North Indian Aloo Paratha
(Sorry I didn't have a picture so I stole this from someone named Ajay on google)
Aloo parathas are a quintessential Indian dish, and consist of a pan fried flat bread filled with spiced potatoes. The best thing about parathas are that they extremely versatile and can be filled with whatever you want, from eggs to cauliflower or carrots and parsnips. They are also quite filling and can be served with a curry dish or as a meal on their own with chutney or a sauce of your choice.
Ingredients-
4 tablespoons refined vegetable oil
1 small onion
1 green
3 small boiled and pealed potatoes
1/2 teaspoon veg masala
2 cups wheat flour
Water for mixing
Salt to taste
Potato (aloo) filling:
- Heat oil in a pan
- Cook onion and chill adding the masala once the onions start to turn golden brown
- Add the 3 potatoes to the mixture, crushing them with you hand as you add them
- Mix over heat until the mixture resembles mashed potatoes, adding about a tablespoon of salt to taste
- Remove from head and cool
Paratha dough-
- Mix wheat flour with water until it becomes a sticky dough.
- Kneed for about 5 minutes until the dough is soft to the touch
- Make the dough into small balls and set aside.
Making the parathas-
- Take the balls of dough, crushing them into small flat discs.
- Place a spoon full of the potato mixture in the center of the dough disc
- Fold the dough around the potato mixture, rolling the dough until it is make into a ball shape with the mixture completely concealed on the inside
- Press the dough ball into a flat disc again and careful roll out the dough into a flat tortilla-like disc, leaving it somewhere around 1/4-1/2 of an inch thick. (note: be careful not to let the inside mixture pop out, it takes some skill to keep it all inside the dough, but thats part of the fun)
- Heat a flat pan with around 1/2 tablespoon of oil.
- Place the paratha on the pan. While the first side is cooking, coat the other side with oil before flipping
- Repeat this procedure until the dark brown spots appear on the paratha and it is fully cooked. (Make sure not to forget to put oil on the top side each time before you flip it)
- Remove and serve!
Enjoy!
Bonus variation- Plain parathas often make a great companion to curry dishes and are much less heavy than the potato filled version. My favorite type of plain parathas are called coin parathas or latcha paratha. For these you simply prepare the paratha dough, roll it out and then cut the paratha in about 5-6 strips. Then roll these strips together in a spiral and roll it out again and repeat the cutting procedure 4 times. This will result in the paratha being flakier and having nice layers. It is usually done with white flour which leads to a flakier consistency but can also be done with wheat!
