Gizka Chapati

I figured that I had to join the Great Gizka War, (please read `DragonWinter's Gizka War Coverage if you have no clue what I'm talking about). It wouldn't do to be left at the sidelines without having fired a single pea shot! As it is, this is a little late, but butter late then never! Okay, that didn't make sense, but this is food related.

It's quite clear what this piece of work is, but I like stating the obvious. This is a page from Tycho Celchu's Big Mama's Cookbook, which he definitely did not get from Alderaan. In fact, it was Wedge, Wes and Hobbie, who got it for him after the killer veggie scandal (I'd put a reference here, but I haven't written the story yet).

It didn't make a difference to him either way - Tycho was still going to make exotic dishes, but he does like the photos. After all, he doesn't have access to a lightsaber in order to cut out the gizka head (something about cauterizing it for better taste). And Luke doesn't show up very often, those days. Too bad, Gizka Chapati is delicious.



Reality bites

So what really is a chapati?
Actually, a chapati is a sort of unleavened Indian bread. I won't put the whole recipe here, you can google it. This is just for information.

You mix atta flour (or Indian wheat flour) together with salt, vegetable oil (though I used butter, in this case), and some water. And you knead it until your stress has dissipated.

Then you leave it be for a while and go take in a couple of movies, and maybe even take out your frustrations on it again. The more you mess with it, the better. And after that, you take out your rolling pin, and smoosh it, and then fry the poor flattened dough in a pan. Or there are other ways of heating it, but this is generally how it's done in modern kitchens, such as mine.


Can you sculpt with chapati dough?
Sure, why not? That's what I did. I wasn't able to make the full gizka, like I had initially intended. That's because my dough seemed to be drying up. So I settled for the head. Was grosser in the end, anyways.

The squashed gizka in the photo was my mum's doing. She likes messing around with my dough!


What can you eat with chapati?
Well, generally when you eat chapatis here, they serve it with dhall and some fish curry. There are vegetable dishes as well. I prefer dhall though, but nobody makes decent dhall here anymore, so that will be my next project.

My sister wasn't really in a curry mood that day, so we ended up doing a bit of a fusion dish. So she made a tahini yogurt sauce (doubling up as Gizka Gland Sauce... ewww) - which tastes kinda icky on it's own, but in a sandwich it's awesome; and I did a simple stir fry using chicken (chicken, gizka, same same!), italian spices, pepper, a bit of salt and anchovy stock, and soy sauce. The veg is veg.

I did say fusion, didn't I?


Photography: mine
Idea: mine
Gizka: LucasArt and related
Layout using Arcsoft Photoimpression 3