Tuesday. 15/09/2015. 'Loaded Naans'

This recipe is from 'Good Food' September 2015 issue. Page 46.





















Having used naans as pizza before but more importantly having enjoyed the experience, I saw that new recipe as a must try.

Instead of the traditional tomato sauce spread at the base of a pizza, here we have a combination of curry paste and cashew nut butter. Despite the sound of that mixture sounding rather odd to me, I was pleasantly surprised by the taste of it. Now this little spread is simply the magical ingredient which gives bags of flavour to those loaded naans.

For the toppings, red peppers, red onions, cherry tomatoes and paneer cheese were a delightful combination to which I added cooked breast of chicken pieces.

I never cooked with paneer before however I love that Indian cheese. Any time we order an Indian take away or go to an Indian restaurant, if saag paneer is on the menu, I will have it. I can only recommend anyone to try paneer. It can be bought from an around the corner deli, but nowadays it has reached the supermarket shelves. I was worried that it will not turn up at my doors with my entire delivery yet it did. I am determined to use paneer more often in my cooking a bit like I do with Feta cheese.



This recipe allowed us to eat our first tomatoes harvest of the year. I grew from seeds a variety called 'Bumble Bee', and trained the plants to be suitable for my hanging baskets. Those baskets have been a bountiful joy throughout the summer months. However ripening is slow in our climate, without mentioning that the season has been rather rainy than sunny this year. This variety gives cherry tomatoes which have lovely colours, stripy red & yellow, stripy red & green and stripy orange & pink.







Yep, I do love my fancy tomatoes... When my partner is passionate about growing chillies of different varieties, I am the same but with tomatoes. The essential for us, as kin gardeners, is enjoying the fruit of our labour at some stage on our plates.  Now when our fruits taste delicious, we are in food heaven. Let's brag about my 'Bumble Bee' tomatoes: they taste great, sweet and mellow. They almost melt in your mouth even eaten cold. For they were duly dished out, not only roasted on the top of the naans, but also on the side within a lovely salad.

For the dip, I had a little accident in my planning: the shop bought mango chutney living in our fridge, went truly living in it. It went 'I have decided to grow fury polka dots'. So I jazzed up a home made chutney/sauce/thing ASAP using tomatoes and a couple of chillies from the garden.

 It went like that:
6 tomatoes, halved, 2 cayenne chillies, seeded and chopped, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 1 garlic clove, 1 teaspoon of golden caster sugar and 4 tablespoons of  English wild flowers honey. First I toss the tomatoes, chillies and oil in one bowl. Then I picked my halves of tomatoes to fry them a little. All infused with nice chilli oil, those babies skin crisp up nicely quickly. When they have a lovely crisp skin I put them in a blender along with the oil and the chillies, I add the chopped garlic and the spoonful of sugar then whiz together. I put the lovely red mixture in a pan and let it boil and reduce for about 10-15 minutes. The honey is added five minutes before the end.

Two tablespoons of that concoction went into the Greek yoghurt  to form the 'Dip', while the rest went into a jar to use up. The sauce was used fully up this weekend when we snacked on dough balls for lunch and dipped them into it: Delish'!

The naan recipe was easy to make and follow.  Like you do with a pizza or an omelette, it's easy to get inspired here and play with the recipe a little. It reached a four stars at home which means, it's a definite come back. More than an Autumn one, I feel this dish is perfect for Summer.