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Recipe: Packed To Go – Paneer & Mint Paratha

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What has become a challenge for me recently, cooking-wise, is figuring out how to pack nourishing and interesting lunches for the office-goers in my home. While I love having a hot Gujarati thaali ready for them, it isn’t always possible for them to come home mid-day. Sometimes, they have to travel a little far, as is common in India, or the day’s schedule is especially busy. It is always better to have home-cooked food in any case, and I prefer that they do so. This means that quite often lately, my mornings begin with a question: “Oh gosh, what shall I prepare for them today?” This is different from the regular daily musings over what to cook, because time is of the essence. The food has to be packed, and made to suit various likes and dislikes, before they leave. This paneer mint paratha is a recipe that came about to fulfil exactly this need.

I know that some of my readers may wonder why these lunchboxes aren’t prepared in advance, but that is because in India it is customary to cook fresh food each day. It is rarely carried forward, except for specific dishes, such as those in the Second Helpings series that I did long ago. Leftovers are consumed as soon as possible, and innovatively. Even so, fresh, hot, home-cooked food is just a preference and a way of life for most Indians.  I think there are many reasons behind why this is the norm. One is that culturally, we don’t believe in wastage so we tend to cook in exact quantities. More often than not, even if we can afford to waste food, we prefer not to because the high levels of poverty here make an impression on us and make us conscientious. The idea is to cook only as much as is required, consume all of it, and then make more food for the next day.

Coming back to the paneer mint paratha: as I said, it is one among several recipes that I’m able to make fresh in the mornings and pack off with my loved ones for their workday lunches. My own workday therefore begins even earlier than theirs, but I’m fortunate to have household staff who help me cope with the demands of a very active kitchen that functions both for my family as well as for re:store. If you have a similar lifestyle, juggling other people’s schedules and preferences while also working either at home or beyond it, dishes like this will come very handy. The same is true if it’s your own lunchbox that you’re packing for.

A good lunchbox has to have a fair bit of thought behind it. The items in it should keep well and still maintain their taste and texture hours after packing, even if reheating is not possible. Items that may spill need to be very carefully packed. Something like this paratha, which doesn’t require a curry and is flavourful on its own, is a safer bet. That said, some curd or buttermilk on the side rounds out the meal, as does a pickle or chutney. These enhance the experience of eating on the go. I really believe that there should be something to look forward to during such lunch breaks, even if they are short and without frills. Filling the tummy is only one aspect of it. Even if eaten straight out of a lunchbox while pausing for just a few minutes, the meal should be appealing and rejuvenate the person who eats it so that they can carry on with the rest of their busy day.

I also came up with this particular paratha because I’ve been growing some herbs and basic vegetables in my garden, including tomatoes and – you guessed it – mint. These grow fast and are pretty easy to cultivate too. Little experiments like this are a lifelong fascination for me. As a child, I would sprinkle mustard seeds on a steel plate and be fascinated by the little shoots that appeared when I would check on them a few mornings later. That always excited me and made me proud. Now, we call these microgreens and incorporate them into healthy diets. Growing various sprouts or certain herbs ourselves is not difficult at all, even if we don’t have the space to grow plants.

Mint works especially well in summers as it has a cooling effect, but I feel it’s great at any time. It pairs well with so many other ingredients, and always gives a very refreshing touch to a dish. The paneer here can be replaced with peas, for instance. Or you can keep the paneer – that is, retain the protein boost – and include peas too. This is a compact lunch, flavour-packed, healthy and very delicious. Whether you’re eating it on the go or in a more relaxed way at home, you and your family are sure to enjoy it too.

Paneer & Mint Paratha

(Yield: 5 parathas)

Paratha

1 cup whole wheat flour
½ cup maida
¼ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons oil
¾ cup water

Filling

1 cup paneer
2 tablespoons mint leaves (finely chopped)
1 tablespoons coriander leaves (finely chopped)
¼ teaspoon aamchur powder
¼ teaspoon chaat masala
½ teaspoon green chili-ginger paste
Salt to taste

Ghee for frying

First, prepare the dough for the paratha. In a bowl, add the flours and the salt. To this, add water. Make a tight and smooth dough. Set aside for at least 30 minutes.

