The Chappati Heartache

How do normal people react to reading their own past work ? Everytime I re-read something I have written, I cringe a little bit. To me, my work always seems juvinile, with plenty of room for improvement. Recently, I stumbled upon a piece that was published about 7 years ago on Sulekha. This was back when postings on that site had to be edited and approved by a reviewing team. I titled the article 'The chappati heartache' and it was meant to be a sarcastic yet useful guide for the kitchen self-starter to make their own chappatis/rotis from scratch. I have come a long way in my kitchen experiences since then, yet many of my feelings about making rotis have not changed. I still enjoy the whole process and more so enjoy complaining about it. As I read this article, I had an instant urge to edit my own work. But the older and wiser me decided that any changes would just ruin the innocence and the sheer geekiness that shines so proudly from it. So here, for your reading pleasure and for my records, I present to you the unedited 'Chappati Heartache' -- an account of my culinary frustrations more than 7 years ago.

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The Chappati Heartache
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The soul of Indian food is composed of rotis. These complex carbohydrates form the staple food of a billion people worldwide. They are delicious to eat and highly nourishing for the body (proteins and fiber). So naturally, they are a delightful pain to make. The procedure is messy, time consuming, exhausting and at the end of it all, you are just glad there is something to eat! I would attribute getting consistent (good) chappati results over and over again to a stroke of pure luck. At every attempt at chappati making, you get closer to getting better. Which only means that you will never be perfect, just like an infinite series only promises to converge at infinity. Are you willing to wait till eternity to eat perfect chappatis made by you?

If you don't believe me, allow me to exemplify my theory with -- myself! I am your average girl next door, have been away from home for several years, eating copious amounts of rice and pasta during those years and close to being sick of rice and any form of beans. I greatly enjoy (and sorely miss) my mother's cooking. I have been trying to make chappatis for a while now but the art of chappati-making completely eludes me! Sure, every once in a while, I have the blessing to enjoy my own handmade steamy, puffy, soft, melt-in-my-mouth chappatis, but the sheer amount of times I have had to eat thick, hard, chewy chappatis just ruins the pleasure. It's like my chappatis are forever jinxed by a cosmic conspiracy. How else would you explain that in say, x number of times I have made chappatis, 10x! uniquely different things have gone wrong? Now, do I see some heads nodding in agreement? Haven't we all been there, ladies (and um... the real gentlemen)? Hence the chappati heartache -- consistency is the key in chappati making, but the lock is unfortunately password protected.

Don't get me wrong. I love the entire cooking process, but failure frustrates me. Repeated failure prompts me to write about it. It is my belief that cooking results directly indicate the mood and frustration level of the chef. I have noticed that if I am frustrated about something (other than cooking), my chappatis come out great. This I believe is because, frustration is good for the dough-making process, you have all the motivation to beat the crap out of it and the dough comes out soft and smooth. Ironically, if I am frustrated about how my chappatis are turning out, their quality just goes downhill from there.

For the benefit of the naive beginners and the entertainment of the (self-proclaimed) chappati experts, allow me to explain the nuances of the fine art of chappati-making. It is hoped that in spite of some not-so-subtle sarcastic (frustrated) statements, this will be considered a useful guide.

The chappati making process has 4 main steps:

Kneading the dough
Making small balls of the dough
Rolling out chappatis
Roasting the chappatis

It is difficult to judge which one of the above steps is the most idiot proof, because like I mentioned, I have goofed up every step of the way, and still discovering new goofs and mutations of old ones.

Step 1: Kneading the dough

This process is a little messy. Beginners, please remember to clip your nails and wash hands with soap and water! Use a nice broad mouthed vessel for this process, one that would have room for various violent arm movements.

Start with some atta (wheat flour) in the vessel, and add salt to it.

Then add 1 teaspoon of oil and rub into the mixture.

Now gradually add water, rub into the mixture. Continue adding water until the mixture looks like dry scrambled eggs.

Now sprinkle about a fistful (?) of water and combine into a single dough structure.

Knead and knead, till your knuckles give out, and your carpal tunneled wrists are permanently hanging at right angles to your arm.

Wash hands and cover and keep dough aside for at least 10 minutes.

Tips on kneading dough

Start making the dough when you are frustrated. Imagine the dough as the object of your frustration and vent it out. Start at the end of the long school/ workday for the ideal frustration level.

Salt is an important and easy-to-forget ingredient!

Keep in mind, the physics theories of relativity and the uncertainty principle.

