tjappings.

Above: socca experiments continue, this one sports smoked paprika and lots of black pepper in the batter, and on top it's caramelized tomatoes and red onions, plus harissa-and olive-marinated mozzarella. And sriracha, and fresh basil. I know it looks a little blackened in the northwest sector but the blacker parts are good. The whole thing was good. Both of them were good (I made two for us to share b/c they were only like six inches across).

Totally unrelatedly, it's been a long while since I've been so pleased to discover an Amsterdam food blog, but Tjappings is just great.

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form factor.

Above: trying to use our Cineville cards properly, here we are at Kriterion for The Place Beyond the Pines.

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Chickpea flour surplus reduction effort underway here. Messing around with socca again, hampered a bit by the fact we never really did get our oven fixed (I mean, it works, but now if it gets too hot [around 450F] it stops working and the only fix is to push the Reset button, conveniently located on the rear of the oven, that's right, the side FACING THE FUCKING WALL).

So 2013's socca technique is all about stovetop-style crepe-ishness. And while it's not really as good texturally as the ovenblasting method, it's still pretty good. That is, after the first three fucked-up looking ones. Is it impossible when making pancake-esque things to just wait until the pan is the right temperature? Signs point to yes (context for non-elderly/non-Americans).

Anyway, I keep seeing all these people putting things on their socca, and I think that hey I too want to be one of these "all these people". But what for toppings to use? I find myself asking in a Peter Lorre kind of voice. Right before drifting off to sleep last night I envisioned something like: torn harissa-marinated mozzarella; half-dried tomatoes, chopped basil leaves and a drizzle of balsamic or lemon-date syrup. Seems like any flavors you'd normally pair with chickpeas would be good (thus Spanish, Italian, Middle Eastern, Indian primarily), but the challenge would be the addition of complementary textures to end up with something possibly pizza-achtige.

So maybe some kind of play on romesco sauce plus arugula and manchego? Something with spinach, pine nuts and raisins plus pecorino? Something based on a potatoless pav bhaji (mostly cauliflower and carrot then I guess) with coriander and....whatever cheese goes with Indian food? Please continue without me: I'll be at the stove trying to gauge socca flipworthiness.

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what you see.

Something I've been wanting to try with socca is using it as a pizza base, and tonight I did just that. And it almost worked. The results were delicious, but the texture was kind of like a pizza-shaped cake. Or like the time Terrill opened up a can of asparagus and served it on a plate with crackers: what came out of the can was asparagus-shaped, but had the texture of shaving foam.

I think I didn't quite cook the base enough before I put my toppings on it (chorizo, mushrooms, tomato sauce, mozzarella). Next time, I cook the socca all the way through and then put the toppings on.

soccatewme.

Finally, some sleep that didn't involve howling cats or clattering scaffolding, and I must say it makes a difference. Mood up 26% today, to something like 53%.

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Made socca for afternoon snack, and this same old recipe is still pretty perfect. Due to a lack of olive oil around here, a mixture of 5:1 sunflower oil to truffle oil was used, and almost everything about the results were better than usual (no sticking, great texture), especially when showered with some grated parmesan afterwards.

cupboard's bare.

You really start eating differently after your at-home inventory dips below a certain level. Due to a busy pre-Easter week we kind of forgot to do grocery shopping before the holiday weekend. This is not a huge deal, since we live 30 seconds away from the one grocery store in town you know will be open.

But we also just didn't feel like going to the store. We were working on complicated things, it was snowing, etc. So after a few days of this, there's no fresh food in the house (especially with the size of our refrigerators...think college dorm) and you begin rummaging through cupboards.

And turning up things like spicy Moroccan sardines, which I just put on a piece of toasted bread with butter, fresh mint, and a little lemon, these are great. I know that sardines are a divisive foodstuff, and frankly I've had some sardines that just about ended my relationship with them. But if you can find a brand you like and trust, they can be some dang good eatin'.

Why just look at this tasty specimen here. This is what you get when you open a tin of Tagine sardines and dump it into a cute little plate.
















Yes, those are chile peppers and mandolined carrots and onions in there as well. Then you toast some bread, toss the fishies onto it, tear off a couple of fresh mint leaves and add them, squeeze a little lemon on there, and if you're not planning on leaving the house, add some raw onion. And then bite the heck out of it.

















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I also found some chickpea flour when I was rummaging around. With which you make socca/farinata (pictured at the top of this post) like we did last night. Recipe from the VDuck archives here, and guess what: I still need a new pizza pan.

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fantasyplan.

