Roti and bara

As tradition built it

Roti and bara

Unlike Trinidad's buss-up-shut, not finished by beating; leans on Madame Jeanette pepper and turmeric · rested 2 hours, or overnight

Ingredients

Roti

• 400g flour
• 200ml water
• a pinch salt
• a little, optional garlic, optional
• a little, optional cumin, optional
• as needed ghee, for brushing
• as needed oil, for the tawa

Bara

• 650g self-rising flour
• 200g yellow split lentils, or urid bean flour
• 2 tbsp roti-kip masala
• 4 cloves garlic
• 4 tsp roasted ground cumin
• 2 tsp, or to taste butter
• 2 tsp yoghurt
• as needed oil, for deep-frying

Method

1. Rest a dough of flour, water and salt, sometimes with garlic or cumin, until elastic.
2. Brush a flattened disc with ghee and fold it back into a ball to laminate the fat through the dough, then rest again under a damp cloth at least 30 minutes.
3. Roll thin and cook on a dry, hot tawa, both sides brushed with oil, until golden, folding the finished sheets twice before serving.
4. For the bara: knead 650g self-rising flour, 200g yellow split lentils or urid bean flour, roti-kip masala, garlic, roasted ground cumin, a little butter and yoghurt to a soft, airy dough.
5. Rest the bara dough two hours or overnight.
6. Shape into egg-sized balls, flatten to roughly 10cm with a finger-poked centre hole echoing the medu vada's own doughnut shape, then fry until golden.

Notes

Bara is a fried lentil doughnut adapted from the South Indian medu vada.

What a modern chef changes

Fresh-ground lentils, sous vide-warmed prove, clarified ghee

Rung 03

Method

1. Leave the roti's ghee-fold lamination entirely as tradition performs it, this is already the technique this atlas exists to celebrate, and spend the kit instead on the bara.
2. Grind the split lentils fresh in the spice grinder rather than buying urid flour ready-made, for a coarser, more textured crumb once fried.
3. Rest the bara dough under sous vide-controlled gentle warmth, around 30°C, rather than at ambient room temperature, for a more consistent rise across a whole batch than an unheated kitchen gives on a cold day.
4. Fry both roti and bara in ghee clarified through a chinois, for a cleaner finish and a higher, more stable smoke point than whole ghee allows.