Taste and Create: Chana Dal Parantha

My Partner For this month's Taste and Create is Simran of Bombay Foodie. Her blog has a wide selection of Indian food with the occasional cookie or other treat thrown in. Not surprisingly I was totally unfamiliar with alot of the dishes and ingredients. I still found plenty of things that appealed to me (and I wouldn't be to scared to make). I will admit it was a tough choice the Lemon and Mint Cooler looked like it would really hit the spot and the Biryani intrigued me. But I choose to go with the Chana Dal Parantha. I have been eyeing different versions of this ever since I started browsing food blogs. So I decided now was my chance.

I am pretty sure what I made doesn't qualify as a Roti Mela (not being real sure what that is exactly, I can't be positive) but it is close enough for me.

Here is the original recipe:

To make the parantha, boil 1/2 cup split yellow lentils until al dente. In a bowl, mix the lentils, one small onion chopped finely, a tbsp of chopped coriander, salt, garam masala, red chilli powder, cumin seeds and anardana (dried pomegranate seeds). Mix well to make your filling.

Knead one cup whole wheat flour with enough water to make a firm yet pliable dough. Let it rest for a while.

Take a small ball of dough (roughly the size of tennis ball) and roll out to a thick disc. Place 2 tablespoon of the filling in the middle of this disc. Gather the side and bring them together to form a filling-stuffed ball. Toss the ball in dry flour to prevent it sticking and roll it out to a thin parantha.

Heat a griddle and place the stuffed parantha on it. Cook for around half a minute, then flip over. Spread ghee over the parantha, flip back again and apply ghee on the other side. Cook the parantha on both sides until its golden in color. You will notice that chana dal will absorb a lot more ghee than any other parantha, making it sinfully rich yet delicious.

I of course changed it all up and had more of a southwestern parantha then an Indian one.

1 cup flour with enough water to make a firm but pliable dough (mine was a soft dough, but close enough)

For the filling I used
corn from a left over ear of corn on the cob.
chopped carrots
chopped onion
chopped garlic
left over sweet potato fries
chipotle powder
garlic salt
pepper
cumin
corriander
caraway
threw it all in the food processor to get rid of the big chunks and boy did it smell good.

I made my dough balls walnut sized and they rolled out beautifully. When I fried them up I didn't read the recipe right and used way to much butter. They were as good as I expected but something was missing.

So I sauteed up the left over filling and ate it like a taco with a little chipotle sourcream and it was devine. (chipotle sourcream is chipotle salsa and sour cream heated together until bubbly, then served right away as a sauce or cooled and used in place of sourcream.)

Would I make these again? With out a doubt. Next time there will be less butter though, and maybe some cucumbers and tomatoes in yogurt to go with them, and maybe something green.