Savory Country Corn Bread (tikkar)

INGREDIENTS

INSTRUCTIONS

99    
Combine flours and salt in bowl and mix well.  Add onion, ginger,
garlic, jalapeno, tomato, and cilantro and mix well.  Make well in
center and pour in water, stirring it into flour.  The amount of  water
you will need will vary.  Add more if necessary to form  kneadable
dough. If dough is too sticky, add a little more atta  flour. Turn
dough out onto lightly floured surface and knead 4-5  minutes. Wash,
dry, and lightly oil bowl. Return dough to bowl and  cover with
plastic. Let rest  Divide dough into 1 piece per tikkar.  On generously
floured surface,  flatten each piece into disk, flouring both sides.
Cover most disks  with plastic wrap (do not stack) and set aside.  On
lightly floured  surface with rolling pin, roll out two disks to
circles 7" in  diameter and 1/4" thick. To cook, heat heavy skillet
over medium  heat. (Two skillets are preferable, since breads take 15
minutes each  to cook.) Transfer a rolled-out bread to skillet.  Cook 7
minutes,  until bottom is covered with brown speckles. Turn and cook
other side  for same length of time. Brush 1 ts oil or ghee on top of
bread. Turn  bread over and fry 1 minute, until golden brown. Brush
other side  with oil or ghee, flip, and fry 1 more minute. Transfer
bread to  plate.  If possible, serve at once, while you continue to
make the  other breads.  Alternatively, wrap in cloth to keep warm.
Authors' comments: This thick, savory flatbread is characteristic of
many breads in the western part of India.  The dough is laden with
chiles, fresh cilantro, ginger, onion, and tomato, and it comes out
(as you might expect) like a wonderfully savory meal in itself.  It
doesn't rise or puff up. Instead, just as the end of cooking, ghee or
oil is brushed on both sides of bread, so that it ends up tasting up
almost as if it had been fried. There is nothing fine or delicate
about this bread; it is simply very good.  Sylvia's comments: I was
DYING to make something from this book, and  the snow was too deep to
get into town, so I made some substitutions.  I used regular
all-purpose flour instead of atta flour, and ground  ginger and
coriander instead of fresh ginger and cilantro.  I skipped  the
jalapeno, of course! but substituted chili paste.  And since I  prefer
it, I sauteed the onions in a little oil before mixing them  in. I
mixed and kneaded it in my breadmaker and added almost 1/2 c  extra
flour to get it to a rollable consistency, then let it rest in  the
breadmaker. The tomatoes did disappear, I'll use more next time.
Cooking it was <ahem> interesting. I managed to not see the part  about
rolling it 1/4" thick and rolled the first one out THIN.  It  burned
long before 7 minutes in a dry skillet. So I added a thin  layer of
oil, let it heat, and cooked the next thin one 5 minutes in  the oil --
DELICIOUS! Even my tomato-hating, onion-hating,  spicy-hating kids
loved it.  As I rolled and cooked, I eventually  noticed it was
supposed to be thicker and did so, but I could NOT  find a heat that
would cook the thick dough in my good cast-iron  skillet without
burning them!  Low, it didn't cook; medium, it  burned; and I couldn't
find a medium-low that would logically have  cooked it without burning.
(danged gas stove!)  Anyway, I'll stick  with rolling 'em thin and
cooking 'em 4-5 minutes, it's an authentic  Indian cooking style even
if not for this particular bread.  Tyops courtesy of Sylvia Steiger,
SylviaRN (at) CompuServe (dot) com  Posted to MM-Recipes Digest V4 #14
by tobbs@earthlink.net on May 26,

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Nutrition (calculated from recipe ingredients)
----------------------------------------------
Calories: 59
Calories From Fat: 5
Total Fat: <1g
Cholesterol: 0mg
Sodium: 457.7mg
Potassium: 87.9mg
Carbohydrates: 12.5g
Fiber: 1.3g
Sugar: <1g
Protein: 1.6g