Recipe: Mrs Nath's Mattar Parathas - Indian bread stuffed with peas

This is a recipe from my friend Arindam's mom. He served them to us at dinner at his place. The parathas were really very tasty and we gladly accepted the offer to take home leftovers to be refried the next day.. He has been kind enough to share the recipe.

Of course technique is key to making parathas and I'm terrible at stuffing and rolling out parathas (I can barely manage rotis), so my pictures look a bit mangled. But the taste was so good, that I had to share the recipe.

Ingredients:
Roti dough / paratha dough (made from wheat flour, a pinch of ghee and salt)
For the Stuffing:
1 cup fresh/frozen peas (not dried - you won't get the flavour from dried peas)
1 tsp saunf - fennel seeds
1-3 green chillies (adjust heat to your taste)

pinch of sugar
salt to taste
ghee to fry (or oil if you want to keep it vegan)

Method:
Puree the green peas (if frozen, let them come to room temperature) in a blender
Saute the pureed peas with the saunf, chillies, sugar and salt.
Fry on a low flame until it reaches the consistency slightly drier than mashed potatoes.
Stuff this filling into balls of dough and roll out the parathas (how much stuffing you manage to put in is completely dependent on your competence at stuffing- my MIL who is supremely competent in this art has more stuffing than dough in her parathas - something I can only aspire to)

Slowly fry the parathas in ghee (for best taste use at least a tsp per paratha) on a low flame till well cooked on both sides.

Serve hot.

The simplest accompaniment to stuffed parathas is  yoghurt and pickles.
You can get fancy and serve it with a raita.
Its a wonderful filling breakfast to start a busy day.
Stuffed parathas aren't normally served with dhal, if they are, it would be with a black dhal rather than a yellow dhal.
You can serve it with a dry vegetable side or a semi gravy side of meat. In the picture below, its served with tawa kebabs.