Manchurian Paratha for the documentary soul

November 2009:

Dish in question: Manchurian Paratha
Chef: Maggie alias Egg
Sous chef : Window Siller
Agenda: To make something special, which will get us started on a film proposal.

Ingredients: Atta, one little carrot, four onions, vinegar, tomato ketchup, soya sauce, ginger, garlic, chilli powder, oil and lots and lots of ghee.

The dough for the paratha is made a little harder than what we make for rotis. We use a lot of oil and Egg makes them perfectly triangular. She was trained to make perfect geometric figures with the belan, pure math and no geography here.

Then we fry it until they become golden brown and all crispy. With loads of ghee of course. And cut them into square bits. Perfect squares again.

Now we dice the onions, add a teaspoon of vinegar and set them aside for 30 mins. In the meanwhile, we grate ginger and garlic and saute them in oil.

In a while, we add the onions, the thin slices of carrot, and a big spoon of soya sauce. Egg insists on adding 5-6 spoons of tomato ketchup. I would have preferred plain puree.

Now we add 1 tsp of chilli powder, 1/2 tsp of salt, and 1/2 a tumbler of water to the mixture and let the mixture boil.

When it is almost done, we add the paratha bits to the sabji, let it simmer for five seconds and serve ourselves to eat.

Some onion raitha, I suppose, will be good to go along. But we are done cooking.