Surinamese roti

Making Surinamese roti – 50 minutes

Before we're going to make the filling, let's make home-made surinamese roti first. You can of course skip this step by purchasing store-bought surinamese roti. If so, continue to the next step.  

The following recipe is enough for about 15 to 20 roti, you can easily freeze them! add 500 grams of wheat flour in a large bowl and make a doughnut hole in the middle. Add baking powder, baking soda, sunflower oil and lukewarm water in the middle.

Mix everything together by hand, it should be very sticky! knead for about 5 to 10 minutes, keep adding the remaining wheat flour until the dough is smooth and elastic. Cover the bowl with some plastic film (or tinfoil) and let rise for about 30 minutes.

Put the bowl somewhere where it's at room temperature and let the bacteria do their thing! after the dough has risen, from 15 to 20 balls from the dough. Make them about the same size as a large egg.

Flatten each dough ball using a rolling pin. Lightly dust your working area before rolling them. Repeat this step for each roti. Heat up the roti pan (or large pan) on high heat, and bake the roti.  

Lightly coat the top with some sunflower oil, then turn it around. Coat again and turn around, repeat this 3 times or until nicely browned.

Preparing the filling – 10 minutes

Cut the chicken fillet in bite-sized chunks. It will take longer to cook if you cut them into larger chunks, plus it's easier to eat when you cut them a bit smaller. Dice the potatoes in fairly large cubes.

Finely dice the onions and set them aside. Rinse the snake beans or long beans and cut off the dried-up ends.  

Cooking the chicken masala – 35 minutes

Add about 4 tablespoons of sunflower oil to the large pan. Put on medium-high heat and sauté about 2/3rd of the diced onions. Press 2 cloves of garlic and add it to the pan. When glazed, add 1 teaspoon of tomato paste and 1 tablespoon of garam masala.

Stir and let bake for another minute. Add the chunks of chicken to the pot after a minute or two, add freshly ground salt and pepper. Stir the chicken once in a while, be careful to prevent it from burning.

When the chicken chunks are nicely cooked, add in 1 cup of water and 1 vegetable stock cube. We usually crumble vegetable stock cubes before adding them to a dish.

Put the lid on the pan and let steam for about 5 minutes on low heat, then add half a cup of water.  the chicken masala is ready after a minute or 30, depending on how large you've cut the chunks.

If you notice that the dish doesn't have that much juice/gravy, add in more water and taste to see if it's still salty enough. prepare the potatoes in the meanwhile.

Cooking the potatoes – 20 minutes

This method is actually very similar to the first step. Put on another pot on medium-high heat. Add in 4 tablespoons worth of sunflower oil and sauté 1/3rd of the diced onions along with 1 pressed garlic clove.

Add in 1 teaspoon of tomato paste, give it a good stir and mix with 1 tablespoon of garam masala.  add in the diced potatoes with 1 cup of water and 1 (crumbled) vegetable stock cube.

Turn down the heat to low, put on the lid and let steam until the potatoes are nice and tender. An easy way of checking if your potatoes are done is by poking it with a fork.

The potatoes are done when the fork goes in smoothly and without any resistance. When this happens, add in 400 grams of snake beans / long beans. Taste the dish to see if it has enough salt to your liking.

Add more vegetable stock or freshly ground salt if you think it needs more salt. Meanwhile, boil 6 hard-boiled eggs, this is easily done by adding water to a pan, turn on high heat and let come to a boil.

Boil the six eggs for about 10 minutes, then remove them and "shock" them by putting them under running cold water. Colour the eggs nicely yellowish by adding them into the garam masala sauce for a minute or 3.

Turn them around a few times. By the way: surinamese roti is traditionally eaten using hands, so grab a roti, scoop in filling and enjoy!