5punk

Weird. I never imagined naans had yeast in, I thought the general idea was that they didn't rise.

bread, or as they like to label it 'hard' or 'strong' flour, flour with a higher gluten content. Always conjures an image of white dust doing reps and talking like arnie. But thats just me.

HereComesPete wrote:bread, or as they like to label it 'hard' or 'strong' flour, flour with a higher gluten content. Always conjures an image of white dust doing reps and talking like arnie. But thats just me.

Hurrah *always keeps more bread flour around than plain*

FatherJack wrote:Weird. I never imagined naans had yeast in, I thought the general idea was that they didn't rise.

Enough to stop flaccid stodginess occuring, not enough to get anything more than a few air pockets.

Cheers. I find cooking so much more interesting when it's about science, rather than as a (what I feel is a rather misconceived) art-form about making things look pretty on a plate.

Not that artful presentation is something to be derided, it's just a talent I know I'll never have.

I'll quite happily got to a rat van, or eat a nasty bab, but I also get a sense of satisfaction from arranging a plate of food which is aesthetically pleasing, I know the customer will just demolish it, but they happily pay a lot of money, and leave a tip, and I think the arty side of it helps with loosening the purse strings. In the end though, you can't polish a turd, its got to taste good, pretty doesn't cut it.

HereComesPete wrote:it's got to taste good, pretty doesn't cut it.

TWSS

There was a south Asian Mela festival up in Newcastle a couple of weeks ago, and there were loads of curry tents there from amazing restaurants. One of them had a big stone oven and was making fresh naans to go with the curries. Best Food Ever.

Also Pete, the Jesmond Takeaway by the Cradlewell does some good curry, especially the saag. Unfortunately, many of the others are the standard lumpsofmeatinsomethicksaucewithnoveg curry which doesn't do it for me at all. Last Days of the Raj in Low Fell (Gateshead) is a good but slightly pricey restaurant.

Thanks lat, I'll probably skip the one by the cradlewell, think I've been before, when I lived in sandyford. Might well venture out to the last days of the raj, like a sit-down in a good establishment from time to time. Thankfully I'm just off chilli road, so there's pretty much everything I could want within a minutes walk. Not good for the waistline!

Very much a first try recipe this:

Lemon Chicken type stuff

Stuff you need:

Lemons
Chicken
cornflour
water
flour
fizzy water
honey


Do This:
Chop chicken into lumps, lob it into a bowl, add the juice of a lemon, then slice that lemon and stick it in there. marinade as long as you can be arsed.

make batter using 4 oz of flour, and enough fizzy water to make a
reasonably thick batter, (whisk the 2 together and wing it) needs a pinch of salt or 2 too.

dip chickeny bits into flour, then into the batter and place them into a vat of hot oil. cook until golden brown and drain on a kitten or something.

for the lemony sauce:

put cornflour and cold water into a pan, mix together well, add honey, lemon juice and bring to a boil stirring constantly. you'll probably need to add sugar and water to get the consistency/sweetness right. little bit of salt is good too.


Notes:
Marinate the chicken for as long as you can, it'll help the lemonyness.
The sauce probably needs to be more yellow, but i didn't have anything to hand to make it so.

To up lemony goodness, a nutmeg grater for zesting into the batter mix may help, you'll have to be patient though, it will clog a lot. Also you could use lemon oil for the frying, but that's expensive compared to olive/vegetable oil. Also you could try a bit of plastic lemon juice into the mix, it's useful for being a concentrate, but don't get it confused with bathroom cleaner


For the yellow, food dye? Can't think of a natural yellow that wouldn't mask the lemon except a miniscule amount of saffron, but that's bloody expensive.

Ghee! That even turns my worktop yellow through a sheet of aluminium and I've got to bleach the bastard stuff off.

How come you use fizzy water for the batter? Seems like an excellent idea, I was curious as to where it came from

fabyak wrote:How come you use fizzy water for the batter? Seems like an excellent idea, I was curious as to where it came from

Well, beer batter is good and light, but I didn't want that kind of flavour.

so fizzy water seemed like it'd work.

ahhhhhhhhh, I like your thinking!

Thinking about it, I can't imagine it's not a common/standard thing. but whatever, seemed to work.

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:Thinking about it, I can't imagine it's not a common/standard thing. but whatever, seemed to work.

It is a common thing for light airy batters like tempura

I bring forth the epic geekpizza recipe.

Need:
1 Frozen Pizza from nearest supermarket
1 Oven

Do:
Put in oven for 15 minutes. Eat.

You fail. I did home-made pizza the other day with goat's cheese, olives and butternut squash. Needed bacons, but I was feeding a vegetarian too. Can't remember the dough recipe off the top of my head, but it was dead easy.

Don't -

do a kv, forget it's there and create some small black disk of incredible density and heat/melt a pa/smoke a house out/live on super noodles and dr pepper.