Rolling Rotli

Growing up I ate a lot of rotli. Yes, rotli, not rotis, or chapatis, but the Gujarati/Saurashtra/Junagadhi-way-of-saying-it rotli. I don’t really call them that as much anymore, because most non-Gujarati people think I am saying it wrong. So I switch words, but the comfort factor is the same. 

The perfect rotli is a nice medium size, smaller than a dinner plate, soft and easily torn with one hand, to make a small scoop to maneuver the shaakh or dal to your mouth. Tear, scoop, dab in athanu, eat, repeat. Even now, though I make myriad other comfort foods for my family, every once in a while one of the kids will ask why I haven’t made rotli, when I next plan to, and how they reeeeeaaaaaally miss it. 

When I was younger, my mother insisted that we help her cook in the kitchen, and after a while my standard job became the designated rotli-roller. She had this certain way of doing it which I thought was really cool -- through balancing the pressure back and forth while she was rolling it, she rotates the rotli with the rolling pin so she never actually has to pick it up to rotate it. I was so intrigued by this that I practiced it and finally mastered it in high school. My obsessive practice made me one of the fastest rollers in the house (in the top three with my niece and my father). 

But those days after school I would pop in the kitchen to help my mom with dinner in between homework assignments, and it was just me and her. We would talk about our days, and she would listen to my stories about who was running for student council or how I did on my chemistry quiz, or what happened at softball practice that day. And she would often tell me stories too -- about how when she lived in a joint family the ladies of the house rolled and fried hundreds of pani puris for one meal, and the legendary cousin who ate around 90 just by himself. Of the time when she was out of town and my father took over cooking, and added so much oil to the pan that my uncle thought he was about to fry something. Of the way they grew up in post-partition India, when my mother’s father insisted that though their family had the money to eat wheat every day, they would eat millet several times a week because they should not live in a richer manner than the rest of the village, when they could share and ration their resources instead. 

My own daughters now want to roll rotli with me.  And while I don’t make rotli as often as my mother did, it’s enough for the girls to remember that it’s our special food. Right now, we just concentrate on not spilling flour, not eating raw dough, and making enough space for everyone to roll at the kitchen island. My youngest still claps whenever the rotli puffs up like fulka on the high flame -- “it’s like a balloon!” and reminds me that the first one is hers, with ghee and sugar. But one day the lessons and teaching will give way to more conversations, more storytelling, and a quiet time of reflection and hanging out. The process forces you to slow down -- you can be the fastest roller ever, but you can’t rush the process of cooking it on the stove, and it just goes through each little ball of dough until you are finished with the stack. Patience, one thing at at a time.

Making rotli is a great example of being in the heart of the house -- I’ve noticed that creating food in the kitchen, prepping a meal -- that’s where the magic happens. If we go to someone’s house, I always pop in to see how I can help with anything, and if you pick up that velan (rolling pin), get ready for the stories, for getting the inside scoop, and for feeling like family. And grab yourself a plate and keep the ghee and sugar handy. 

Master Chef What?

I am a fan of Netflix — and on my list, I’ve got some fun shows about food — Salt Fat Acid Heat, Sugar Rush, Ainsley Eats the Streets. My daughters (sometimes one, sometimes more than one) LOVE these, and will try to sneak down in various combinations after their bedtime to see if i am watching anything. The kids’ food show love began with the competition show Master Chef Junior, which if you have not watched, is when Gordon Ramsay is kind and encouraging to young chefs (as opposed to Master Chef, which is REALLY the opposite), and you are blown away by a small eight year old who needs to stand on stool to reach the counter, and still manages to create a professional level pho bowl from scratch. 

The upside of these shows is that my oldest daughter became very interested in the kitchen. She was always interested in food, but now she wanted to create, and take over tasks from me and her dad. So she started with scrambled eggs, and then took over brownies, and then last week decided to guide her little sister on how to make garlic bread. 

The real fun was when we first started watching it, though. That’s when she would come into the kitchen with advice:

Her: Ooh, what are you making?

Me: Spaghetti with asparagus on the side.

Her: Cool. I think you should sear the asparagus so it tastes really good. 

Me: Wait, what? Do you know what searing is?

Her: Yes, because I saw it on Master Chef Junior. You make the pan really hot and then put stuff in it. 

Me: Okay, but I was going to roast them because there’s a lot. 

Her: Oh, okay, then you can make a special sauce, and then whip it into a foam to put on top.

So this was really fun, and we actually had a Master Chef moment in our kitchen when she and I “competed” against each other to make a dish using bagels, cream cheese, and strawberries. Daddy and little sisters got to score, with special categories for “Freshest taste” and “Best Plating.”

But I love the culture of food that it has helped create, and the culture of wanting to be involved in cooking and enjoying the components of a meal, of creating and sharing it with others. And honestly, I love how food shows have changed the game a bit from when I was a child. I was expected to help in the kitchen because that’s what Indian girls did, and by a certain age I was supposed to know how to make a full Indian meal. While we had some good bonding moments in the kitchen and I am happy with my skills now,  was a little embarrassed at the time. None of my friends had to really help with dinner, at least not the way I did. It was almost awkward to be into cooking, as the stereotype was that it was domestic and something that only June Cleaver-type housewives did. But now, cooking is not as much a woman’s domain, at least not in the public sphere. And cooking, sharing recipes, creating something delicious to share — that’s cool. Or maybe it was all along and I didn’t know it until I fully embraced my joy of eating and creating dishes and experiences in my own kitchen. In any case, thank you, Gordon Ramsay, for opening up the culinary world a little bit more for my little ones.