Based on your interests, info that some of you have sent me and my quest to come up with a gluten-free Naan recipe that is close to the original, I tried quite a few combinations of gluten-free flours. My goal was to come up with a gluten-free naan recipe that was soft, fluffy, chewy and of course, tasty. Since there was lot of experimentation in store for me, I had to find a gluten-free store in Seattle that sold the flours in bulk. For people who live in Seattle, the store is located in Mountlake and is called Manna Mills. It is a fascinating store as it has al kinds of gluten-free flours available in bulk and also they have ready made gluten-free products. Few weeks ago, got all kinds of gluten-free flours that I didn’t know existed – Quinoa, Amaranth, Buckwheat, Oat, Rice, Brown Rice, Garfava, Potato Starch Flour (different from Potato Flour), Tapioca flour and numerous others.
As indicated in my last post, this weekend I tried making the gluten-free Naan and unfortunately, it did not work out. I tried two different flour combinations – one from a gluten-free website and one a combination that I came up with. The flour did rise a little bit because of the yeast but when I started making the naan, it was hard to handle it as it kept falling apart. So I used a wooden board with dustings of flour to shape it and then I let it bake in the oven at 500F. The regular naan takes approximately 3-5 minutes to bake. But the gluten-free version had to be baked for almost 8-10 minutes. In the end it did not taste anything like naan. In face, it tasted weird! So it is back to the drawing board er…kitchen and hopefully I can come up with a good combination of flour(s) and post the recipe in the future. If any of you readers are gluten-free flour experts, could you please suggest some flour combinations that can used? Either send me an email or leave me a comment. I would love to hear from you.
I had two goals last week – make Naan, one using all-purpose flour (traditional way) and the other using gluten-free flours. So I perused through my cookbook collection and various food blogs. Based on my experiments and the knowledge that I gained, I think I hit upon a good recipe. Let me give you a few details about my failed experiements to make good Naan. I followed the recipe as outlined in one of the cookbooks. It said to use self-rising flour. Since I did not have self-rising flour handy, I made my own based on recommendations on the web.The Naan came out tasting more like a soft biscuit than Naan. Maybe, it is not the cookbook’s fault. The flour did not rise as much as I had expected it to. That could be because of the way I mixed the yeast with the milk and did not give it time to rise. Also, it could be because I created my self-rising flour though making your own self-rising flour is not a big deal..
When I told my friend that I will be posting a cobbler recipe, he said “Wait a minute! That’s not Indian food.” He is right, but, I really like peach cobbler. Besides, donut peaches are in season right now and the produce that we get from the farm has lots of organic peaches and blueberries. So I am posting the recipe that has been modified to include cardamom and cloves and the result is very tasty. If you decide to make it, please let me know you think of it? Should I post non-Indian recipes adapted with Indian spices as long as I promise they will taste as good, if not, better than the original? I would really like to hear from the readers.
Kaju Kuthli (or Katli) or Cashew Cookie is one of my favorite Indian dessert that is made with cashews and sugar that is ground to a paste along with some water and cardamom powder. An edible silver foil is then overlaid on it and then cut into diamond shape. It is one of the easiest dessert to make. But when making this cookie, I did not want to use sugar. So I substituted with deglet dates that are naturally sweet. Also, my daughter loves dates and cashews. So why not make a cookie out of them. Happy to say that I made the cookie since my daughter ate most of the them within two days! I have a hard time cooking for kids in general. When I think she might like something, she does not touch the dish and vice versa. What I found is, with kids, the food has to be real simple and nothing fancy.
In a food processor, combine the dates and cashews and process them till they are they are ground to fine pieces (not a paste). It took me approximately 5-6 minutes.
Take out of the food processor into a bowl and using your hands, knead the mixture till you feel a little oily for approximately a minute or two. Make a ball, flatten it with your hands and place between two sheets of parchment paper.
Then using a rolling pin, roll till you have attained the desired thickness based on your preference. Cut into various shapes using cookie cutters.