Naan
History of Naan
The Naan originates
from India but is today eaten in most types of South Asian restaurants and
homes around the globe. It has transformed from a basic form of bread for many
to experimental creations by chefs and food enthusiasts today with different
fillings and flavours.
The first recorded
history of Naan can be found in the notes of the Indo-Persian poet Amir Kushrau
in 1300 AD. Naan was originally cooked at the Imperial Court in Delhi as
naan-e-tunuk (light bread) and naan-e-tanuri (cooked in a tandoor oven). During
the Mughal era in India from around 1526, Naan accompanied by keema or kebab
was a popular breakfast food of the royals.
In 1926, overlooking
the hustle and bustle of Regent Street, Veeraswamy, Britain’s oldest Indian
restaurant served Naan on its menu.
Founded in 1984,
Honeytop Speciality Foods became the first company in Europe to supply
authentic Naan bread on a commercial scale to major retailers and restaurants.
They introduced the first 13 week shelf-life flatbread.
How to Make the Perfect
Naan Bread
The naan, a word that
just means bread in its original Persian, is a flatbread native to west,
central and southern Asia. It is baked in a clay oven, rather than over a flame
like the chapati, which gives it a crisp exterior, a fluffy core and a
distinctive charred flavour. Not being blessed with either the space or the
funds for a second oven, clay or not, I'd long ago lumped naans in with pizzas
as things that weren't worth attempting at home. I've since changed my mind on
the margherita front, particularly after a revelatory moment earlier this year
involving a frying pan and a hot grill, but I was still wary of attempting a
bread that had no toppings to hide behind. Well, turns out I'm wrong - again.
The flour
Though one poster
online assures the world that "real naan has a mix of stoneground wheat
flour (chakki atta) and white flour", I don't find any recipes calling for
this - instead, the difference is between plain flour and higher protein bread
flour. Most recipes I try go for plain flour, but Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate
Curry Bible uses bread flour, and Rick Stein's India sits on the fence with a
1:3 ratio of bread to plain flour. Now, it is perfectly possible to make decent
naan with plain flour - Meera Sodha's Made in India does so - but the more
naans I munch my way through, the more I realise how important their
characteristic chewy, elastic texture is. A strong flour, with its higher
gluten content, gives the best chance of this.
Raising agent
Though they're
flatbreads, naans traditionally get their bubbly texture from yeast (and, very
traditionally, from wild yeasts). Some more modern variations, such as that in
Vivek Singh's Curry, use baking powder instead, with Jaffrey also adding extra
bicarbonate of soda. Like Stein's, the recipe in Charmaine Solomon's India and
Pakistan volume of her Complete Asian Cookbook uses yeast alone, while Sodha
tops it up with baking powder.
The benefit of
Singh's baking powder is that I don't need to leave the dough to prove for
hours - after a mere 15 minutes under a damp cloth, it is ready to shape. The
snag is that, while it boasts a few bubbles, the overall texture is more like a
pitta bread. It is a decent-tasting quick fix if you need flatbread in a hurry (an
emergency that surely plagues us all from time to time), but when it comes to
texture, you can't beat yeast. The extra baking powder doesn't seem necessary
if you leave those microorganisms to do their thing - especially as baking
powder itself gets to work immediately, and will thus presumably be spent by
the time the dough is ready to bake.
Stein, Jaffrey, Singh
and Sodha use milk to wet their dough, with the first two adding yoghurt as
well, and Stein and Solomon topping it up with water. Milk, and dairy in
general, will give the naan a soft, more tender crumb than water alone, but I'm
not sure you want to go too far down that road, as you risk sacrificing that
aforementioned chewy texture. A little yoghurt for tang and richness, mixed
with rather more water, seems a good compromise. Solomon, Singh and Jaffrey
also add egg to their doughs, which only seems to make them tough. Some extra
fat is welcome, though; Solomon adds ghee, Jaffrey butter and Singh vegetable
oil. Personally, I like the flavour of ghee, but melted butter is a decent
substitute.
