Flatbread with Dandelion Greens

There are recipes that are old friends. The years go by, and you keep perfecting them (and there's always something to be perfected, isn't there?)

This one is an oldie. The CC got it from a friend's magazine (Seriously! The CC wouldn't be caught dead buying those magazines.)

Over the years, it's been rationalized and made much much more scientific. It's been through the paces more than a few times. More spices have been added and tweaks made but the basic ideas remain the same. You, my good friends, are the beneficiaries of the CC's hard work.

It's an idea as old as time. Bread topped with tasty stuff topped with cheese. If you're thinking "pizza" then that's what it resembles, of course.

What makes it interesting is what the "stuff" is and how the "bread" is constructed.

It's basically a very classic long-fermented dough topped with dark leafy slightly-bitter greens with tomatoes and Indian spices topped with salty feta. A Greek friend mentioned that it very strongly resembles what they call "Arabic Pie".

It's truly a wondrous recipe. So make this one. It takes a little effort but it has a rock-your-world kinda taste. It will certainly rock your party!


Ingredients

Dough

1/4 cup rye flour
2 cups whole wheat flour (sifted)
3/4 cup dark rye flour
1/2 tsp dried yeast
2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups water
cilantro (chopped fine)
rosemary (chopped fine)
1 tbsp ground pepper

Topping

1 large red onion (very finely diced)

3" ginger
5 garlic cloves
2-3 Thai green chillies (or 1 serrano)

1 stick cinnamon
2 tsp whole coriander
1 tsp whole cumin
1 tsp cloves
1/2 tbsp fennel

3-4 cardamom pods

1 cup tomato sauce
6 cups chopped dandelion greens

olive oil
salt

crumbled feta

Recipe

Dough

Just a few notes about commercial yeast. It is built to reproduce fast but that doesn't allow flavor to build so you need to retard it. The standard way is just to stick it in the refrigerator and give it much much longer times to do its thing. This recipe was made last week when Fall made its way. The house was extraordinarily cool which is functionally the same thing as a refrigerator. The CC trudged off to the NYFF while the dough did its thing.

You want a cool long fermentation process not a fast one. Otherwise, the dough which is part of the magic will have no taste. 

You need to prepare this dough early in the day for consumption at night.

In a very roomy glass bowl, add 1/4 cup of rye flour with the dried yeast and mix with about 1/2 cup of luke-warm water. Err on the cooler side. Hot water will definitely kill the yeast. Let it sit for about 20 minutes.

This is an old baker's trick. Rye flour is like crack-cocaine for yeast. They will reproduce and go crazy. It's called a poolish (French) or biga (Italian).

After 20 minutes, the sludge will be all foamy. (If not, your yeast is dead. Discard and try again.)

Add the sifted whole-wheat flour, rye flour, cilantro, rosemary, salt, black pepper. Add water slowly and knead until you get a solid but pliable ball. (This really depends on the weather and humidity. The CC just adds water slowly until he gets it right.)

Cover the bowl tightly and let it sit for at least 8 hours.

After 8 hours, you will notice that the dough is a lot more "flowy". The yeast have eaten away the sugars and left the gluten behind. Deflate the dough.

Form a ball one more time. If it's very wet, you may need to add a little bit more flour.

Cover and let it sit for a 2-3 hours. It will rise a lot faster the second time around.

Topping

Roast the spices in a dry skillet. Make sure they don't burn. Set aside and grind in a clean coffee grinder.

Pound the ginger, green chillies and garlic to a paste. Set aside.

Heat up some olive oil. Fry the onions for about 4 minutes. Add the paste above and fry for a while. Add the tomato sauce. Let it cook for about 6 minutes.

Add the greens with some salt. They will give off a lot of water. Let them cook at a medium-low heat until almost all the water is gone.

Add the ground spices, mix and set aside.

Assembly

Cover a large rectangular 9"x16" pizza tray with aluminum foil. This makes cleanup easy.

