An Indian feast

I had some friends round for lunch today (R calls us “The Ladies that Lunch” – this seems to be an excuse for he and J to go and hide rather than be sociable as they were both invited). Gifts were brought for me – the lily of the valley has been planted and quite a few of the chocolates consumed.

The food was vegetarian (again – everyone I know seems to be a veggie these days) – we had poppadums with mango chutney and cucumber raita, potato and cauliflower katsu curry, tarka dhal, stuffed peppers with spiced yellow rice, onion bhajis and vegetable pakora, plain and garlic flatbreads.  Then strawberries and ice “cream” – I put that in inverted commas because it was vegan, but actually it was very nice.

I was asked for a recipe for my flatbreads – I am ashamed to admit that it is so simple as to be really no recipe at all.  The easiest way is with a breadmaker – put 500g strong bread flour (I think white is best for this), 1 tsp yeast and 1 tsp in the pan and add 320ml cold water.  Put the breadmaker on the “pizza” setting which is just plain dough and on my machine takes 45 minutes.  If you do not have a breadmaker, put all the ingredients into a bowl, mix and then knead for 10 minutes.  Divide the dough into eight pieces and shape into either rounds or ovals about 5mm thick. Take a heavy based non-stick frying pan and heat until quite hot (on a scale of 1 to 10 on my hob it is 7) and put the flatbreads into it two or three at a time.  If you have a decent pan you do not need oil at all, but if yours is a bit worn you can grease it very lightly.  After a minute or so you will see it start to puff up and look cooked at the sides.  Keep lifting it to look at the under side, and when it is light brown, flip it and do the same on the other.  You can drizzle it with garlic oil and chopped coriander for a more authentically naan bread effect.

Then we went for a walk in the park and managed not to get rained on – the weather today has been a bit variable.