Peas Paratha

Excitement abounds !!
Arpi mentioned a few days back that she is very keen on peas parathas, and we had a lot of atta left over after her parents' visit, so today I decided to make peas paratha. A bit of searching on the internet revealed a treasure trove of paratha info, the stuff that only grandmas would have a generation back. Armed with all this, I got down to business :)

I started making the dough by mixing the flour with the salt. Then slowly added some oil, mixing constantly, and then also added some curd and a buunch of cilantro leaves that I had cut up. After that, I slowly added the water, mixing constantly. The water is really important I learnt. If you have too little, then there will be flour left on your vessel, but if you have too much, then your dough will be too sticky. So be careful there. I left the dough covered for a hour or so.

For the stuffing, I microwaved the frozen peas, and we mashed them up. Then fried jeera in oil, added and sauteed some besan, and then added the peas and dhaniya powder and fried it all. The original recipe needed enough besan to make the thing into a paste, but I had too little by far, but it was okay anyway. Besan to taste, I guess is the conclusion :)

Then we just made balls of the dough, and stuffed them traditional style, and made the parathas. One more tip. If you paratha sticks to the tava, then the tava is too cold, but if it browns too fast, then the tava is too hot. I think we cooked each side twice, first without oil, then with oil. You can oil the top side before flipping.

It was great fun, and me rolling the parathas, and arpi cooking them worked out really well. I had not realised only how deeply I was interested in parathas. Really enthu to make a bunch more now. :D