You’d be hard pressed to find a sin­gle Trin­bag­on­ian kitchen that did not pos­sess a tawa. From the Hin­dus­tani word mean­ing “iron plate”, tawas are flat, cir­cu­lar grid­dles made of met­al that are used for cook­ing flat breads like the var­i­ous types of roti and roast-bakes. The first tawas in T&T were used in earth­en fire­places called chul­has that would crum­ble each rain­fall and need reg­u­lar leep­ay­ing (plas­ter­ing) with fresh clay. The tawa would sit atop a well stoked fire and dough flat­tened with a bil­na (rolling pin) would be placed on top of it to cook. When it was time to flip the dough a sim­tah, or tong-like uten­sil, would be used, al­though the most skil­ful roti-mak­ers would use swift and nim­ble hands and nev­er be burned! How­ev­er, the hall­mark of a true tawa-mas­ter is in their abil­i­ty to sakay—the tawa is pulled slight­ly off the fire and the par­tial­ly cooked dough is made to face the di­rect flames! This makes the dough swell and some even let it get a nice toast­ing. To­day lit­tle of these tech­niques has changed.

The tawa ar­rived on Caribbean shores through East In­di­an in­den­ture­ship. For some time it was un­clear if the East-In­di­ans brought al­ready forged tawas or wrought new ones on lo­cal soil so they could de­light in tra­di­tion­al meals from their home­land. How­ev­er, some his­tor­i­cal ac­counts tell of the tawa be­ing used at sea to cook on the boats that brought the in­den­tured In­di­ans. One thing is for sure though, the in­den­tured ser­vants who came here would have en­coun­tered a ver­sion of the tawa al­ready on the is­lands! The bak­ing stone or plat­tin was made of stone and used by the Afro-Trinida­di­ans for mak­ing cas­sa­va bread. Af­ter the tawa was in­tro­duced some peo­ple con­tin­ued to call it a bak­ing stone.

What­ev­er you choose to call it, this in­ge­nious uten­sil has un­doubt­ed­ly been ce­ment­ed in lo­cal cul­ture— from every­day meal­time to fan­cy wed­dings, from Mus­lim hakikas to Hin­du Ra­mayan Jhags. Due to trav­el and trade with In­dia you can even find tawas in places that might sur­prise you like Ro­ma­nia, Croa­t­ia and Bosnia. Though an­cient the tawa is yet to be out­mod­ed and re­mains a gate­way to a world of ro­tis like lux­u­ri­ous dhalpour­ri, es­sen­tial sa­da, cov­et­ed buss-up-shut and ex­cep­tion­al dosti, not to men­tion the ac­com­pa­ny­ing saucy talka­ris, chokas, buljols and cur­ries.

Dosti Roti

Dosti roti is a unique type of flat­bread. The word “dosti” comes from the Hin­di term for close friends and refers to the roti con­sist­ing twin lay­ers stuck to­geth­er. Its some­times called 2-in-1 roti.

Makes four

IN­GRE­DI­ENTS

4 cups of flour

2 tsp bak­ing pow­der

1 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups of wa­ter

4 tb­sp of but­ter or ghee (soft­ened).

1/4 cup of oil

Equip­ment

One medi­um sized bowl / basin.

Bil­na (rolling pin)

Tawa

Bast­ing brush (al­though tra­di­tion­al­ly a cloth is used)

DI­REC­TIONS

1 In a bowl, com­bine flour, bak­ing pow­der and salt.

2 Add wa­ter grad­u­al­ly and knead in­to a soft­ened dough.

3 Leave to rest for about 10 min­utes.

4 Di­vide dough in­to 8 small loy­ahs (balls of dough).

5 Us­ing one loy­ah at a time, flat­ten in­to lit­tle cir­cles.

6 Rub one flat­tened loy­ah with but­ter and sprin­kle a lit­tle dry flour, then take an un-but­tered one and stick it on­to this one (this forms the two lay­ers of your first dhosti).

7 Re­peat with the re­main­ing cir­cles of dough. The 8 loy­ahs will give you 4 dosti ro­tis. Leave to rest for 35-45 min­utes.

8 Heat tawa on medi­um heat.

9 Dust your bil­na and sur­face for rolling out the ro­tis with some dry flour to pre­vent the dough from stick­ing.

10 Use your bil­na and roll out each dough un­til they are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 8” in di­am­e­ter.

11 Baste some oil on­to your tawa and trans­fer the un­cooked roti.

12 Cook the roti, spin­ning it every so of­ten to al­low the oil on the tawa to dis­trib­ute even­ly. Do this un­til the top lay­er be­gins to swell (it won’t hap­pen all at once, it will look like many small air pock­ets).

13 Baste the top lay­er of the roti with oil and flip it.

14 Cook this side like you did be­fore un­til it has toasty brown bits.