you are rolling it on. Some people can use the work surface tops or wooden or marble patlo (a Gujarati word for the surface you roll out your chapattis).

The parathas should be rolled out to about half centimetre thick at the most. Thinner than that could break the dough up as the mooli will be small bits that cannot be rolled out. Put on the hot griddle and wait for it to warm up and start to get cooked. Turn it over once and brush with oil. Then turn over again and brush the other side with oil. The cooked paratha will have some blistering and darkening patches. 

These amounts of ingredients will make about 10 to 12 parathas. You can enjoy them with hot mango pickle or raita or dal. Hope you enjoy it as much as my guests and I did.

Gujarati savoury flat bread - Methi Thepla

I love thepla. For the non gujjus it is a flat bread like paratha but with spices in it. 

To the basic chapatti flour which is wheat flour one adds a spoonful of oil, salt, chilli powder, cumin and coriander powder as well a big pinch of turmeric. 

Add water and knead the dough. Once the dough is ready roll out and cook like a paratha with a small amount of oil applied on each side while cooking.

Now I know this is not a recipe as that has been done by many people. For example there is a YouTube video about making thepla. Tarla Dalal has a slightly different version with yoghurt added into the dough to give it a nice sourness. While I do love this plain version of thepla and have it with yoghurt or plain potato sabhji or indeed with sweet mango pickles like chhunda and gol kari. Now the hyperlinks will get you to the recipe sites but I have not tired making them myself and only remember the traditional way my mother used to make. Now that I have some time I will actually give it a go and see if they work.

My favourite thepla are with other additions like either chopped methi (fenugreek leaves) or with grated doodhi (bottle gourd). With the doodhi it is always good to add yogurt in the making of the dough and sometimes mix a bit of bajari (pearl millet) flour in it. The methi or grated doodhi is added to the flour along with the spices and the kneaded into dough by adding water. Now I am planning to make methi thepla (sorry this is a gujju video) for dinner today and so thought maybe my friends would like to have some too! Thus the blog…. However I am well aware of my limitations as a recipe writer and so resorted to making use of the various websites and also youtube. Hope you guys like it too.