Chapati, Roti, whatever you want to call it, the disc of flat bread which can go with anything and everything here is an Indian food staple. Forget all that Naan business, Roti is the original boss. To such a point that, its basically pointless me explaining how to make Palak or Dal without it. It may sound idiotic now I know how simple they are to make, but before I got to India I didn’t have the slightest clue how to make a roti and would have probably died a little inside if you had asked me. When I told Manju she needed to show me, she looked puzzled and  honestly said : ‘But what do you eat in England?! Just Rice?’. In an effort to save myself and our nation from this doomed fate, I therefore made making a chapati number one on my Indian cooking mission. If I can do it, you can too! Here’s a very quick post on how to make a roti…

Chapati / Roti

Ingredients:

Plain Flour

Water

Cooking Time: 2 mins. If that.

Step One: Get a large dish and sieve some flour onto it. Add some table spoons of water and begin to knead, adding flour and water as necessary until you have a mound of dough.

Step Two: Take a small chunk of dough and make into a ball using the palms of your hands.

Step Three: Sprinkle some flour onto a chopping board or your worktop and flatten out the ball using a rolling pin.

Step Four: Keep flipping the flattened dough in the flour so it doesn’t stick and roll in circular motions – roll and then rotate, roll and then rotate, until you have a circle. Don’t make the disc too thin!

Step five: Put onto a small frying pan on high heat for around seconds or so. Flip and do the same for the other side.

Step Six: Remove the pan and put the chapati directly onto the gas using tongs so that it rises. Flip

Step Seven: Take off the gas and put on the side to cool.

Repeat as you like!

As Manju would say: ‘Ea-gy!’

xxx