Kati rolls with pickled onion & green chilli salad

The picture of this in Rick Stein's India book looked fabulous. It simply had to be made and sampled.
And....it was unquestionably delicious.
(Note, clearly not quite enough on its own so I served it with a Renghan bataka (Aubergine and potato curry), and the old favourite phudino dai (Yoghurt and mint dip) - both of which can (or will be very soon) be found on this blog.)

In essence, this is street food - in Western parlance, this is a "pancake" type round flat bread, with a layer of coriander flavoured omelette, wrapped around very tasty and succulent beef (although I see no reason why pretty much anything wouldn't work - chicken, duck, pork, lamb would all be good contenders) - combined with a nice crunchy pickled salad. Then just munch away!

It is also a doddle to make (Although as a quick caveat, you will need to have made some chat masala and garam masala ahead of time)

Ingredients

I recommend doing this in the order below....

For the Pickled Onions -
2 medium sized red onions, halved and very finely sliced - use a mandolin if you have one on pretty much minimum setting if your knife skills need honing (!) but watch the fingers.
2 fresh green chillies, finely chopped
2 tbsp lime juice
2 tbsp white wine vinegar (or rice wine vinegar probably works too)
1 tsp salt
Handful of chopped fresh coriander leaves

Mix all the above together well and leave, covered, for at least an hour.....

For the meat -
500g Sirloin or rump steak, cut into 3cm cubes. (As it happened, I used about 370g good quality chuck steak)
6 Cloves garlic - crushed
3 fresh green chillies, finely chopped
3 tbsp lime juice/ juice from 2 limes
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp salt

Mix all the above together well and leave to marinate for at least an hour

For the wraps -
6 free range eggs
1 tsp salt
Handful of chopped coriander leaves
6 parathas or chapatis
vegetable oil (Dependent on whether using shop bought parathas - I used pre-frozen ones where the oil is already combined into the product)

Method

First, the parathas.
Lightly beat eggs with the coriander and salt. Heat frying pan and place your paratha in the hot pan for 30-secs - 1 min, until the underneath starts to brown. Then, coat the top of the paratha with 1/6 of the mixture and flip it immediately. Most of the egg mix will promptly fall off into the pan but do not worry about this. Press down briefly on the top of the paratha and cook for 1-2 mins until the egg is set . Flip back over to complete the browning of the first side.
Set aside in a warming oven and complete the remainder of the parathas.

Ideally, you can get your sous chef to continue the above whilst you address yourself to the meat. This can be done in numerous ways - skewer on BBQ, griddle pan, grill etc - but I just used the big wok.
First drain the meat from the marinade. and pat dry.
Put wok on high heat, add splosh sunflower oil and then the meat, tossing regularly so that you get caramelisation on the beef but DON'T overcook it - you want this succulent, not a piece of shoe leather in a wrap. I wouldn't recommend taking this anywhere more than rare - medium rare.

Plate up. Tip the beef onto a warmed plate and sprinkle with the fabulous chat masala!!!
Get the parathas out of the warming oven, the phudino dai out of the fridge and remove the cover on the pickled onions. Drain the juice from the onions and toss with a little more chopped coriander.

This is now a fun assembly job for your diners, just like tacos or burittos.

Tastes fantastic!