[ID: A pile of round flatbreads on a blue plate; a bowl of mango pickle is in the background. End ID]
बथुआ का पराठा / Bathua ke paratha (Panjābī lambsquarters-stuffed flatbread)
पराठे ("parāṭhe"; singular "पराठा," "parāṭhā"*) are laminated, wheat-based flatbreads eaten throughout the Indian subcontinent, as well as in other places with significant South Asian diasporic populations, such as South Africa, southeast Asia, and parts of South America.
Paratha has multiple origin claims and prospective etymologies. Some dictionaries speculate that the word "पराठा" ("parāṭhā") derives from a term in Hindi's parent language, Shauraseni Prakrit: namely "𑀧𑀮𑁆𑀮𑀝𑁆𑀝𑀇" ("pallaṭṭaï"), meaning "to turn over." Others scan "paratha" as a compound of Hindi परत ("parat," "layer") + आटा ("āṭā," "flour"). "Āṭā" is itself from Sauraseni Prakrit 𑀆𑀝𑀸 (āṭā), meaning "ground."
Parathe may be made plain, or stuffed with various fillings including potato, cauliflower, paneer, daikon radish, onions, and greens. Preparation methods also vary. Parathe are often rolled out, brushed with oil or ghee, and folded two to four times, formed into triangles, circles, or squares.
This recipe makes parathe in a Panjabi style: the filling of bathua (also known as lambsquarters, or white goosefoot) is enclosed within the dough, which is then rolled out and fried. The greens are fried with onion, garlic, and chili to give aroma and heat; cumin and carom seeds give notes of citrus and anise. The whole wheat flour lends a nutty, robust flavor to the bread itself, which stands up well to the intense pungency of the mustard oil used for frying.
History
Parathe have been eaten in the Panjāb region (modern-day northern India and Pakistan) since at least the 14th century, when ابن بطوطة (Ibn Battuta), travelling from ملتان (Multan) to دہلی (Dehli), noted "round cakes of bread soaked in ghee" served by cooks from Multan (Mahdi p. 15, FN 3). قصۀ چهار درویش (Qissa-ye Chahār Darvēsh; "The Story of the Four Dervishes"), an early 13th-century Persian collection of stories, also contains mention of a thin flatbread made of flour and butter, which is arguably the same dish:
[...]ور ایک قابزردے کی اور کئی طرح کے قلیے ، دو پیازہ، نرگسی، بادام، روغن جوش اور روٹیاں کئی قسم کی باقر خانی تنکی شیر مال، گاؤ دیده، گاؤ زبان، نعمت نان، پر اٹھے ، اور کباب کوفتے کے ، مرچ کے تکے، خاگینہ، ملغو به شب دیگ، دم پخت، حلیم، ہریسا، سموسے ، ورقی ، قبولی، فرنی، شیر برنج، ملائی، حلوہ، فالودہ، پن بھتا، نمش، آب شوره، ساق عروس، لوزیات، مربه ، اچار دان، دہی کی قلفیاں [...] (trans. میر امن / Mir Amman, p. 60)
And there was one dish of zardah, and several sorts of kaliyahs and meat boiled with onions, [...] and cakes fried in clarified butter, and several kinds of bread, [...] Halīm, Harīsā, Samosah, Warakī, [...] almond-cakes, preserves, pickle-pots, small glasses filled with curds. (trans. Edward B. Eastwick, from the Urdu of Mir Amman, pp. 79-80)
Eastwick writes that he asked "a gentleman in India" to describe the dishes listed, and was told that "Waraḳī [ورقي] is the Persian name for the Parāṭhā because it peels off ورق بورق, waraḳ ba-waraḳ [sheet by sheet]" (p. 80). According to him, this bread was made as follows:
Make a "chau-pattī," i.e., a thin cake of baked flour, spread it with butter, knead it, spread butter again, repeat kneading and spreading ten or twelve times; then bake it well, and it will come out in slices thinner than paper. (p. 79, FN 253)
When Eastwick's translation of Qissa-ye Chahār Darvēsh was published in 1852, the word "paratha" had already been appearing in English-language dictionaries for about three decades. It was included in the 1820 second edition of John Shakespear's A dictionary, Hindūstānī and English, though it had been absent from the first:
پراٹھا parāṭhā, s. m. Bread made with butter or ghī, and of several layers, like pye-crust. (p. 187)
The production of "Hindūstānī" dictionaries and grammars in the 18th and 19th centuries was explicitly connected to the colonial aims of the East India Company. Shakespear notes that his dictionary was "prepared under [the] patronage" of the EIC (p. iv); it was also printed by the Company's official booksellers. This and other such works were published, in London, "Calcutta" (Kolkata), and Madras, for the education of colonial officers and administrators.
