Industrial strength cooking

I enjoyed having a long chat with a master cook, who specialises in cooking for hundreds of people. His frankness and willingness to share tips he has gained over tens of years enchanted me.
Here they are
1. For cooking south Indian wedding feasts for a large crowd, always start with the dal. It takes longest to cook and unless the dal is cooked, other dishes like sambars/ rasams cannot be cooked. After the dal is put to boil, vegetables for poriyals are boiled. Sambars / rasams/ morekulambu / pulikulambu are cooked next.

Rice is cooked just two hours before the feast starts , so that it is hot the time it is served.

If dal does not cook to a mush as demanded in many south Indian recipes, addition of coconut shells , grated raw papaya, crushed ginger or baking powder would help.

When too much salt has been added by mistake, a dry brick or a couple of sheets of newspaper are dunked in the curry and removed after a couple of minutes. They act as giant sponges and suck up some of the salt out. Though very unhygienic and not advisable, this technique is frequently used in many large kitchens. A more hygienic alternative might be to dunk in a loaf of sliced bread or a bunch of fresh tissues and remove them in a few seconds.

Padi- (a cylinder covered at one end) is a commonly used measure in Tamilnadu. One padi holds 600 gms of rice and can feed 6 people. 'Padikku Pudi' is the amount of salt that is sufficient for a padi of rice - that is, a fistful of salt is sufficient for 600 gms of rice.

One kg of rice can feed 10 people.

Cooking rice :
Large aluminum vessels which cook over huge wood fires can hold up to 25 kgs of rice. The rice is first soaked for half an hour and is washed a couple of times.

Meanwhile a in a huge vat, water is boiled ( 5 parts of water for 1 part of rice). When water starts boiling, the soaked and washed rice is dumped in, stirred a couple of times, covered and let to cook. It is stirred every 5-8 minutes. Raw rice gets cooked in 10-15 minutes and boiled rice takes around 25 minutes. when the rice is almost cooked, it is scooped out with huge buckets and dumped into large wicker baskets lined with gunny sacks. The water filters away and the rice continues cooking.

When rice has been overcooked, cold water is added so that any further cooking is stopped. Addition of some salt helps keep the grains separate.

I've been invited today to observe a cooking session for 450 people. It'll be interesting to watch large scale cooking.

1001 Leavened Indian Rotis

Leavened Indian Breads : A Primer
Leavened breads are not indigenous to India and are not commonly made in Indian homes. Like China, baking never caught on in India, probably due to the scarcity of fuel. Baking is still viewed as an exotic skill and very few Indian recipes call for baking. Ovens are very uncommon in Indian homes. The only oven used is the Tandoor, the open pit clay oven invented in central Asia. Traditional tandoor is a pain to set up, light up and operate. I prefer to use the tabletop electric tandoor which is very convenient and can cook almost everthing a tandoor can.
Any thick bread needs to be leavened, so that it remains soft when baked. Leavening is the process of filling up the dough with a gas. This gas is normally generated by yeast or by baking powder. When dough is kneaded with yeast, you can actually watch it puff up like a balloon in a couple of hours. Baking powder works differently. On heating, it generates carbon di oxide, which inflates the dough from the inside like a balloon. Yeast requires a few hours to work and fill up the dough with gas. So the dough is rested for 3-5 hours before baking. Baking powder works instantly and so breads made with baking powder can be baked rightaway.

Most leavened Indian breads are cooked in a tandoor, though some like the Bhatura are deep fried. All breads listed here are designed to be cooked on an electric Tandoor. If you don’t have an electric tandoor, you can cook these in a preheated oven at its highest heat setting, in a skillet, on a grill or on the walls of a sturdy vessel. They’d taste different, but they’ll certainly be edible !

The Base (Column 1)
Kulcha is very similar to a Naan, but is usually leavened with baking powder and yogurt instead of yeast. Kulchas are often stuffed with a variety of fillings. It is normally shaped as a round disc unlike the teardrop shaped Naan.
· Tandoori roti is a thick , round roti made from wholewheat flour. It is generally leavened by wild yeast by letting the dough sit for a few hours before baking. Baking powder is now used widely in Tandoori rotis.
· The Bati is a unique bread, designed to last. It was the staple travel food of the Rajput warriors and Marwari traders. Tomato sized balls of whole wheat dough are roasted over hot coals and are eaten dipped in ghee. (They can also be cooked in an electric tandoor). Smaller Batis can be cooked without leavening. They may also be cooked in boiling water first and then baked.
· The most popular leavened bread in Asia, the teardrop shaped Naan, was cooked in central Asia long before it found its way into India. Naan is a staple food in countries like Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan & Tajikistan. That is why Naan is not a Hindi word. It is a pan asian word which means bread in all these languages- Persian, Urdu, Uzbek, Uyghur and Burmese. Sesame seeds / onion seeds / cilantro / garlic slivers are occasionally patted on the surface just before baking.
· When you knead Nan dough with semolina, you get a less chewy and more crumbly version of the Naan- the Khasta Naan.
· Rogani Naan is a richer version of Naan kneaded with milk and ghee.
· Khameeri roti is just a Tandoori roti leavened with yeast instead of baking powder. In some regions these are deep fried.
· Sheermal is an orange coloured, saffron flavoured, sweet version of the Naan. Some versions of sheermal use eggs.
· Taftan is a unique bread made from leavened rice flour. Rice flour is not easy to work with and needs quite a bit of practice to knead and shape. Use of some all purpose flour makes it easier to knead and shape.

