Filled godamba rotis - Sri Lankan street food

I need to make some Sri Lankan finger food for a gathering. I usually make my tried and tested fish buns or maalu paan for it but this time around someone else has agreed to make it and I wanted to make something that is not too difficult and decided to try my hand at making filled godamba or gothamba rotis.

For those of you who are not too familiar with Sri Lankan food, godamba rotis probably have their origin in Malaysia or Singapore or thereabouts as I have come across similar roti tissues in that part of the world. However, as we do, we Lankans have adopted this item and made it our own. We fill the tissues with fiery fish, meat and vegetable fillings and call them maalu roti (fish roti), mas roti (meat roti) or elavalu roti (vegetable roti).  They are a popular street food and it is common to see them in many a street food stall or roadside tea house to be washed down with a cup of hot sweet plain tea.

I learnt how to make godamba roti from our Appu (cook) Arunasalam and he could whip up a batch of these rotis in no time. He painstakingly showed me how to flip the rotis on a flat griddle to create gossamer thin, translucent tissues by the flick of his wrist. I mastered the art then but with a fractured wrist that has become weak, I am not able to achieve this anymore. However, I can make passably good roties by flattening them down on a normal cutting board.

Ingredients:

 4.5 cups of plain or all purpose flour (250 g x 4.5 =  gms)
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp cooking oil ((I used rice bran oil)
Cold water (approximately ml)
an extra half cup of oil to soak the dough balls

Place the sifted flour in a large bowl and make a hole in the middle. Add salt and oil and bind with water to make a stiffish dough adding sufficient water. Knead well for 5 minutes or until the dough is springy (like bread dough).

Make into small balls and place in a bowl with the oil and swirl around to coat the dough balls with oil. Cover with cling wrap and leave for at least half a day or overnight.

Meanwhile make a filling using flaked canned or cooked fresh fish/mince or finely chopped chicken or a vegetable filling.

Basic veggie filling:

Boil 3 potatoes, peel and mash roughly. Saute about 2 chopped onions, a couple of green chillies, a few curry leaves in a tablespoon of oil. Add some ginger garlic paste and stir fry for a minute. Add your choice of chopped vegetables such as chopped leeks, parboiled and grated carrot, finely shredded cabbage leaves etc. and stir fry. Season with a little ground turmeric, unroasted curry powder and season with salt and pepper. Add the boiled potato lastly and mix well. You can add some Worcestershire sauce or tomato sauce if you like.

You can add cooked flaked fish or cooked meat to this mixture to create a fish or meat filling too or chopped hardboiled eggs.

Heat a griddle or a flat bottomed frying pan on medium heat and grease with melted butter or oil when heated.

Take one of the dough balls and using your oil smeared hands flatten each ball out into a thin tissue on a work surface or board. Place a heaped tablespoon of filling and fold the sides to envelope the filling and create a square, oblong or triangular shape and tucking the ends in. Place on the hot griddle and cook until lightly browned and turn over.

Repeat with all the balls and cook all 4 sides of the rotis, stacking them as you go.

Once cooked serve them on their own or with a sauce on the side.

I didn't take photos of my end product so borrowed this photo from the Pearl of the Indian Ocean Facebook page. Thank you for that.