Prakash Per­sad

Un­like bread, roti re­al­ly tastes good when it is fresh­ly made. Roti-mak­ing is a skill that takes some time to ac­quire. To com­pound the sit­u­a­tion, there are many types of ro­tis and fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing it, are the dif­fer­ences aris­ing out of cul­tur­al evo­lu­tion.

In the Caribbean and coun­tries with its Di­as­po­ra, one can find the tawa-based ro­tis like sa­da, dosti, dhalpuri, aloo, pep­per, paratha. A tawa is cir­cu­lar flat sheet of iron which is heat­ed by plac­ing it on a chul­ha (tra­di­tion­al fire place) or a gas/elec­tric stove. The roti is placed on it and turned over, pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly, for both sides of it to be cooked.

In In­dia there are dif­fer­ent va­ri­eties like nan, cha­p­at­ti and paratha. These use dif­fer­ent types of flours and the end prod­ucts are sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent their Caribbean cousins. The In­di­an paratha is more akin to the Trinida­di­an aloo roti and the both the nan and cha­p­at­ti bear lit­tle re­sem­blance to the sa­da roti. The com­mon de­nom­i­na­tors are the labour-in­ten­sive and skilled process­es in­volved in mak­ing them. So any help man­u­al or oth­er­wise is al­ways wel­come.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers