Rajma Paratha | Kidney Beans stuffed Indian Bread

Presenting to you... yet another paratha variation :) This time around its an absolute experiment and a successful one at that. I love kidney beans or rajma as it is called in India. If perfectly cooked, these beans are soft in texture and have an interesting flavour of their own. I have made rajma as a side dish several times and love it with rotis or rice.

These days, to help me manage my work and home schedules, I plan my meals a little better. I pre-cook some basic items before hand at my convenience and store them in the fridge for later, when I need to make a meal in a hurry. For instance, when I have time on my hand, I pressure cook channa/chickpea, rajma/kidney beans, potatoes and store them in the fridge and they come so much in handy when I am in a rush to get to work, as I can dish out a meal like Channa Pulav or Spiced Baby Potato Roast in minutes with the pressure-cooked ingredients ready for use :) Well, this pre-cooking plan lasts for about 2-3 days and it really helps! :)

So, I had this lot of pressure cooked kidney beans in my fridge and I also had a small ball of dough... voila! I could just visualize my meal in front of me... and in another half hour, it was really in front of me :D With a very easy stuffing, which doesn't not need any stove top cooking... I prepared these extremely healthy parathas :)

Rajma is a very paratha-friendly ingredient, by which i mean its its easy to make parathas with it as it gets mashed up and shapes easily into rounds, like boiled potatoes. Try them out :)

Ingredients

Wheat Flour - 2 cups

Flax seed powder - 1 tsp (optional)

Rajma | Kidney Beans - 1 cup, pressure-cooked

Cheese - 1 cube, grated

Red Chilli Powder - 1 tsp

Pepper Powder - 1 tsp

Cumin Powder - 1 tsp

Dried Fenugreek Leaves/Kasuri Methi - a handful

Coriander Leaves - a little

Salt - as needed

Water - as needed

Ghee - as needed

Method:

• Mix together wheat flour, flax seed powder and a pinch of salt.
• Using water little by little, as needed, make a firm dough ball. Set aside.

• Mash the pressure cooked kidney beans to get a coarse consistency.
• Add in the grated cheese, spices, dried fenugreek leaves and salt and mix well to incorporate all the flavours. Set aside.
• Now, make smaller balls of the dough ball (but make sure they are bigger than normal chapathi dough balls, as you would be stuffing them with filling. So bigger dough balls are easier to work with)

• Dust the work floor and place one dough ball on the board and roll it out into a flat round using the rolling pin.
• Place a tbsp heaped dollop of the kidney bean mixture in the middle.
• Bring together the ends of the rolled out doughs and pinch it to shape.
• Flatten it with your hands, then dip it in flour and place it back on the board. Gently roll it out shaping it into a round as you go.
• Do this for all the dough balls.
• Roast them on a hot griddle, one by one using little ghee on both sides.

• Serve these yummy parathas with raita or pickle. I love them plain, as it is stuffed with a flavourful filling.

Sending it to Only Parathas and Flat Breads event hosted by Big Sweet Tooth