Bizarre cookery experiment

I'm a bit of an armchair enthusiast of Indian food, as is the boss and some time ago as a have-a-go-at-anything-once cook (I'm certainly not a chef!) I started making my own curries from scratch, trying to get as close as possible to the taste of the takeaway (so nothing like traditional domestic Indian cuisine).

Armed with a copy of "The Curry Secret", the curries are good, rice is good but the one thing that has been lacking from the home curry experience has been the naan bread - after much experimenting with various recipes and tinkering with them I'd got the taste near enough right, but it was lacking a bit of je ne sais quoi.

A few months ago, I stumbled across this site and noted with some amusement that the author had an idea for a tandoor substitute. (He also adds daft comments to most of his recipes - Mrs Beeton would no doubt be revolving in her grave at the informal style and non-standard methods & ingredients employed)

Traditionally, nan breads are cooked in a Tandori oven which is a clay oven shaped a bit like a flower pot.

I got mine from John Lewis for a fiver. Not surprisingly mine is shaped a lot like a flower pot and uses no electricity whatsoever. (my oven does though.)

You guessed it - he's using a terracotta flower pot as his tandoor - one cross-border trip to Berwick Garden Centre later and an experimental tandoor Mk I was procured for the sum of £2.80.

The dough was mixed up in the traditional japanese breadmaker and the experiment was a moderate success in as much as the bread cooked as expected, although the texture was all wrong. A subsequent attempt using a higher oven temperature than Madge & Geoffrey suggested yielded texturally better naans - the tandoor seems a totally ridiculous idea but it appears to work very well in my limited experiment.

So I have now acquired a "tandoor" (the Mk II - £4.30 from Berwick Garden Centre) that is as large as will reasonably fit into the oven here at the Papershop which will be used in anger for the first time tomorrow evening.

The Mk I has now been retired gracefully to the garden for it's normally recognised use.

For the record the dough recipe currently in use is as follows (in metric only I'm afraid) - makes 2 large naans (or one mega monster naan):

• 250g strong white flour
• ½ tsp dried yeast
• ½ tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp sugar
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 tbsp natural yoghurt
• 1 tsp kalonji (black onion) seed
• 100ml water