Flavourings
Everyone adds salt
and sugar to varying degrees - the sugar helps the yeast to get to work, while
the salt does the opposite but is essential for flavour. More interesting are
the toppings; though I avoided garlic butter, on the basis that it would give
the breads concerned a very unfair advantage (what doesn't taste good smothered
in garlic butter?), I did allow Jaffrey her nigella and sesame seeds and
Solomon her poppy ones. Pretty as they all looked, nigella was the only seed to
contribute much in the way of flavour, so which you choose, if any, depends on
what you're serving it with. More important, I'd suggest, is a big dollop of
melted ghee to finish, as wisely counselled by Jaffrey.
Method and cooking
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Traditionally
cooked in Tandoor
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The two big beasts
here, the Michelin-starred Singh and the legend that is Jaffrey, disagree on
one fundamental point, possibly connected with their choice of raising agent.
While Jaffrey instructs you to give the dough "100 strokes" with a
wooden spoon to develop the gluten, Singh cautions you to be careful "not
to work the gluten too much, or the dough will become stretchy". Stretchy
is exactly what you want, in my opinion, so kneading is a must. However, I must
add that although a naan dough ought to be soft and sticky, both Jaffrey and
Stein's are so liquid I have great difficulty kneading them at all, and end up
having to add more flour to both just to be able to get them back into the
bowl. As with all doughs, do it by feel: if the dough feels at all tough or
dry, add more liquid; it should be soft and irritatingly sticky.
Having established my
kitchen is a tandoor-free zone, cooking is necessarily going to be a
compromise. I find the best way to replicate the high heat and charred flavours
is with a very, very hot dry pan - Singh and Solomon's hot oven leaves them too
stiff, more like a pizza crust. You can finish them off under a very hot grill,
as Jaffrey suggests, but I find Sodha's pan method simpler and more effective.
Use the oven to keep your curries warm instead.
The perfect naan
bread
(Makes 6-8)
1.5 tsp fast-action
yeast
1 tsp sugar
150ml warm water
300g strong white
bread flour, plus extra to dust
1 tsp salt
5 tbsp natural yoghur
2 tbsp melted ghee or
butter, plus extra to brush
A little vegetable
oil, to greas
1 tsp nigella (black
onion), sesame or poppy seeds (optional)
Put the yeast, sugar
and two tablespoons of warm water in a bowl and stir well. Leave until it
begins to froth.
Put the flour and
salt into a large mixing bowl and whisk to combine. Stir the yoghurt into the
yeast mixture, then make a well in the middle of the flour and pour it in, plus
the melted ghee. Mix, then gradually stir in the water to make a soft, sticky
mixture that is just firm enough to call a dough, but not at all dry. Tip out
on a lightly floured surface and knead for about five minutes until smooth and
a little less sticky, then put in a large, lightly oiled bowl and turn to coat.
Cover and leave in a draught-free place (the airing cupboard, or an unlit oven)
until doubled in size: roughly 90-120 minutes.
Tip the dough back
out on to the lightly floured surface and knock the air out, then divide into
eight balls (or six if you have a particularly large frying pan). Meanwhile,
heat a non-stick frying pan over a very high heat for five minutes and put the
oven on low. Prepare the melted ghee and any seeds to garnish.
Flatten one of the
balls and prod or roll it into a flat circle, slightly thicker around the edge.
Pick it up by the top to stretch it slightly into a teardrop shape, then put it
in the hot pan. When it starts to bubble, turn it over and cook until the other
side is browned in patches. Turn it back over and cook until there are no
doughy bits remaining.
Brush with melted
ghee and sprinkle with seeds, if using, and put in the oven to keep warm while
you make the other breads.
Naan breads: worth making
at home without a tandoor, or are you better off buying them to go with your
homemade curries? Do you prefer a chapati or a paratha? And does anyone have a
good recipe for a classic stuffed naan: keema, peshwari or even something a
little more unusual
Naan Fact
o. Naan bread typically consists of dry
yeast, all-purpose flour, warm water, sugar, sal ghee and yogurt.
o. Naan is traditionally cooked in a
tandoor, or clay oven.
