Friday 7 February 2014

Kid’s Lunch Box Ideas-1 | Bi Coloured Flat Bread Variations- Chequered & Marbled | Step Wise | Vegan


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Hi all!!
I keep making variety of paratha/ flatbreads at home trying to incorporate veggies in various forms into them. One can find quite a few variations of parathas here. I prefer to make the parathas of high nutritive value, devoid of maida/ all purpose flour and using minimal oil.
A few days back while surfing the channels I  landed on a Marathi channel where a famous chef  whom I actually admire for his skills, was making a chequered paratha but I found the process quite messy and tedious. Also, the paratha didn’t have the neat chequers but I loved the  idea and hence, it kept surfacing in my thoughts.. I wanted to experiment with my version of flavours, also keeping the nutritive value high and most importantly, wanted to make a neat looking chequered flatbread.

Finally a few days back, I got the idea into execution and during the trials developed a simpler way of making chequered paratha and one more variant too, the marbled. I served the kid an assortment of parathas in his lunch box and he offered them to his teacher. The kid was overwhelmed with joy to hear all praises for his mom from his  teacher. She told him that his mom is a great cook and was all praises for the taste and creativity.
The marbled paratha is quick to make but the chequered needs loads of patience and diligence. Initially one needs to show a lot of persistence to do it neatly, with practice it’s easier to make. Fortunately, I surprised myself with some patience as well as persistenceThumbs up and unlike the chef’s paratha, mine was neat and looked beautiful!!

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Chequered Flatbread/ Paratha

Preparation Time: 20mins | Cooking Time: 5mins/paratha | Serves:4-5 | Makes: 10-12 | Difficulty Level: Difficult


Ingredients

(Recipe adapted from cookery show)

For Green Dough

A large handful of spinach leaves, stemmed
a small handful coriander leaves
2 green chillies
about 1-1/2cups whole wheat flour (add more or less as required)
salt to taste*

For Dark Pink dough

1 beetroot washed, peeled and chopped roughly
2carrots washed, peeled and chopped roughly
2 fresh red chillies
about 2cups whole wheat flour (add more or less as required)
salt to taste
also cooking oil for roasting
&
wheat flour for rolling

Method For Coloured Dough

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Wash the Spinach, Coriander, green chillies. Chop them roughly and grind them to a fine paste* using minimum water. In a food processor tip in the paste, salt to taste and first add about a cup of flour. Give quick pulses to mix the flour with the paste. If the dough appears to be sticky, add more wheat flour and run on the slowest speed of the processor. Once the mix starts forming a shape, put a few drops of oil. Remove and cover the dough. Rest it for about 15 minutes.
Make the red dough in the similar fashion as the green one.

Method For Making Chequered Flatbread & Marbled Flatbread

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Break equal sized red and green dough and smoothen them to make balls.
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Roll a green and a red ball separately using wheat flour to a not so thin* flatbread.
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Place the two coloured flatbreads over each other and cut around the edges to give a square shape. Remove the cut edges and place them over each other. These are to be used later...
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Cut equidistant strips of the rectangular flatbreads.
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Remove the strips of top colour.
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Put one horizontal strip of green colour on the vertical strips of pink colour. Place one end of the horizontal strip under the first vertical strip and apply water on it so that they stick. Now push the horizontal strip under the third and fifth vertical strip and stick using water. The first row gets completed this way.
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For the second row, stick the horizontal green strip on the first pink strip hugging the top row so that there are no gaps. Now over turn the 2nd, 4th and 6th pink strip (alternate strips). Apply water on the green strip and then turn the pink strips straight over it, leaving no gaps. This way second row is completed.
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Do the third row same as the first row. (alternate rows are done in similar fashion)
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Do the fourth row same as the second row.
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Complete the entire flatbread in the similar fashion. Normally all the horizontal strips do not get used. If the edges are uneven, shape them.
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Lift the flatbread gently and transfer to the griddle. Roast it on the hot griddle on both the sides using some oil, till it’s cooked and light brown spots are seen.

