Last week Saturday, I made the best Dhal Puri I have ever made.
Taste has never been an issue for me; I had mastered that, but I never seemed to get it as paper thin as I liked even though I would roll it thin. Not so this time, it was thin and soft, just as I like it.
There are some things that we home cooks and bakers get obsessed about perfecting and getting just the way we want, like and prefer them. Cook-up rice, Fried rice, Paratha/oil roti, bread, Tennis rolls, and black cake are among such things, and right up there with them is Dhal puri. Perfecting is about getting the cook just right, and that could be the temperature, taste (flavour), balance, texture and finish. With the dhal puri, for me it was about the texture and the finish. I finally managed to achieve them by adjusting the cooking temperature and borrowing two methods from Mauritius’ dhal puri – eliminating baking powder from the dough and using the turmeric flavoured water in which the split peas were cooked, to make the dough.