Pour some olive oil and spread all over. This ensures that the dough doesn't stick. Deflate the dough gently with your hands. Dump it in the tray, flatten it gently with your fingers so that it assumes the rectangular shape of the tray. The dough will be quite "doughy" so this step is quite easy.

Top with the greens mixture from above. Add crumbled feta on top.

Pre-heat the oven to 450°F.

The CC lets the tray sit near the oven while it pre-heats for about 20-25 minutes. Consider this as the third rising of the dough. (It rises really rapidly.)

Bake for about 14 minutes. (You will need to check because the feta can easily burn.)

Let it rest for about 7 minutes. (Yes, this is important. It's still cooking even though you've pulled it out of the oven.)

Slice and devour!

Pizza

It's a bit surprising that this recipe never made its way to the blog.

The simple explanation is that this is a well-oiled machine that is pre-blogger phase.

This was the most requested (and delivered) recipe in the CC's wild youth. Many pies were made and consumed with suitable libations all around (champagne! martinis!) and much merriment was made with all and sundry for very little cost.

Rewind the clock, and once upon a time, the CC used to be a serious bread person. Natural fermentation, mid-night feedings, the whole nine yards. That's all very wonderful, and mind you, it does lead to spectacular bread, but why bother when the bakery literally a block away can do it for you? (That's New York, my friends!)

This recipe adopts the best of both worlds. Dried yeast (= convenience) but the slow development of flavor that comes from natural fermentation. It works perfectly for parties because you can make it in the morning, and it will be ready in the evening.

Standard dried yeast (saccharomyces cerevisiae) has been bred for exactly one purpose. Fast fermentation.

Live fast, die young.

That's what dried yeast does. Reproduce a lot. Minus the cocaine and the parties. Alas, they also happen to be asexual! Sucks to be them.

The problem with this fast fermentation is while it does make the dough rise quickly, it does not allow it to gain the complexity that it would have if the yeast could chow down on the sugars present in the flour.

The trick is straightforward. Use very little of the dry yeast, and further retard the fermentation process by lowering the temperature. We are undoing what the marketeers want in the interest of taste!

There's a second trick that most ol'-school bakers know. It's called rye flour. Rye flour is the crack-cocaine of the yeast world. They love it (= high sugar content.) They chow down, go nuts and reproduce like crazy.

In this case, the idea is very simple. First make a poolish (slurry of rye flour, yeast, and water.) Let the yeast go completely crazy. Then mix in the regular flour, and stick it in the fridge.

The first two steps are the trick to the amazingness that is this recipe. Do not skip them under any circumstances!

Incidentally, for all you lovers of convenience, this recipe works perfectly well if you skip the retardation process. You will just not get the complexity of taste though.

Thirdly, you need a pizza stone. There's no need to buy a fancy one. Just get some unglazed tiles and stick them in the oven. The reason is very simple. Air has barely any thermal capacity (ability to hold heat.) The oven is filled with air. You need something in there that can hold heat. The ideal objects are things that are impossible to heat (= stone.) They take forever to heat precisely because they have a huge capacity to hold heat.

The CC has the stone permanently in his oven. It works magnificently in holding heat. Everything from mac-n-cheese to braised lamb is helped on its way by the stone.

Fourth, the CC is going to give a caveat. This is a recipe with flour that has a very high "hydration quotient". That means the dough is quite close to being liquid. There's a lot of water in there. Working with dough with a high hydration quotient is quite hard. It requires some experience. The CC has had more than his share of "legendary disasters" with breads that have high HQ's. If you are a newbie, just use less water. You will find it easier and you will have great results anyway (with a completely different pizza texture though!)

Fifth, the CC will not talk about the toppings but he will give a warning. In order to be successful, the toppings have to be reasonably dry. Which means that if you plan to use veggies (onions, peppers, mushrooms), then you must at the very least dry sautée them on a skillet to get the moisture out.

Even a tomato "sauce" must be on the dry side for this to work.

Finally, this is not a Neapolitan pizza. The dough is totally different. In order to be from "Napoli", you need far less hydration and a totally different flour, and a goddamn wood-burning oven (good luck!)

Better to abide by the golden rule: There are many pizzas in the CC's house.

Also, for all you control-freaks, when the dough is this wet, it's near impossible to control the shape. Yes, the pizza will be roughly round, more likely elliptical, or even like the map of Italy. Just enjoy it.

Buon appetito!


Ingredients

Starter

2 tsp yeast
2/3 cup rye flour
4 oz water

Dough

2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp Maldon sea salt
1 2/3 cups white flour
5 oz water

Recipe

Mix all the starter ingredients together to a starter dough. It should be like sludge. Let it sit for at least 30 minutes. At the end of this, it should be bubbling. If not, your yeast are dead. Bail out.

Mix the rest of the stuff. Add water till you have a sticky dough. You can just use a mixing spoon to mix it. It's quite wet and sticky. Kinda like a runny clay. There will be a light sheen on the surface.

Stick it in the fridge till 5 hours before you are ready to eat.

The dough will have ballooned. Deflate it with a ladle. You will notice it has changed in consistency completely. The dough will be a lot more "dough"-like, the stickiness will be "flowy" rather than "clumpy". There should be a strong sheen on the surface, and a great yeasty smell.

(This yeasty smell is why this pizza goes great with champagne. Ahem!)

Pre-heat the oven to 475°F for at least an hour while the dough rises.

Assemble the pizza dough with a lot of flour on a pizza peel. Assemble the toppings as required. Slide the pizza onto the stone (this requires some back-and-forth motion practice.)

The last piece is the hard part. For beginners, the CC recommends corn-meal rather than flour because it helps the sliding part. Also, ignore the toppings initially, get the pie in there and a few minutes later, top the pizza while it is structurally intact.

Bake for 12-13 minutes.

You'll never go out for pizza again!

Fascism attacks Food

The Earth Times reports: Cambodia's 'happy pizza' faces chop in drug crackdown.

Changing times and politics in South-East Asia may finally spell extinction for one of the most famous (or infamous) fusion cuisines enjoyed by backpackers, Cambodia's "happy pizza."Legendary amongst travelers for more than a decade, this hippy's little helper version of pizza is simply the traditional Italian favourite with a Cambodian twist - the rich tomato base comes heavily laced with marijuana.

Although officially illegal for several years, locals have traditionally used marijuana in soups or medicinally. Pioneering travelers crossing the Lao-Cambodian border previously even reported a small garden of the stuff being lovingly tended by customs officials.

But now the Cambodian government's current battle against drugs has given "pizza wars" a whole new meaning.

This week marijuana was claimed as Cambodia's first "total victory" in eliminating a drug from both domestic and export markets by Interior Ministry anti-drug chief, Police General Lou Ramin.

For most adventurous tourists, however, "happy pizza" provided no more than a great travel yarn, insists one of the country's dwindling chefs of Cambodia's quasi-clandestine classic, speaking on condition of anonymity.

On his menu, it costs as little as 3 dollars for a small pizza of happiness.

But he agrees that life as a purveyor of happy pizza is becoming increasingly precarious and expensive.

"It is much more expensive to make now because of the ingredients," he says. "The special ingredient costs much more now, but our biggest problem is that tourists do not ask for it anymore because they are afraid it is illegal."

"We still make the happy pizza if the tourists ask directly, but we put less special ingredient now because we don't want any problems with the police if they get crazy."

So how long can the marijuana pizza last out the law?

"The government goal is that this drug does not exist any more in Cambodia," says Police General Lou Ramin. "We will only be satisfied when it is not available at all."

The CC is not a Toker™ but something about this fascistic Brave New World bums him out.

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

Pepe's (in New Haven)

The original "New Haven" pizza with a coal-fired oven!

The CC (and his friends) had a clam pizza, and the crust is absolutely divine. For once, reality lives up to the hype.

Better believe it!

Clam Pizza

Ever since spending his waking hours in Connecticut, the CC finds himself addicted to clam pizza?

"Where have you been all my life?"

Is the CC turning into an East-coaster? (Apologies to all of you on the wrong coast!)

Comments, please!