Recipe : Home Made Stuffed Naan on a Gas Stove Tandoor

In the run up to Diwali, my husbands mom and maami are beseiged with menu requests from their husbands and visiting children. On Chhoti Diwali, the final consensus was for stuffed naan and paneer ki sabji.

I have to mention here, that my husbands mom and maami cook almost identically to each other without the aid of any written recipes. On a blind taste test it would be almost impossible to identify who cooked what. So its equally difficult to identify whom to attribute a recipe to and hence I will alwasy attribute it to them both.

There are 2 ways to make naan at home. The instant way is to mix maida (plain flour) with a bit of sugar and salt and then make the dough using only soda water. The dough is ready for rolling after resting for 5-10 minutes. You can also rest this dough for a couple of hours if you prefer.

But if you have enough time to rest the dough, you will get tastier naans by mixing maida (plain flour) with a bit of sugar and salt, a teaspoon of ghee or butter, a little cream, a little yoghurt and a bit of yeast. If you do not want to use yeast, you can again just make a dough with soda water. Rest this dough in a warmish place, so it can rise. If using yeast, let it rise for at least 8 hours.

The main equipment you need, to make authentic naan at home is a tandoor. A coal burning tandoor isn't practical for most homes and the electric tandoors take up too much place if you live in an apartment and only use it occassionally. My mom-in-law has an ingenious contraption that fits over a regular gas burner but works like a tandoor. This needs to be preheated before you can start using it, much like how an oven would operate.

This time they decided to stuff the naans with paneer or grated cheese, so there were 2 varieties of stuffed naans that were being rolled out simultaneously.

Mami was working so quickly with her hands, I had to get her to stop and work in extreme slow motion so I could capture the basic steps.

Flatten out a ball of dough.

Drop some stuffing on it.

Draw the edges to the top and crimp shut.

Carefully flatten again, so the stuffing does not pop out.

Roll out the naans.

There are 2 ways of doing the next step. The traditional method would be to lightly moisten the inside of the dome of the tandoor contraption and stick the naan onto that. Giventhat it is burning hot, the easier option is to lightly pre fry the naans on a tawa kept on a low flame.

Then place the pre fried naans on the grill of the tandoor.

Keep turning over every minute or so until done.

Dot lightly with melted butter and serve hot with a bowl of steaming curry/korma like the paneer gravy below.

Edited on 29 Oct 2011 to add:
My friend Michelle from Food, Football and a Baby asked for better quantities, so upon checking, its roughly
1 cup maida (plain flour), salt to taste, sugar about a teaspoon or more if you want it sweeter, cream 1 teaspoon, yoghurt 1 tablespoon, ghee/butter - 1 tsp and enough soda water to make the dough (no other liquid at all). They prefer not to use yeast in general.