I have about 20 drafts of posts sitting around, the Blogger equivalent of Post-it Notes, reminding me of things I want to cook. This is a constant process pretty much, thinking of things to cook...which I thought sounded pretty fucked-up for awhile until I realized that for me it's a way of constantly "creating", and it can give you immediate, tangible results whenever you actually make time to stop by the stove and cook any of these brain visions.

The thing with leaving these posts as drafts is....I never look at them after I save them, so it's about as helpful as jotting down something on a Post-it Note and then throwing it out the window.

Which is why VDuck will probably contain more posts like this in the future. The point of this one in particular is to remind me to a) eat at Zinc Bistro the next time I'm in Phoenix (which will hopefully be May/June 2007), and b) steal some recipe and presentation ideas from Matt Carter (there's even a combination of tuna and socca, two of my faves with no (to me) obvious affinity).

Here's the eGullet thread that caught my roving eye.

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Also, I had a perfect no-time-for-prep vegetarian dinner planned for Tuesday, but the venue has been moved. For future reference, it was: Marcella Hazan's Ligurian Vegetable Soup; ricotta-zucchini-spinach raviolis (from Pasta Panini on the Rozengracht) with tomato-butter sauce; stoofperen.

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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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o, veganismo.

Consider:

"...Don't' consider the bird head and feet as ornaments, No sir, pop them in your mouth beak and all. Yes, the eyeballs too. It's not boney or weird like you might think, it's just more crispy, flavorful entrée."

or

Every dish was offal, except for the dessert, which was bloody offal.

(both via Yummy Chow).

The excellent photos taken by the witty, extremely carnivorous bunnies over at Yummy Chow made me realize that I think I might actually be "off meat" (as in me not eating it vs. me not tasting good). Still happily putting my tooth all over those poor ocean-dwellers, though...I guess I'd find strict vegetarianism or and especially veganism tons more practical for me if I had a squadron of deployable vegan recipes that I could serve to guests without feeling like I was "feeding the band"...you know, veggie chili, couscous, bulgur, beans, etc. Stuff you serve with a ladle. I'm obviously not making this up: one of my original inspirations toward more careful cooking is Stephen Pyles (aka Steamin' Pile around here), and in his newish book Southwestern Vegetarian, Mr. Pile is becoming part of the problem: "Eschewing the usual recipe categories, Pyles divides his cookbook into chapters by gratins, casseroles, stuffed vegetables, tortas, sandwiches, and pizzas."

Now, as the Rossington-Collins Band used to like to say, don't misunderstand me...I loves all that stuff and have cooked up a ton of it. But I'm also a total sucker for artfully presented food that has layers and layers of flavors...like if you could find an ingenious, edible way to present a perfectly-constructed Maoz falafel on a dinner plate...crispy, spicy-ass falafel balls; soft, supergarlicky cumin carrots with plenty of cilantro; the double cuke attack of traditional dill pickles and cucumbers with fresh dill and lemon juice; crinkle-cut beets with mint and olive oil; the sinus-clearing red chile sauce; the tart, fresh green sauce...drizzled with a light tahini sauce...(falls face-first onto the keyboard)...

OK, so you probably could find an ingenious way to plate this. But it would still just be a falafel on a big plate. So, I guess I'm looking for vegan entrees with complex flavors that come from somewhere other than the snack/street food, Indian cuisine, and one-pot dinner categories. Fire away with suggestions, o vast ocean of faithful readers...here's what I've found thus far.

IMBB #19, coincidentally enough, was "I Can't Believe I Ate Vegan". The entries for this IMBB kind of highlight what I'm talking about...lots of creative stuff, but 75% of them are served in a bowl. Some of the examples that are more like what I'd like to cook:

• Portobello Steak with Butternut Squash Risotto (via Restaurant Widow).
• Banh Xeo and Fresh Basil Rolls (via A Blithe Palate).
• Sesame-Crusted Oyster Mushroom Calamari with Toasted Sesame Carrot Salad (via Brownie Points).
• Socca Crèpes filled with Ratatouille (via In Praise of Sardines).
  

And Meathenge's effort falls into the "band food" category, but it looks like a fantastic recipe (with the exception of vegan sausage, which no one should ever use for anything...I'd substitute Quorn or the Tivali "ground tofu" thingie and add some smoked paprika for emulating sausage-y goodness): Chili and Cornbread.

Speaking of Quorn, they've just released a new product, Steak au Poivre, which is, well...freaky as shit. It's close, so close to being right...but just far enough away to make you think of Soylent Green or some Stephen King story where food sent through a time machine/transporter thingie doesn't taste the same when it comes back. Or is that The Fly I'm thinking of?