A medley of colorful vegetables blends in seamlessly with bengal gram flour and spices to create the stuffing for this soft, luscious, and utterly scrumptious paratha, that makes for a complete meal in itself. Serve it with some raitha (spiced yogurt) and your favorite pickle, and you’re all set for a healthy, tasty, and satisfying meal!
Ingredients (makes around 10 medium sized parathas):
- Whole Wheat Flour (2 cups)
- Water (1 cup – this depends on the flour being used)
- Onions (finely chopped) (1/4 cup)
- Ginger-garlic paste (1 tsp)
- Broccoli, carrots, cabbage (grated) and kale/spinach/fenugreek leaves (finely chopped) (2 cups)
- Lemon juice (1 tbsp)
- Salt (to taste)
- Cumin (jeera) powder (1/4 tsp)
- Coriander (dhaniya) powder (1/4 tsp)
- Turmeric (haldi) powder (1/4 tsp)
- Dried red chilli powder (1/4 tsp)
- Bengal gram flour (besan) (2 tbsp)
- Oil (1 tbsp)
- Ghee (for spreading on the parathas)
Method:
- Make the paratha dough by mixing wheat flour, salt and water. Follow the instructions in the chapati/roti recipe. Keep the dough covered and let it sit for at least 20 minutes.
- In a pan, heat oil on medium, add onions, ginger-garlic paste and saute for a minute or so until the onions turn translucent.
- Add the remaining grated vegetables, all the dry spice powders and salt. Saute for a few minutes until the vegetables are almost done.
- Add besan and continue sauteing for a few minutes to give the besan some time to cook.
- Once the moisture from the vegetables has evaporated, add the lemon juice and switch off the flame. The filling should be well homogenized and should have come together like a gigantic ball because of the binding agent (besan). If you don’t have a homogeneous consistency, you can add some more besan and cook well until you get the desired consistency for the filling. Even if the filling is not completely homogeneous, it is fine.
- Make medium sized balls of filling and dough.
- Roll out the dough into a tiny circle (2 inches diameter) and place the filling at the center.
- Seal the filling completely using the dough.
- Slowly and carefully, roll it out while simultaneously sprinkling wheat flour on the paratha to prevent sticking. If the filling starts to leak at a particular place, just sprinkle some flour over that spot and continue rolling.
- On a flat pan (tava/griddle) on medium heat, place the rolled out paratha. When tiny bubble-like eruptions start to appear, it is time to flip the paratha.
- After flipping the paratha, apply some ghee on top. Flip again after 15-20 seconds.
- Apply ghee on the top now. Keep flipping the paratha and adjusting the heat, until the paratha is golden brown and fully cooked.
- This makes for a great, satisfying and complete lunch with raitha and pickles, for both adults and kids.
Reusing the Filling:
The filling balls can be flattened into cutlet/patties shape and shallow fried on a flat pan with a little oil to make for tasty mixed vegetable & besan cutlets, that can be served as is with a dip of choice or even inside a burger or wrap!
Tastes (Rasa):
Sweet (flours, oil, ghee), sour (lemon), salty (salt), bitter (leaves), pungent (chilly, ginger, garlic), astringent (leaves).
Doshic Influence:
This recipe is quite tridoshic in nature. Wheat that is heavy, sticky, cold and slightly difficult to digest tends to be kapha and vata provoking. Bengal gram flour is also kapha and vata aggravating. To counter these and increase some pitta in the recipe, warming, digestive spices like cumin, coriander, chilly, ginger, garlic are added. Ghee is tridoshic and a great digestive aid. As always, kaphas should watch portion sizes and control the amount of ghee and oil. Pittas shouldn’t overdo the garlic, ginger and chillies – skipping them is also fine. Adding dried ginger powder instead of fresh ginger in any recipe will reduce the pitta effects, while still giving the digestive benefits of adding ginger. Ensure that the bengal gram flour is well cooked to avoid flatulence for vatas.
Effects on the Mind (Gunas):
Garlic and onions add some minimal rajas and tamas respectively to the dish. You may skip these, if you want to. But in small amounts, even these ingredients offer benefits – so you can just use them in moderation once in a while. Otherwise, the spices used with the exception of chilli are all sattvic in nature.