Vegan dip + Lavash Crackers


The Daring Bakers challenge this month is Vegan: Great I know a lot about vegan food, friends were/are vegan, I once cooked an all Vegan Christmas meal back when, so I knew I would have no problem with the dip + a couple of Sunday back, I happened to visit the National Vegan Festival.

However Lavash Crackers, no idea. so I read on, maybe there was a clue in the text: "It is similar to the many other Middle Eastern and Northern African flatbreads known by different names, such as mankoush or mannaeesh (Lebanese), barbari (Iranian), khoubiz or khobz (Arabian), aiysh (Egyptian), kesret and mella (Tunisian), pide or pita (Turkish), and pideh (Armenian)" ahhhhh, got you, pitta, so what I had to do was extra thin pittas.

and there they are

before




after


For the toppings I was determined to make my crackers colourful so I used


sesame seeds for white, poppy seeds, seeds with no name from a market in the Yemen, for black Charawma : a blend of Moroccan spices, for brown paprika for red

and for the dip:





Hummus without chickpeas.

a can of white beans, 2 garlic gloves, 3 tablespoons of Tahini, a teaspoon of lemon, salt, paper, cold water to smooth. everything in the food processor, transfer to a serving dish, a sprinkle of paprika.
if you would like to try the Lavash Crackers here are the instructions

The key to a crisp lavash,...is to roll out the dough paper-thin.
The sheet can be cut into crackers in advance or snapped into shards after baking.
The shards make a nice presentation when arranged in baskets.
Makes 1 sheet pan of crackers
1 1/2 cups (6.75 oz) unbleached bread flour
1/2 tsp (.13 oz) salt
1/2 tsp (.055 oz) instant yeast
1 Tb (.75 oz) agave syrup or sugar
1 Tb (.5 oz) vegetable oil
1/3 to 1/2 cup + 2 Tb (3 to 4 oz) water, at room temperature

1. In a mixing bowl, stir together the flour, salt yeast, agave, oil, and just enough water to bring everything together into a ball. You may not need the full 1/2 cup + 2 Tb of water, but be prepared to use it all if needed.
2. For Non Gluten Free Cracker Dough: Sprinkle some flour on the counter and transfer the dough to the counter. Knead for about 10 minutes, or until the ingredients are evenly distributed. The dough should pass the windowpane test (see http://www.wikihow.com/Determine-if-Bread-Dough-Has-Been-Mixed-Long-Enough for a description of this). The dough should be firmer than French bread dough, but not quite as firm as bagel dough (what I call medium-firm dough), satiny to the touch, not tacky, and supple enough to stretch when pulled. Lightly oil a bowl and transfer the dough to the bowl, rolling it around to coat it with oil.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap
3. Ferment at room temperature for 90 minutes, or until the dough doubles in size. (You can also retard the dough overnight in the refrigerator immediately after kneading or mixing)
4. Press the dough into a square with your hand and dust the top of the dough lightly with flour. Roll it out with a rolling pin into a paper thin sheet about 15 inches by 12 inches. You may have to stop from time to time so that the gluten can relax. At these times, lift the dough from the counter and wave it a little, and then lay it back down. Cover it with a towel or plastic wrap while it relaxes. When it is the desired thinness, let the dough relax for 5 minutes.

Line a sheet pan with baking parchment. Carefully lift the sheet of dough and lay it on the parchment. If it overlaps the edge of the pan, snip off the excess with scissors. or4.
5. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit with the oven rack on the middle shelf. Mist the top of the dough with water and sprinkle a covering of seeds or spices on the dough (such as alternating rows of poppy seeds, sesame seeds, paprika, cumin seeds, caraway seeds, kosher or pretzel salt, etc.) Be careful with spices and salt - a little goes a long way. If you want to pre cut the cracker, use a pizza cutter (rolling blade) and cut diamonds or rectangles in the dough. You do not need to separate the pieces, as they will snap apart after baking. If you want to make shards, bake the sheet of dough without cutting it first.
6. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the crackers begin to brown evenly across the top (the time will depend on how thinly and evenly you rolled the dough).6. When the crackers are baked, remove the pan from the oven and let them cool in the pan for about 10 minutes. You can then snap them apart or snap off shards and serve.