Prepare the filling by adding all the ingredients to a bowl. Mix gently. Set aside.

Now, roll out the dough into 5 balls. You may find that you have some extra, which you can use for plain parathas.

Using the help of some flour, dust 1 ball and roll it out into a disc. Repeat with all five. Place a spoonful of the filling in the centre of each disc and seal the edges by folding the corners of the dough. Gently roll out the filled discs into small parathas.

Heat a griddle on a medium flame, and place a rolled-out paratha on it. Allow to cook on both sides with the help of some ghee. Roast both sides well until golden. Repeat with the remaining parathas.

Your paneer mint parathas are now ready. You may want to serve them hot with pickle or chutney of your choice, or else pack them into a lunchbox that you or a loved one can look forward to, a little later in the day! If you’re a fan of Indian breads, don’t miss my post on different rotis. There are also a range of paneer dishes to explore on the blog.

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Recipe: A Prettier Paratha – Vegan Palak Paratha

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In my last post, I shared a recipe for a delicious stuffed paratha using radish, something I first began enjoying on my trips to Delhi. Today, I share another paratha, but this one is made differently. This lovely vegan palak paratha (using spinach) is a healthy upgrade on your regular parathas, and is perfect for those who often eat flatbreads at home.

The spinach is blended into the dough directly, which gives this paratha a lovely green colour. This also means that it is an excellent way to get people to eat their greens – not just school-going children, but even young adults or anyone who is picky about them, really. I imagine that the very first palak paratha must have been put together by an inventive mother who was trying to trick her kids into getting more nutrition. So this recipe is dedicated to everyone who is on a quest to serve healthy food to their children. Another thing that helps is to make the parathas in an unusual shape, to add a touch of fun.

You would think that I would have lots of childhood memories of palak paratha myself, but I don’t, and the reason is that my mother didn’t resort to this particular trick. Two or times a week, some kind of leafy vegetable would be spooned onto our plates, and we just had to eat it. That was that. Growing up in South India, this meant that a large selection of seasonal greens was a part of our diets. I may have made a fuss about it as a child, but I am grateful for it now. As I got older, I began to genuinely enjoy the different varieties of local spinach, and I understood just how much our bodies love the chlorophyll too. If you’d like to explore a few dishes that utilise South Indian greens, you could also take a look at my recipes for purslane dal and araikeerai vadai.

Speaking of stuff that’s good for you, I like to make these palak parathas with ghee, which has begun to shake off its bad reputation and is now being embraced everywhere as a superfood. That’s right, our humble ghee that we health-conscious Indians shunned is back with a bang, and is being acknowledged as being not just tasty but also nourishing. However, I have provided the recipe below with oil so that it remains vegan. Substitute accordingly, if you prefer.

Visually appealing, full of goodness and so very delicious – what more could you ask of this dish?

I feel that this palak paratha is best eaten hot off the griddle, and it goes very well with a dry roast paneer (which I will share the recipe for soon). A dal will also pair nicely. Sometimes I have this with a small bowl of tomato soup and a few scoops of that paneer stir-fry, and everything that’s on my table looks so beautiful. The reds, the greens and the aroma of them all together make for a gorgeous meal, in every way.

Palak Paratha

(Yield: 8 pieces)

1 bunch palak (spinach)
1½ cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
Salt to taste
A pinch of turmeric
A handful of coriander leaves
1 tablespoon green chili ginger paste
1 teaspoon aamchur (raw mango) powder
2 teaspoons oil
Oil for cooking

Clean the spinach thoroughly. Put the spinach in hot water for a minute. Squeeze, remove and immediately place it in cold water. This will help retain the colour of the leaves. Squeeze the water out.

Place the squeezed spinach in a blender jar and add cumin seeds, a pinch of turmeric and coriander leaves. Blend. This will give you a ¾ cup of spinach purée.

In a bowl, add 1½ cups wholewheat flour.  To this add the aamchur powder, salt to taste, chili ginger paste, sesame seeds and 2 teaspoons oil.

