The Recipe - Indian Roti

Flatbread (roti)

4 cups chapati or roti flour (it is super finely ground durham semolina wheat)
some water
3 Tbsp olive oil

Put flour in a large mixing bowl. Add 1 1/2 Tbsp olive oil. Add water a little bit at a time, mixing, squeezing, then kneading with hands until all dry flour disappears and you have a smooth dough and a clean bowl, about 5 minutes by hand. Add another 1 1/2 Tbsp oil, knead to incorporate, and let rest for an hour.

Break off a piece (about the diameter of a quarter). Squeeze the piece in between the palms of your hand. Do this four or five times, turning your hands so they get a slightly different angle on the dough in your palms. When you have what looks like a smooth flat river stone, then use a rolling pin and roll it out on a counter into a a circle, about 1/8th inch thick. (Indians use a special round board (ahdni) and rolling stick (vhelan) to roll out the roti. You can do without it, but it's nice to have the tool. They can be found at Indian markets.)

Cook both sides of the roti in a hot dry pan until the color turns light brown. Then use tongs to hold it directly over a high gas flame. Roti will likely puff up like a pufferfish. Flip so other side gets a little spots of toasted tan color. Repeat process to make many roti out of all the dough.

Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2014

The Story

Dare to Dal

Once you get to know the ingredients, it’s easy.

By Lindsay Sterling

I’d tasted dals from time to time in Indian restaurants and liked them, but never had the occasion to cook one. I guess I was intimidated. What were dals even made of? And how many kinds were there? It seemed like dozens,maybe even a hundred. I asked my Indian friend, Shweta Galway, if she’d show me how to make one. She said yes, although she had a funny reaction, like I asked her to show me how to make a glass of milk.

Growing up in the town of Umreth in Gujarat State in northwestern India, her mom made toor dal several times a week. Her family’s Hindu culture is vegetarian, and dals are a major source of protein. In Shweta’s pantry rows of glass jars revealed fifteen legumes I’d never cooked with. There were black chickpeas, little white beans called val, little black beans called urad, and dark green BB-shaped ones called moong. Since there are more than 50 different kinds of pulses in India and Pakistan, perhaps I had a right to be intimidated.

I was thankful when she singled out one. You’ve got to start somewhere, right? She called these golden split beans, toor dal, and proceeded to show me how to make them into a thick golden stew, spiced with magical Indian mojo. It was absolutely hearty and delicious (not how I usually describe vegetarian food), especially eaten as it was presented to me, with white rice, handmade, whole-wheat flatbread and spiced yellow potatoes and cauliflower.

Although toor dal is new to most Westerners, it’s really just an old relative of the peas and beans you are familiar with. Archeologists have determined that people have been eating toor dal for at least 3500 years in India. They look a lot like yellow split peas, but they’re smaller and a different species of legume. Toor dal are small golden dried beans that have been sliced in half. Indeed, the “dal” in the name means “split” in Sanskrit. Toor dal are known by some as yellow pigeon peas in English, which might be one reason why the ingredient hasn’t really caught on in the U.S. Who wants to eat something called a pigeon pea? I think the name might allude to them being pea lookalikes. As in, they’re like peas, but they’re not the peas you know. They’re a yellow pigeon pea.

To make toor dal you’ll have to go to an Indian store to get the ingredients. In Maine you can get everything you need at Masala Mahal (798 Main Street, South Portland, Tues-Sat 10am-7pm, Mon. 4pm-8pm, Sun. 11am-6pm) or Shere Punjab (the spice store above the restaurant at 46 Main St, Brunswick, open 11am-7pm Wednesday-Monday). Click here to find an Indian Market in your state.

Cooking the soup is really easy. First you soak the toor dal as you would any other dried beans, and cook them in water until they’re soft. Then you add turmeric, chili powder, coriander, cumin, salt, tamarind paste (it’s tangy like lemon juice) and jaggery (sugar cane juice). Then in about a quarter cup of oil in a separate small pan, you fry whole spices: black mustard seeds, Indian dried red chilis, fenugreek seeds, and curry leaves along with some peanuts. Then you stir the oil with spices and peanuts into the toor dal,  and there you have it: an awesome vegetarian, protein-packed soup.

I can’t believe making my first dal could actually be that easy. The bottom line: don’t let dal intimidate you. Once you get the ingredients, your toor dal will be golden.

Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2014

Indian Palak Paneer and Roti

My friend, Shweta Galway, teaches us her family's go-to weeknight vegetarian Indian dish. Click at right for the story, recipe and how-to-photos.

The Story

When Cutting Corners,

Careful Not to Cut the Heart Out

By Lindsay Sterling

Indian food is one of my favorite cuisines, but it can be the most complicated to cook. In my experience, it tends to require 15 spices you don’t have, a lot of work, and extremely long cooking times. The chicken biryani I wrote about her last year takes four hours to cook. That’s not saying it isn’t worth it. It is worth it, especially for a party. But wouldn’t it be great to know a relatively easy Indian dish that you could cook in less than an hour?

I asked my friend, Shweta Galway, from Gujarat State in India, what she likes to cook. Shweta said growing up in a Hindu family, her mom made vegetarian Indian food every night. “Every day in my household there would be rice, roti, vegetables, and dal.” Now a pharmacist and a mom of two young kids, Shweta’s favorite dish to cook on a weeknight is palak paneer and roti. Palak means spinach. And paneer is the type of cheese that’s mixed into it. Paneer is fresh and mild, like cottage cheese, ricotta, or farmer’s cheese, but drier and pressed into a block.

There are many longer, more complicated versions of palak paneer than hers, but Shweta has found her method to be fast, tasty and achievable on a weeknight. One corner-cutting trick Shweta learned from her sister-in-law is to use frozen creamed spinach as an ingredient. Then all you have to do is sauté onions and garlic in olive oil in a large sauté pan, and add the creamed spinach, frozen chopped spinach, spices, and cheese.

And she doesn’t make a custom blend of a lot of different spices. She has faith in the contents of the garam masala in her cabinet. She used Patel Brother’s brand, which is a blend of coriander, red chili, cumin, clove, star anise, mace, fennel seeds, black pepper, bay leaves, cinnamon, dry mango, salt, and clove leaves. She adds two teaspoons of this to the spinach and lets that be that. Her dish, also known as saag paneer, was kid friendly. You could add more spice if you like more intensity.

Roti is a type of flatbread made out of Indian atta flour, which is a light yellow flour made out of the durum variety of wheat. According to Wikipedia, atta includes the endosperm and bran of the wheat grain, but not the germ. After mixing water into the flour and a little bit of olive oil, Shweta kneads the dough for five minutes until it’s smooth and doesn’t break when stretched. She rolls out little pieces into very thin discs with a tool that looks like a drummer’s drumstick. Shweta’s rotis were each as perfect as a full moon. Mine looked like cartoons of Maine islands. Shweta recalled getting a lot of practice when she was a young girl. “I used to get made fun of when I was little. People would say, ‘Oh look, yours has a nose!’‘Yours look like India.’ It was fun.” She cooks the discs of dough on a hot, dry pan and then on an open flame until toasty spots appear.

To eat palak paneer, you tear off a piece of roti and use it to scoop up spinach and cheese. Then you eat the whole bite of spinach and bread together. Earthy, hot, creamy and delicious, Shweta’s spinach and flatbread cut out the fuss while keeping the homemade heart.

Click at right for the recipe, how-to photos, and live cooking class info.

Copyright Lindsay Sterling 2014

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