Chapati

Eaten as often as possible here, chapatis have a big place in the food of Kenya. I looked up their provenance in Kenya and found this: “Chapatis were one of the first prepared foods to be "globalized" in relatively modern times. They spread into Africa and South-East Asia as Indians moved about within the British Empire, back in the days when one could. Today, in countries like Kenya, chapatis are considered "traditional" food, though they probably only really arrived there in the final years of the 19th century with Indians working on the Kenya-Uganda railway.

But enough of the history lesson…how do you make them? Having made them for years, James doesn’t habitually measure out the ingredients for chapatis, but recognising the evangelical nature of this exercise, he agreed to. So for one night only…

Ingredients (to make about 14 chapati)
3 cups/mugs (full) of wholemeal flour
2 eggs
2 carrots (very finely grated - these will add flavour and boost consistency & texture)
Pinch of salt
Pinch of sugar

Sieve the flour into a bowl, add a pinch of sugar and salt and mix in the 2 eggs with a wooden spoon. Sprinkle in the grated carrots and keep mixing until you have a smoothish dough.

Sprinkle a little flour on a work surface/board and knead the dough with your hands until very fine and it no-longer sticks to your hands. This is best done when frustrated.

Now Take a handful of dough at a time and roll it out (if you have a work surface large enough, you can roll out the entire dough). Roll to thickness of about 2 or 3mm and apply a little oil; this will help the chapati pastry obtain a kind of layering when cooked.

Pat each of the dough discs back into portions of about the size of a hockey puck (he says having never held a hockey puck). Then when ready you can roll out each again to a diameter of about 20cm and a thickness of ca. 2mm.

Place the uncooked chapatis one at a time in a frying pan with no oil and cook on either side until it becomes golden (just like a pancake). You can keep the ones you have already cooked on top of the one that is cooking to keep warm.

You may eat them immediately or warm them up in a pan again.

Serve with rice and some kind of stewy sauce affair, or of course with a curry or balti.