Now, add the spinach purée to this mixture. Using your hands, make a smooth, pliable dough with the help of a few drops of oil. Cover and set aside for ½ an hour.

Make balls of the dough. With the help of dry flour, roll these out in any shape you desire. The paratha needs to be a little thicker than the regular rotis to get the most of the spinach flavour. Place on the griddle, and ensure both sides are cooked.

Serve hot with yoghurt or pickle or a vegetable of your choice.

If you’d like to explore more spinach recipes, do try out this spinach and corn bake and this spinach rice. As for parathas, my recent radish paratha and earlier peas paratha recipes may catch your fancy too!

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Recipe: A Roll To Relish – Radish Paratha

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Let’s face it: most children dislike radish. I did too, and it was only when I was studying Macrobiotics about a decade ago that I really began to appreciate the vegetable that was known to those of us in the course as daikon. After that, I began to look at the humble Indian mooli – which we get here in pink and white, and which are used in salads, curries and sambars – differently. There’s one particular usage of it that is my absolute favourite, and that is the mooli paratha or radish paratha.

Parathas are an excellent way of getting kids to eat ingredients they may not be fond of, which is probably how this particular one came into being. The stuffings also vary across regions – in Bengal, for instance, I believe that fish is commonly used. I once had some that was stuffed only with fresh cream, which was fascinating to me. They can be made quite healthy, as well as flavourful. They don’t need an accompaniment, but a pickle may sometimes complement them.

Radish paratha is popular in North India as a Punjabi street food, and along with peas paratha is one of my two favourite versions of stuffed Indian flatbreads. To me, it is synonymous with some of the best food that Delhi – a city that I’m rarely in, but in which I have had many cherished moments and meals with loved ones – has to offer.

The radish paratha came into my life at a time when my dear friends Sujatha and Michael lived there. They would take me to a famous parathawalla near a railway station, a roadside vendor whose enterprise had grown quite large. There was always a crowd and a queue there. To me, it looked like there were hundreds of options on the menu. We would each order what we liked, and sit in the car and consume our stuffed parathas while they were hot. They all came with pickled onions, and were served rolled in a newspaper page with some kind of leaf inside it to mop up the oil. They were just such a joy to eat. Those experiences of sharing food and laughter in a parked vehicle became great memories, too.

I tried some different options out on occasion, but always came back to the radish paratha. It was absolutely delicious, and filling enough to count as a meal. That’s the thing about street food in India. The fancy restaurants have their charms, but there’s something about the food prepared by roadside hawkers and railway vendors that just hits the spot every time.

In the years since, I began recreating the radish paratha at home, and it has become fairly frequent at our dinner table. I have found that while radish is pungent on its own, it is also absorbent, which means that adding a good masala to it makes it very appealing. Try it out and see for yourself!

Radish Paratha

(Yield: 5 pieces)

150 grams radish (3 medium-sized)
Salt to taste
1 teaspoon green chili+ginger paste
½ teaspoon garam masala
1 teaspoon aamchur powder
1 teaspoon cumin powder
¼ teaspoon ajwain
3 tablespoons coriander leaves (finely chopped)
1½ cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon oil + oil for sautéing paratha

Clean and grate the radishes. Add ¼ teaspoon salt. Mix well and squeeze out the water really well. Set the radish water aside.

To the grated radish, add the cumin powder, pinch salt, coriander leaves, aamchur powder, ajwain, chili+ginger paste and garam masala. Mix with your fingertips.

In a bowl, add the flour and the squeezed-out water from the radish so there is zero waste.  Make a tight and smooth dough of the flour with the help of a little oil.

Now, it is time to roll out the parathas. Divide the dough into 10 small balls and set aside. Dust and roll a ball. Set aside and roll another.

Now, fill one flattened disc with 1 tablespoon of the radish filling and cover with another rolled out disc. Make sure you pinch the edges well. Using a rolling pin, roll gently over the paratha. Roll out 5 such filled parathas.

