Courgette Paratha
I have this really weird habit of picking up things that I really don't need while shopping. I know it?s a common complaint many men have against their wives, but I think I do it more often than I realize. Especially when I am doing grocery. I end up buying things and then keep thinking what shall I do with them. That is exactly what happened when I last went to the supermarket. I bought 1 kg of Courgettes (2 packets, around 6 of them). Then I forgot about them. I rediscovered them back in my refrigerator three days after I bought them. They were buried under the tomatoes, the green beans, the mushrooms, the green chillies, the coriander etc. etc. Well, now you know how my veg. basket looks like :)
Anyway, when I rescued the courgettes underneath all these vegs, I started to worry that what do I do with them. These are similar to a veg we get in India called ?Lauki? in Hindi and ?Lau? in Bengali. The typical dish that we make with these are with prawns called ?Lau-Chigri? which we had recently. I looked in the internet and guess what I found a recipe in BBC Good Food called ?Indian Bread with courgettes and coriander?!! That was unusual!! I didn?t expect that at all!! So I thought of giving it a try and an hour later, there I was serving courgette paratha for dinner. As usual I didn?t follow the recipe word by word and started adding different things and made my own version of it. I must tell you it?s quite difficult to handle the dough when you are using fresh raw veg as it releases lot of water and becomes a nightmare to get the right dough consistency but the finished product was good. I loved it. Hope you like it too.
Ingredients:
3 Courgettes / 500gms (pealed and grated using the coarsest side of the greater)
1 tsp cumin seeds (dry roasted and made into dust)
1 tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp garam masala powder
200 gm of plain flour and some extra for rolling the paratha
200 gm of roasted chick peas flour (we call it ?Chatu? in Bengali) (you may find this in Indian store or replace with whole meal flour)
3 tbsp rice flour
2 tsp grated root ginger
3 tsp of green chilli paste (optional, I added because I like it)
Oil for frying
Method:
Mix all the dry ingredients in a big mixing bowl and then add 2/3 tbsp of oil in the flour mix. Give it a good mix then add rest of the wet ingredients in to it and start kneading. You will not need any water to knead as the grated courgette will release a lot of water. I found this step bit difficult as the dough is very sticky at this point. I put few drops of oil in my palms while kneading the dough, which helps to make the dough not sticking to hand. Continue kneading till you have a smooth dough. Make a log out of the dough and cut it into 12-14 equal portions. One by one take each portions and roll the in your palm to make small flat balls. Dip them in dry flour and set them aside. Dust the rolling plane with flour and start rolling each of the balls to thin parathas. Heat a heavy bottom frying pan and place one paratha and cook until you see little brown spot on the side facing down. Turn it over and cook till you see the brown spots again. Pour a teaspoon full of oil on and around the paratha and cook for 1 minute on both sides or until they are fully cooked. Serve them with your choice of veg or meat curry.
I made simple potato with onion, tomato and cumin slowly cooked on low heat.
