The Good, the Bad, and the Chapatti

So, my adventures in chapatti.

My recipe is pretty basic: flour, water, oil, and salt. Bread products outside the US are very different from bread products inside the US (or maybe I should say bread products that originate in Europe?), and it's actually really hard to make them because you just can't get the ingredients. When in Tanzania, make the bread products that Tanzanians make.


Chapatti are actually made with ghee, which is a special type of butter, but I just used oil. I spoke with my Kenyan friend and she said oil works just fine. The second thing about cooking with my recipe is I don't actually have any measuring utensils. That makes cooking very interesting. In retrospect I could have spoken with my Pakistani mother (my landlady's mother, because my landlady doesn't know how to cook chapatti) about ingredients and recipes, but she's visiting her sick mother in Pakistan, which makes conversation difficult. Also, I think I would have to work very hard to just get the recipe--I think once I showed interest she would just want to make me chapatti and feed me (which isn't bad, really, but not quite my intent).

My pseudo-chapatti. If it cooks like chapatti, tastes like chapatti, but looks only kinda like chapatti, is it still chapatti? I didn't have a rolling pin and I'm really not that skilled to make them flat without one, so my chapatti are very lumpy! They looked a little more like pita than chapatti, but they tasted good. Mine are very filling because they're thicker!

So, of course, I tried to make them again the night before last, and added too much water to the recipe. Rather than dump my whole bag of flour in to make dough I decided to cut my losses and make chapatti-pancakes. I must say, it was the ugliest batch of chapatti I have ever seen. Like I said, I'm not sure if they actually count as chapatti, but I eat them and like them, so I consider it a win!

I am also surprised by how much I like puttering around the kitchen in my khanga (kanga? I'm not sure if it's like the animal or the Mongolian emperor) trying new things. (That is a window in the picture, by the way). Cooking without measuring cups and without an actual stove makes it more novel and unpredictable, but also more exciting. I cooked beans the other night and added onions and peas to it and really enjoyed the whole thing. I think my priorities are very different from other interns here, but I like living a different way, not just being a tourist.