Roti

I have never made roti before but it turned out to be surprisingly easy and fun. The dough is just flour and water, and optionally some salt if you want. The recipe I have says chipati flour or, if you can't find that (as I couldn't), half plain and half self-raising flour. You sift the flour into a bowl, then make a well and add water, mixing it through, until you have enough water that all the flour has become dough and is left slightly sticky. Then you knead it for 8-10 minutes and leave it in a warm place, covered with a damp tea towel, for about half an hour.

Next you take the dough and break it into even pieces and make it into balls - each ball should be about the size of a golf ball. Then you roll them out into flat circles, which you can easily do by rolling in the one direction and turning the roti as you go. The cooking part is where it gets really fun. Cooking roti turns out be basically like cooking a pancake, at least to start with. You take a non-stick frypan, make it very hot, then turn the heat down somewhat and put in a roti. When it starts to bubble, flip it over and cook the other side. When the new bottom side has little beige spots, you can take it out. All of which takes less than a minute.

Then, you take a separate gas burner and turn it on and, using tongs, put the roti directly over the open flame, just resting on the stand thingy that you usually put a pot on. You only need to do each side for a few seconds. The roti will puff up immediately, it's pretty amazing actually, it just inflates like a balloon. Once it's puffy and has a few black spots on it it is done and you can eat it.

North Indian Lamb Curry

Since we were going to be out this evening, it was time to pull out the slow cooker. I started with some lamb chops - they were the closest to an appropriate cut of meat for the slow cooker that the supermarket had. In any case, they turned out ok. I diced up the meat and an onion and browned them. Then I cut up a couple of capsicums (one red one green, because I like having colourful food) and put them in the slow cooker.

Next I added a bunch of spices: two green chillis (chopped up), a lot of garlic and ginger (blended into a paste), two black cardamom pods and two green ones, a bay leaf, some garam masala, some tumeric and some salt. I was also supposed to put in coriander powder but I didn't have any. I did have some coriander seeds, but not a spice grinder of any kind, so I put them in the blender thingy. It didn't really work that well, to be honest, but at least they weren't whole seeds anymore. I crushed them a bit with the flat of a knife to further break them up and then put them in too. Then I put the meat and onion on top, and then poured four tomatoes worth of tomato puree over it.

Then leave it to cook for six hours or so and come home to delicious curry. Just before serving, stir through some fresh coriander. I served it with roti, which I will put in another post.

Paper parcels

On today's episode of Stuff We Cooked: wrapping things in paper and putting them in the oven.

Specifically, prawns and green beans (top left), chicken and shredded sweet potato (top right) and more shredded sweet potato (bottom) because there was too much. Flavouring for the prawns was chilli and garlic and for the chicken a middle eastern spice mix - the recipe called for za'atar, but the only one I could find in the supermarket was harissa. I don't actually know what either of these spice mixes involve, but it tasted good.

These things were then sprinkled with vegetable oil and wrapped in their respective pieces of baking paper before being put in the (pre-heated to 200 degrees) oven for about 15 minutes. Once done, they were garnished with parsley (for the prawns) and mint and plain yoghurt (for the chicken and sweet potato).

This was a fairly healthy and very quick meal to make, which is unusual for oven things! Having magical gadgets to shred the sweet potato and finely chop the chilli and garlic definitely helped with the preparation speed though, so if you lack such gadgets, it may take a bit longer.