Hi, Ray here again.
I spotted a recipe for Peshwari Naan when I was looking through the great recipes on the Curry Focus website. Peshwari naan is a bit favourite with my girlfriend so making the naan would be a big hit all round.
As is the case with most bread recipes, a lot of rolling and kneading is involved along with experimentation.
I made up the dough and left it for over an hour rather than the 20 minutes in the recipe.
Before starting the rolling and folding, I cut up the raisins and crushed the nuts with my rolling pin.
Then I just followed the recipe and rolled, folded and rolled again.
The oven was already heated up by the time that I’d finished the final rolling of the first naan
The first naan did not seem fully cooked after 10 minutes and I eventually let it bake for 16 minutes before taking it out of the oven. It was awful – overcooked, crunchy, too thick and very dry. I broke the naan up and threw it into the yard where it was much appreciated by the birds.
I made the second naan thinner and popped it into the oven. I only baked it for 12 minutes this time. The naan was thinner than the first and tasted a bit better but was still dry and crunchy at the edges. The birds enjoyed a second serving.
The third naan was rolled just as thin as the second and was baked for 10 minutes. I served this naan up with dinner. This eas the best naan so far but I still did not rate it very highly. Once again, it was too dry.
The fourth naan cooked whilst we were having dinner and was pulled from the oven after 10 minutes. I did everything the same for the fourth naan as for the third but it did not taste as good. Who knows why?
The dinner guests had widely opposing views about the naan. One person thought that it was great whereas another person just loathed it and would only try one mouthful.
The overall consensus was that there should be more raisins and less nuts. And the naan was much too dry – perhaps more oil on the naan would make it more moist.
The scores for the naan had the widest range that I’d received for one of the Curry Focus recipes, going from an excellent 7.5 down to a bad 4. The naan averaged a score of 5.5 out of 10 – not very good. There were no spices in the naan so there was no spice/heat rating.
I will try out a pashwari naan recipe again in the future because it’s just too good a dish to ignore. And I will roll the dough out even thinner, use more raisins, with less nuts, and be more liberal with the oil.
Let me know if you have any ideas on how this recipe can be improved.