Freeze on the flatbread

(I know, it's been a long time since I blogged. But life has a way of overtaking you quite happily, with friends, love and laughter shooting past more mundane considerations. This was published yesterday...)

Christmas may have come and gone, and the visions of sugarplums dancing in your head – usually induced by too much plum pudding and too little sleep – must have faded by now. But the 'winter', such as we have it, is playing hide and seek in the city, even as elsewhere across the country it has stomped in and made its unpleasantly cold presence felt. (Tangent: Why don't they heat homes in the north, so that toes and nose don't get froze?) And the mind wanders along to a more local delicacy, one that is almost a staple in some parts: parathas. Sometimes spelled with a 'n' and varying in configuration and weight, depending on who makes them, filled with anything from spinach or methi to potatoes, onions, paneer, cheese, herbs and spices…even kheema or dried fruit, and eaten with raw onion, pickles, chillies or jaggery, along with a mandatory dollop of fresh white butter, parathas are heartwarming and filling, the ideal meal for a cold morning or a chilly afternoon…or evening, or whenever. Sometimes too filling and almost always on the weight-loss regimen's black list, a paratha is perfect made fresh and often even nicer when reheated crisp and munched on while you snuggle under a comforter and watch a cheesy K-soap on television.

But making the stuffed rotis can be long-winded and tedious. The roti first needs to be rolled out, using stretchy, gluten-laden dough. Then a generous measure of filling has to be placed just so in the centre and the dough folded over and rolled out again to ensure that there is a satisfying ratio of filling to dough in every bite. Then the whole thing has to be carefully cooked without it falling apart, served up hot and a tad crunchy at the edges, and consumed at a rapid pace so that it is cool enough to eat yet warm enough not to get leathery, as these are wont to do. Too much butter will make any dietician glower, but too little deprives the eater of the requisite sensory ecstasy. So it becomes a delicate balance of power between maker and eater, fat and calorie-counting, inside and outside, to eat or not to eat.

One way of beating the paratha paradox is to let someone else do the making. Stepping into that spot is a whole panoply of brands, from MTR, Al Kabeer and Pillsbury to Sumeru and Vadilal, among many others, who fill the freezer compartment of the grocery store with a range of deep frozen stuffed rotis. Most are not too spicy, ideal for the palate that cringes at the mention of a chilli, and easier than…well…pie to get ready to eat. After a little experimentation with the amount of oil or butter or ghee needed to make them crisp and delicious rather than tough and stretchy, I find them a godsend for those dinner times when you just don't want to bash into the dough and roll out the rotis. Perhaps the best of the lot is the Flaky Paratha, which has all the layers and flair of the just-made thing, and puffs up nicely on a tawa, but stays neutral enough to match anything you may want to eat it with. The Kerala Parota is also most delightful, though it does need to be eaten very quickly or else you could use it as a rubberband to hold up saggy socks! I have experimented with filled parathas – the onion, potato, methi and mooli – and have carefully navigated around the cabbage and masala for fear of enraging the god of all things mirchi.

For my next stuffed 'Indian bread' trial, I have been cautiously eyeing the masala naan, without having summed up enough of the actual nerve to pick it up and take it to the checkout. I have not yet found a non-vegetarian version, but I am sure someone somewhere has already started making them. Life is far easier these days, with almost everything that you need to make a good meal available in the chiller or freezer compartments in the ubiquitous supermarkets in every mall that dots the urban landscape. A paratha is no longer just a seasonal food, and does not need more than a few minutes to get ready for table. Now if only the family was as simple to muster up!