These are simple and delicious. Rotis are, in my opinion, the least complicated and bestest tasing of all southeast asian breads. Forget your naan’s and chapatis, rotis are crisp on the outside and soft on the inside with a lovely sweet coconut flavour. Make a couple of these bad boys to go with your home made curry feast and you will have lots of “ohhh you made these yourself?” and similar backhanded compliments. Trust me, when it comes to a good indian/sri lankan meal, flat breads are the icing on the cake … so heres the recipe
2 cups self raising flour
1/2 cup of dessicated coconut
1 teaspoon of salt
1 cup of water
ghee or vegetable oil for cooking
mix the flour coconut and salt in a bowl and then add the water slowly to form a soft dough.
Kneed the dough until it forms a ball that doesn’t stick to the sides of the bowl. (if it’s sticking to your hands and making you cranky, take a breath count to 10 and dust a little flour on your hands and on the outside of your dough ball)
Cover the bowl and let the dough sit for half an hour. (don’t worry too much about the time, this dough is very forgiving, i’ve forgotten about the dough before and left it sitting for 3 hours and it still made good rotis)
When you’re ready to roll, form the dough into 6-8 small balls. Sprinkle flour generously over a flat surface and using a rolling pin, flatten the dough into a circle about the size of a small plate.
Heat the a heavy based frying pan or griddle untill it is really really hot. heat a teaspoon of ghee or oil in the pan and use a spatula to flip the roti in the pan so that it’s covered on both sides with the ghee/oil. fry one roti at a time until both sides are crisp (it won’t take long on a high heat so don’t wander off). After each roti is cooked you will have to re-oil the pan.
Hint: You will want to serve these babie HOT, so i like to prepare the dough early, then while the dough is sitting, get my curries and rice and other foods going. Once you have around 5 minutes of curry/rice cooking left start rolling and cooking your rotis. It’s a simple act of timing but it’s nice being able to serve each element of your meal nice and hot.
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