“This recipe of chequered flatbread is been created for The Urban Spice and KitchenAid India Diwali Contest”

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Method For Marbled Flat Bread

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Take the cut edges from the chequered flatbread. Place them over each other.
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Turn them from one end to another to form a spiral, close the end. Using the palm press it lightly on the top to smoothen.
Using the wheat flour roll it out to 5”-6” diameter and roast it on a griddle using oil.
Or
Break small pieces of both the colour dough and combine them to make one ball. Roll it out. This also makes a marbled flatbread. The first method is more useful as it gives better textured marbled flatbread and also the cut portions do not go waste.
Serve the hot flatbread with curds, butter and chutney/pickle.

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*Note:

1. Spinach has natural salts so add a little less salt while using spinach.
2. It is important to make a fine paste as it has to be mixed with the dough which gets rolled later on. If the paste is lumpy then the rolled flatbread will tear.
3. Making a thick flatbread ensures that while lifting and sticking the flatbread doesn’t tear.
Sending the flatbread to my event ‘ONLY’ Food For Growing Children guest hosted by Shruti.
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38 comments:

Unknown said...

Colorful and attractive recipe

Babitha said...

nice idea

mandala said...

very nice idea !!!

AparnaRajeshkumar said...

what an idea sir ji :D

AparnaRajeshkumar said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
chow and chatter said...

wow genius and natural coloring

Saraswathi Ganeshan said...

Healthy and catchy idea..look superb:)

prethika said...

lovely and innovative idea...really a wonderful post and i hope its going to help lot of mom's :)

Anonymous said...

This is brilliant!

Shruti Dhingra Wahi said...

Loved the idea :)
Will try this for my son too ...
Thanks for sharing :)

Unknown said...

This looks fabulous..Very colorful and Innovative dear :)

Priya Srinivasan - I Camp in My Kitchen said...

Superb idea! !! Love the weave!!!

Unknown said...

superb idea and so natural loved it

Eat n Eat little More said...

O my O my! U kept me hooked! Lovely way to attract kids! :) Beautiful clicks n the step by step pics r just awesome

great-secret-of-life said...

very colorful and attractive dish.. Love the this innovative dish

Abhivyaktiya said...

Attractive and healthy with natural colors. Love the idea.

Priyanka said...

Superb idea and looks so colorful. A must try dish

Priyanka said...

Superb idea and looks so colorful. A must try dish

Priyanka said...

Superb idea and looks so colorful. A must try dish

Nivedita Thadani said...

HI PARI,
AMAZING IDEA, WHAT A LOVELY CLICK, WHO WILL SAY NO TO THESE!!
YOU ARE A REAL PARI :-)

PLEASE CHECK MY TRY ALSO,
http://niveditaskitchen.blogspot.in/2010/06/tri-colored-chapatis-and-tomato-chutney.html

Padmajha said...

The chequred one looks awesome! I make the marbles one often for the kids. Will try the chequred one soon! Great idea!!!

Rajani said...

Oh My God! This is a very good and neat execution of your brainwave. The best part is all natural colours and whole wheat flour.

Unknown said...

Omg thats an awesome idea to impress any one they looks fantastic dear :) love the way it turned out :)

Shree said...

Wow ! very creative !

Unknown said...

Love the idea of checkered flatbread!

Hari Chandana said...

Very creative.. great job :)

Roshni said...

goodness me, that is one beautiful parata.. hats off for such beautiful creation.. will make it for my little one. he will love it

Unknown said...

Ohoooo .... that's a lovely idea ... the chequered one looks fantastic

Kitchen Rhythms said...

Good idea!!!Happy to follow you!!

Merry Tummy said...

Wow this looks amazing :-) great recipe and presentation :-)
Do visit my blog:-)

Shruti J said...

I make palak paratha and beetroot one too!!! But never thought of making any such thing... That looks so cute :) Lemme suggest this to a my bhabhi for her kiddo!!!

Anonymous said...

Brilliant! Wonder how you came up with this, really needs lot of patience and determination to feed your kiddo :) Hats off!

Beena said...

Wow bookmarked recipe . Will try dear.

Gauri said...

This is such a brilliant idea, looks terrific... Thanks a ton for sharing :)

CHIKKI said...

Very innovative!

Nargis Aara said...

Wonderfully done!! thumbs up :)

Unknown said...

Amazing.. luks lovely..

Anonymous said...

Too goooooooooo.....dddddddd

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