Broccoli Parathas

Broccoli Paratha is a recipe I had bookmarked a very long time ago and the regular habit is to bookmark and forget and that's what I did :).  Seeing Broccoli eeveryday at the vegetable shop reminded of this recipe and I had to make it. It called out to me I guess ;). I liked the thought of seeing a green colored stuffing inside the paratha and you can also get the healthy brocolli into your system as well. But I wasn't sure if they would taste great. So with some suspicion on that end, I went ahead and made them. To accompany these parathas I cooked some really awesome Paneer Tikka Masala just to be on the safe side, so that it can make up for the bad tasting brocolli paratha if that happend at all :). Looks like i dint need them after all. Brocolli Paratha by itself tasted super good and I am sure I would repeat this dish quite often.

I usually put away making parathas, I think it takes a lot of time, I am not an expert on them and until sometime back, I always had the stuffing oozing out issue while making parathas. This time though, I made really nice broccoli parathas and the stuffing stayed intact. I stayed extremely patient and gentle while rolling out the parathas and made doubly sure that the stuffing was dry and did not contain a lot of moisture. After rolling each paratha well, I would punch my fist into the air as a sign of victory, LOL. And eventually I discovered the trick to make parathas and I shall tell you how! :). So lets move on.

Ingredients

Recipe Source - Monsoon Spice
Serves - makes about 8 parathas
Spice Level - Moderate
Prep Time - 20 minutes
Cook time - 20 minutes

For the stuffing

Broccoli - 1 small sized, grated finely in your food processor
Green chilli - 1, finely chopped
Jeera/Cumin powder - 1/2 Tsp
Coriander powder - 1/2 Tsp
Amchur powder - 1/2 tsp or a tsp of lemon juice
Salt - as per need
Oil - 1 Tbsp

For the dough

Wheat flour - 2 cups
Water - 3/4 cup
Yoghurt - 2 Tbsp
Salt - 1/2 Tsp
Some wheat flour for dusting and rolling
Oil - for making the parathas


How do you do it

1. To prepare the filling, heat oil in a kadai. Add the green chillies and saute for a minute. Add the grated broccoli now and all the spice powders and mix well. Saute  for a couple of minutes until the broccoli release a little moisture. Switch off flame and cool completely. Do not stir fry this filling for long, then the mixture will contain a lot of moisture and the stuffing will ooze out while rolling parathas. Also make sure the filling completely cools before making parathas. Hot stuffing will cause the filling to ooze out of the paratha while rolling.

2. I make my dough in the food processor and this is what I do. The flour, salt, and youghurt is mixed well first. Then I pour in the water and run the processor until a smooth non-sticky dough is formed. You can use your bowl and hand to knead this dough as usual. Mix in the flour, salt and youghurt well. Then slowly add water while you knead to get a smooth surfaced non-sticky dough. Cover this dough with a damp tea towel and rest for 30 minutes.

3. The dough needs to be soft and smooth for soft parathas. So take care to get this right.

4. Remove the damp tea towel, take the dough and knead with hand once again and divide into seven-eight equal sized large balls. For parathas, the size of each dough ball needs to be quite big to accommodate the filling.

5. Dust this dough ball well in flour and using a rolling pin, roll into thick discs of 4 inch diameter.

6. Take 1.5 tsp of the prepared filling and place in center of the rolled disc. Gather the edges of the rolled disc and seal them. When you gather the edges of the rolled disc, the height of these edges must be at-least an inch above the stuffing, this is to make sure the filling will sit well inside. So bring the edges together and make them like a dumpling and seal well.

7. Use your rolling pin, gently roll over the sealed edge to flatten them. Once done, dust that surface with a little flour and roll into 1/2 inch thick parathas.

8. Heat a griddle on high flame. Move to low-medium flame once the griddle is hot. Place the paratha on the griddle now and cook on both sides until dark brown spots appear on them. Each paratha should take about 5 minutes to cook. Apply some ghee or oil on top of the paratha before taking it out of the pan.

Serve this super yummy Broccoli paratha with any side dish of your choice. We had this with Paneer Tikka Masala, watch out for the recipe soon :)