Four Cheese Naan with Fresh Cilantro, Crushed & Toasted Cumin Seeds and Garlic

I was watching a Swedish cooking show where a Swedish chef visited an Indian restaurant in NYC. During the program, he made a naan stuffed with cheese, cilantro, cumin and garlic. We never figured out what kind of cheese they used or whether the cumin was whole or ground, but it looked very good and we decided to try making something like it.

I left one ball of dough in the refrigerator overnight and made the one in the photo above this morning. It appears that the naan come out more like naan when you leave the dough to mature overnight, so I have modified the steps taken in making naan accordingly.

To really make naan you need to have a Tandoori Clay Oven. Manjula suggests using a pizza stone. I had neither. The logic is similar to making pizza in that the oven should be as hot as you can make it and the surface that you place the dough on should be ultra-hot. If you have neither of the above like me, all you can do is crank your oven up to maximum heat and then slip the naan on a board, quickly onto the baking hot oven tray.

I have to say that the cilantro was a little disappointing. I would suggest making it without the cilantro and sprinkling some of it on top after it comes out of the oven.

Four Cheese Naan with Fresh Cilantro, Toasted Cumin Seeds and Garlic

Naan - Manjula's Kitchen

Makes 6 Naans

Ingredients

2 Cups AP Flour

5.5 g Dry Yeast

1 Tsp Salt

1 Tsp Sugar

Pinch Baking Soda

2 Tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

2 Heaping Tbsp Yogurt

1/2 Cup Water (or as much as you need)

Filling

Ingredients

1 Cup Fresh Cilantro Chopped

2 Tsp Toasted Cumin Seeds (Grind them a bit)

200g Shredded Cheese (Mozzarella, Cheddar, Samsoe, Emmental)

6 Cloves Garlic Chopped

Step 1: In a big plastic bowl, mix the yeast with 2 Tbsp of lukewarm water, 1 Tsp sugar and 1 Tsp flour and leave until frothy. This will take around 10 minutes.

Step 2: Add some more of the flour, the salt, baking soda and oil and mix it.

Step 3: Add the rest of the flour and mix it until crumbly, and then add as much water as you need to form a smooth dough. I kneaded mine on a lightly floured surface.

Step 4: After coating the ball of dough with more extra virgin olive oil, return it to the bowl and cover with plastic and let it rise for 6 hours. At this point you can knead the dough thoroughly until elastic and smooth and divide it up into 6 portions. Wrap each individual portion in plastic and store inside the cold compartment of your refrigerator.

Next Day:

Step 5: Take out as many balls as you are going to make and let them warm to room temperature.

Step 6: Preheat the oven to 250C or the highest you can make it go. Leave the tray inside the oven. Knead each portion before rolling them out. Kneading will also help them warm-up so you can start when they are still a bit cool to the touch.

Step 7: Flatten the dough out into a circle, sprinkle with cheese, cilantro, cumin and garlic and fold the naan in a similar way to making Chinese Beef Pies. See Manjula's video.

Step 8: Let these balls of dough rest for 5 minutes, and then flatten them with a rolling pin.

Step 8: Place the naan on oven paper on top of a flat board so that you can slide them onto the baking hot oven tray. If you have a pizza stone use it by all means, but I don't have one.

Step 9: Bake for 3-4 minutes. The baking time will depend on your oven and whether you have a pizza stone. It was around 4 minutes for me. The naan is ready when it is still snow white, but has some golden brown patches on top.

Step 10: Brush the naan with butter and sprinkle with some fleur de sel (and fresh cilantro).

Step 11: Let the oven reheat for 5 minutes before putting the next batch inside the oven. You can bake 2-3 in one go depending on the size of your oven.

We had ours with Garam Masala chicken and a salad.

Spicy New Potato & Green Bean Salad (Warm)

I guess this is a standard, but I've revised the basic recipe to suit my own taste buds. I wanted something with a crispy, crunchy texture and bursting with flavor....so here it is:

Ingredients

20 Unpeeled New Red Potatoes (halve the bigger ones)

20 Green Beans (cut into bite size lengths)

Onion (a few very thin slices will do for flavoring)

1 - 2 Big Garlic Cloves (crushed)

2 Tsp Coarse Sweet Paprika Powder

1/2 Lemon (the juice of)

2 Tsp Parsley (chopped)

Rosemary

Parmesan Cheese

3 Tbsps Extra Virgin Olive Oil (you don't have to measure this, but you get the idea)

Chili Powder

Black Pepper

Coarse Sea Salt

Step 1: Preheat oven to 250C.

Step 2: While the oven is heating-up slice the bigger new potatoes into two. The smaller ones can be whole. The whole point of this is to make all your cute little potatoes uniform in size.

Step 3: Coat the potatoes in salt, pepper, rosemary, olive oil, chili powder and coarse sweet paprika. Put the crushed garlic into the casserole dish with the potatoes, and roast them in the oven for 60 minutes or until nice and crisp on the outside.

Step 4: Chop a handful of parsley and slice your onion. Use very little onion as you just want a touch of onion flavor and you don't want it to dominate.

Step 5: When you think your potatoes are almost ready, bring some salted water to boil and parboil your green beans. I put the beans into the water and when the water comes to a boil again, they're ready.

Step 5: Toss the roasted potatoes and green beans together with the rest of the ingredients. Grate some Parmesan cheese into the salad and squeeze some lemon juice.

You'll find that the tang of the lemon juice along with the flavor of roasted garlic, chili, sweet paprika, black pepper, extra virgin olive oil and salt will deliver that nice feeling of 'bursting with flavor' and be a perfect compliment to the crispy skin of the roasted potatoes and the crunchiness of the green beans!

If you have some fresh rucola, you might try garnishing the salad with them.