The Ration Challenge - Playing with Ingredients - Flour

So, I know for Ration Challenge week my 400g flour ration will mostly be used to make me flatbreads as they are just so easy to do and great for accompanying meals or just dipping in hummus for a snack.  But I wanted to try a couple of other things to try to vary what I can make with my limited ingredients and, well just to make it feel like I'm cooking and eating different things.

I have already tried pastry and that was quite successful, well maybe it wasn't the prettiest to look at it but boy was it tasty.  Then I read on the Facebook group page about Parathas.

On the BBC Food website it says:

A paratha is a deliciously flaky flatbread, made by brushing ghee on the dough and folding it over itself before re-rolling and frying in a dry frying pan.

My basic recipe copied from someone's post on the Facebook group is this, so I thought I would give it a go yesterday while the rain poured down outside.

I decided to make one large paratha for my lunch, so I used 50g of flour ... well as you can see just a smidge over!  I added a pinch of salt and enough water to bring it together to a nice workable dough.  

After a good kneading I left it to rest for a just over half an hour.

Then I rolled it out nice and thin, brushed it with oil and then sprinkled it with some garlic powder and a pinch of salt and started to roll it up.

The next stage is to coil it up, then cover and leave to rest again for another 30 minutes.

Then roll it out thinly again into a large circle ... and once again brush with oil and roll up.

This time you can roll it out straight away, the slight squelching noise as the oil is pushed into dough is brilliant. 

Then after brushing both sides of the paratha with oil you fry it in a very hot dry pan until both sides are slightly browned.

I cut mine into quarters and had two of them spread with hummus and the other two just as they were so I could really understand the flavour and texture of them.

They taste like an amazing cross between a flatbread and a slice of lightly cooked flaky pastry, and with mine having garlic powder added mine were very reminiscent of a delightfully light and crisp garlic bread.

It might seem like a lot of work for a simple snack or meal, but I can assure you the end result is more than worth it.  They actually taste the nicest when they are still warm, fresh from the pan as like anything made with oil they do tend to get a bit stodgier as they cool.  

You can also incorporate other things into the parathas, such a tomato or curry paste, or some dahl or herbs.  Really it's something I intend to play with a lot in the future as I already have at the back of my mind a future Challenge using minimal ingredients and very little money. 

Sue xx