Buss-up-shut roti

As tradition built it

Buss-up-shut roti

Trinidad; dough rested 15 minutes, then cooked and clapped straight off the tawa

Ingredients

• from 5 cups flour, 3 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt, 2 to 3 cups water and a little oil, divided into 6 portions dough

Method

1. Roll the dough thin, lightly grease it, and fold or roll it again to build internal layers.
2. Cook on a hot tawa.
3. While still hot, beat and shred it, "bussed up", using two wooden paddles or a dabla struck from opposite edges toward the centre, or simply clapped between bare palms.
4. Do this immediately off the heat, while steam is still trapped between the layers, or the roti is merely torn rather than genuinely flaked.

What a modern chef changes

Clarified Ghee Lamination, Big Green Egg Heat

Rung 03

Method

1. Brush clarified ghee, passed through a chinois for a shorter, cleaner crumb, between the folds before cooking, for a more distinct lamination than whole butter or oil gives.
2. Cook on a Big Green Egg run hot with a steel plate for consistent, high, even heat across the whole roti rather than the hot spots a domestic tawa can develop.
3. Leave the clapping itself entirely alone: it is already the correct technique for the job, a restaurant pastry chef's lamination-shattering method that this cuisine arrived at on its own terms, and elevating it further would only be French technique looking for an excuse to intrude.