I’m ambitious. Sometimes, stupidly so.
The first day I bought my own tawa(frying pan) , belan and chaklan (the tools for making roti), I sat down, determined to make aloo paratha. Not plain roti, as a normal beginner with no prior experience would do, direct aloo paratha! By myself, no sensible supervision involved.
7 pm .. I have all my tools ready, am pretty excited, already imagining how they’d look like. Hmm.. took the wheat flour in a container, poured a little water, took a deep breath and plunged my hand into it. Icky!! Gooey sticky muck. Put a little more flour.. too dry, more water.. and the process continued..
7.20 .. This stupid thing looked soooo easy when I saw my mom doing it!!!
7.40.. yippee.. dough is done! Put the potatoes in water to boil! Uh-oh! Should have done this first.
7.45.. potatoes boiling.. Me watching TV.
8.15.. Oh shit!! The potatoes!!! Ok, nothing burnt.. just a lil over-boiled.. u silly gas-waster!!
8.25.. potatoes cooled enough to be peeled. Mashed them up nicely.. By now, started feeling hungry.. consoled myself by thinking that it’s almost done.. (in reality.. not even close!)
8.30.. added the spices to potatoes.. green chillies, salt, a little garam masala.. and dunno why I felt like adding a pinch of turmeric.. maybe coz it was the only thing left untouched in the spice-box.
9.20.. still trying to roll out the parathas with the potato stuffing.. no matter how I tried, the mashed potato filling kept coming out.
Why the hell did it look easy when someone else was making it?!?
Stomach grumbling , actually roaring with hunger… I continued battling with the dough.
10.00 pm.. ahaa! My first ever aloo parathas… though the end-product looked like a cross between cutlets and aloo tikki rather than paratha..
But the first bite was straight out of heaven.. they were yummy! Or maybe I was too hungry by then.. whatever.. I loved it!
