The Weekend Tandoorist

Fun with the tandoor on a rainy Sunday. Fancy a little snack on a rainy Sunday? The tandoor is your friend. Slightly more work than microwave dinners, but who can beat the tandoor when it comes to crispy roasted meats.

Let's start by making some naans. I have yet to make one naan I can proudly call Perfect, so I'll just show you how it works with no pretention whatsoever that these are better than your own favorite naans. In the giant bowl of a kitchen mixer goes the yogurt.

... then two whole eggs ...

and a little milk.

Mix and crumble the live yeast, then add a tiny bit of sugar to help the yeast culture start off.

While you call Captain Hook to borrow the secret behind his trademark handshake, leave the mixture at room temperature to give the yeasts a headstart.

Now add the flour, here a mixture of homemade wholewheat flour and plain bread flour. Mix in a little salt.

Let Hook loose on the dough for a couple minutes. More than mixing the liquids with the flour, you need to stretch the dough to create strong gluten strands that will make a nice, elastic bread. We are not baking a cake here. Cover and leave at room temperature to leaven for 2 or 3 hours.

Meanwhile, let's prepare the bolti kebab according to a recipe sent by an Punjabi reader - it was his Dad's favorite recipe. Slice the leg of lamb to make 2 inches / 5cm cubes.

Remove the white patches of fat.

The marinade will be prepared with cinammon, ginger, lemon, cardamom, chillies, garlic, oil and yogurt.

Remove the seeds from the cardamom pods, stem and deseed the dried chilies. Peel and remove the green inside the garlic cloves, peel the ginger. Locked and loaded, ready to roll.

Grind the dry spices to a fine powder. You can use a mortar and pestle, but this is a Sunday and I went electric on the spices.

Let the garlic, ginger and lemon join the spices and cover in yogurt...

... then grind again.

Drown the meat in the marinade...

... then cover and leave for a moment to marinate. How long exactly? Well, if you have Indian-style meat, freshly killed and shoesole-hard, I'd leave it about 3 hours. If you are using tender Western-style meat 30 minutes might be all you need. If you marinate the meat too long, it will taste like a piece of pre-chewed brisket, not hugely appealing to most of us.

Back the naans. Flour your working surface, then take a tangerine-sized ball of dough in your hand and stretch it or flatten it using a rolling pin. 'Why can't you just show me?', you will ask. Well, Lord Shiva was on vacation this afternoon and I, unfortunately, had only one pair of hands, both covered in sticky naan dough. No photo.

Gently lay each naan on a very clean floured towel, here one I bought at Ikea. Cover with sesame or poppy or black onion seeds and leave to raise for 20-30 minutes.

Get the tandoor ready - heat it up to the max. While a tandoor certainly is a fancy appliance seldom see in Western kitchen, it is by no means a luxury reserved to oil Sheiks. Here is a picture a reader sent me from his gas-powered tandoor. In Britain such a tandoor might set you back 800 quids or less, hardly the most expensive appliance ever.

Using a glove and infinite precaution, stick the naans onto the tandoor inside walls and pray. They might fall off right away it too dry, or tear in half, lengthwise if you please, if too wet. Or you might need a crowbar to take them off the tandoor. The right balance is quite difficult to attain for the weekend tandoorist.

Readers whose heart would fill with the putrid brew of envy while reading this article will find confort in this picture showing the charred remains of a number of naans who just fell off the tandoor. I can't say that I have made the tandoor my bitch just yet. In the past I managed to turn out some rather fantastic naans, but today only moderate success!

Using the pair of bread seekhs, those long pikes that come with a tandoor, one flat to pry the naan off the walls and the other ending in an L-shaped prick, remove the naans from the oven after about 4 minutes. Many will fall down the beast's throat, but don't worry, the good Lord will recognize its own.

Skewer the meat on the regular seekhs and put something to stop them from falling down, like a potato for instance. I use rotisserie forks instead. Much less messy.

Then plunge the meat into the beast.

Meanwhile, prepare the garnish. Slice an onion and pepper, cut a few limes in half and bring out the onion date chutney. I'll show you how to make that one very soon.

After about 8 minutes, remove from the tandoor, hang from the ceiling and let the fat drip for 5 minutes. Baste in clarified butter or the remaining marinade emulsified with some oil, then tandoorize for 5 more minutes until the edges of the meat cubes start to turn black. Go answer the door to tell the firemen that everything is all right, really, then call the guests to the table.

Finally, here is our quick-fix TV tray.