Decoding the original biskoot - naan khatai, an Eid special

Ma'amoul shortbread cookies are stuffed with date paste or chopped walnuts and dusted with powdered sugar. (Photo: Quin Engle via Unsplash)

It’s a time-honoured tradition at the Khan household to make the buttery and crumbly naan khatai for Eid every year. Preparations start well in advance, with shopping for dry fruits and good quality ghee for the cookies.

“Our job as kids was to roll the dough between the palms of our hands to form a ball and then press down to flatten slightly. Using a sharp knife, my nani would then make a cross on top of the ball and insert an almond in the centre to decorate it. We would then march to the bakery in the locality to have them baked. Of course, now we bake them at home. The melt-in-the-mouth naan khatai used to be the perfect ‘Eid ka nashta’ at home,” remembers Asiya Khan who has been baking these blonde shortbread biscuits for the last 30 years.

A Dutch - Parsi collaboration 

The history of naan khatai is just as interesting as the biscuit itself.

“Towards the end of the 16th century, a couple of Dutch dudes set up a bakery in Surat to cater to the needs of the local Dutch populace. When the Dutch were leaving India, the owners handed over the bakery to a very enterprising employee, a Parsi gentleman, Faramji Pestonji Dotivala. Since the bread was made with palm toddy for fermentation, it didn't find favour with the local Indians. In order to save his bakery, Dotivala started converting the stale bread into dried, crisp biscuits for dipping in tea. This became so popular that he started drying the bread before selling it. Later, the dried version came to be known as the 'Irani Biscuit'. This ingenuity gradually morphed into the sugary cookie it is today, and acquired the name naan khatai – which literally translates into ‘bread biscuit’ (naan is the Mughlai word for bread, and khatai is the Afghan word for biscuit),” explains chef and restaurateur Mohit Balachandran.

The golden shortbread biscuit travelled from Surat to Bombay (now Mumbai), then further afield into Pakistan and across the rest of the subcontinent and beyond, to become a popular everyday snack. It’s also an Eid essential and the perfect sweet treat to share and send across to friends and family.

“Naan khatai is a celebration of the 'biskoot', generally served at teatime. For Eid they are decked up with almonds or cashew and served to guests who visit throughout the day,” says chef Taj, Indian masterchef of The Sahib Room & Kipling Bar, The St Regis Mumbai.

Khatai variations in the world 

A wide variety of naan khatai cookies are used to usher in Eid celebrations all over the world. In the Levantine region of the Middle East, the incredibly moreish ma’amoul shortbread cookies are stuffed with date paste or chopped walnuts and dusted with powdered sugar - the perfect reward after a month of fasting during Ramadan. The dough is made with wheat flour or semolina (or a combination of the two), then pressed into special moulds, traditionally carved in wood.

Palestinian-Jordanian food blogger Sawsan Abu Farha makes several versions of ma'amoul, some with both semolina and wheat flour in the crust, others with wheat flour alone. She adds mastic, a sun-dried resin from trees, and mahlab, a spice made from the inner kernels of cherry pits, to her dough. “Ma'amoul is usually made a few days before Eid, then stored to be served with Arabic coffee and chocolate to the guests who come during the holiday,” says Farha, who now lives in the United Arab Emirates. “Plates full of it are also exchanged as gifts between neighbors and relatives.”

In Lebanon, Eid celebrations are incomplete without the ghraybeh: a close cousin of the khatai, these butter cookies are made with either pine nuts or almonds and lightly scented with orange blossom water.

In Eygpt, these biscuits are called khak and have a honey-based stuffing.

What the humble naan khatai has in common with other Eid cookies is its rich buttery composition. 

How these cookies came to be associated with Eid is less certain. “Some say the cookies are meant to remind you that though fasting is hard, within it is a sweet reward, exactly like ma'amoul's outer shell is bland but the core is sweet,” reasons Farha.

From the Lebanese ghraybeh to Egyptian khak and Palestinian-Jordanian ma'amoul, the buttery shell of Eid biscuits remains constant but the filling changes. (Photo: Jon Butterworth via Unsplash)

Secret of the best naan khatai

The mark of a good naan khatai, according to chef Taj, is the smooth but slightly cracked top. “This can be achieved by using ghee as opposed to butter in the recipe. You can also add some almond flour for richness,” he says.

Semolina in the batter is also crucial, as it adds crunch to the cookies.

The best naan khatai in India is still made by a silver-bearded genial man in old Delhi’s Chawri Bazaar. A fresh batch takes less than ten minutes to get baked and less than five to disappear!

Naan khatai or nankhatai biscuits on sale in Old Delhi. (Image: Twitter/@hvgoenka)