India feast - Garlic Naan and Spinach Raita recipes

My Indian feast with spinach raita, chicken tandoori and my self baked garlic naan

So, after I a quiet week end with some birthday celebration and a day at the poolside (the weather was awesome), I wasn’t in the mood to write a lot. So you had a wait a bit to find out the continuing of my Indian festival recipes. Well, as I am back, here we go with the second part of the recipe. Today I will put two recipes in one blog post, the Indian bread – naan and the spinach raita (I think Raita is Indian for Yogurt, if I am not wrong). So, here are the recipes for you:

Clear blue sky in Guangzhou

Swimming pool in Guangzhou with the skyline view

Part 1: the naan

Ingredients for the naan:

• 500 gram all-purpose flour
• 150 ml lukewarm milk
• 1 pack of dried yeast
• 2 ½ Tbsp. sugar
• 150 g natural non sweetened yogurt
• 1 egg
• 2 Tbsp. Vegetable oil
• ½ Tsp.. salt

Mix the milk with a spoon of sugar and the dried yeast. Put aside for 10 - 20 minutes and let the yeast get activated. Mix all the ingredients together (strain the flour through a sieve) and work the dough with your hands or in your kitchen machine for at least for five minutes.

Garlic naan bread dough before rising

Cover it up in a bowl and put it aside in a dry and warm place for an hour. The dough should have doubled in size now.

Garlic naan bread dough after rising

Now take the dough out on a work surface on which flour has been sprinkled out. Part the dough in 6 equal pieces. Take a rolling pin and roll each piece out very thin before immediately proceeding to flip it in a well-oiled, hot pan. Fry the naan until brown and crispy from both sides (attention, second side needs less time than the first side), if you wait too long it might burn.

Garlic naan in the frying pan

Then use some butter to butter the naan on one side and I like to press some garlic and sprinkle a fingertip of fresh pressed garlic on the buttered side of the naan.

Part 2: The raita
The easier thing to make by far is the raita. Here it goes:

Ingredients:

• Red chili
• 500 g spinach
• 1 Tsp. salt
• 200 ml yogurt
• 1 Tsp. lemon juice
• ½ Tsp. cumin powder
• ½ Tsp. of black roasted sesame powder
• ½ Tsp. sugar
• 2 cloves of garlic

Blanch your fresh spinach, drain it and squeeze out all the excess liquids from it. Put all the ingredients and the spinach in your kitchen blender and blend well so you will get a smooth consistency that looks like in the picture. Put it for a couple of hours in the fridge as it should be eaten cold.

Spinach raita fresh from the fridge