Roti Chicken and Pancakes

I was surfing the web when I came across a recipe for Roti Chicken in which the author declared she was making a lot of friends “very, very” happy for posting this particular secret recipe. That selling point is promising, yet what intrigued me was this is allegedly a Surinamese dish from a woman who is Dutch. What really sold me was its liberal use of curry. We in my house are people who love our curry.

Unfortunately, the dish is pretty ugly. Go see the original post because it does a much better job making the food pretty.

Kay, the author, does a beautiful job of meticulously documenting every step of the recipe with sharp, meaningful photos, directions, and commentary. She does a nearly perfect job streamlining the steps and providing all the information I need such that I didn’t have to scroll back to the top of the post to review the recipe itself.

The only change I made was I used one habanero chili in place of her recommended red chili or Madam Jeanette chili. Much to my surprise – HEB didn’t have fresh red chilis! I did commit and purchased a bottle of Sunflower oil and the flavor it lent to the dish was entirely worth adding to bottle to my pantry. (Well, half a bottle. The recipe used half of what I purchased! It loves its sunflower oil.)

Foremost, despite the use of an entire habanero between the curry dish and the pancakes, this recipe isn’t at all hot. It was completely mild in terms of heat. The habanero did lend a nice, chili flavor to everything, yet no heat that I could discern. (So little heat, in fact, that I handed over a pancake to Little Hands and he happily ate it. Stuck his tongue out a lot while smiling, but he’s been pretty fascinated by his tongue all evening.)

The chicken and potatoes dish itself is good. It’s tasty. It doesn’t make our curry-loving tongues sing, but it didn’t make them sad either. I think the green beans went in much too soon and became over cooked. That is the only fault in an otherwise perfectly written recipe. (And maybe it had something to do with my green beans.)

The Roti pancakes? We love them. Love love love. I’ll probably just start making these “just because” to go with other curry dishes. They’re tender and have just the right amount of garlic, onion, potato, and chili to flavor them. Absolutely fantastic.