Kitchen Experiments : Chhole Paratha, or how to convert leftovers from a North Indian dinner into a delicious take-away breakfast

Today, after many years, Mom made Chhole - the North Indian (don't know if its strictly Punjabi) dish of chickpeas redolent with tomatoes, onion and fragrant spices. Studded with soft cubes of paneer, Mom's version is finger-licking, plate-wiping good, though I have no clue about how authentic it is. :)


Being Sunday, I had some free time to mess around in the kitchen - and in a happy coincidence, I got a lighting bolt (no, make that two bolts) of culinary inventiveness, so off I started.

First off was Chhole Paratha:

Kneaded wheat flour (atta) and refined/superfine wheat flour (maida) (roughly in the ratio 2:1) and kneaded it with oil, salt and water to make a soft dough.


Mashed the pre-made chhole (leftover from lunch) and crumbled in a boiled potato to the mix. Adjusted the seasoning (salt, green chilly paste and garam masala) to make up for the added volume of the bland potato.


Rolled out a thin (a shade thicker than normal phulka) roti, spread out the mashed chickpea-and-potato mix, and folded the roti over the stuffing to make a neat rectangular parcel.


Cooked the paratha parcel in a frying pan with ghee to help things become all golden brown and sizzling. :)


Served piping hot off the tawa with a dollop of sweet-sour-spicy chutney (mint-coriander-raw mango-jaggery)

Preened as Mom and Dad dug in with gusto. :D

Yay!

The advantages of this technique (can't really call it a recipe) are:

• It transmogrifies leftover heavy curries/gravy dishes into a whole new dish, and make them more appealing/palatable - often I have noticed that I cannot face the spicy dishes I relish at lunch/dinner when they are served at the next meal as leftovers - especially if they have been made in large quantities like for a party.
• It is versatile - you can convert not just chhole, but any other spicy gravy dish (navratan korma, palak paneer, chana masala, and so on) into paratha stuffing when you blend in enough mashed potato/paneer
• You cant eat subzi-roti for breakfast, can you - but parathas go down a treat!
• Packing leftover subzi-roti as an office/school lunch can be a task (water-tight container for the subzi/curry, foil for the roti, spoon to eat the curry with) - a paratha is finger-food if made into a roll wrapped with foil - so much more convenient to eat!

Another technique that Mom suggested was to mash the leftovers of the gravy dish, add oil and wheat flour - keep adding flour till a knead-able dough is formed - roll out the spiced dough into a roti and roast with some ghee in a frying pan. So you are spared the multi-step process of stuffing the paratha, and can make parathas similar to the Gujarati thepla.

So go ahead, make your own paratha mutants...err....I mean variants (:P) And comment on this post with your own recipes!