Monday: Re-Roti

 

Warm black-eyed pea and golden chard salad, served with roti.

Elizabeth Schneider's Vegetables: From Amaranth to Zucchini attributes this recipe to Cyprus.  Chard leaves and stems are just simmered briefly and tossed with black-eyed peas, lemon juice, and olive oil.  We were enamored of the roti we made on Friday (why haven't we made it in so long??) so we made another short stack.  Roti is really not that hard:

ROTI

Put 1 cup whole wheat flour into a bowl, and slowly add up to 1/2 cup water, mixing until the dough adheres and you can knead it.  Knead 7-8 minutes.  Then roll into a ball, put it back in the bowl, and cover with a damp cloth.  Leave it there for 1/2 hour to 3 hours.

Put a cast iron skillet on a medium flame to let it heat up.  Meanwhile, knead the dough again and then divide it into eight balls.  Roll each one out on a floured board until it's about five inches in diameter (it should be pretty thin).  Then place each roti directly on the skillet and within about 30 seconds it should start to puff up.  If this doesn't happen, the griddle probably isn't hot enough yet.  Flip the roti and let the other side cook about 30 seconds again.  Remove and gorge.

PS: this recipe, from Madhur Jaffrey's Invitation to Indian Cooking, is technically for "chapati."  But that is apparently the same as roti.