Naan

Well I'm back! 

With my brother's recipe for naan. 

It has been a busy month. I am taking a child psychology class as part of my Associates degree and have a "Virtual Child" to take care of. Not quite like those digital pocket pets from the 90's, or the "Baby Think it over Dolls" from health class. Actually I only have to log on to the website once every two weeks or so to "raise" it as we start a new unit, still there are other time consuming parts of the class. It is funny because the other day I had planned to return a call to my bff at Bubba's nap time, but forgot I had to take care of my virtual baby instead. Having a real baby should count for something ;) 

Maybe I could skip the first 14 months of the virtual baby's life since I took care of him the same way I did Bubba. They ask all kinds of hypothetical questions like: Your baby is waking multiple times during the night and has trouble getting back to sleep on his own what do you do? They didn't have a "sit on the floor and hold his hands through the bars of the crib" option. 

I almost forgot! Bubba now goes to sleep alone in his crib, no more hand holding and he is weaned. I give him his nuk (I know, I know nukie at his age? No one went to college with a nuk. He'll give it up soon enough. One step at a time.) anyway, I give him his nuk, hand him his alien blankie he puts his head on my shoulder we rock for a minute or two and I sing Baby on the Moon, put him in bed, say night- night, cover him with a blanket and most of the time that is it! Some nights we repeat it a couple times, but that's ok because I don't spend 1/2 hour to and hour on his floor every nap time or at bed time. 

VICTORY!

In addition we FINALLY finished fixing up the condo, thanks to the best friends in the world who helped paint and tile, and numerous other odd jobs on countless days off, so now we need to take them out for millions of dinners to thank them (and that still probably wouldn't show our appriciation accurately.) This week I met with a rental management company to find a renter so hopefully that will work out soon because we finally found a house we like in Wisconsin! We made an offer but now we are waiting and in the negotiating stage. We offered lower than what they were asking by a bit, but their price was a bit higher than all the other homes in the area due to the super awesome kitchen. If we get it there will be beautiful cooking pictures in future blog posts with all my potential fancy new kitchen appliances.

Now after that brief catch up, Tim's recipe for naan (which actually comes from his favorite Indian cookbook).

Recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking:

Ingredients:

2/3 cup hand hot milk

2 tsp sugar

2 tsp yeast

3 3/4 cups flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

2 tsp (and a bit extra) vegetable oil

2/3 cup plain yoghurt (that's yoghurt, not yogurt; you can really taste the h)

1 egg

Heat the milk add 1 tsp of sugar and the 2 tsp of yeast. Stir and then let sit for 15 min. or so.

Eventually the mixture should froth up, if you have old yeast this may take awhile.

When the yeast mixture's ready, stir the flour salt and baking powder together in a large bowl.

Frothy

Add in the other tsp of sugar, the yeast mixture, the "yoghurt", and the egg.

Stir until the mixture's a doughy consistency then spread some flour on the counter and knead the dough for about 10 min.

(Punching works best)

Rub oil around the inside of a bowl and put the dough in. Cover with plastic wrap and leave it aside for an hour to rise.

Before

After

Knead the dough again and mold it into a roll shape.

Cut the roll into 6-ish, equalish, sized pieces

Roll the pieces into balls

Here's where we break away from the cookbook since we don't have an oven that can reach 1000 degrees. Instead we follow the same style as the Tortilla Recipe.

Start heating a large skillet and roll the balls flat, about a centimeter thick.

When the skillet's Hot (capital H) throw the naan on and it should puff up almost immediately. Cook for  30 seconds to a minute, then flip and cook for 10 to 20 seconds.

Oh yeah, you should probably cook some other stuff too. Patak's Indian sauces are great, and so much simpler than making it from scratch. We put it on some roasted chicken poured it over basmati rice and made some roasted potatoes and carrots on the side.

Bubba liked it all, but naan was his favorite. He does love his bread products!