A Bong's Kitchen

Among other things that I love about the Punjabis, I love their food a lot. Though their food is often very rich and has too much of oil or butter in them, but they taste very good. My neighbour Sharma aunty is a Punjabi too and it is from her that I have got to learn quite a few Punjabi dishes. I had instantly become her fan when I had tasted her Shahi Paneer. She is no doubt an expert cook and she is very affectionate as well. It is she who taught me how to make these super soft yet extremely delicious in taste, alur porotha or alu paratha as they call it.

Ingredients :

Wheat Flour - 2 cups
Boiled Potatoes - 3 medium sized
Onion - 1 finely chopped
Finely chopped Green Chillies - 2 tbsp
Cumin powder - 1 tsp
Salt
Coriander leaves, finely chopped
Refined Oil

Method :

To prepare a soft dough, mix the wheat flour with salt and gradually adding little amounts of water, keep kneading the dough till it doesn't stick to your hands. Now cover it with a wet thin cloth and let it to sit for half an hour. Now for preparing the stuffing mixture, take the boiled potatoes in bowl, peel off their skin and mash them smoothly. Add chopped onions, green chillies, cumin powder, coriander powder, salt and the chopped coriander leaves and mix nicely. Divide the dough into small balls of equal size and flattening them a bit, make a cup shape out of that and stuff it with the prepared potato stuffing mixture and close the ball. Keep these balls to rest for a few minutes otherwise it would be difficult to roll them out. Then roll out these balls carefully into porothas, but be careful that the mixture doesn't come out. Now heat some refined oil on the tawa over medium heat and place the porotha on it. Soon it will change its colour and will also start to puff at different places. After a few minutes, now flip it to the other side and spread some oil on this side as well. Every now and then, press the porotha slightly with a spatula so that the porotha is golden brown on both sides. Now take it out onto a plate, it's ready to be served. Similarly fry the other porothas too. These alur porotha can be eaten with a simple mango pickle or they even taste good with plain yogurt.