An interesting street food morsel - Trinidad street food has more in common with Mumbai than some of its Caribbean neighbors.  Granted, there's the Shark and Bake, but the curries and pickles have a remarkably Indian taste.  This roti is really meant to be carried about as you head toward the beach.  Roti stands are fairly common, and very simple.

This is a fairly simple curry recipe that can be cooked a couple different ways.  I like to use canned tomatoes so that I can use roasted without burning anything.  There are a couple different ways to do the curry too, and you can choose whether to use whole seeds or ground.  Depends what you have handy - we tend to have plentiful ground cumin, so that's what I use.

Shrimp Curry

Your choice - for the curry, use:

1 Tbsp curry paste or powder

- or -

3/4 tsp cumin

3/4 tsp coriander

3/4 mustard

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/2 tsp tumeric

1/2 tsp red pepper

You can either grind this from seeds or use ground spices

2 Tbsp oil

1 onion, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2-3 in. grated ginger

 1 can of diced tomatoes

1/2 cup water

1 tsp salt

1 1b medium shrimp, shelled, deveined and cleaned

2 Tbsp fresh lime juice

Roti

Directions

1. Cook the onion, garlic and ginger over medium heat until the onion is translucent, about 5 minutes


2. Add the spices or paste and cook 2 minutes more


3. Add the tomatoes, water and salt and stir.  Bring to a boil, then simmer until most of the water is boiled off.


4. Add the shrimp and stir well.  Cover and let the shrimp cook for 5 minutes.


5. Remove from heat and stir in the lime juice.

A visit to India always includes fantastic food, and every meal seems to include bread.  I learned early in my travels that if you don't understand the menu, you can simply order "some meats, some gravies and some bread" and things won't turn out entirely wrong.

  photo by diametrik

Making the bread, however, has proved elusive for me.  I have never come even close to recreating the bread served at Lazee's in Bangalore, even though I am pretty sure it is a Kerala Porota.  Below is a simple recipe that I rarely do wrong.  It is my general purpose Roti.

Roti

2 cups whole wheat flour

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup milk

Directions

1. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl.


2. Put out a board and dust with a good amount of flour.


3. Add the milk and mix into a sticky dough


4. Knead the dough on the board, adding more flour until it is worked into a stiff dough


5. Divide the dough into 4 balls.  Roll each ball out flat, cover them in oil, reform into a ball and let sit for 30 minutes.


6. Roll each ball out to a very thin pancake.  Fry each side with just a little bit of oil.