Why? If you made nearly perfect dough today, measured the amount of ingredients with astronomical precision and the next day mixed up the exact astronomical amount to make the dough, the result will almost always never be perfect. According to my research, this is due to the fact that your experiments can be affected by the plethora of factors, your sense of measurement, instruments used, number of experimental trials, temperature, humidity, sweat level of the palms, magnitude and direction of the force vectors applied to the dough, quality of the mill that ground the flour, entropy of the atmosphere, pollen count etc., to name a few. In the big picture, all this boils down to the following factors: the speed of light, the speed of kneading relative to the speed of light, the orientation of the earth, its rotational speed and the resulting centripetal force and the gravitational pull of other celestial objects to name a few of them. That is how physics becomes involved. As you will soon realize, it is difficult for an uninformed mind to keep all these factors in mind. For a more detailed guide for this step, please refer to another guide that will be written after the completion of research: “No Two Dough Balls Are The Same – Why?”

Rare second chance opportunity, If dough turns out too dry/hard, try adding water and knead extra hard to incorporate in the dough.

If dough turns out too soft/sticky, You have messed up. You can try adding more dry flour and knead till you pass out, but I doubt if the situation is recoverable.

A word of confidence: Whatever the end doughy result is, try to continue with the following steps, because after all, you can always eat thick, ugly chappatis.

Step 2: Making balls from the dough

1. Break the dough into 'ping-pong size' balls, smooth, no cracks or gradations on the surface. Opinions vary among the chappati gurus, some say 'marble sized', some say 'lemon sized' and some others say 'small melon' sized. My short stint of experience seems to suggest that 1.45” would be more or less the precise diameter.

This sounds a little too easy but believe you me, if you mess up here this could jeopardize the next steps.

Step 3: Rolling out chappatis

Keep dry flour handy for dusting purposes (a little more if your dough is on the sticky side)

Take each ball from the previous step, flatten on the rolling board, apply flour and roll with the rolling pin. In the beginning, the rolling process would seem more like flattening. But this is a delicate process; one has got to respect the chappati.

Roll out into rounds of about 6-7 inches in diameter. And that's it!

Tips, Tricks and Strategies for rolling

You have to talk to the chappati, sometimes curse at it. Show who the boss is. At the same time, be gentle. Just like teaching a kid how to tie his/her shoelaces (except for the cursing part).

The trick is to roll such that the chappati rotates with your motions, so that it is even throughout.

A neat little trick that my mom once taught me: Once the chappatis are about 1 inch in diameter, roll with even pressure (not measurements again), trying to roll out the edges to prevent overworking the center.

If you worry too much about the shape, it will never come out round.

Remember that you cannot get the round shape by tricky rolling pin movements in the end. That is why step 2 is so important; you have to make the balls such that if you flatten it, it is a perfect round. Now rotate it and roll evenly to try and maintain that as far as possible.

Step 4: Roasting the chappati

Preheat the tawa/griddle.

Wait till small bubbles are formed and the surface facing the tawa has small brown spots.

Use a paper towel or clean kitchen cloth and apply pressure on the chappati to cook it from within.

Remove and apply ghee to the surface that has just left the tawa. As a wise man once said, “It is very important to realize that in the real world, everything has a right side and a wrong side.” Truer words have never been spoken.

If you followed all the above steps 100% correctly, there is about 50% probability that the chappati will puff up nicely. Tips and Tricks for roasting

Keep your eyes peeled at the chappatis; they love to burn.

When in doubt, turn the chappati over to check for doneness. If it is not done, flip it back. Defense is the best strategy you can use here.

Keep the flame on 'high' while cooking the chappatis. This is supposed to prevent them from becoming hard on cooling.

Now that the process is outlined, do you feel you are up to it yet? Here is the final twister that adds slight complications – multiplexing.

Yes, you are expected to perform the rolling, toasting and greasing processes in a parallel, pipelined fashion for optimum time and fuel efficiency. By the time you lovingly roll out the chappati at hand into a semi-circle with Australia on top, the one on the tawa has turned to coal and the ones piled up waiting to be greased have turned to stone.

As with most things in life, one should start with this adventure simple and add the multiplexing to give themselves a challenge along the way. Unfortunately, such people are considered lowly novices among the chappati elites.

I can almost see those chappati experts rolling their eyes saying, well, Rome wasn't built in a day! My answer to them would be, of course that makes sense, Romans were so preoccupied with making pizza dough that they procrastinated building Rome!

