Parathas particularly the stuffed kind

It's a David special meal day and he has asked for curry with stuffed parathas - the stuffed parathas being the main game. The aim being to use the parathas to scoop up the curry rather than rice.

Which makes me ponder a bit on whether I have chosen the right curry. You probably want a dryish one to eat with bread and I am currently aiming for doh-piaza which might be a bit runny. Well I suppose I can always boil down the sauce.

I think this will be a shortish post, because I haven't really found much about parathas in my cookbook and internet wandering.

When we go out for an Indian meal my sons go for naan, always, as the bread of choice. But David and I always go for a paratha. Of late I have been going for a lacha paratha which is an even flakier version than the plain one. David usually goes for the stuffed one. I don't think I have ever attempted to make one, but I'm going to give it a red hot go this evening.

With respect to origins - it comes from Peshawer one website said. Northern India/Pakistan anyway and seems to be mainly seen as a breakfast food and a way of getting your children to eat some vegetables. It also is eaten at lunch but then you would probably have one with a substantial filling. And virtually all of the sites I visited said that it is served with pickles and chutneys. Which again makes me worry whether I should cook some rice anyway.

I have now perused several recipes and have come to the conclusion that, as always everyone has their own particular way of doing this. The main thing it seems to me is to use a mix of wholemeal and plain flour, and to have some butter or oil in the dough mix. The dough should also rest for a while before being used. There are then various techniques for rolling it out but just about all of them involved spreading the rolled out bread with ghee/butter/oil, folding and then rolling out again. Some even suggested doing this again. Because parathas are flakier than chapatis, rotes and naan you see. There were lots of different suggestions for how you rolled them out the second time, though I think the most common one was to roll your disc up, form it into a spiral and then roll out again. I think this is the version I shall choose. Although it might not be the best version for a stuffed paratha. I'll give it a go and see how it pans out.

The cooking of the bread also varied but involved cooking them in ghee/butter/oil over a low heat, brushing with butter and then cooking the other side. Some recipes and Madhur Jaffrey said you should keep brushing with your chosen fat and turning over several times - until it looked spotted with brown and yummy looking - as on the right. As you finished one you cover it over with foil or tea towel or something to keep it warm whilst you cook the others. And you can freeze them too. I don't think I shall do that though, because, knowing me, they'll just lurk in the back of the freezer until I have to throw them out. It depends on how many I need I guess. And I'm guessing you freeze them before you cook them too.

As for the filling - well there were an incredible number of fillings out there. Actually the very first recipe I looked at from my little and ancient Cooking the Indian Way, just simply spread the bread with horseradish before rolling up and rolling out. But the most common one was spiced potato. Which, I think, is what I am going to go for. The spices of course were endlessly varied, so I think I will just add this and that according to what I feel like at the time. But I think I shall add peas to the potato - so maybe some mint.

We are having a 'proper' Indian meal out next week to celebrate my son's birthday so I shall be able to compare my own efforts with the professional version. I know who will win that one!

POSTSCRIPT

Well they did taste really nice but as some of the recipes inferred it was a bit tricky to roll them out without the stuffing coming through the dough. Perhaps I put too much stuffing in. I think I'll just cook them in oil next time because in spite of having some oil with the butter, the butter burnt a bit.