Lately, in my 30s, I delved into a hobby and found that there is a cook inside me. After my marriage, I started working in the kitchen as was fascinated by Laboratory. I embraced spices-ingredients as Lab-chemicals. Each and every cooking was like my experiment going on with waiting for a perfect result. There was certainly variation in the taste if the quantity of spices bit changed for the same cooking. Not only kitchen chemicals are so-called ‘factors’ responsible for changing the taste of the specific cuisine.
But others like time of cooking, temperature level, water content, and of course your patient-level could affect the taste. All together add up taste to cooking. I observe if I am making any dish with a happy mood or listening to song, it certainly results in a perfect dish. Irrespective of with off-mood or in hurry, which could absolutely disturb the rhythm of cooking itself and resultant product will be less moderate. Hence, so obvious to say that cooking from the heart is tastiest of all. Or we can judge the mood of a person by just tasting the food.
Every cuisine has a specific cooking protocol for a specific taste. I got to know that different pulses require different times to cook, depending on the hardness of their seed coat or permeability for water. For a long time, I stymied myself from the cooking of thinking me a bad cook. However, with regular cooking, I felt like I can cook anything by watching the youtube-cooking tutorials. I too start hounding for new cuisine on YouTube like others. It pleased me when my family starts appreciating my progress in kitchen work. And I literally addicted to my new hobby. Yehhhhhh….!!!
Fortunately, I have gone with full exposure to explore my cooking during lockdown 2020. Throughout the year, I cooked, baked, and learned with subsequent seasons by experiments with seasonal vegetables. Moreover, my chapatis start getting in shape, becoming angle-less and less oval. I felt I am at my advanced level of cooking.
But here winter comes with Kharif season crops. And during winter, we have another source of carbohydrate i.e., Maize or Makki (Zea mays)in our north Indian region. We consume it as corn-bhutta, pop-corn, and makki ki roti along with Sarson ka saag (cooked Mustard-leaves) or with Karru (spicy fried curd) with the regional recipe. There is a folk rhyme…
Makki di Roti… Sarounada Saag…
Mirch Marodi… Aya swaad…
... which means here is a symbiotic taste combination of saag along with Makki ki roti only. And if we add chilli (hot-pepper) in saag, the taste will enhance after expanding of taste buds.
With this folklore related to cuisine-combinations, we are still connected to our ancestors.
I could not understand the logic behind the binding properties of maize flour. So, I searched about it on youtube. After a glance, it looks easy enough to make dough and roti without using chakla-belana (Traditional rolling pin and base). Though, I had seen my mother making makki ki roti on traditional mud-chulha. But nowadays we are prosperous with fumeless cooking appliances - LPG. It is actually easier to adjust fire temperature with knobs on the gas-stove. Traditionally, on mud-chulha, this part was done by shifting burning billets with bare hands.
Anyhow, I took a handful of maize flour for practice. But I couldn’t perform in the right way in my first attempt. It was sticking more on hands and lots of check-cracks over it while trying to make it round. It would be a great struggle if you are naive.
So, I decided myself take the second attempt where I took guidance from one of my senior colleagues. She guided me with an easy trick. I am here sharing this culinary trick with those who are still wondering about it.
For this, we need a clean plastic sheet. Spread that sheet on a plain surface or on circular-chakla. Place the small rounded peda (dough-ball) on the sheet and press it with your palm and try to beat softly so that peda (ball) moves in rotation without breaking edges. With each rotation and beat-pressure, it will start to spread and become round. There you will get round roti with an accurate thickness. Then flip that round flattened roti on the palm from the sheet as you’ll see roti will neither stick-on the plastic sheet nor on the hands. Then place it on a hot pan slowly. Don’t just throw it on the pan otherwise it will create cavities between the pan and roti. And roast it slowly with medium flame as a regular procedure.
This was my first experience with Makki di roti and succeeded in 4th attempt.
What’s your experience?
Looking forward to your comments.