Recipe books served a similar purpose, catering to former EIC employees, and trading in an interest in the "Oriental" which had been on the rise since the late 18th century. The practical cook, English and foreign, published in London in 1845, boasts of "the most complete system of Indian cookery ever presented," and explicitly connects the need for such a publication with the tastes of former colonial officers and administrators:
As there is scarcely an English family among the higher or middle classes, who does not number among its members a retired military or civil servant of the East India Company, or a retired naval officer or commercial man, it has been thought advisable to introduce a considerable chapter on Anglo-Indian cookery. (p. vi)
Foraging in the Panjāb
The gathering and consumption of wild food plants is very common across the Panjāb region. Avik Ray et al. write that an "enormous diversity of [wild] plants constitutes a significant part of the rural diet" in India (p. 1), with well over a thousand species of wild flora being "in regular use" (p. 6) across various geographic regions. Some social and economic activities in the region are organized around foraging: wild food plant knowledge is passed down through generations by oral means (Malik et al. p. 2); wild greens are sold in local vegetable markets, providing a source of income for foragers, who are mainly women (ibid., p. 5; Roopa).
Amongst these hundreds of wild food plants, bathua (Chenopodium album) is of particular importance: it is one of the most commonly foraged wild plants across all areas of India (Ray et al. p. 8) and in the Panjab district of Pakistan (Malik et al.; Waheed et al.) It is notable for its tendency to grow in disturbed soil, including around cultivated crops such as wheat and mustard (Malik et al. p. 18), as well as along roadsides, in graveyards, and in waste places (Majeed et al. p. 8). Foragers note that its availability has not been affected by agricultural practices, drought, deforestation, or grazing practices (Malik et al. p. 18).
Bathua is foraged and cooked fresh in multiple seasons throughout the year (ibid.), but may also be dried and stored for future periods of food scarcity and drought (Waheed et al. p. 14). It is thus a widespread and reliable source of nutrition in the Panjāb (Malik et al. note that it is "famous" amongst people of Panjābī, Sarā'īkī, and Muhājir ethnicity in the region, p. 14), as well as part of a diverse landscape of local ecological knowledge.
In some places, however, this knowledge is on the decline. Malik et al. note that "the rapid urbanization of the peri-urban areas [of Pakistan] poses a significant threat to the ancestral ethnobotanical knowledge on [...] wild food resources" (p. 2). Jabeen et al. point to global climate crisis and cultural changes—with older generations more interested in and knowledgeable about wild food plants than younger—to explain a decline in folk foraging practices in Pakistan.
But many people see value in preserving foraging traditions—not only in rural areas, where reliance on foraging is most often reported, but also in urban and peri-urban ones. Urban foraging in particular has multiple benefits: the stewardship of wild food plants is particularly useful in preserving ecological diversity and food security in densely populated and anthropogenically disturbed areas (Sardeshpande & Shackleton p. 214).
Foragers such as Nina Sengupta, Shruti Tharayil, Sanjiv Valsan, Suresh Kumar, and Kush Sethi organise walks and workshops to teach people throughout India about the wild food resources growing in their own areas (Roopa; Mehrotra). In Kolkata, in the Aarey Forest in Mumbai, and in the gardens of Dehli, these wild food walks encourage connection with local ecosystems and the creation of social bonds. One of the participations in a weed walk run by Kumar reflected:
What l found interesting about foraging is the experience of walking, discussing and sharing hometown stories and childhood memories and our food culture. (Roopa)
Thus, the physical space mapped out by the weed walk is doubled by the temporal space that foragers traverse. Foraging connects people to the local land, to each other, and to their own culinary heritage, as they reminisce on childhood experiences with wild food plants, and act on the knowledge that these memories contain.
Recipe under the cut!
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