Naan Bread With An Indian Curry
Naan (or Nan) is a flatbread that can be eaten with most curries. It is a leavened bread, which means that it rises using yeast.
The Moguls brought naan bread to India hundreds of years ago (the Moguls came from Persia, now called Iran, and naan is the Persian word for bread).
Naan is almost a compulsory component of an Indian meal. Naan is usually eaten with the main curry dish and can be used to scoop up the curry (instead of using knives and forks).
The main ingredients in naan are flour, water, yogurt and yeast (a substitute such as baking powder is sometimes used instead of yeast).
You make naan by first making a dough with the flour, water and yeast. Then you add any other ingredients that you want. Then you roll out the naan and, finally, you bake the naan in an oven (traditionally, tandoor ovens are used but western style ovens make naan just as well as tandoor ovens).
Making naan is a relatively lengthy process because you have wait while the yeast makes the dough rise. This isn’t hard to do because you just mix the ingredients together and then put them in a warm place for a few hours to let the yeast make the dough rise. You can batch up making naans and freeze the excess naan so you can warm them up and eat them at a later date (all you need to do is make sure that the naans are individually wrapped with clear film, or greaeproof paper, so you can easily separate the naans that you want without having to pull them apart from a pile of naans that have frozen together).
There are lots of different types of naan that you can make and the most popular ones are plain, garlic, keema (naan with minced lamb) and peshwari (naan with nuts and raisins).
There are some recipes for making naan on the Curry Focus website. There’s one for plain naan here, one for garlic naan here and one for peshwari naan here. As yet, we don’t have one for keema naan – so if you have one then we’d be delighted to add it to the website – just give us the details on this simple form and we’ll share the recipe with the world.
Why not have a naan with the next curry that you have? They really are simple to make and are delicious.
