A paratha is a flatbread native to the Indian subcontinent, prevalent throughout the modern-day nations of India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Maldives and Myanmar, where wheat is the traditional staple. Paratha is an amalgamation of the wordsparat and atta, which literally means layers of cooked dough. Alternative spellings and names include parantha, parauntha, prontha, parontay , porota, palata, and farata.
History
The Hindi word paratha is derived from Sanskrit. Recipes for various stuffed wheat puranpolis are mentioned in Manasollasa, a 12th-century Sanskrit encyclopedia compiled by Someshvara III, who ruled from present-day Karnataka. However, Puran poli is a separate bread. Earlier references to paratha have been mentioned by Nijjar, in his book Panjāb under the sultāns, 1000-1526 A.D. when he writes that parauthas were common with the nobility and aristocracy in the Punjab. According to Banerji, parathas are associated with Punjabi and North Indian cooking. The Punjabi method is to stuff parathas with a variety of stuffings. However, Banerji states, Mughals were also fond of parathas which gave raise to the Dhakai paratha, multilayered and flaky, taking its name from Dhaka in Bangladesh. O'Brien suggests that it is not correct to state that the Punjabi paratha was popularised in Delhi after the 1947 partition of India, as the Punjabi item was prevalent in Delhi before then.
Plain and stuffed varieties
Parathas are one of the most popular unleavened flatbreads in the Indian Subcontinent, made by baking or cooking whole wheat dough on a tava, and finishing off with shallow frying. Parathas are thicker and more substantial than chapatis/rotis and this is either because, in the case of a plain paratha, they have been layered by coating with ghee or oil and folding repeatedly using a laminated dough technique; or else because food ingredients such as mixed vegetables have been mixed in with the dough, such as potato or cauliflower, green beans, and carrots. A Rajasthani mung bean paratha uses both the layering technique together with mung dal mixed into the dough. Some so-called stuffed parathas resemble a filled pie squashed flat and shallow fried, using two discs of dough sealed around the edges. Then by alternatively using a single disc of dough to encase a ball of filling and sealed with a series of pleats pinched into the dough around the top, gently flattened with the palm against the working surface before being rolled into a circle. Most stuffed parathas are not layered. Parathas can be eaten as a breakfast dish or as a tea-time snack. The flour used is finely ground wholemeal and the dough is shallow fried. Perhaps the most common stuffing for parathas is mashed, spiced potatoes followed perhaps by dal. Many other alternatives exist such as leaf vegetables, radishes, cauliflower or paneer. A paratha can be eaten simply with a pat of butter spread on top or with chutney, pickles, ketchup, dahi or a raita or with meat or vegetable curries. Some roll the paratha into a tube and eat it with tea, often dipping the paratha. To achieve the layered dough for plain parathas, a number of different traditional techniques exist. These include covering the thinly rolled out pastry with oil, folding back and forth like a paper fan and coiling the resulting strip into a round shape before rolling flat, baking on the tava and shallow frying. Another method is to cut a circle of dough from the centre to its circumference along its radius, oiling the dough and starting at the cut edge rolling so as to form a cone which is then squashed into a disc shape and rolled out. The method of oiling and repeatedly folding the dough as in western puff pastry also exists, and this is combined with folding patterns that give traditional geometrical shapes to the finished parathas. Plain parathas can be round, heptagonal, square, or triangular.
Serving
The paratha is an important part of a traditional breakfast from the Indian subcontinent. Traditionally, it is made using ghee but oil is also used. Some people may even bake it in the oven for health reasons. Usually, the paratha is eaten with dollops of white butter on top of it. Side dishes which go very well with paratha are curd, fried egg, omelette, mutton kheema, nihari, jeera aloo, daal, and raita as part of a breakfast meal. It may be stuffed with potatoes, paneer, onions, qeema or chili peppers.
The process of layering the "skins" of dough in a paratha can make preparation a difficult process. This, mixed with the popularity of this flatbread, has opened the market to several ranges of frozen paratha, especially in Western markets where consumers seek authenticity. Ready-to-cook paratha may also be purchased. These preparations offer one-step preparation and save time. Some of the ready-to-cook products in the market are just the stuffings for making the stuffed parathas.