Flavouring (Column 2)
Column 2 lists various flavourings from 0 to 9, which can be kneaded along with the dough. Most traditional flatbreads stop at 0 and do not use extra flavouring. The flavouring choices are numerous and you can create your signature dish by choosing your favourite flavouring for your bread.

Stuffing (Column 3)
A variety of stuffings listed in column 3 can be used to stuff the dough. Stuffings from 1 to 5 are easy to work with. Others take a bit of practice to master.

Have fun in cooking up your own combinations of new flatbreads !

And that's another entry for Srivalli’s Roti Mela

1001 Rotis

Srivalli’s Roti Mela gave me a good excuse to work on a comprehensive list of Indian rotis. The word Roti( bread) is used here as a general term to cover all unleavened Indian flatbreads. Leavened flatbreads, like the Naan and Kulcha, are covered here.
Rotis can be thick or thin, small or large, round, square or triangular, stuffed or plain. Though they are generally cooked on a skillet, they can also be baked in a tandoor, shallow fried or deep fried. Indian Rotis are eaten with a variety of dals, curries or raitas. It is easy to get lost in the huge variety of rotis eaten across the country. But remember that at their core, all rotis are just cooked dough sheets. The additives, the flours used and the cooking techniques combine to create hundreds of different types of rotis.
The cooking technique:
Knead the dough, roll it into thin discs, cook it on a hot skillet and you have the basic roti. Shallow fry it and you have parathas.Deep fry to make luchis / pooris. Cook the rolled dough initially on a skillet and then cook it over an open fire, puffing it up and you get phulkas. Cook it on a skillet over a low fire till they are crisp and you have Khakras.
Flours used :
Wheat flour is the most common flour used in most Indian flatbreads. Numerous versions of local flatbreads use grains like maize, millets, rice, gram flour in place of or in addition to wheat flour. Add gram flour to wheat flour and you have the missi roti & Besan rotis. Use maize flour and you have Punjab’s Makki Roti. Using rice flour gives us the Ari Pathiris of the Malabar coast, Karnataka’s Akki Roti and Bihar’s Chaaur ka roti. Using sorghum flour gives the Bhakri / Jalad roti / Jowar roti / Jonna roti. Use pearl millet flour and you have the Gujarati rotlas, Bajre ki roti or Sajje roti. Using finger millet flour gives us the Ragi rotis.
Most flatbreads cooked in India are made from a single flour. However, any combination of flours can be used to cook up never before cooked rotis. To see how delicious a mixture of flours can be, check out the missi roti and the Thalipith, which are among the very few rotis which use a mixture of flours.

Special techniques :
Special cooking techniques and vessels are used to cook up several unique rotis. When all purpose dough is stretched wafer thin and cooked almost instantly on a hot inverted wok, we have the Rumali roti. Cook it instead on a large flat skillet, drizzling it with oil and you have the Tamil Veechu Parota. Spread the dough into a large thin sheet, roll it up into a swiss roll, roll out and shallow fry in oil to make the flaky, crumbly parota , so popular in Tamilnadu and Kerala. Shape the wholewheat dough into tomato sized balls, roast them over hot coals ( or bake them) and you get the Rajastani Bati.
Tandoori rotis :.
All flatbreads have their equivalent Tandoori version, where they are not cooked on a skillet, but are baked in a tandoor. These rotis are thicker than their skillet-cooked versions.
Stuffed rotis :
Anything that can be shaped into a tight ball can be used to stuff a roti. Anything wet and soggy will not make a good stuffing. Paneer/ boiled potato / boiled dal/ boiled green peas make easy stuffings, but grated radish / cauliflower take quite a bit of practice. Kneaded Wheat dough is pliable and is easy to stuff. It takes a good deal of skill to make stuffed rotis from other flours.
Sweet Rotis :
All Rotis have their sweet version, though most are not commonly cooked. The Sindhi meetha lo lo is one such sweet roti. Take handful of sugar / jaggery, mix in a cup of water and bring to a boil. Simmer for 2 minutes and let cool. Filter if needed. Use this liquid instead of water to knead the dough.
Rotis across India
Each state has its own flatbread, mostly made from the locally available grain. Let's start from the south and hop across India from flatbread to flatbread.
Parotas and a unique flatbread – the Pathiri are popular in Kerala. The moplah muslims of the Malabar coast make their super soft Pathris from rice flour. As rice flour is not kneadable, it is partially cooked into starch by mixing it with boiling water. It then becomes more pliable. The dough cannot be easily rolled and is either patted to shape on a skillet or rolled on thin parchment paper and then peeled and transferred to the skillet.This technique is used across India for kneading and rolling flours which are not easily kneadable.

