Sri Lankan food can often be time-consuming and labor-intensive. It’s well worth the effort but sometimes it’s difficult to find the time on a busy weeknight. Pol Roti is an exception. Easy, quick, and tasty, it’s something we often eat during the week when the need for curry hits us and rice just won’t cut it.
It took us a while to make Roti here in Seattle. Every single bag of coconut we found was “sweetened”. We finally happened upon it at the largest organic market WHOLE FOODS, and we’ve never looked back. Thank goodness, can you imagine life without pol sambal, roti, or Anzac Biccies? Disaster!
Roti is delicious by itself and especially with lunu miris (recipe below). It also goes perfectly with our chicken curry and a generous smear of butter!
Ingredients
Serves 2-3 (Makes 8 medium-sized Rotis)
2 cups of plain flour
I cup grated coconut
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp oil
Enough lukewarm water to make a dough
Instructions
In a bowl place all the dry ingredients and the oil. Mix until the coconut is evenly distributed.
Now slowly add enough warm water to make a dough that comes together in a ball. I used about 1 cup.
Here you have 2 options;
Option 1: you can flour your bench and use a rolling pin to roll the dough out. You can then cut the dough using a round cutter to get uniform circles. Then repeat until all the dough is used up.
I decided to go the other way
Option 2: Divide the large ball of dough into 8 small balls. Now press the dough flat with the tips of your fingers until the roti is about 1/2 cm thick.
Place a frying pan or crepe pan on the stove and turn the heat to medium. Place the roti on there one or two at a time. I like the roti to get some nice dark brown patches and keep turning them until I have some colour on both sides.
Cook all the roti and serve warm with Lunu miris (quite literally onion and chili symbol).
Uncooked Rotis freeze really well so if you have extra freeze them with greaseproof paper between the rotis and then sealed in a Ziploc bag. You can then cook them straight from frozen.
LUNU MIRIS
Ingredients
1/2 a small red onion chopped
3/4 tbsp. chili flakes
1/2 tsp. Maldive fish flakes
1 small clove of garlic
salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp lemon juice
Preparation
In the bowl of a food processor place your onion, chilli flakes, maldive fish flakes, garlic and pepper. Now whizz it up until the onion is finely chopped and all the ingredients are well mixed. Place the contents in bowl and add the salt and lemon juice to taste. Mix and serve with your warm roti!
Note: If you don’t have a food processor use a mortar and pestle and grind the ingredients together and add the salt and lemon juice last.
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