Making Porotha for the hostel!

In the school's kitchen: Pratheeba (on the left), and Viji Tr (on the right). You can see the 'snails' (step 4) and the flattening of the snails (step 5). Mathew (in the red shirt) is watching Viji Tr and giving her tips, while Sima Tr is cooking the Porotha in the background.

On Sunday, the 21st of January, we FINALLY made Porotha for the hostel. Mathew and I went to buy 12 kg of Porotha flour from our landowner’s shop. They were rather startled by the amount we were buying, especially since we told them that Mathew and I would eat it all.
After making the dough at around 11.30am, we let the dough get soft for a few hours (while I did my long-overdue washing!) before we started making the Porotha. We had many helpers; one of the Aunties (there are 2 Aunties who work in the kitchen; I love them both!) was an expert Porotha-maker, so she helped a lot. But there wasn’t much space to work, so while the Auntie and I made Porotha, Mathew didn’t have much to do. Even though I offered my spot to him, he refused to take over making the Porotha, although I know he loves to make it. That was really nice of him.
It took us roughly 4 hours to finally finish making all the Porotha. This is the process:
1. Form large balls of dough.
2. Flatten the balls with the palm of your hand.
3. ‘Fling’ the dough to make it thin (this is the hard part!).
4. Make a ‘snail’ by rolling up the dough. Leave this to soften before…
5. Flattening the snail! The Porotha is then ready to be cooked.
6. After the cooking, the Porotha have to be 'smashed' so they become fluffy. That means you smash your hands together as hard as you can to 'soften' the HOT Porotha. No wonder Mathew has such rough hands... (this is my least favourite step. I'd always have red hands...)

The hostel teachers (all ladies) really wanted to learn how to make Porotha (maybe so they could make it for their future husbands), so we were constantly surrounded by them. They made good attempts, but it was hard having so many of them around at once, because the Auntie and I didn’t really have space to fling our Porotha anymore. It was lots of fun, though (especially seeing the kids’ faces when they saw that I manage to fling the dough). I also had fun making a heart (which got stretched into the continent of Africa while being moved for cooking), and I was curious about who would end up getting it.

This Porotha-making was then followed by a break, during which I watched the boys playing football. Afterwards, Cristy and I played (very badly) with a few of the boys, and when the hostel boys had to leave to go to worship, Cristy and I tried to defeat Benet. We weren’t very successful (and unfortunately I have our defeat on tape). :)

After worship with the hostel kids, Cristy and I had the honour of serving the food. I was in charge of giving them 3 Porotha each, and Cristy was in charge of the vegetable curry (usually, the kids get Porotha with chicken curry, but Cristy and I decided we don’t support the killing of animals, so despite the protests from the kids, we told the Aunties to make vegetable curry. It was really good!). I managed to burn my fingers quite badly, but I loved seeing the kids enjoy their food (they hardly ever get Porotha because it’s more expensive to make, and hardly anyone knows how to make it). Some of the boys (even the small ones!) managed to eat 9 to 11 Porotha. Crazy! But they enjoyed their dinner, so the effort was all worth it!