The Duke v2.3 » Dholl Poori recipe

Compared to most people I know or have ever spoken to about it, I have the worst memory of my childhood. I don’t mean my childhood was horrible, just my capacity to remember it.

One of my earliest memories is of my second trip to Mauritius when I was 6 – I only remember two other things before this (you can ask, I won’t tell). I remember we stopped at the side of the road on the way to Père Laval’s grave. A guy had a little cart similar to a hot dog stand you would see at the footy in the 80s and he appeared to be selling food – at least, that’s what it smelt like. It was at this stop that I was introduced to dholl poori. I’m pretty sure I had it with chatini pomme d’amour (tomato chutney), but my first taste was of the poori on its own. My taste buds have yet to come close to the excitement of that first dholl poori.

My father made the best faratas of anyone within our familial network in Australia. He showed me how as a kid and being the rebellious son of my father, I dutifully forgot how. Until recently. Sure, my faratas don’t quite match up to my dad’s, but they’re pretty close now. When it comes to dholl poori, no one in my family knows how to make them properly. In any case, there have been plenty of Mauritians selling the stuff for peanuts so the urge to learn myself has never been there. But, over the years my memories of my first dholl poori have been coming back stronger and stronger, such that other people’s dholl poori are less and less meeting my expectations. I decided that if I’m going to try to relive that first dholl poori, I’d have to make it myself.

A lady by the name of Madeleine Philippe has what appears to be the most helpful recipe for dholl poori online. That’s not really saying much. Dholl poori is very easy to make for experienced hands. There’s a lot of work that goes into this simple recipe, which makes it easy to go wrong. Not so simple a recipe really. Anyway, I’m going to provide you with my version of dholl poori which is based entirely on the recipe by Mme Philippe, but with more instructions on how to get it right and make them good. What you should end up with are very thin and quite flaky pooris with a nice spicy dholl.

Ingredients:

500g yellow split peas
1/2 tbsp turmeric
2 tsp salt
750g plain white flour
1 tsp salt, additional
2 tbsp turmeric, additional
1 tbsp ground cumin
250g ghee (but you might need more)

Instructions:

Boil yellow split peas. Place enough water in a pot to boil the yellow split peas. About half a litre should do the job, but it will depend on the size of your pot. The water is used later in the making of the dough and the less water you use, the stronger its flavour. Once water is boiled, add yellow split peas, 1/2 tbsp turmeric and 2 tsp salt and drop heat to medium. Stir occasionally to prevent peas from sticking to the bottom of the pot. Allow peas to boil until soft, but not sticky – al dente, if you will. Once done, pour peas into a strainer placed over a large bowl so that you retain the liquid used to boil the peas. Strain the peas well. Leave for some time in the strainer and make sure to not leave above the hot liquid. Allow liquid to cool – I’ve placed it in the fridge while in Darwin, but I’ll probably do the same elsewhere.
Prepare dry ingredients for dough. Sift the flour and 1 tsp salt into a large mixing bowl.
Prepare dough. Once the liquid from boiling the peas is cool enough, mix it slowly into the dough. I create a hole in the middle of the dry ingredients, add a ladle of the liquid and gently push the dry ingredients into the water while I mix them together until no more of the dry ingredients will mix. I then add another ladle of liquid and repeat the mixing process. If you run out of the liquid leftover from boiling the peas, just use warm water. As the dough starts to get bigger, I actually knead the dough to ensure it continues to mix without using too much liquid. I also add less liquid each time – something like 1 tbsp at a time. You want the dough to be soft, but not sticky. It should be smooth and soft, not too silky, but no dough should peel away and stick to your hands. Once done, wrap in plastic and rest in the fridge for an hour.
Prepare dholl. Before going on, make sure the peas are as dry as possible. Do whatever to make it as dry as possible – muslin, paper towels, whatever. Once dry, the peas need to be ground. A coffee or spice grinder works best. A mortar and pestle will also do the job. Either way, don’t over do it. If you end up with large chunky balls of ground peas you have overdone it. You want the ground peas to be a little chunky but mostly powdery. Once the peas have been ground, place in a large mixing bowl, add 2 tbsp turmeric and 1 tbsp ground cumin and mix all ingredients. Use a fork to do this and mix by making a similar aerating motion you would to scramble eggs. This helps to distribute the spices evenly as well as keep the peas from developing into chunky balls. Add more salt or spices (i.e. turmeric and/or ground cumin) to taste. I tend to add more turmeric and salt. Once mixed, the dholl should be a little chunky, but mostly powdery.
Retrieve dough from fridge.
Prepare dholl poori. This is the hardest part to get right. Remove some dough about the size of a squash ball and make into a round piece of dough. Cup the dough ball in your hand, using your palm or fingers. Create a deep well in the centre of the dough ball using your thumb. Using a teaspoon, place some dholl in the centre of dough ball. Press the dholl well into the base of the dough ball. Add more dholl and press it into the sides of the dough ball expanding the width of the well. Keep adding dholl in this way until you feel as though the dough ball has reached a size whereby there is still enough dough left around the sides of the well to cover the well. The idea here is that you expand the well so that dholl reaches to the very edge of the poori, once rolled out. But you don’t expand it to the point where there is not enough dough around the side of the well to eventually pull over and cover the well of dholl properly. Pressing the dholl into the sides of the dough ball should also deepend the well to some extent. Once you have reached a point where the well is wide enough, start filling the well with more dholl until it sits just below the lip of the well – about 0.5cm to 1cm, depending on how wide the dough ball is. Make sure to pack the dholl in relatively tight. Once packed, pull up on the dough around the well of dholl and then fold over the well to cover. Once covered and sealed, I like to round out the dholl poori in my hand so that it rolls out nicely.
Roll out dholl poori. Do this on a lightly floured surface. Ensure that the surface and the dholl poori is always lightly floured because you want to roll it out nice and flat. If you use a lot of flour here, that’s fine. Once the dholl poori is rolled out you can just wipe off any excess flour – the dholl poori is best cooked relatively flour free. If while rolling, the dholl starts to appear really close to the surface of the poori dough, this is fine. Continue rolling lightly. You want to avoid rolling to the point where the dholl creates holes in the poori dough. The idea is to get the dholl poori as flat and round as possible.I ended making a little video, with assistance from wifey, showing how I prepare and roll out the dholl poori.
Repeat steps 6 and 7 until you have enough dholl poori to cook. I usually make whatever will fit on my kitchen bench before I start cooking.
Melt about 250g of ghee.
Cook dholl poori. Heat some ghee in a non-stick frypan over medium heat. Once hot, place dholl poori in frypan. While cooking, place ghee on uncooked side of dholl poori using a pastry brush. Cook the dholl poori for about 15 seconds. Turn over and cook for another 15 seconds. You don’t want to brown the dholl poori. You want it to cook to the point just after it loses its doughiness. Once cooked, place dholl poori on a paper towel. You can create a stack of cooked dholl pooris, each separated by a paper towel.
Make more batches until finished. Go back to step 6 until you have finished cooking until you run out of dough.
Enjoy! Nice with a good chatini, but I also like to have it with a curry.