It’s not out of spite but Suzen and I have some culinary rules of engagement. You probably do, too. We love food and we eat everything, but we have a definite pattern of what we cook at home and what we eat only at restaurants. Home is naturally American plus Mexican, some French and Italian. And when we go out: it’s all those Asian cuisines from the Middle East all the way to Japan, with stops in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Thailand, China and Viet Nam.
Why don’t we do those cuisines at home? It’s being unfamiliar with the ingredients and the techniques. Ever see the recipe for Hot and Sour Soup? It’s intimidating.
Recently, we began to discuss our reluctance. And what it is that we loveabout those restaurants we go back to time and again. We’re going to give those cuisines a chance in our own kitchen. And, we realized, the first step is important and easy. A core component of many Asian meals is bread: pita, naan, kulcha,.. For Indian restaurants, those wonderful breads are the second most ordered item, after the tandoori chicken.
I thought we needed a tandoori oven to create these breads, but our worries were erased by a wonderful article recently by Mark Bittman in his The Minimalist column of The New York Times.
Actually, it started with Suzen looking at me one afternoon and saying, “I’m making grilled bread.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. I smiled.
“Like in an Indian restaurant,” she added.
I kept smiling, knowing there was no way she could succeed. Two hours later she took a first bite and then smiled back at me.
“Eat,” she suggested. If it had been an order, I would have been worried. But the kitchen smelled so wonderfully from the grilled bread she held in her hand, that I happily complied. And then I reached for my own piece.
Now, the truth is this recipe is for Lebanese bread, not Indian. An Indian bread would have used yoghurt or milk or egg. This Lebanese variety is truly a basic bread, but ooh so delicious. Simple and relatively quick to make, this bread can be combined with tapas or salad for a weekend meal. We used our indoor grill on the stovetop and achieved perfect flavor. The bread was brown and black, hot, with soft and crispy spots. It’s a fun eat.
We are now inspired and testing more ideas. We will let you know the results as we work our way across Asia. We’re looking at doing some Indian breads and surprisingly we’ve found recipes that will work in our western kitchens. So, you don’t need a four or five foot vertical tandoori oven to achieve bread paradise. Just flour, water, yeast, some other things, and the patience to let yeast do its miracle thing.
Start with this simple bread and I think you’ll become an instant fan.
Grilled Lebanese Flatbread
Yield: 8 breads
Timing: 1 ½ hours
Ingredients:
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon instant yeast
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- Extra virgin olive oil as needed
- 2 tablespoons za’atar, optional
Preparation:
Whisk together the salt, sugar, yeast and 1 cup warm water in a large bowl. Let the mixture sit until it begins to froth, about 5 minutes, then add the flour and mix until well combined. (If the dough is very dry, add more warm water a tablespoon at a time to moisten it.) Cover and let rise somewhere warm for about an hour.
Meanwhile, prepare a grill. The heat should be medium-high and the rack about 4 inches from the fire. When the dough has puffed up, transfer it to a well-floured surface and knead until soft and silky, 5 to 8 minutes.
Cut the dough into 8 equally size pieces and roll each one out until it’s about 6 inches in diameter. Don’t worry about making these perfectly round, but try to keep them relatively even in thickness. Brush one side of the breads with olive oil and put as many on the grill, oiled side down, as will comfortably fit at one time. While the first side cooks, brush the side facing you with more oil; when the breads begin to brown and puff up, flip them. When the second side is nicely browned, remove from the grill and sprinkle with the za’atar, if you like. Serve immediately.
Source: Mark Bittman in The Minimalist, The New York Times.