Sunday, August 9, 2009

Zucchini Chapati (Serves 2; makes 6 chapatis)







This was something my wife Anita created at a time when we were at our wits end to come up with an idea of feeding our daughter Tvisha vegetables. Not that we still aren't having trouble with feeding her vegetables. That's a story for another day which I may post on my other blog.






This has turned out to be something that my daughter relishes at least when its fresh. She has it with plain yogurt. For us adults though, spice this thing up a bit and it's a yummy dish.


I have gone ahead and modified the recipe to suit our palettes. For the original recipe for kids that we posted in our other blog, here is the link for the same.


The beauty of this recipe is the flexibility of adding different vegetables (well, the ones that are compatible of course). Here my wife used zucchini and carrots for Tvisha. I am keeping the recipe simple and modifying it so it includes only zucchini.


2 medium size Zucchini

1 tsp cumin seeds

Very small bunch fresh basil leaves (10-15 leaves) chopped very fine.

3 green chillis chopped very fine

1 1/2 cups of Wheat flour

2 tsp of vegetable oil

1 Cup of water

1/2 tsp salt


Grate the zucchinis with a fine grater. Add salt, cumin seeds, chopped chillis, chopped basil (this can be substituted with coriander or parsley, depending on your preference), and the whole wheat flour.


Mix the ingredients into a dough with 2 tsp of vegetable oil and 1 cup of water. You can add or reduce the water and/or whole wheat flour in order to make sure that the dough doesn't get too sticky. Roll the dough into small balls and shape them with a rolling pin into round thin tortillas (my daughter still calls it a pitathi, a combination of pizza and chapati).


Pan fry both sides with oil. This can be eaten with plain yogurt, lentil or tomato soup, with pickles, or by itself. I think spreading fruit jelly/jam/preserve, rolling it up and eating it would be very tasty :-).


Health Rating: High


Substitute Ingredient/s: The other vegetables one can use are carrots, potatoes, pumpkins, cauliflower, fenugreek leaves, white raddish, cabbage, etc. Just make sure if you are using any vegetable combinations, they are compatible and not too watery or you will have a certified mess in your hands. For those who aren't vegan, use dollops of butter to cook the tortilla and the taste goes to another level ;-). But then it would cease to be healthy, right?


Bio on Anita:
























Anita is my wonderful wife, and when in the mood can cook up a storm, especially desserts and baked products. She works in New York and is in the research field. She likes to try out new dishes (again only when she is in the mood), and always loves to critique my cooking ready to find any fault even if there isn't one :-). I will credit her fully for pushing me to start the two blogs that we maintain currently. I am trying to get her to try out new dishes more often.