Cooking Naan Breads and Pullas!

My Finnish friend Sirpa wanted us to teach her how to make Indian Naan Bread…so she organized a cooking evening at her place. She had invited another friend of hers – Pahvi and while Harsha was to teach them Naan Bread, they would teach us how to make traditional Finnish Pulla (sweet bread).

Equipped with our atta (wheat flour), rolling pin and pan, off we went to her place. While Harsha rolled out nice round chapatis, we 3 rolled interesting maps!

What I also found interesting was …Sirpa wanted to know how much water and how much flour to use to knead the flour? How much salt and how much oil was added to the flour? And like all Indian women…we didn't have any answer! Its like ‘Andazay sey’. I still think she is not convinced and thinks we are hiding it from her. I understand that she can’t figure how we just do approximations…coz i have the same problem when I am taking a recipe from someone. I want to know the amount of each ingredient including the salt and no one is ever able to tell me that!!

Sirapa made Saag Paneer – she used mozarella cheese - to go with the Chapatis. And it was good!!! I guess if someone had not seen her make it, they would have thought we only made it because she used most of the Indian Spices so that it tasted like proper Indian saag paneer, only not that spicy. And then we all – her family and us – ate the chapatis and saag paneer…finnish style - the saag is buttered on the chapati and then rolled up and eaten!!!

Now it was their turn. In contrast to us, proper measurements (its a different thing that Pahvi was chatting and forgot the count in the middle when measuring the flour) of each ingredient was used.

We made traditional Cinnamon Rolls and Berry Pulla, both of which came out very, very nice.

At times I felt like a small girl…its my turn now to roll the chapati, to cook it, to cut the roll, to fill the berries!!! It was a lot of fun!

At the end of it all, Sirpa wrote out the recipe for us coz she expects us to make it for our friends and family in India.

And that is the challenge – with my cooking skills how to make these in India!