Roti Jallas (lacey net breads)

I got to know this recipe a couple of months back while watching one of India’s Master Chef episodes, where the chefs shared a recipe sent in from a viewer from Singapore.

I liked the name of this dish and it probably got stuck in my head and I also liked the way it was prepared on the show.

So I looked up the recipe, and I found two comprehensive recipes for Roti Jallas (www.Rasamalaysia.com and www.singaporelocalfavourites.com ). A little digging around, led me to learn that ‘Roti Jallas’ are famous in Singapore and Malaysia, they go really well with coco-nutty curries and sambals (spicy curry).

They remind me of ‘neer dosas (in Kannada)/ paan-polays (in Konkani)’ served in the Karnataka (India) with a variety of gravies and chutneys. They lacy and look like someone crocheted them.

However Roti Jallas (roti-bread, jallas- net) are more on the yellow side, because of the turmeric used in preparing the batter, and taste lightly like coconut milk, which again is an important ingredient in this delicacy. You of course do not crochet them though; you just use a ‘roti- jalla cup’ to get that crochet effect.

Here is what a roti jalla cup looks like,

Picture Source: WWW.fussfreecooking.com

I tried to follow the recipe as closely as I could but I had to play with the quantities a little.

Ingredients:

(Makes 30 rotis- Preparation time: 10 minutes Frying time: 60 to 90 minutes)

•  3 and half cups of flour
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp turmeric powder
• 2 cups water
• 1 and half cup coconut milk
• 2 tsp salt

Cooking tools needed:

• Roti Jalla Cup or a bottle closed tightly and a hole made on its cap or a squeezy ketchup bottle.

Steps:

1. Mix all the ingredients together to form a thick batter. The batter should have no lumps you could both strain and remove lumps or you could use an electric beater and get a thick lump-less batter.

2. If you have a roti jalla cup use that. Or else, take a dry and clean empty bottle, make a hole on its cap (or use an empty ketchup squeezy bottle), enough for the batter to pass through in like thin straw. Pour the first round of batter in the bottle. And closely tightly.

3. Take a tava as used in the Nutty Tava Fried Prawns recipe on this blog or a non stick pan; heat it up on medium flame.

4. In a small bowl, pour some EVOO/ cooking oil and stick a quarter of an onion in a fork and dip the onion in the oil and rub it onto frying pan/ tava. Do this before every roti jalla is to be fried.

5. Pour the batter from the bottle on to the tava/ pan and create three big circles, and continue making many more circles within those. Try and make sure that most of the circles are linked with each other.

6. Let them fry for about 30-40 seconds. Once they are fried, they will start peeling off the pan like the below picture.

7. This is a good indicator that, it is time to fold the roti into quarters and take it off the pan. You do not have to fry the other side.

8. Repeat the steps for the rest of the rotis.

*Serve warm with a nice gravy/curry/sambal

I served these with Coconut Chicken Curry.

Enjoy!

-bpV