recipe testing: socca/farinata.

I've posted about besan, or chickpea flour, or kikkererwtenmeel, before, but not in any useful detail. I've been going through periods where I cook with it quite a bit and then give up on it because it takes too much attention to detail (or so I thought...keep reading), and well...I'm la-zy.

In my defense, there are a couple of issues with it: it doesn't really operate much like flour during the cooking process, for starters. It acts like mashed beans. That means it behaves badly in the pan, falls apart during flipping, it crusts up on the outside while remaining uncooked on the inside, it doesn't do its homework, stays out late without calling, etc.

Secondly, it needs to be browned perfectly in order for things to taste right. If you don't brown it, it tastes like you ground up uncooked chickpeas and added water to them, and that tastes even worse than it sounds.

If you're going to be trying crepes or anything that doesn't involve really high cooking temperatures, in order to bypass the potential uncooked grossness you might want to consider toasting the chickpea flour before you even add water to it. And as you know, toasting things requires a close eye on the stove so you don't f*ck it up, and I am bad at the close eye on the stove bit.

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Why are we even cooking with it again? Because it's a very nutritious flour-like medium that tastes very nice when prepared carefully, which makes it appropriate for breading things you're frying, so you end up with a crunchy bhaji- or pakora-type device (why are all of the best-looking besan recipes coming from NZ and Australia?), or you can make kofta with it which are also tasty and nutritionally valorous. It's basically a good wheat flour substitute: better nutrition profile and more interesting taste.

Here's an Australian article that talks about how making socca (French/Italian chickpea flour pizzas. Well, socca in France, but farinata in Italy, and they're called something else in Tuscany which escapes me now, something to do with ceci...anyone?) is "foolproof." This makes me the perfect test subject.

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socca.

1 cup besan/chickpea flour
1 tsp salt
lots of freshly cracked black pepper, at least 1 tsp, up to 2 tsp
1 cup lukewarm water
5-6 tbsp olive oil
1/2 large onion, chopped, optional
1 tsp, up to 1 tbsp fresh rosemary, minced, optional

Preheat oven to 230C. Put a non-stick pizza pan in the oven. Put chickpea flour in bowl, add salt and pepper, then slowly add 1 cup lukewarm water, whisking to eliminate lumps. Stir in 2 tbsp of the olive oil. Cover, and let sit while oven heats, or as long as 12 hours. Batter should be about the consistency of cream. If using onion and rosemary, stir them into batter. Pour 2 tbsp oil into the heated pan, and swirl to cover pan evenly. Pour in batter, and bake 12 to 15 minutes, or until firm and edges set. Heat broiler, and brush top of socca with 1 or 2 tbsp oil if it looks dry. Set socca just below broiler, just long enough to brown it in spots. Cut into wedges and serve hot, or at least warm.


UPDATE: I'm making it for breakfast the next day it turns out, as I do not have any other appropriate food in the house. I even went to the grocery store yesterday. Anyway, I'll let you know what happens. I forgot to highlight the article author's big tips: 1) use lots of freshly ground pepper. And 2) sift your chickpea flour. I did do number 1...50 grinds. I did not do number 2 (titter).

AND: Foolproof and awesome is the verdict. Make sure you add lots of pepper. Make sure you get it as brown as possible. And lots of olive oil. And salt. And turn up your oven as high as it will go (well, unless you've got a serious oven. mine only goes to 260C), the browner the better, think falafel brown. Really tasty. Yay! For those of you counting these things, chickpea flour has about 390 kcal per 100g, which is a little more than a cup. The problem in this recipe would be the olive oil, which is 120kcal per tbsp and I used 5. Which makes this socca 1000kcal, which means I should not eat the whole thing.

LASTLY: Tasty Bites, which is new to me, has a very nice socca post (or three) that links to socca recipes on four of my regular reads, TSOGB, Beyond Salmon, Traveler's Lunchbox, and In Praise of Sardines....I'll just let you follow her links to the socca posts.

ADDENDUM: Buy a non-stick pizza pan if you don't have one. My cheapo one has not been cutting it in the "successfully getting the socca off the pan" department.

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besan: it's also a face cream.

A few weeks ago Mara and I enjoyed a serious fling with chickpea flour, or besan. For a quick reference with some recipes, check here.

My thumbnail sketch: it's a flour made from ground, roasted chickpeas that is very common in Indian cooking. First of all, I already want to marry Indian food and have hundreds of children with it. There was a period in my mid-twenties when, newly single and flush with my first real salary, I was eating out every night, and a great many of those nights were spent at a place called Himalayas on Peachtree Industrial Boulevard in Atlanta. Pappadam with coriander/mint and tamarind chutneys, some bhajees, maybe a chana dal, a blazing chicken vindaloo (you want it even hotter??? it's already veddy veddy spicy my friend) with a lovely raita, and a big smoky Taj Mahal ale or three...with my Creative Loafing or LAN Manager manual or Daveyboy Liebman's Chromatic Approach to Jazz Harmony in front of me, I didn't need no nothin' else.

One year and 15 extra pounds later, well...I had to scale things down to a weekly visit. But, in, uh...heaven, right, y'all'll see me there with my long-lost Indian friends, breathing deadly fire and stumbling out to my hubcapless Bonneville if we have them there. Kidding!

Anyway, so, Mara got me this superduper Indian cookbook last year, like Madhur Jaffrey's biblical tome which we also have, but with gorgeous pictures and a handful of southern Indian recipes as well, and there were a couple of intriguing besan-centric recipes in there. It's kind of their standard breading for frying things, so that's the way we started using it--as a coating for fried fish. And it was excellent. We then progressed to sort of falafel-esque besan fritters with spinach and scallions in them, served with some dipping chutneys. Also really nice. Turns out you can even make breakfast-y sort of things out of them. One critical factor is to toast the besan first, otherwise it has a distinctly uncooked taste. I don't always do this, and when I don't I'm always sorry.

The major relevance here is the nutritional content. Which I don't have at hand. Soon, rabbit, soon. Oh, and it's also a face cream when mixed with a little rosewater. More on that as well.