the accidental flatbread feast
Tonight could’ve been the worst night of cookery since the time I almost set Eric’s apartment on fire in an inept attempt at sauteeing eggplant. Through luck, help, and serendipitous
innovation, Amanda and I managed to salvage dough and dinner, and save Whoville. Well, we might’ve.
…
I had a plan for dinner this evening: a tasty palak-batata (spinach-potato) bhaaji, with a side of a sort of raitha. After returning from the grocery store, I discovered that I’d brought home neither yogurt for the raitha nor naan for the bhaaji. The raitha was pretty easy to substitute with cucumber slices, which I sprinkled with lemon, salt, and pepper. The bread problem was more serious. There is pretty much nowhere within a five-block radius where one can purchase naan. And I didn’t want to make rice, as that was for dinner tomorrow night.
That’s when Amanda came up with a chapati recipe. I hadn’t yet tried making the Indian flatbreads, as they take a lot of work and are best made with durum wheat atta rather than the all-purpose flour I had on hand. But her recipe seemed rather simple, so I gave it a shot. It was disastrous almost from the beginning. I unwittingly threw the proportions off with my hyperadjustment, leaving a sticky, glutinous mess. I decided to leave it alone until after making the bhaaji and hope for the best.
It was an unmitigated disaster. I tried to roll out the dough (with a bottle of Yuengling, no less!), but it snapped back into place. The laws of physics would not allow it to be rolled out into anything better than an oval. And it was still sticky to boot. After spending some time on stove, I came out with chewy, doughy, woefully undercooked hockey pucks. It was 10.00p, and I had no accompaniment.
Amanda noted that the bread looked like naan and could be used as naan, and it was indeed as thick as naan. But that would take another half hour to bake, and there was no guarantee it would work. Then, as we brainstormed other ways to use the dough, it hit me: fry them up! I poured a healthy dose of oil in the pan and dropped one of the pre-pucks into hot oil. It was crispy, but still doughy. Amanda rolled a couple dollops of dough out, and they came out much thinner.
After some frying, they…didn’t suck! They were a little crispy, so one couldn’t grab the bhaaji with chunks as one would with a normal flatbread. Instead, we were forced to eat in the fashion of chips-and-salsa.
The final product is displayed below. Tomorrow will feature a much, much simpler meal.
