Name: Dholl Puri (Split-Pea Stuffed Flatbread)
Prep time: 50 min
Cook time: 1 h 15 min
Total time: 2 h 5 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Mauritian
Ingredients: 200 g chana dal; 1.5 tsp ground cumin; 1 tsp salt; 0.25 tsp turmeric; 400 g maida or plain flour; 230 ml reserved dal cooking water; 0.5 tsp turmeric; 1 tsp salt; 2 tbsp oil; 4 tbsp oil; 200 g dried lima beans; 3 tomatoes; 1 onion; 1 tbsp ginger-garlic paste; 4 sprigs thyme; 1 handful coriander; 2 green chillies

Ingredients

4servings

The filling (makes 8)
chana dal · split chickpeas, soaked overnight200 g
ground cumin1.5 tsp
salt1 tsp
turmeric · for the filling0.25 tsp
The dough
maida or plain flour400 g
reserved dal cooking water · lukewarm; top up with water if short230 ml
turmeric0.5 tsp
salt1 tsp
oil · into the dough2 tbsp
oil · for brushing as they cook4 tbsp
To serve
dried lima beans · for the rougaille, soaked overnight200 g
tomatoes · chopped3
onion · chopped1
ginger-garlic paste1 tbsp
thyme4 sprigs
coriander · for the satini1 handful
green chillies · for the satini2

Steps

Drain the soaked chana dal, cover with fresh water and boil 40 minutes. Stop while the grains still hold their shape under a bite. Cooked to a mush there is nothing left to grate.
⏲ 40 min
Keep the cooking water. It is the liquid for the dough. Soaking sorts soaking liquids into ones to discard and ones to use, and pulse cooking water is on neither list; the reason to keep this one is not aroma but that nothing in this dish is thrown away.
⏲ 1 min
Spread the dal in a sieve and let it cool and dry for 20 minutes. Grated warm and wet it clumps into a paste.
⏲ 20 min
Season with the salt, cumin and turmeric and push it through a grater. This is not the same as crushing it by hand. A grater gives a loose crumb of separate particles, and only a dry crumb like that will survive a rolling pin later. Press it into a mass and divide into 8.
⏲ 15 min
The dough: mix the flour with the salt and turmeric, then add the reserved dal water a little at a time. Work in the 2 tablespoons of oil and knead 8 minutes to a very soft, faintly tacky dough.
⏲ 8 min
Cover and rest 30 minutes. As dough and gluten puts it, a dough springing back is a time problem rather than a strength problem — and here the dough has to be rolled out twice, so that rest is a condition of the dish.
⏲ 30 min
Divide the dough into 8. Press each piece flat in your palm, set a ball of the grated filling on it and gather the edges to seal it completely. Turn it seam side down and press it flat again.
⏲ 10 min
Roll it out to 20cm across and about 2mm thick. The seal disappears at this step. Pupusa also closes a ball and flattens the seam away, but it stops at about a centimetre by hand and the filling stays a pocket. Here the pin spreads that filling into a thin layer across the whole disc. If it leaks, the filling was wet or coarse.
⏲ 10 min
Heat a heavy pan or tava over medium. Lay one on, give it 30 seconds, then turn it and cook about a minute a side, brushing both faces thinly with oil. A scatter of brown spots is right. Crisp it like a fried puri and it shatters instead of folding, the way a samosa shell is meant to.
⏲ 2 min 30 sec
Stack the cooked ones under a dry cloth. They keep each other soft with their own steam.
⏲ 2 min
Rougaille: simmer the cooked lima beans with the onion, ginger-garlic, tomatoes and thyme for 25 minutes until thick. The tomato goes in after the beans are tender, because acid sets pectin firm (soaking).
⏲ 25 min
Satini: pound or blend the coriander and green chillies with salt. Take two dholl puri, spoon rougaille and satini on, fold, and eat them in your hand.
⏲ 5 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

Against doubles: the closest dish on this site, and the difference is clean. Trinidad's bara is yeasted, deep fried, and the channa goes on top. Dholl puri is unleavened, griddled, and the dal goes inside. Both put turmeric in the dough. Two branches of the same indentured-Indian migration.
Farata (roti): the same dough with no filling, folded into layers instead. With nothing inside there is no reason to roll it twice.
Dhalpuri roti in the Caribbean: Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad make the same bread and call it dhalpuri or dhalpuri roti, grated filling and all.
What goes with it: lima bean rougaille is the commonest, but butter beans, chickpea curry, salt-fish rougaille and achard pickle are all standard. A street vendor will ask you to pick two sauces.
Against roti canai: that is a bread about building layers, this is a bread about a filling. Roti canai coils a stretched sheet into a spiral; dholl puri seals a filling in and then rolls the seal out of existence.
Against chapati: a chapati balloons because its two faces seal against each other and trap steam. A dholl puri has filling in the middle, so there is nowhere to balloon into — and it must not.

Tips

Cool the dal before you grate it. This is where the dish is won or lost. Warm or damp dal comes off the grater as a paste, and paste shifts to one side under the pin and tears the dough.
Stop the boil slightly early. Dal cooked to a mush cannot be grated at all. You want grains that give under a bite and are still grains.
Keep the dough very soft. A stiff dough will not go to 2mm, and forced, the filling comes through.
Do not dust with flour. Dry flour on the outside scorches on the tava and tastes bitter, and it makes the bread crack when you fold it. A little oil on your hands and pin is better.
Do not cook it crisp. A dholl puri is folded and eaten in the hand. A few brown spots is all you want.
Leftover dal water goes into the rougaille. Almost nothing in this dish gets thrown away.

The basics behind this dish

Cooking basics →

More of the same kind

Bread →