PLANTAIN NAAN
Another Flatbread
These are amazing paired with Vegan Butter Chicken. Plantain Naan came about as an evolution of trying to solve several issues.
I make a very nice coconut naan with yeast. It is a recipe I found and adapted, it has yeast; it’s great although I try to avoid yeast in my diet. Furthermore, yeast has been widely unavailable since the COVID lockdown.
So, I have been tinkering with how to make a Naan that is without yeast. There have been many fails.
Plantains to the rescue
Recently, I saw a company that sells plantain wraps. I had no idea that wraps could be made with plantain. I have loved plantain for years and never tried making wraps with them.
Searching the internet provided fruitful, pun intended. There are many simple recipes out there. I encourage you to try, I was pleasantly surprised by the sturdiness and flavour of plantain wraps.
However, I got to thinking….plantains are this sturdy and starchy, perhaps they will make a nice naan bread. They also bind together like gums or gluten so perhaps this will be a recipe with no gums, less ingredients always means easier.
Rearranging my last coconut naan fail and revamping the recipe got me to this.
This recipe was delicious and sturdy. It soaked up butter chicken sauce perfectly and required no binder as plantains held the batter together. Yellow plantains do not work for this recipe, they are too sweet and don’t have the starchy binding properties that cooked green ones do.
I would experiment with adding more and different spice blends to it. It was perfectly neutral but would be lovely with roast garlic or spinach. I’ve added more cumin (1 tsp) and ½ tsp of cardamom as the spices and it was very good.
Plantain Naan
Equipment
- skillet
- two bowls
- blender or food processor
- microwave
- whisk
- flipper
Ingredients
Dry ingredients:
- 1 ½ cup gluten free bread blend, our recipe
- 1 tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp cumin
Plantain tortilla base:
- 1 green plantain
- 1 tsp salt
Wet ingredients:
- 2 Tbsp coconut oil
- 1 ½ cup water
- 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
For frying:
- chopped cilantro
- oil
Instructions
- Score a green plantain with a knife along its long edge. About 3 times.
- Microwave the plantain for 4-6 minutes (depending on your microwave power) – these can be boiled to be cooked
- Plantain will be soft and the peel turning black when it is cooked.
- Cool the plantain.
- While plantain is cooking and cooling, prepare flour, soda and cumin in a large bowl. Whisk to combine.
- Cut cooled plantain into chunks and add it to a food processor with the salt.
- Pulse until it can be blended into a thick dough. Picture shows it’s texture.
- Add 1/2 cup water and oil to food processor and blend until all the chunks are smooth. Add the rest of the water and blend until smooth consistency reached. Stir in the apple cider vinegar.
- Add the plantain mix to the flour and whisk until smooth.
- Heat a skillet on medium heat. Oil the skillet and add chopped cilantro. Scoop about ½ cup of batter onto skillet and level with a spatula to a shape that’s about ¼ -⅜” thick. Add cilantro and oil spray to the uncooked side and allow the first side to cook like a pancake for about 3-5 minutes or golden brown on the bottom.
- Flip to cook the other side. Continue until all the batter is gone and serve.
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