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Tandoor is a cylindrical clay
oven used in the Punjab region, northern India and
Pakistan in which food is cooked over a hot
charcoal fire. Temperatures in a tandoor can
approach 480°C (900°F). It is common for tandoor
ovens to remain lit for long periods of time to
maintain the high cooking temperature.
The
oldest example of a tandoor was found in the
Harappa and Mohenjo Daro settlements of the
ancient Indus Valley Civilization. In
Sanskrit, the tandoor was referred to as kandu.
The word tandoor comes from the Urdu
words tandoor and tannr; these
derive from the Persion tanoor, which
comes from the Arabic word tannoor, from
which the Turkish word Tandır and the
Azeri word tandir (which has the same
meaning as explained in the article) originate. It
is used for cooking certain types of Indian
and Pakistani food, such as tandoori chicken and
bread varieties like tandoori roti and naan (the
word tandoori is the adjective form) It
is also known as a tonir in Armenian which is a
widely used method of cooking barbeque and lavash
bread.
The tandoor is also known by another
name of 'Bhatti' in India. The Bhatti tribe of the
Thar Desert of Northwestern India and Eastern
Pakistan developed the Bhatti in their desert
abode, and thus it gained the name of Bhatti. It
is thought to have travelled to Central Asia and
the Middle East along with the Gypsies or Roma,
who originated fromamongst the Thar Desert
tribes.
The tandoor is currently a very
important fixture in many Indian/Pakistani
restaurants around the world. Food cooked in
a tandoor retains all the juices and taste inside
and hence is considered very healthy. Many
people have installed a tandoor in their homes for
making bread and kabobs. Some modern
tandorrs use electricity or gas instead of
charcoal. |
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You may think of naan as
the thin, stretchy, slightly oily flatbread served
in Indian restaurants, but we've discovered that
this particular style of bread is just one of a
large family of naan made in India,
Central Asia, the Middle East, and pockets of
Africa. In these regions, the word naan,
also spelled nan, non, nane, or
none, refers to any bread baked in a
tandoor oven.
Made of clay and shaped more
or less like a barrel, tandoors stand
vertically and are usually encased in mud,
concrete, or some other supportive, insulating
material. The fire -- fueled by wood, coal, or gas
-- burns fiercely at the bottom, heating the clay
interior. When the tandoor is very
hot, the cook dampens the heat, and then slaps the
flattened dough against the hot inside walls of
the oven. The hot walls give the bread a firm,
well-browned bottom crust while the top bakes to a
soft tenderness in the hot air circulating in the
oven. When it's done, the cook retrieves it with a
hooked metal rod. It always seems like magic.
Whenever we hear the clap and slap of dough as
it's shaped and then slapped onto the
tandoor wall, we find the rhythm
wonderfully spellbinding. |