They say perseverance pays and practice makes perfect (or nearly perfect in this case). In the meantime, misery loves company, so I am sharing my whines and complaints. Then again, a new day will come and I will go through the process once more, and maybe one day I will be close to getting better at it. Remember, he who says he is perfect, lies. She, who says she is perfect, usually lies.

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Think Pink: Beetroot Roti

Have you seen 'Chopped' on food network? I absolutely love the show. The creators of 'Chopped' go out of the way to select the most outrageous food combinations -- quail eggs, fish and dried cherries for instance, and have chefs compete against each other by cooking up the best possible appetizer/entree/dessert dish using the chosen ingredients.

As I opened my refrigerator door looking for some sort of dinner inspiration, I found the beetroot stashed behind the bag of apples with half a squash tucked in between. If I was at my creative best perhaps I could have used all three ingredients. I picked out the beets and squash.

I don't like to cook with beets that much. They make too much of a mess and stain everything on their path. If they were not so good for you and taste so darn good -- I would never bother with them. So, whenever I have to prepare beets, I prefer to cook and eat from the same apparatus. Tonight I grated the beets and squash into a giant bowl, mixed up seasonings (chili powder, ginger + garlic paste and vegetable bouillon cube) and whole wheat flour, made a dough out of it. Then took lumps of the dough between two large gallon sized freezer baggies and flattened then into flat discs using my palm . Then transferred the disks to a hot griddle and cooked them till done on both sides. Ate them with some sriracha hot sauce. Dinner accomplished yet again.

The sweet from the beetroot and spice from the chili powder made for a very interesting combination. The pink hue looked bright and pleasant on my white dinner plates.

All in one solitary meal: Tofu Spinach Roti

I can tell that it has been too long since my last visit to the grocery store because I am all out of junk food. Yes, been a slacker lately - no excuses. Plenty of theories for my lack of motivation to cook (besides the hackneyed too busy at work) -we'll go over them another day.

But, today I was possessed with the will to cook something good. I was surveying the pantry when it came to me - the mother of all one dish meals - the paratha (Indian flat bread). I gathered all elements of the USDA food pyramid - whole wheat flour, tofu, frozen spinach, vegetable stock cube, water and oil. And got to work. Also, in my life when it rains, it pours. So in true overachiever behaviorial pattern, I also launched another unit of processing - laundry. I kneaded the dough for the parathas and put the clothes in the washer as the dough rested. The whole cooking, cleaning and eating process was done before the end of the dryer cycle. Of course, I was eating as I was cooking. Here goes the recipe for the parathas/rotis

Tofu Spinach Roti/Paratha
0.5 cups frozen spinach 1/2 a vegetable stock cube	Place spinach and half a stock cube in a microwave safe bowl (big enough to knead the dough in) and nuke for 1 min to defrost the spinach
1.5 cups whole wheat flour 2-3 tbsp crumbled tofu (no need to drain) 1 tsp chili pow Not more than 1/2 cup water	Add the flour, tofu and chili pow (and salt if needed, the stock cube will have seasonings). Use your hands to incorporate all the ingredients. Add water little by little and knead into a smooth dough. Keep aside for a few minutes if you can spare.
	Divide dough into 10 parts, Roll into balls and flatten to form discs. Using a rolling pin, roll out into discs of about 6in diameter. Shape has no effect on the taste and nutrition. Heat a griddle/shallow frying pan till hot. Slap on a rolled out disc, flip after cooking ~30 sec on each side. Now drizzle some oil if desired and toast both sides applying slight pressure till brown spots appear on both sides.

Eat by itself or with plain yogurt. A proper meal, two loads of laundry and a blog post all in one week night - tonight is going to be hard to beat. If only I can now muster up motivation to put away that laundry!

Doodhi Aur Jowar ki Masala Roti

Jowar aka sorghum is a gluten free, wheat free whole grain. I was blissfully unaware of the existence of this grain until MIL came into the picture. I instantly liked the bhakris (rotis that are rolled by patting), warm off the tawa with ghee and garlic chutney. The texture of the bhakri was unlike anything I had tasted before. Because the jowar flour is gluten free, it is difficult to roll out and breaks easily. One tip MIL graciously shared with me, is to prepare the dough with hot water. Add hot water to dough while stiring around with a spoon and when it forms the consistency of scrambled eggs, use both hands to form a firm dough. This makes the dough on the stickier side, which makes it easier to roll out. That said, I will be the first to admit that I have great difficulty rolling out the bakri, and end up doing patch work. As a result, the bhakris are not round, nor do they puff up ever so slightly when cooked :-( If you want to take a look at what jowar rotis should look like, you might want to visit Ashwini's Food-for Thought. Edit: Another excellent resource can be found at the Cook's Cottage. Thanks! I feel a renewed zeal to try out the jowar bhakris.

