kale, spuds, chillis. what else do you need, really?

I wasn't planning on blogging this, but... yum!

Potato roti: About 3-4 spuds worth of leftover mashed spuds, or microwaved spuds that have been mashed. Mix in curry powder, mango powder, nutritional yeast. Roti dough: about a cup of whole wheat flour and a cup of ww spelt flour, sprinkle of crushed flax seeds, a nice sprinkle of white poppy seeds, dash of salt. Add water (enough that the dough is wet but not sticky), knead, and set aside while you make the greens. It is KEY to let the dough rest in quiet for at least 20 minutes, or you will rush it, which will upset the dough, and then it will retaliate and the roti won't be as wonderful as they could, all because you couldn't wait 20 minutes. So step away from the dough.

Kale: dry-roast a heaping tbs paunch poran, plus extra cumin, plus crushed chilli, plus asafoetida. Then add two large onions, chopped + water. When the onions have cooked through, add a handful of fenugreek (methi) leaves and um, 5 cloves of chopped garlic. Then all the kale you can handle and a few mushrooms if they're looking at you, all sad and excluded-feeling (like mine were). Cook the kale uncovered, you need to cook all the water off. ALL OF IT. When it's all cooked up, salt to taste, mix, and then add about half a cup of toasted chickpea flour. Mix. Turn off heat. Now, go back to your roti.

Repeat after me: The point of potato roti is to get as much potato product as humanly possible in the roti. Keeping this in mind the entire time, assemble your roti: Put a goodly layer of flour on the cupboard, or whatever surface you're using. Divide dough in 4. Take one chunk, knead, and form into a ball. The dryer you make the dough (ie, the more flour you knead into it), the harder it will be to roll out your roti. So knead just enough to make the dough unsticky. Squish the ball and roll it out in a smallish circle. Say.... the size of a saucer. Now, take a quarter of the spud mixture and put in in the middle of the rolled-out dough. Even though you don't think it will reach, pull the edges of the dough up around the spuds and seal it by pinching. See? It reaches! You will now have a dough-covered spud sphere. Do not get demoralized. Flip the sphere over so that the seam is on the bottom. Now dust the top with four and roll out the roti, squishing down gently. You should end up with a roti the size of a large dinner plate (do not exceed the size of your roti-cooking pan). If you cheated, and didn't let the dough rest, or were overzealous with the kneading just now, the roti will get back at you by exploding, leaving you with a mashed potato covered cupboard. Otherwise, you should be fine. Cook on a hot pan. No oil. The roti should puff up a little, which is how you know it's time to flip it. You'll just have to be figure out when to take it off the heat after flipping it. Good luck.

The whole dinner took about half an hour to make. Roti get fast to make, but you'll want to set aside a fair amount of time the first few times you do it.

Roti music: Cabaret. And I was singing along....badly.