Though wheat is not a staple, Tamilnadu loves the multilayered and flaky parota made from all purpose flour. This is served only in the evenings and is almost never used for breakfast. The cooked parota is then crushed between palms , separating the layers and making it flaky and crumbly. On roadside eateries you can frequently catch a glimpse of the dough being stretched wafer thin , a large as a newspapaer, by deft flicks of the wrist. The stretched out dough is then gathered to a long cylinder and is coiled on itself. This is then rolled out to a thick disc and shallow fried on a skillet. In southern districts, parotas are deep fried. They are also chopped up, mixed with onions, eggs and served as Kothu Parota. Another common flatbread is the Pori. Whole wheat dough is rolled out into thin discs and deep fried into Pooris which are popular breakfast dishes.

In the less fertile, drought prone regions of Andhra rice was a luxury and Jonna roti made from sorghum flour was a staple a few decades back. Karnataka loves the the Sajje roti made from pearl millet flour. It also has Obattu, a stufed paratha like dish made from all purpose flour coloured with turmeric powder and stuffed with sweet, boiled chana dal.

As foods do not respect man made boundaries, you’ll see a large overlap of recipes at the state borders. This is why obittu is also found in Maharashtra, but is called the puran poli. You’ll also bump into the Jowar Bhakri and Ragi Bhakri here, which are chapati like flatbreads made from sorghum flour & Ragi flour. Maharashtra gives us the delicious Thalipith, a flatbread made from a mixture of wheat, rice, gram and millet flours. It is interesting to see that rotis become pancakes if too much water is added. To illustrate, check this version of of a Thalipith which is a pancake.

In the Madhya Pradesh we see the Palak Puri, where a whole wheat flour dough kneaded with spinach, ginger, chilies and yogurt is shaped into thin rounds and deep fried.

In Bihar, we see rice flour being used in rotis to make the Chaaur Ke Roti. Sattu ( roasted gram flour) is a popular stuffing in rotis here.

In Orissa and West Bengal, flat breads made from all purpose flour ( maida) are not cooked on a skillet, but are deep fried in oil and are known as Luchis.

In Uttar Pradesh we see the Nawabi version of rotis and parathas perfected by decades of experiments in the dastarkhanas ( royal kitchens). It is here we see the Warq-e-Sada ( ‘plain sheet’) ,a richer version of rumali roti and the warqui paratha which incorporates eggs and ghee into the dough.

The fertile Punjab has its array of delicious parathas. Makki roti, the flatbread made from maize flour is another Punjabi favourite.

In Haryana we have the Besan Roti made from gram flour and wheat flour mixture. It differs from the missi roti in the amount of gram flour used.

In Rajasthan we bump into the missi roti, made from a spiced up mixture of gram flour and wheat flour. It is Rajasthan which is the home of the unique bati - a flattened golf ball sized bread, which is roasted over hot coals and is eaten dipped in ghee.

The Gujarati rotla is made from millet flour and is served with ghee and jaggery. Theplas( wholewheat dough kneaded with yogurt, turmeric, chili and coriander powder) and the travel friendly Khakras (rotis cooked to be as crisp as papads) are other famous Gujarati flatbreads.

In the hilly Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh, we get a roti made from Mandwa flour. (Mandwa is the grain obtained from a hardy plant native to these hills). It is only here you’ll see the Gauhat Ka Paratha. Gauhat, a lentil unique to this region is boiled, mixed with onions, coriander and green chilies and is used as a stuffing in the Mandwa flour dough.

Moving north, we see the rich Kashmiri roti made from a dough kneaded with milk, and spices like asafetida, anise seeds, cumin seeds, pepper powder and ajwain. North eastern India prefers rice over roti and so you’ll not see many indigenous rotis here.

Rotis moved out of India with the immigrants and have transformed to become the Loti prata of Singapore, Roti canai of Malaysia, Bussup shut of Trinidad, the Double of the Caribbean, the Palata or htat ta-ya ( Hundred layers) of Burma, the farata and Dholl purri of Mauritius.

Interesting recipes
Here are some of the interesting recipes I’ve come across in the roti mela. The number in the brackets refers to the corresponding recipe number in the one page cookbook. The first digit denotes the base from column 1, the second denotes the flavouring from column 2 and the third digit denotes the additives from column3.

Trupti’s not so common Sweet Potato Rotis (007)
Veda’s step by step introduction to the delicious Akki Roti,(720)
Missi Roti (261)
Siri’s Bedmi Roti (068)
Anjali’s Doodhi Paratha (066)
The cooker’s fusion paratha - Agretti Paratha (015)
Vandana’s fusion Roti – The Tofu Roti. (046)
Medhaa’s Koki roti (016)