Heat a griddle and place one of the parathas on it. Allow to cook until a few spots are formed. Flip the paratha. Once it turns golden brown on both sides, apply a few drops of oil onto both sides and allow to cook until darkened. Transfer it onto a lined plate. Repeat with the remaining parathas.

Serve hot, with or without accompaniments. Yoghurt and pickle go well, but as I said the radish paratha is itself quite flavourful. It is also rather filling, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you also begin serving it for dinner, as I do.

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Recipe: Perfectly Pleasing – Peas Paratha

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Peas are in abundance right now – they are in season, cheap to purchase, good for health, and I for one am glad they are flooding the local market. It feels like I am making something with them every day. Recipes I’ve shared with you in the past, like this harra bhara kebab, pea-pomegranate festive kachori and chura matar are being relished at my dining table. I’ve even begun using peas as substitutes for staples. For instance, I usually send my family members off to their offices with some aloo paratha in their tiffin carriers, but the potatoes have been swapped out for – you guessed it – peas. I would like for you to experience the lovely pea-stuffed parathas that they are enjoying at the moment too, so that’s exactly the recipe that I’ve decided to share this week.

Since I am now preparing as well as eating these pea parathas daily, I’ve observed that they are healthier and lighter than aloo parathas, which makes them more suitable for the mid-day meal when one’s work has to be resumed after. The best accompaniment for them is yoghurt and a cup of simple salad – add these two elements and you’re all set with a nice lunch. Traditionally, parathas are meant to be generous in size, but I prefer to make them small. They look pretty and dainty, fit more easily into your Tupperware or tiffin carrier, and the overall presentation just looks and feels nicer. That’s quite important for any meal, not just a special one. When a loved one opens their lunchbox at the office, the dishes within would have been prepared hours earlier and may no longer be warm or as fresh, so making them look attractive makes a difference.

I’ve been using peas grown in my region, but I must admit a preference for those harvested in Jaipur or Delhi at this time of year. The weather there is more conducive to this vegetable, and the yield is smaller in size and so sweet that it can be eaten raw (and even used in desserts, like in peas halwa). I have friends who grow peas on farms there, and visits from or to them during this season would always include some fresh produce. Sadly, no one is able to travel much at the moment, but the local variants are still much enjoyed in my home.

As I was preparing the peas for my photo shoot, I smiled as I recalled helping out in the kitchen when I was growing up. When we were kids, my siblings and I would have a competition about who would peel and shell the most peas. These were a chore that our mother often assigned to us, and this is how we would make it more interesting. The winner had no reward and the loser had no punishment, but this game was just a way for us to pep up a boring activity. Once again, as I did while sharing the previous recipe, I reminisce about how kids of my generation always found ways to keep ourselves entertained. We were innovative and creative in the absence of technology. What sorts of games did you play to make chores go by faster?

Peas Paratha

(Yield: 4-6)

 

Peas stuffing

1 full cup crushed green peas

1 teaspoon aamchur powder

1 teaspoon roasted cumin powder

1 teaspoon ginger/green chilli paste

Salt to taste

1 teaspoon oil (to roast the peas)

 

Paratha dough

1½ cups whole-wheat flour

Salt to taste

1 teaspoon oil

+ Oil for shallow frying

 

Divide the dough and the stuffing separately into equally-sized small balls (lime/lemon-sized).

Roll one dough ball out, and place a spoonful of the peas stuffing in the centre. Gather the dough around the peas and make a smooth round ball, using gentle pressure.

Dust some flour onto the ball and roll out again delicately, making sure the peas do not come out of the dough.

The method of stuffing the paratha with peas is similar to the method for making puran poli, which you can refer to in this post here.

Heat the tava over a medium flame. Once it is hot, place the rolled paratha on it and cook. Flip and spread a ½ teaspoon of oil evenly around the edges and shallow fry both sides until light golden brown spots appear. Repeat with the remaining parathas. Serve.

As I said earlier, some yoghurt and a bit of salad are great accompaniments, but even eaten on its own this peas paratha is flavourful. It is a perfect light meal, and it is lunchbox-friendly, cost-friendly and health-friendly too!

 

 

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