Flatbread with Mustard Greens

This is one of those "fusion" recipes that a friend of CC's found in some magazine more than a few years ago.

The results of years of tinkering are presented for your collective delectation.

Ingredients

Topping

3" ginger
5 garlic cloves
1 large serrano

1 stick cinnamon
2 tsp whole coriander
1 tbsp whole cumin
1 tbsp ground cloves
1/2 tbsp whole peppercorns

5 shallots (or 1 large red onion, finely diced)
4 tomatoes (finely diced)
2 1/2 cups chopped mustard greens

crumbled feta

Dough

1/4 cup rye flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups white flour
1 tsp dried yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups water
minced cilantro (or minced mint leaves)
ground pepper

Recipe

First up, the mise-en-scène.

Diced Onions
Chopped cilantro
Diced tomatoes
Chopped mustard greens
Crumbled feta

Ginger-garlic-green-chilli paste
The ginger-garlic-green chilli paste was just ground together in a food processor.

The poolish
This is a critical part of good bread. Mix together, the yeast, the rye flour, and just enough water to make a paste. Let it sit for 30 mins.

Rye flour is like crack cocaine for yeast (the science awaits a future post.) They are going to reproduce like crazy. This is an old baker's trick, and a very good one, the CC may add.


Dough
Then, we mix together the various flours along with salt, lots of ground pepper (look at the picture closely!), and the chopped cilantro to make a dough.

Feel free to change the proportion of wheat to white flour. Just remember, you will need a longer rise for whole wheat flour.

The dough needs to rise for at least 2 hours.

Dry roasting the spices
This is a critical component of using Indian spices. You need to dry roast them. The idea is simple -- roast them till they smell "good". Start with the bigger pieces and work your way down to the smallest. In this recipe, that would be cumin (not shown in the above picture.)

Fry the onions at a medium-low heat. The goal is to soften them not to caramelize them.

This is what the onions will look like.

Add the ginger-garlic-green-chilli paste, and fry for a bit.

This would be the end result.

Add the homemade tomato paste, and fry for a bit.

Then, in go the tomatoes. Do not turn up the heat. Let them reduce at the same medium-low temperature.

Add the ground spices.

You can see the color darken from both the tomato reduction, and the masses of brown spices. This takes a while. Do not attempt to hurry the process.

In go the mustard greens.

They will wilt exceedingly quickly in the heat. This picture was taken barely 30 seconds after the previous one.

The Finished Topping
Roll out the dough with a rolling pin, and top it with the topping, followed by the crumbled feta.

Bake this in an oven at 450F for 8-12 minutes. (You will need to check when it's done.)

The Final Product