Source:
http://irrawsistible.com/naan-bread-history-facts/
http://food.ndtv.com/food-drinks/how-to-make-the-perfect-naan-bread-696193
Samosa
History
The SAMOSA probably travelled to India along ancient
trade routes from Central Asia. Small, crisp mince-filled triangles that were
easy to make around the campfire during night halts, then conveniently packed
into saddlebags as snacks for the next day's journey. According to the “The
Oxford Companion to Food” the Indian samosa is merely the best known of an
entire family of stuffed pastries or dumplings popular from Egypt and Zanzibar
to Central Asia and West China. Arab cookery books of the 10th and 13th
Centuries refer to the pastries as sanbusak (the pronunciation still current in
Egypt, Syria, & Lebanon), sanbusaq or sanbusaj, all reflecting the early
medieval form of the Persian word: sanbosag. Claudia Roden (1968) quotes a poem
by Ishaq ibn Ibrahim-al-Mausili (9th Century) praising the sanbusaj.
By the early 14th Century, it was not only a part of
Indian cuisine but also food fit for a king. Amir Khusrao, prolific poet of
Delhi royalty, observed in 1300 that the royal set seemed partial to the
"samosa prepared from meat, ghee, onion and so on". In 1334, the
renowned traveller Ibn Battuta wrote about the sambusak: "minced meat
cooked with almonds, pistachios, onions and spices placed inside a thin envelop
of wheat and deep-fried in ghee". And the samosa obtained a royal stamp
with its inclusion in the Ain-i-Akbari which declared that among dishes cooked
with wheat there is the qutab, "which the people of Hind called the
sanbusa".
The current day samosas are small, crispy, flaky pastries
that are usually deep-fried. They are stuffed with an assortment of fillings
ranging from minced meat with herbs and spices to vegetables such as cauliflower
and potatoes. In Bengal one finds samosas filled with sweetened reduced milk
that go straight from the frying pan to a syrup wash. But whatever the filling,
samosas are a treasured snack---the perfect companion to a cup of chai.
How to make the perfect
Samosa
Stuffing
Samosas come in many forms, but, in a country where
20%-40% of the population is vegetarian, the meat-free version is the most
popular. Potato tends to form the bulk of the filling, usually pre-cooked and
mashed, though Daley sautes raw cubes until “tender but still retaining some
bite”. This keeps all the ingredients separate, but I rather like the contrast
between the fluffiness of the mash and the crisp pastry.
Everyone uses onion in some form (although not always
cooked) and Sodha and Daley stick in some garlic, too. Peas are also popular,
with Simon Hopkinson suggesting that if fresh aren’t in season, “I would prefer
marrowfat peas” to the frozen variety, although they’re too mushily similar to
the potato for my liking. Smaller peas add sweetness, too, as does Daley’s
carrot and Sodha’s beetroot, all of which are a great counterpoint to the spice.
Along with carrot, potato, peas and two sorts of onion,
Daley sticks in some shredded cabbage, which gives his filling a surprising
lightness, as well as a pleasing variety my testers prefer to the stodginess of
Jaffrey’s overwhelmingly potatoey one. Feel free to use whatever ingredients
you have to hand, while aiming for a variety of textures and flavours;
something soft, something crunchy, something sweet and something savoury –
which, in Sodha and Singh’s cases, means cheese.
Sodha uses salty, crumbly feta, and Singh the much
milder, creamier paneer, which feels the more authentic choice, although I’d
recommend salting it first to add flavour. The chef also adds rich, crunchy
cashew nuts, which, though rarely unwelcome, feel like overkill with the
cheese, although if you’d prefer a vegan recipe, they’re an excellent
alternative.
Spicing
However simple you choose to keep your filling, a touch
of spice is non-negotiable. The sweet heat of ginger and chillies, as deployed
by Jaffrey, Daley and Singh works well, as does the fresh aromatic flavour of
the equally popular fresh coriander.
Daley employs the most complex spicing, using mustard
seeds, fenugreek, asafoetida, curry leaves, turmeric and dried red pepper, plus
his mother-in-law’s “secret ingredient”: a special masala used solely for
samosas – “It was with some reluctance and a good deal or persuasion on my part
that she eventually gave me the details.”