If you fancy doing October's challenge, join the Daring bakers, as for the blog roll it contains all the posts for this month's challenge

Roll the Pin, Beat the Egg, I am....

Tam tam tam, TAM TAM TAM TAM a Daring Baker.

And what is that? I hear you say, oh yes by the way I can hear you again, he kindly fixed my Google Stats which indicates that readers of this blog do exists.

Back to the Daring Bakers: it is one of these amazing web story, in short 2 people challenged one other to bake from the same recipe, great fun, next thing they know thousands of people have joined them and do the same. Power of the web; a DB is sworn to secrecy and can't reveal the monthly challenge content until a certain date, when all DBs post the recipe of the month on their blog. Make sense?

The great thing is that you get to keep the little badge which adorns the left end side of PebbleSoup, I have always wanted one of these. So watch that space...... in the meantime here is a list some of the past challenges:

January 2008: Lemon Meringue Pie February 2008: French Baguette March 2008: The Perfect Party Cake April 2008: Cheesecake Pops May 2008: Opera Cake June 2008: Danish Braid - Chocolate & Raspberries August 2008: Chocolate Éclairs

The Secret Scottish Tortilla

I hope you are still with me, lovely readers, I have not been able to use my google stats for a while, it requires a new code which I have got but I don't know where to paste. I shall ask for advice as it is a bit lonely talking to the ether.

Anyway, I recently came back from Scotland where Ailie makes the best tortilla this side of the Alhambra. This time I stole her secret, so no telling OK?




Chop 2 onions









cook slowly 5 medium potatoes diced in olive oil for about 25 minutes







whisk 6 eggs and 2 cloves of garlic pressed.



Now pay attention because here comes the trick:


Return the content of the frying pan into the egg mixture and beat








Pour back into the pan, and here Ailie let slipped that the non-stick quality of the pan is all important. Go tuck tuck around the corner with your spatula as demonstrated. until the tortilla looks set.



do that nifty trick where you put a plate on the top of the tortilla so that it covers it and turn the lot round to transfer the tortilla into the plate, making sure that you are holding your plate with one hand.
transfer the content of the plate back in the pan for a few minutes

et voila, best tortilla known on earth.


Happy Cookies

You go away for a few weeks and on return, the world has been transformed. The world, may be a little bit of an exaggeration.
Let me elaborate: when I have a minute, I take a sweet delight in reading "the Greenwich Phantom". Every district, town, village should have a phantom, ours is a kind of contemporary freelance town-crier. This morning as I looked at his/hers website, I gasp, threw my shawl over my head and flew out of the house direction....... a new bakery. We have not had a bakery for pffffffff many many years, I got to Rhodes in 5 minutes flat, that is its name: "Rhodes Bakery" not the island, I have not grown wings yet. It was hiving, a joyous site, lovely, brown breads in the window, buttercups and tartelettes parading on their stand, this is really good new and it would seem that artisan-bakeries are back.
Sometime ago, I got an email from a friend who was about to finalise her dream: opening a bakery. Rather they are going to re-open the village bakery in Wye (Kent) which had long closed and will offer freshly baked high-quality breads, cakes and all sorts of other baked "deliciouseries". So it was with some anticipation that I tried one of her recipe.

Chocolate and Ginger Cookies

Chocolate and Ginger is a marriage made is heaven, we are all aware of the mood-boosting properties of chocolate and if the best property of crystallized ginger (also called candied ginger) is its tastes, it also relieves indigestion, the symptoms of colds, it alleviates nausea of all sorts including morning sickness and now.... wait for it..... it could even burn fat, the latter I doubt a little, certainly not when used in this recipe.

Yield: c.24
150 gm plain sifted flour
2 gm baking powder
100 gm crystallised ginger, finely chopped
50 gm soft light brown sugar
120 gm castor sugar1 large egg
120g plain chocolate chips
120g butter, softened

Method


Beat sugars and butter until light and fluffy. Mix in egg. Sift flour and baking powder and add to mixture, along with ginger and chocolate chips. Blend lightly but well.
Drop rounded dessertspoons of the mixture onto two greased baking sheets spacing well apart. Bate in pre-heated 175 C oven for about 18 minutes until light golden brown. Transfer to cooling rack. Store, when coll, in airtight container.
si

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