Tutorial on Vegan Roti Making

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I will not post the full recipe now until I perfected my roti "dough" making skills and the perfect curry filling but I will in this tutorial show you how much work it takes to make roti esp when your hubby says to use purple potatoes instead of the regular white ones (lol).

Roti is ideal for a packed lunch because once the dough is made well you can eat in some paper or foil and u do not have to use any forks or whatever to eat it. This is why for a day trip to St. Barts I decided to make some roti for us to take. It is hard for find vegan dishes other than salad when you travel so it is a good idea to bring your own food and store it well. As a microbiologist I am also thinking about proper food storage especially if you will get back to your food 3 hours later. Once you take care you can store you vegan roti in some paper or foil for ur trip and sometimes I like to keep it in this kind of grand thermos if they are not wrapped.

LETS GET STARTED!!

My husband likes his roti with tvp chunks chick peas and other vegetables and unlike me he does not like alot of potato in his.

I like hot curried potato in mine and some protein.

In a medium saucepan I would usually put in some oil and some curry and cumin and let it roast up a little.

I would then add my onions garlic and chives and let them cook for a while.

I add some chick peas , spinach because I had extra and some chopped carrots.

Hydrate my tvp and add some marmite and a little bajan seasoning to it and add this to the pot.

For me at this stage I would add a few cups of water some tomata anything may it be paste some sauce I had I would add a little to add a little sweetness to balance out the spice in my roti.

I would let this cook for 20 mins and add my potatoes and salt.

I cook my roti until my potatoes dissolved a little some people like their potatoes firm. It depends. You know me I love pepper so I would add some sauce of scotch bonnet or haberno peppers and some salt some cumin some black pepper, onion powder whatever us spicy I have i add.

I remember making roti dough at home when I was 13 years old and I never used a recipe yet my dough use to be soft and flavourful

Now I suck so much at this but I am trying

I am getting somewhere.

I used 3 cups of flour to 1 cup water.

I added some fat to my skins something I did in the past but not usually now.

I added some margerine to the flour at first and some salt and slowly worked in the water.

This time I added some baking powder to my dough. I let my dough rest and I formed 6 to 8 pieces. I rolled out my dough very very very very thin and I cooked in a skillet that the French use to make crepes with because that's all I had. I cannot make the roti dough on the crepe pan by myself so I usually ask my husband to help me with this step we do not cook it too much. I cook it for a few seconds until I see faint brown spots appearing on the dough.

My dough this time was a half of a disaster but I will try again.

In the Caribbean a lot of countries in the south like Trinidad and Guyana and Barbados eat roti but it is an Indian dish that many countires in the Caribbean have adopted and did their own thing with it. I had a roti in the French West Indies and it was just as tasty as the ones I got in Barbados. Unfortunately I did not get to eat a roti when I was in Trinidad:( which people say has the best roti. Let me clear up the roti is just the dough but in Barbados we call roti the entire thing.It is not a vegan dish usually because they usually curry meat but many roti shops have vegan fillings like tvp, chick peas and whats not. The roti is served piping hot in Barbados and I serve mine hot. Since I was going on a day trip I will wrap mine up and wrap some clean towels around them and serve.

I hope this cleared up what roti actually is for some of you who never heard of it and are afraid to make it at home because there is so starting block for this.

I will post my final roti recipe soon when I did some more test runs.

au revoir