roti canai

Being half Indian, I grew up eating roti. I love roti. A lot. Roti is an Indian flatbread made of whole wheat flour that’s eaten with most North Indian meals. My grandmother’s perfectly-made roti, painted with butter, is so good it makes your brain finally stop whirring for a brief, beautiful moment. Dadima makes the best roti hands down. She’s too old to make it now but it was one of my earliest memories of loving food as much as I love food now. Now, of course, I am capital-P passionate about food. Back then, I just knew that I loved roti and it was a super delicious thing to eat.

Basically every single time I was at Grandaddy and Dadima’s house, Dadima would cook roti and dal for us. It was a savory, salty, earthy yellow dal (made of lentils, as dal is) that was thicker than a brothy soup but not as thick as that broccoli cheddar soup from Panera Bread (which is quite thick for those uninitiated). Dadima’s dal was just the right consistency so that you could tear off a piece of roti, curl it into a U shape with your hand, dip it into the bowl of dal and then come out with the perfect bite – as long as you bent your head down a little to meet your hand because otherwise the dal will make a run for it.

I have a very weak memory of my childhood overall; sadly my brain decided long ago that it only needs to focus on what my therapist calls my “working memory” aka the present. But eating roti and dal at Dadima’s kitchen table back when I was small-ish… I still remember that VIVIDLY because of the impact roti and dal had on me.

So many years later, now in adulthood, you can imagine my feels when I traveled to Malaysia and found out they have a dish called roti canai (pronounced chen-nai, named after the Indian city Chennai) that is more or less my grandma’s roti and dal with a few, beautiful edits.

But first! Let me briefly explain why this Indian dish exists in Malaysia. Indians have been migrating to Malaysia since ancient times but the largest migration was during the colonial period when Malaysia (and India) was under British control. Today there are over 2 million people of Indian descent living in Malaysia making Malaysian Indians the fourth largest ethnic group in the country. And btw, Malaysia is wonderfully diverse, which is another reason that it’s one of my very favorite countries in the world – a diversity of cultures has allowed for a beautiful diversity of truly bangin’ foods!

Loads of Indian recipes have been brought over to Malaysia with the migrations and then been adapted for the specific tastes and preferences of the locals, as well as edited for the ingredients that are available/not available in Malaysia as opposed to India. This is where, finally, ROTI CANAI ENTERS THE SCENE!

Roti canai, as you can see above, is basically still just roti and dal. But here’s how it differs from what I grew up eating:

1.     The roti is flakier and chewier.

2.     The dal is usually thinner in consistency so you just dip the roti into it instead of scooping.

3. The dal is oftentimes more of a curry than a dal! Hence the orange color instead of yellow. Think cumin, cinnamon, ginger, cayenne, tumeric, garlic, chili, tomato, onion kind of vibes.

The reason I really bonded with this dish, other than the obvious childhood connection, is because the thinness of this curry dal allowed me to get full less quickly / eat way more of that perfect, flaky, lightly crispy roti. Plus the flavor of the dal (with that curry kick) was more exciting and crave-worthy than your average north Indian yellow dal, which I sometimes can find bland when Dadima isn’t the one making it.

As my husband can attest, roti canai is now one of my absolute top favorite dishes in the whole world. For the month we spent in Malaysia in 2019, I went on a full-fledged quest to eat as many roti canais as possible all over the country. I ate them in Kuala Lumpur (had my first one there, see video below), Penang and the island of Langkawi (had my favorite one there, see first photo)  – they were all beautiful and perfect in their own unique ways. I had no idea this dish existed upon entering the country and I left having tried at least a dozen or more roti canais.

One last thing I should note: roti canai is largely considered a breakfast food in Malaysia. Most stalls/roti shops will stop serving if by noon or even earlier. So go early and eat plenty!