Tuesday 12 April 2011

Spelt flatbreads with haloumi, capers and homemade sundried tomatos

Ok so they're not sun-dried, that'd be difficult seeing as we've only had a week of sun. And actually I don't have the patience to wait weeks for them to slowly bake anyway. Instead, these flavour packed and intensely sweet tasting beauties are done in the oven, and they're really easy to do.

I've made these purely after eating the delicious ones at Flatplanet in London on Monday. The bread not only has a wonderfully nutty taste and crispy but soft centred texture, it's widely eaten by people who struggle with wheat - ticks all my boxes.

Instead of doing a traditional tomato sauce for the base I've used a red pepper dip I've recently got into. It's full of flavour and is a bit different, and it works very well in complementing the flavour of the capers and haloumi, tasty tasty.

Think of this simple dish as a cross between an open sandwich and a pizza - loads of options for interesting toppings and making the dough is incredibly easy (trust me, I don't do baking and this recipe is foolproof).

For 4 flatbreads, and toppings for just 2:
340g wholegrain spelt flour
1 cup of warm water
1 teaspoon yeast granules
1 tablespoon runny honey
2 red peppers cut into strips
3 tablespoons natural yogurt
6 tomatoes, quartered
Half a clove of garlic, finely minced
One avocado, sliced finely
A tablespoon of drained capers
A handful of fresh rocket
8 slices of haloumi
Sea salt and pepper
Extra virgin olive oil - the best you can get hold of 
Groundnut / sunflower oil

Method:
Start with making the sundried tomatoes
- Preheat the oven to 100 degrees and lay the quartered tomatoes onto a non stick baking sheet and bake for 2 hours
- Remove and place them into a bowl and dot with the minced garlic, a generous scrunch of salt and grind of pepper, and then drizzle them in extra virgin olive oil - enough to cover them. Set aside

Now it's time to make the dough
- Add 2 scrunches of salt, honey and the yeast to the cup of warm water and leave for 10 minutes
- Make a hole in the centre of the dough (reserving a bit for kneading) and pour the water in, then using your hands mix it all together until you've formed a ball of dough
- Turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead gently for a couple of minutes, then place it into a floured bowl and cover with cling film for an hour
- Preheat your oven to 200degrees and place the red pepper slices and a dressing of olive oil into a roasting tin, and roast for 4o minutes until they've softened and begun to char around the edges
- Remove from the oven and pop into a blender and blitz with a little salt. When they've cooled in the food processor after about 10 minutes add the yogurt and blitz again, decant into a bowl and set aside
- Take the dough out of the bowl and turn it out onto a floured surface, cut into quarters and roll each out each in turn into whatever shape it comes out in until they're around 5mm thick - I like them not being uniform and being a bit random, adds to their character!
- Lay 2 of them side by side onto a lightly oiled baking sheet on a baking tray and bake for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and bake the remaining 2. Remove them from the oven and turn the oven off
- Pile them up separated by baking paper, this will stop them cooling down and getting stuck to each other, and will keep them just crisp enough
- Heat some frying oil in a frying pan on a medium high heat and fry your haloumi slices on each side for around 2-3 minutes until its nice and golden, then remove it from the pan
- Turn on the grill
- Take both of the flatbreads you'll be using and place them onto a clean surface, dollop half the red pepper sauce onto each and using the back of a spoon smear it over as you would a tomato sauce on a pizza base
- Now place on the flatbreads the capers and haloumi, and grill both of them for a few minutes
- Remove and dot on the tomatoes, avocado and drizzle over more of the extra virgin olive oil from the tomatoes over the breads, then top with some rocket and cut into large pieces
- Eat

2 comments:

  1. I'd love to use spelt flour sometime soon. These look really tasty and healthy.

    ReplyDelete