Happy Accidents: Spelt Skillet Bread and Two Market Dips

Maybe it was making salads with Milton’s Paradise Lost in mind, but this week we found ourselves thinking of the felix culpa—a propitious mistake or happy accident. The history of food is filled with fortunate errors.  We often wonder about the process by which, for example, various kinds of decay were recognized as producing delicious and long-lasting results, like wine, vinegar, and cheese.  The trick has always been figuring out how to repeat what originally happened by accident so it happens in a controlled and predictable way.  There are also wonderful stories, often of dubious provenance, about the circumstances that led to the discovery of fortuitous combinations of ingredients—a general’s chef whipping up an inspired veal dish during a military campaign, a prostitute cobbling together a pasta sauce from the ingredients in her pantry, or a hotelier figuring out how to feed a crowd with lettuce, stale bread, anchovies, an egg, and some parmesan.  Whatever the truth of the many stories about how certain foodstuffs or recipes came about, most cooks find themselves improvising with what’s on hand and sometimes stumbling upon a winning combination of ingredients.

This week, we are sharing the happy accident of a skillet bread that was supposed to be a pita, as well as two dips to go with it, one a fresh take on eggplant from Marcella Hazan and the other the fruit of memory and the market.

Spelt Skillet Breads

This will make about 6-8 filling skillet breads.

These began with a recipe from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking book for Spelt Pitas.  But we first made it at a time when we were also reading Jim Lahey’s My Bread, which pioneered a no-knead method and suggests baking breads in a preheated, covered casserole.   We took the King Arthur recipe, and tried a twist on the Lahey method, cooking the breads in a covered skillet on the stovetop.  The results were delicious—puffed up, soft and chewy, from the steam inside the skillet but also crispy from the hot oil. 

First make a sponge:  Combine 1 cup all purpose flour, ½ teaspoon instant yeast, and one cup warm water in a medium-sized bowl.  Cover and let stand 10 minutes to 2 hours.

Next make the dough:  Sprinkle ¾ teaspoon salt over the sponge. Next stir in 1 ½ teaspoons olive oil.  Then add 1 cup of whole spelt flour (you can get this in the bulk section of the Davis Co-op).  Mix it in well with a fork.  Cover the bowl and leave this in a warm, protected spot to rise for about one hour.  It should double in volume.

[We have made this in a kitchen aid mixer.  We’ve also tried kneading it, as the original recipe required.  We’ve had the best results when we quickly mixed the dough and then left it alone.]

Fry the skillet breads:  Preheat a cast iron skillet, with a tight fitting lid, on a burner over medium high heat.  [Dear reader, we will confess that we have used a small La Creuset casserole for this and that, while the results are excellent, the inside surface of the casserole now looks terrible.  We do not wish to lead you down our own too-much trodden path of unsightly cookware.  So use cheap and indestructible cast iron and avoid regret, at least on this count.]  When the pan is good and hot, add a slick of oil, let that heat up (which it will do quickly), and then use a sharp-edged spoon to scoop up some of the stringy, gooey dough.  Plop that into the pan and cover it.  It will have an irregular shape.  In about a minute, uncover the pan and flip the bread over. Cover again, to cook the other side. 

These breads cook quickly, which is part of their charm.  You will probably need to replenish the oil for each one.  You can hold them in a low oven while you cook the rest.  Leftovers can be popped into the toaster.  You can also keep the dough, covered, in the fridge to cook up fresh ones the next day.

What to serve with these?  And how to use all those eggplants and peppers at the market?

Roasted Eggplant with Peppers and Cucumber

This recipe is from Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.  It is lighter and brighter than many eggplant dishes; every ingredient can be found at the Farmers Market; and it keeps well.

1 ½ pounds eggplant, roasted and chopped (see below)

½ teaspoon garlic chopped very fine

½ cup sweet red bell pepper, diced

¼ cup yellow bell pepper, diced

½ cup cucumber, diced

[We use about half each of large bell peppers in two colors and two small, thin- skinned cucumbers.  If your cukes are thick-skinned, you might peel them.  If they have big, watery seeds, remove them.]

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice

salt and pepper

Basically, this is a shop, chop and combine recipe.  But the crucial step is preparing the eggplant.  You can roast it on the grill if you’ve got the grill going (and we’ve found that if you’re taking the trouble to fire up a charcoal grill, you might as well pop an eggplant or two onto the dying embers and leave it to char, poop out, and soak up the smoke.  It can then be served as a simple puree with just olive oil and salt or star in a baba ghanoush).  Hazan recommends charring the eggplant under the broiler or over a gas burner and we have found this works very well.  We washed the eggplants, and plopped them directly onto a gas burner (turned high).  We also roast peppers this way.  You need to watch them closely and use tongs to turn them and wrangle them when they want to roll off.  Keep them on the flame until the skin is charred and the eggplant feels soft and is starting to deflate.  This process takes about 10 minutes.  It might be even faster with smaller eggplants and this is a good use for those.

Place the charred eggplants in a bowl and cover it with a plate.  This helps it steam to insure the flesh is cooked through.

When you can handle the eggplant, pick off the skin, cut off the top, and roughly chop the eggplant.  Place it in a colander over a bowl to drain for about half an hour.  The liquid is flavorful and can be used for something else, but draining the eggplant keeps the finished dish from being soupy.  When the eggplant is no longer dripping, combine it with the other ingredients and serve immediately or reserve the salt, store it in the fridge, and salt just before serving.  We’ve found this to be a real crowd pleaser.

Red Pepper and Feta Dip

Our final recipe this week comes from a memory—of a wonderful array of little dishes at a Greek restaurant in Chicago—and the need to use up a bag of big red peppers we got at the market for a song.  We roasted the peppers as above and reserved some to serve with golden raisins, olives, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil.  But we combined about half of a roasted pepper with half a container of Orland Farms feta cheese (about 4 ounces) and a good glug of olive oil.  In both these dips, the olive oil is a key ingredient so you want to use the good, fresh stuff from the market.  Whirl this in a food processor.  You don’t want this to be too wet so you need to be judicious in adding the red pepper.  This will also set up a bit if you chill it.   You’re looking for a salmon color.  But you can’t really get this wrong.  It’s got three ingredients, all from the Farmers Market.  If you don’t eat it all, it will keep.  And like many simple dishes, the combination of these ingredients transcends any one of them separately.