It has cinnamon, cloves, cumin and chilli to thank for
its “distinctive scent and flavour”, which my testers can’t quite put their
finger on – what they do know is that they like it. As most of the other
recipes use garam masala, which tends to contain some of the same ingredients,
along with extra chilli and cumin, I don’t think my recipe requires much else,
and certainly not the sugar that Daley and Singh also stir in. A finishing
squeeze of lemon juice, however, rounds things off nicely.
Folding
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Punjabi
Version
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Shaping the samosas is by far the most complicated
element of the whole procedure, although one that is mastered fairly quickly.
Sodha recommends cutting trapeziums and Daley devotes a whole page to his
method, which involves rolling a stack of pastry rounds together and then
heating them to dry them out before use. Two pages may have been better for
slow learners like me, because I find it impossible to separate the rounds
after rolling them together – and, in any case, the whole thing seems
needlessly fiddly when Jaffrey and Singh’s semi-circles, rolled into a cone
shape before stuffing, work so well.
Cooking
Sodha, ever the maverick, bakes her samosas for a
“lighter, less oily” result. Again, it works fine (200C/390F for about 15
minutes, until golden brown), but a baked samosa will never achieve the same
puffy, flaky richness as the deep-fried variety. As with the chicken kiev or
the scotch egg, there really is no substitute for a pan of hot fat and some
strong nerves.
Make sure the oil doesn’t get too hot, though; as Singh
observes, you need to keep the heat medium-low heat otherwise the pastry shell
won’t cook through before the outside burns.
Recipe :
For the pastry
130g plain flour
¼ tsp salt
½ tsp nigella seeds (optional)
2 tbsp neutral oil, plus extra to grease
For the masala
10g cinnamon sticks
1 tsp cloves
1½ tsp cumin seeds
3-4 small dried red chillies
For the filling
1 medium potato, about 175g
1 tbsp finely grated ginger
1 small green chilli, finely chopped
1 tbsp neutral oil
½ onion, finely chopped
½ carrot, finely chopped
50g green cabbage, cored and finely shredded
40g peas
50g paneer, cut into small dice
Fine salt
Juice of ½ lemon
Small bunch of coriander, finely chopped
Neutral oil, to deep fry
To make the pastry, put the flour in a large bowl and
whisk in the salt and nigella seeds, if using. Add the oil and rub in with your
fingers, then gradually add just enough cold water to bring it together into a
stiff dough – about 50ml should do it. Knead for about five minutes until
smooth, then lightly oil, cover and set aside to rest.
Put the potato, skin on, into a small pan, cover with
cold, well-salted water, bring to the boil, then simmer until tender. Drain and
mash.
Meanwhile, toast the ingredients for the masala together
in a hot pan until fragrant, then allow to cool and grind until you have a
smooth powder. Mash the ginger and chilli together into a paste.
Heat the oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat and
fry the onion until soft and golden, then stir in the carrot, turn down the
heat a little and cook for five minutes, then stir in the cabbage and cook
until beginning to soften. Turn up the heat to medium-high and salt the paneer
well, then add to the pan along with the peas. Cook for a couple of minutes,
then stir in the ginger chilli paste and half a teaspoon of the masala and cook
for another couple of minutes, stirring. Stir in the potato and lemon juice and
season to taste.
Divide the pastry into 12 balls of about 18g each for
small samosas, or 6 balls of about 35g for slightly larger ones, and put all
but one under a damp cloth. Roll the ball out on a lightly greased surface to a
circle about 18cm (10cm for small) in diameter and cut in half. Pick up one
half, wet the round edge with water and form into a cone shape, overlapping the
wet edge and pressing together to seal.
Stir the coriander into the mixture, then fill the cones.
Wet the top edge, pinch to close and fold over any remaining flap of pastry.
Repeat with the remaining pastry, making sure each samosa is well sealed.
Heat a deep frying pan with about 4cm of oil to about
175C/347F, or use a fryer. When the oil has come to temperature add a batch of
samosas (don’t overcrowd the pan) and cook until golden brown, turning as
necessary. Scoop on to paper towels and serve immediately.
Reference :
http://www.samosa-connection.com/origin.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2015/nov/26/how-to-make-the-perfect-samosas
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