Matar Paratha - Indian Bread stuffed with Green Peas

Recipe for an exciting and delicious Indian bread stuffed with green peas: matar paratha!

How to make Matar Paratha

As usual, you need to start by washing your vegetables, in this case the green peas. Then you put them into a pot or a pan with 75 ml water. Put the pot onto your stove with a lid on top and heat it up on medium heat. You won’t need to stir or take otherwise care of this pot anymore for approximately the next seven minutes.

You can use this time for preparing the dough. Take the flour in a bowl, add the carom seeds, ½ teaspoon salt and ½ tablespoon olive oil. Mix this a little bit and then add a bit of the remaining 185 ml water. Mix it and knead the dough and when it is nicely mixed, add another little bit of water. You need to knead with some strength and add the rest of the water bit by bit. In this way you will make a nice dough. When it is ready, it should be soft and when you poke a finger into it, it should come back up instead of leaving a deep hole.

Now your peas should be soft and there should not be any water left in the pot anymore. Take them out and mash them either in a blender or by hand to a paste.

Heat up one tablespoon of olive oil in a non-stick pan. When it is hot, add the cumin and the ginger and stir it shortly. Add the paste of the peas and roast it with the spices for a little while. Add garam masala, coriander, mango powder and the remaining salt and mix it well with the paste of peas. Roast it for just another minute, then take it out of the pan and let it cool down a bit.

You now have to form small round balls out of the dough that you prepared. This amount of dough is enough for approximately 10 parathas. So you need to form ten balls of the same size out of the dough and ten balls, a bit smaller, out of the paste of peas.

You now come to the work of making bread out of these balls. Take one of the dough balls, dip it into some spare wheat flower so that it won’t stick and pat it a bit flat. Now take it into your hand and form it to a small bowl the size of your palm. Into this bowl you place one ball of green peas. Carefully close the dough around the green ball now, closing the gap so that it is fully inside it. Repeat the same procedure with the other nine dough balls and nine green pea balls.

Obviously you can be quicker if you have a helper for doing the filling while you already start rolling. Take one of the stuffed balls, pat it flat a bit and then roll it out to a flat bread, about three millimeters thick. Heat up some oil in a pan and when it is hot, put the paratha into the pan. When it is hot on one side, turn it around. With a spoon you can apply and spread a bit of oil on the baked side of the bread. Turn it again and add some oil on the other side. Turn it another two or three times until it is nicely golden on both sides.

Repeat this procedure with the other bread balls and serve your parathas. Even with just some salt or pickles they are simply delicious!