Well it's late March already and almost one 1/4 of the year down, the Summer is slowly falling away and I'm beginning to look at recipes for the cooler months already. After the trip to India last year I think I'll be using the recipe books I picked up in Mumbai and Delhi.

This will be something I work on and get right, I got this made for me in so many places when the restauranteur found out I couldn't eat the normal Roti or paratha.

RAJASTHANI - MISSI ROTI


Ingredients:

150 gms Wheat flour (replace with GF flour mix)
1 tsp Red chilli powder
250 gms Besan (chickpea flour)
1 tsp Dhaniya Powder (coriander powder)
3 tbsp Ghee
2 tbsp oil
1/2 tsp Jeera (cumin seed)
1/2 tsp Kaala Jeera (black cumin)
1 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Ajwain (similar to caraway)

Preparation:

Mix the wheat flour and besan together, add oil, salt, red chilli powder, dhaniya, jeera, kala jeera and ajwain. Mix well. Make into a stiff dough, then roll into small and thick rotis and cook both sides till browned in patches on a pre-heated flat plate or griddle.

Brush missi roti slightly with melted ghee. Serve hot with your favourite curry or dips.

Try it, you'll like it

cheers

Well apparently promises are made to be broken as I promised myself I wouldn't take on a blog unless I could commit to a post once a week and here I've missed several posts/weeks through all the usual excuses, too busy, other people take up my time etc when really I've been doing other things.

So in the immortal words of Chopper Crowe - harden the f up Masters!

So heres the latest missive from the life of me.

And it has been busy, no mistake about that, a long time (in our world of Zoe being home - then bang she's away for the best part of 4 weeks on the trot) and in the meantime Eve has started Uni, doing courses that I don't understand but then for her last couple years at Wgtn College I had no idea what half the prizes where for at prizegiving, Best Male Student to understand crochet styles of the late 1970s, what's with that?

Bryn's playing every sport possible and with the blurring of the lines now common for this time of year, he's got rugby trials, requests to play 20/20 cricket, weekend cricket has become 2 day, golf on Mondays for the College and Sundays at Judgeford.

Me? - I hear you ask, well work is back to it's near manic best so besting the tide there and holding the XT line as strong as I can, though getting the pity look for the first time in 19 years of mobile sales is tough to take.

Food has  been a constant, room to play a bit especially tonight, only Bryn and I at home so a Hugh Fearnly-Whittsingstall recipe comes to mind. White beans, tomatoes, onions, garlic and spicy sausage - strangely all available in my kitchen so away we go.

Both red and white onions, finely diced and into the stock pot, three cans of cannellini and butter beans (la Italiana brand) go in on top once the onion is sweated off, then those tomatoes that are close to past their best, judicious slicing and dicing there, and a small amount of chicken stock (store bought but still - Campbell's so can't be bad) salt, pepper and some oregano follow plus smoked paprika.

Then the meat - pre-cooked sliced cabanossi and GF pure beef sausages and at the end a handful and a half of arborio rice to thicken the stew/soup?

Taste a few times to make sure the rice ius cooked through, nothing worse than chalky rice netween the teeth and we are good to go, adjust seasoning and serve  as is, perhaps some crusty bread (but we have none) so GF Burgen corn & poppyseed toasted will do nicely.

So not wildly exciting but good use of what's at hand to deliver something different to the usual weeknight fare and reasonably quick from start to finish.

Just a random thought - perhaps this is a wet style risotto, Venetian style......