Naan

My husband lived in India for two years and he loves Indian food. Since we started dating I have begun to love Indian food as well. My favorite dish is something called masala dosa. It's this thin pancake like outside with potatoes and spices and vegetables on the inside and they roll it up into a burrito looking roll. It is to die for. Usually when we want real Indian food we go to this place in Artesia, CA called little India. It has Indian restaurants, jewelry stores, clothing stores, grocery stores, everything you can think of. It is a fun place to spend the day. 

So, to try and be a good wife I decided to try and make me some Indian dishes. One of my clients at work bought me a cookbook called The Complete Book of INDIAN COOKING by Shehzad Husain & Rafi Fernandez. I tried a simple cashew curry recipe and a naan recipe. The cashew curry recipe turned out awful. Tyrone said it was the worst curry he's ever had in his life. He said he was joking but it was definitely the worst I have ever had so it probably had a lot of truth to it. All I could taste in the sauce was onions. It needed more flavor of some sort. I did sort of redeem myself with the naan though. 

I am not very good at making bread so I just assumed that this would be a fun experiment but I was happy to find out that it was absolutely delicious and relatively easy. This recipe made about 9 large pieces of naan. We broke off pieces of the bread and dipped it in hummus. It was all gone in just 2 days. We really enjoyed it. 

Ingredients: 

2 tsp dried active yeast

4 tbsp warm milk

2 tsp sugar

4 cups plain (all-purpose) flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2/3 cup milk

2/3 cup natural (plain) yogurt, beaten

1 egg, beaten

2 tbsp ghee, melted 

flour, for dusting

chopped fresh coriander (cilantro) and onion seeds, to sprinkle 

I had no idea what ghee is so I substituted ghee for margarine. I looked up ghee and it looks like you can buy it in the stores or you can make it yourself by heating up butter on the stove and taking off the foam layer and then straining the butter through 2 or 3 cheese cloths. I decided just to go with butter since it was all I had and it turned out fine.

1. Mix the yeast, warm milk and sugar and leave to become frothy. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Make a well in the centre and add the yeast mixture, milk, yogurt, egg and ghee. Fold in all the ingredients.

2. Knead the dough well. Tightly cover the bowl and keep in a warm place until the dough doubles in size. To test, push a finger into the dough-it should spring back. Preheat the oen to 400 F. Roll out the dough on a floured surface.

3. Make each naan slipper-shaped, about 10 in long and about 6 in wide, tapering to 2 in. Sprinkle with the coriander and onion seeds, ( I didn't put an seasoning on it but I would imagine that garlic would taste good on it as well.) Place on greased trays and bake in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes.