[Warning: This will be a pic-heavy post]
This quarter, I clocked in some serious time with my cast iron skillet. With cooking, sometimes the joy comes from making delicious food out of seemingly incompatible ingredients. At other times, it’s knowing that a certain fruit or veggie is in season. This time, it’s using a pot. What can I say? I’m a simple girl.
Socca
Post-lament on my flatbread failures, I checked the back of the brand I was using, saw garbanzo (aka, chickpea) flour as the first ingredient and got to Googling. To my surprise there was an entire world—from Nice, France to Uruguay—eating something called socca or farinata. The recipe was a win from every angle I could think of: simple, forgiving, gluten-free, protein-rich, cast iron pan friendly. Check, check, check.
The flour blend gave me a delicious, slightly chewy socca. Then I decided to buy and use pure chickpea flour (as the original recipe calls for). That’s when it all went to hell in a hand basket. My socca was lumpy and the underside would brown while the top stayed creamy. I finally realized that chickpea flour required a different treatment than the flour blend I’d tagged above. This time, I let the batter rest for awhile, I used actual measurements (cant wing everything😆) —and behold, my socca came out looking like all the pretty pictures on the Internet!
My Recipe
1 cup chickpea flour. Make sure to buy finely ground, not coarsely ground.
1 cup warm water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground pepper – optional
1/4 teaspoon garlic – optional
1/4 teaspoon onion powder – optional
1.5 tablespoons olive oil
Whisk together. Let the batter rest for 30 minutes to an hour or even overnight. While the batter rests, turn your oven on to 450 degrees Fahrenheit and let the cast iron pan sit in there for 30 minutes. At the 25 minutes minute mark, turn your oven to Broil. At 30 minutes, pull out the cast iron pan with oven safe mitts and pour in enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan. Tilt the pan to coat the sides as well. Pour the batter in. It will sizzle and the batter will pull away from the sides almost immediately. Bake until an inserted knife comes out clean.
Alternately, you turn your oven back to 450 for the cooking stage. After the knife insert comes out clean, you can turn the dial to Broil to get the top nice and brown. Cut into slices and enjoy! I’ve had it with hummus and chimichurri but my favorite way is to sprinkle a generous helping of za’atar on it.
Brown Stew ‘Chicken’
Once I realized that this was a dump, stir and walk away kinda dish, I made it three times in the space of a month using this recipe. The first time I used only seitan. Then, a mix of seitan and Beyond Burger Italian Sausage the second time. The third time, I made my own “meat”, a mix of smashed chickpeas and kidney beans, seasoned and held together by oat and millet flours.
Strawberry Crisp
Ah early summer; how I’ve waited for you! I was determined not to miss the fruit season this year. I even bought my basket around Easter in happy anticipation.
Fun fact: I didn’t like cooked fruit until 2015 when my roommate’s apple crisp made me a reluctant convert. That means that until 2015, I thought ALL pies were nasty. Except for pecan but I rarely ate that. I’m not ashamed to admit that I would try to negotiate with someone to give me their crust in exchange for my filling.
