Savory country corn bread (tikkar)

8 Tikkar

Ingredients

Quantity Ingredient
- Rajasthani, India
2½ cup Flour, atta; or whole wheat
1 cup Flour, corn
1½ teaspoon Salt
1 small Onions, chopped; finely
1 Ginger, fresh; 1\", peeled and finely chopped
2 larges Garlic cloves, crushed
1 Jalapeno pepper; seeded & finely chopped
1 medium Tomatoes; finely chopped
2 tablespoons Cilantro, fresh
1½ cup Water; lukewarm
8 tablespoons Oil; or ghee

Directions

FLATBREADS & FLAVORS; ALFORD

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 30 minutes.

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 ¼" 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 ½ 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 ¼" 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@... on May 26, 99

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