Very green flatbread
A freezer-friendly vegan paratha studded with methi and tofu
Hello, my name is Apoorva Sripathi and I’m a writer and editor. This week’s paid subscriber newsletter is a recipe for methi-tofu paratha that is freezer-friendly and vegan. I hope you’ll give it a go. If you’d like to support my work, please consider a paid subscription, it helps a lot. Thank you!
I’d like to think of today’s recipe in tandem with Tuesday’s essay on hands. If you haven’t read it, I urge you to do so1. “Hands represent humanity”, I write. “We make, create, and cook things with them.”
I have been thinking about hands, about dexterity and labour, skill and craft, identity and creation, while I was rolling out these parathas. Pretty heavy parathas, I know. But the work is repetitive and lends itself to deliberation: pinch and divide the dough into small balls, flatten into a disc, dip in flour, and roll into a flat circle. Repeat. Then cook the parathas in a hot frying pan.
I don’t make flatbreads as often even though repetition can be soothing. (My carb of choice is rice; I have written paeans to it.) This type of work requires skill but also patience and so I find making chapathis and parathas to be painstaking. Historically too, making flatbreads – and by extension cooking – has always been understood as the primary responsibility for women. In India especially, the ability to roll round flatbreads is said to signal your readiness as a wife, a concept that truly sickens me and has successfully kept me from rolling out chapatis2.
Cooking as labour should be a more entwined fact everywhere, which makes this recipe column all the more difficult to sell. Even if I see cooking for myself and others as pleasure and a medium to explore my own desires, it still remains a laborious chore. I don’t know where this leaves me or you, so instead I have a few caveats when it comes to these parathas:
1. They don’t have to be rolled out round as much as everyone insists that you do. Jagged edges are more than welcome here! In fact, I insist that craggy and irregular boundaries are what make the paratha tastier; craggy and irregular bounds often enrich life.
2. Use whatever green you want: I have become partial to dill in the last 6 months and I’d love it in a flatbread along with coriander and spinach. You could shred broccoli and fry till there’s no moisture left and stuff it inside the dough. How about kale and spring onions?
3. Skip the tofu and use ricotta or halloumi.
4. Use a tortilla press to flatten the dough. Ask each member of your family to roll theirs out.
5. Or skip this recipe and make rice.