When I lived at home I had several staple recipes I would cook on a regular basis. Ones that were tasty, didn’t take too long to cook (or the ingredients didn’t cost too much money) but which would make me feel a slight sense of achievement that I had made something half decent.
One of these staples was Jamie Oliver’s tikka salmon naan breads (you can find the recipe here). So when we got to the house in Munich we would be housesitting for the month of August and saw that there was already natural yogurt and cucumbers fresh from the garden in the fridge, I knew exactly what to make.
There was only one problem: the supermarket didn’t stock naan breads.
For this recipe (as Jamie himself suggests) I would normally buy pre-made naan breads from the supermarket (I like the garlic and coriander ones for extra flavour). I knew that there were cupboards full of baking ingredients at the house, however, and being a huge baking fan decided I would attempt to bake the first type of bread I’ve ever made.
I scoured the internet for recipes but inevitably ended up on one of my favourites, GoodFood, and found this garlic and coriander naan bread recipe. I got to work kneading the dough and feeling pretty smug about myself. Once I had left the dough to rise (which it didn’t do enough for my liking, probably because the room wasn’t warm enough) I rolled it out into teardrop shapes and pressed crushed garlic into it and sprinkled it with coriander flakes.
Now, I obviously haven’t had as much practise at cooking bread as I would like, because I was totally unprepared for how naan bread is supposed to rise or when it is properly cooked. However, for my first attempt, I thought it wasn’t half bad. Whilst still hot, I brushed it with a little of the tikka paste oil from the salmon pan, which gave it a really nice colour and added taste.
And ta-dah! The finished article. Now, normally I would have cooked the salmon so that it was slightly “crispier” on the outside when cooked in the pan, but as I was using utensils which were unfamiliar to me, the pan I used in the kitchen didn’t give the same effect that it normally would. However, it did mean that the salmon was soft and fleshy and actually really tasty, rather than being overpowered by the curry paste. It also made a big difference that the bread underneath was homemade because the taste was so much more natural than those bought from the store.
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