Beetroot Parathas

          As I have already said, parathas are not an everyday thing in my house, I mostly do them for weekend  brunch or lunch. We can come up with so many varieties of parathas by being a little creative with the filling. I usually make beet parathas by adding them to the flour along with other spices, but for today's paratha I tried a slightly different version. I made a paruppu usili ( lentil curry) with the beets and then used that as a filling, in the process, making the parathas a little more nutritious with protein, thereby making it a complete meal with some curds or raitha..

Need To Have
For The Outer Layer

• Whole Wheat Flour - 2 + 1/2 cups
• Salt - 1/4 teaspoon
• Oil - 1 teaspoon

For The Filling

• Grated Beets - 1 cup packed
• Tuvar Dal (Split Pigeon Peas) - 1/2 cup
• Dried Red Chillies - 3
• Curry Leaves - 10
• Mustard Seeds - 1/4 teaspoon
• Cumin Seeds - 1/4 teaspoon
• Asafoetida - 1/4 teaspoon

Method
          Soak the tuvar dal for an hour, then grind it with the red chillies and the curry leaves, adding as little water as possible. Mix the flour with the salt and enough water to make a soft dough, apply the oil and keep it aside.

         Heat a little oil, add the grated beets and salt, saute it till it turns dry, remove it. Heat oil one more time, add the mustard and cumin seeds, once it splutters, add the asafoetida and the ground tuvar dal, saute it continuously till you get a dry crumble like texture. At this stage mix in the beets and mix well, check for salt, if there are any lumps break them with the back of a spoon, let it cool a bit.

          Roll out slightly a lemon size ball of the dough, keep a tablespoon and half of the filling, close the dough over, make a ball, flatten and dusting it in some flour, roll out again slowly into a slightly thick disc. Heat a skillet, put the rolled out paratha, wait for 1/2 a second, flip, apply some oil, flip immediately, apply some oil on the other side, while waiting for the first side to get brown spots. Now flip it and cook the second side till brown spots appear, remove and serve warm with any pickle and raitha or curd.

Note
See to that, the filling is not wet.
While rolling out the paratha with the filling, roll as lightly as possible, starting on the side you close the dough over the filling, then at the end, flip and roll on the other side.
You can get about 10 parathas with the above quantity of ingredients.