Accidentally Engaged(97)
Mix flour and salt in a bowl.
Add 2 tbsp oil, and rub between fingers until it looks like coarse meal and holds together when squeezed in hand.
Drizzle warm water over it, a little at a time, and mix by hand until a soft dough is formed. It should be quite soft and pliable and a little sticky.
Knead dough for about five minutes until no longer sticky. Add more flour if necessary, but dough should be soft.
Form into a ball and cover. Rest at least 30 minutes.
Knead dough briefly again and divide into 6 equal balls.
Coat one ball completely in flour, and roll in plenty of flour to prevent sticking. Roll with a rolling pin to a 7-to-8-inch circle. (Skip to cooking step 11 to make maani/rotis/chapatti instead of parathas.)
Brush surface with oil or melted ghee. Sprinkle with a pinch of flour.
Perform 2 letter folds with the circle of dough to create layers. To do this, fold the top third of the circle down. Brush folded side with oil and sprinkle with flour. Fold the bottom third up, covering the folded side of the last fold. Brush with oil and sprinkle with flour. You should now have a narrow strip of dough like a folded letter. Repeat previous two folds, folding the right third toward the left, brushing with oil and sprinkling with flour, then folding the left third to the right, covering the folded side of the last fold.
Now you should have a 2-to-3-inch square of dough. Sprinkle with flour and roll out again, pressing evenly and turning often to maintain the square shape. Roll to a 7-to-8-inch square.
Place rolled paratha on a dry pan heated on medium. Cook about one minute until you see small bubbles on the surface. Flip and brush with oil/ghee. It should start ballooning up at this point. Press the bubbles with a spatula to encourage layers. Flip again and brush the other side with oil/ghee.
Keep cooking, flipping often and pressing the bubbles and edges with the spatula until cooked through, with dark spots on both sides. Keep in a covered container to prevent drying out.
Repeat from step 7 with remaining dough balls.
Enjoy with curry, chutney, or jam.
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Acknowledgments
When I was a kid, I used to beg my mother to cook something other than Indian food sometimes.
My parents were married in Tanzania when they were both twenty-two. They moved to Canada a few months later. Eventually they had my sister, then me. We watched hockey or Bollywood most nights, and all we ate was the East African–influenced Indian food they were raised on. They spoke to us in a hybrid English/Kutchi, with a bit of Gujarati and Swahili sprinkled in, and they didn’t care that we weren’t interested in learning the language or learning how to cook. My parents were supportive and obliging, so Mum agreed to vary our diet. We’d have kuku paka one night, lasagna the next. Kebob jo shaak, followed by meat loaf.
As an adult, I became obsessed with cooking. Bread from scratch, homemade pasta, Chinese, Thai, Caribbean food, plus any baked goods you could imagine. I love learning to cook food from around the world. But when I want to feel connected to the beautiful country of Tanzania, and my own specific culture—East African Indian Muslim Canadian—I turn to our food. That is what this book is about, connecting to your roots through food. Writing a romance between two people finding their place in their culture and falling in love through their love of home cooking was such a joy for me, and I am grateful to everyone who had a part in making this book happen.
Thank you to my wonderful agent, Rachel Brooks, for having faith in me and for always supporting marginalized writers to get our stories told. Thank you to the early readers for this book, Jackie Lau, Laura Heffernan, and Roselle Lim, not only for their feedback on the manuscript, but also for being great friends who are always there for me through this publishing journey. Thank you to Jennifer Lambert, whose editorial advice on this project was invaluable. A huge thank-you to my editor at Forever, Leah Hultenschmidt, for her amazing insight and for knowing exactly how to make this book be the absolute best it could be. Thank you to the rest of the team at Forever/Grand Central Publishing, the acquisition team, production editors, art department, marketing, sales, and publicity.
This book is dedicated to my parents, Nazir and Shahida, and I want to thank them for being who they are. I was worried about how to write a book with unsupportive, meddling, and judgmental parents, and it turned out to be so easy. I just had to write the exact opposite of my own parents.
Thank you to my rock, my best friend, my comrade in arms through life, my husband, Tony. Like the couple in this book, we came together because of an obsession with food. Years ago, when we barely knew each other, we stayed up all night together waiting for a cooking show to come on in the morning. Twenty-three years later, there is still no one else I would rather be in the kitchen with.
And finally, to my kids, Khalil and Anissa. They asked me to write a limerick to celebrate how much I love that I get to raise two amazing humans, but I’m no poet. They are awesome, and I am lucky they’re mine. They are the best people I know.