NAAN BREAD WITH GARLIC BUTTER AND CHARRED TANDOORI CHICKEN

Super Easy…

Light fluffy puffed naan breads with that charred finished, painted with a serious raw garlic and herb butter, a wonderful bread for all your Indian dinners, my family loves these breads with clay pot cooked tandoori chicken, recipe below for tandoori chicken.

I like to prove all my dough’s for at least 24 hours in the fridge overnight, this slow proving improves the taste and texture of the breads, but you can prove this bread for 1-2 hours in a warm area of your kitchen, proving draw or laundry room and use on the same day.

Dough 15 minutes / 24hrs proving / 3 minutes cooking each naan (makes 8)

Ingredients 

(makes 8)

450g plain flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp sea salt

150g milk

4g yeast

1 tbsp sugar

2 small eggs

135g Greek yogurt

10 cloves garlic finely chopped

250g butter room temperature 

1 small bunch parsley finely chopped

The dough.

Place the milk in a saucepan and warm, you should be able to drop some milk on the inside of your wrist and it is not hot, take off the heat transfer to a bowl, add the sugar and yeast, leave to one side for 20 minutes so that the yeast can activate, the sugar will feed the yeast and you should see bubbles forming as the yeast activate. 

In a separate bowl whisk the eggs and Greek yogurt together.

Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt to combine, add the wet ingredients, the yogurt egg mixture and the activated yeast milk and bring together to form a dough ball.  Knead with a dough hook for 10 minutes or by hand for 10 minutes.

Grease the bowl and cover, leave to prove for min 1-2 hours at room temperature or in the fridge for 24-48 hours.

If you have proved in the fridge take the dough out and leave to come up to room temperature at least 2 hours before cooking.

Mix the softened butter with the garlic and parsley, place in a bowl by the cooker with a pastry brush ready for painting the cooked naan’s.

To cook the naan’s heat a large skillet hot.

Tear off a tennis ball size of dough, very lightly dust you work top with plain flour and roll out your naan bread to a pound coin thickness, dust off any excess flour, place the naan bread on the skillet and let it cook on the first side for 2 minutes until two thirds cooked and puffed up, flip over and finish cooking for 1 minute on the other side, remove from the skillet and immediately paint with the softened garlic herb butter.  Keep warm and serve immediately.

Tandoori Charred Chicken 

This is so good and is great fun to cook, I love cooking outside, despite the sleet rain and wind at present!  But this is almost as good charred on a hot griddle pan in the kitchen, with the windows open!  After many attempts I have finally married up several inspirational recipes and found this marinade tasted as close to the proper tandoori chicken cooked in a traditional tandoor.  I used my hot coal clay pot to cook the chicken which allowed me to get that all important charred essential layer of flavour on to the chicken to add that authentic tandoor taste, but you can still get that charred flavour from a stove top griddle, the outdoor cooking smoke flavour is the only flavour you be short on.  The flat breads really are worth the effort to make they only take 5 minutes to set the dough up and 3 minutes to cook and are outstandingly fabulous.

I have used kashmiri chilli powder in this recipe, you can find this on Amazon or in good deli stores.  If you want a redder traditional colour like in the Indian restaurants this is achieved by adding a paprika extract known as, paprika oleoresin I was unable to find this, it is used commercially and you can find it in the commercial mix of tandoori masala powders readily available.  I have made my own tandoori masala, recipe below.

MARINADE

5 cardamon pods de-seeded

2 tsp cumin seeds

1/4 tsp cloves

1/2 tsp black peppercorns

2 tsp  coriander seeds

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp turmeric powder

1/4 tsp cinnamon powder

1/4 grated nutmeg

2 tsp kashmiri chilli powder

1 tbsp tandoori masala powder (home made recipe below)

1 lrg tsp salt

2" piece of ginger finely grated

6 garlic cloves finely grated

300g Greek yogurt

1/2 lemon juiced

4 chicken breasts or lamb 

ACCOMPANIMENTS

200ml Greek yogurt

 8 tsps Harissa paste

watercress salad

 1 sliced onion

 1 sliced peppers

2 tbsp fresh chopped coriander 

TANDOORI MASALA POWDER

1 tsp ground ginger, cumin, coriander, paprika, salt, cayenne and turmeric.

Mix together

TANDOORI MASALA MARINADE

In a pestal and mortar or my favourtie a not for coffee grinder, grind the cardamom, cumin, cloves, black peppercorns and coridander seeds, tip into a larage bowl and add the yogurt, cayenne, turmeric, cinnamon, nutmeg, chilli powder, tandoori masala powder, ginger, garlic, salt and lemon juice, mix well into a gorgeous paste and coat the chicken really well.  The longer you can leave this to marinate the deeper the flavour, 30 minutes and you will have a tandoori chicken meal but 5 hours or overnight in the fridge and you will have outstanding tandoori chicken.  Once marinated place the chunks of chicken on your skewers, if using wooden skewers soak them in cold water for 30 minutes prior to use.  If using metal skewers your chicken will cook a little quicker than wooden skewers.

CHICKEN TANDOORI

Fire up your BBQ, coal pot or stove top griddle and to start cook the skewers low down near the coals, or on a really high heat so as to char the chicken, don't turn the skewers until the meat has really sealed and charred on one side then once you have charred both sides lower the heat or pop higher up to finish cooking slowly, allowing the chicken to start resting as it finishes cooking, serve stuffed and rolled up in your naan bread with salad, yogurt and harissa.