But... No despair, MIL gave me another recipe for masala jowar rotis which is very forgiving. It tastes great - all patched up. It is sorgum roti, stuffed with doodhi or bottlegourd. It is quick, nutritious and best of all - one-dish-meal! No fuss cleanup. This roti is best eaten fresh, smeared with ghee or butter accompanied with garlic chutney and a glass of buttermilk.

Jowar Aur Doodhi (Bottle gourd) ki masala Roti
1 cup bottle gourd peeled and cut into large chunks 3-4 green chilies 3 cloves garlic 1 small red onion, peeled and chunked	Place all ingredients in a food processor and give it a 'whir' until the ingredients are grated. Transfer to a wide mouth mixing bowl
2 cups jowar flour 2-3 tbps sprouted moong or bean sprouts (optional) 1 tbsp coriander powder salt to taste	Add to the vegetable mixture. Incorporate into a dough adding hot water only if necessary. Most often the water from the gourd and onion would suffice. Break dough into 6 lumps, shaping each into a ball. Use extra dry flour for dusting, and roll out each lump into a thick disc with hands. Carefully remove with a spatula. Place on a heated tawa, press and cook on both sides till blistered. Remove from heat and smear with ghee/butter. Serve immediately.

Cooking this roti tends of take its toll on nonstick coated (strongly discouraged for this recipe) or even hard anodized griddles/tava. Use a cast iron griddle if you have one. Or like me, use an old tava saving it exclusively for jowar/bajra rotis.

Avocado Parathas

It's true. You can make parathas of anything if you just put your mind to it.
We bought some avocados from our local wholesale retailer last week, which we have been trying to incorporate into our diet in many ways. We tried them sliced or mashed stuffed in sandwiches, which was a great lunch sandwich. Then the legendary guacomole. But anyone familiar with wholesale shopping wouldnot be surprised to know that we still have plenty of avocados to consume, but we are running out of ideas.

Avocado is actually fruit (like tomato), which is in season in the winter. It was first discovered in Mexico and then taken to the English. It is actually pretty versatile. It is used in salads, soups, breads, appetizers, maincourses even desserts believe it nor not. For more interesting food history of avocados and interesting recipes, visit http://homecooking.about.com/library/weekly/aa012698.htm . You should buy avocados that are fresh, just picked but not ripe. Ripen them at home by keeping them in a brown bag away from direct sunlight and the refridgerator. Ripe avocados are fleshy and yield to touch. Just word about nutrition. Avocados are known to have high fat content, but it is mono saturated, so it is good for you in LIMITED quanity and they say it can control cholesterol. It is said that you can avoid using butter altogether by spreading creamed avovados on your bread. hmmmmm...

So, when I got home last night and looked at the fridge for any quick options and my eyes landed on the avocados. Immediately I ran out and checked if hubbie was in a whacky, i-don't-mind-trying-new-stuff-today mood. So then I set to work...

1 ripe avocado, pitted and fleshed (remove skin like an orange or cut lengthwise and scoop out flesh)
2 cups of chappati flour
1tsp salt (to taste)
1tbs corriander pow
1tbs any other masala you fancy (chaat masala, jeera pow, garam masala etc)
1 tsp chilli pow
water as required (small quantity)

In a large bowl, mash avocado pulp with a fork. Add flour and all masalas. Rub the mixture together and use the moisture of avocado to knead a smooth dough, adding water only if necessary (I needed to add about 2-3 tbsps of water). The dough usually is pretty smooth due to the above stated fat content. Then, break into even sized pieces (about 10). Roll out into ~6 in rounds and slap it on to a hot tava/griddle. It was a weekday dinner, so I didn't spend time folding the rounds over and rolling them again to obtain layers. But I bet you would get nice flaky layers, again due to the above state (good) high fat content. When small bubbles appear, flip and slap the other side on the tava. When that side bubbles up and shows some color, flip again and apply slight pressure with a folded paper napkin or a clean kitchen towel to cook it through. Serve with dal or other vegetable for a complete meal.


The results, well hubbie didn't complain as much about experimenting on him, so I think they were good. I liked them too :-)

No surprise again, but we still have more avocados remaning, so if you liked this one, stay tuned for more recipes. May be I will try the avocado bread over the weekend. Lets not get our hopes up just yet.

In the mean time, let me know some of your whacky creations...