Caponata in gram flour pancakes

For some reason, I have never attempted to make caponata before.  I don't know why.  It combines many of my favourite things:  aubergines; olives; capers; tomatoes. 

I think it may be because I first had it, when cooked by my Italian best friend at university, who has been one of the big influences on me cooking-wise.  I wish I could say the same were true vice versa but I fear she still thinks I'm a barbarian with no tastebuds because of my general love for strong flavours.  It's not that she did a bad job when cooking it, it's more that I realised through cooking with her a lot that I just plain understood very little about non-Gujarati food at 18 and I found it all rather intimidating.

Funny-looking aubergine

Anyway.  I bought a funny-looking aubergine (see right) at the supermarket the other day - yes, I did buy it basically because it was funny-looking, yes, I do have a mental age of about 7 - and I thought I'd give it a go.

Anyway.  Caponata.  I went for a combination of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipe, a vague recollection of what my Italian friend did, and whim.

I chopped an onion, a couple of sticks of celery and three cloves of garlic.  Fried for a few minutes  Then added a tin of reasonably nice Italian tomatoes, some chopped green olives and some capers. 

onion, celery and garlic

chopped aubergines

Did a bit of seasoning at this stage (and tweaked and tasted at the end)-  some balsamic vinegar (about 3 table spoons) and about 4 table spoons of sugar.  Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall suggested only a table spoon of sugar but, to me, that just didn't taste quite right so I kept adding more until it did, and obviously salt and black pepper.  Left to reduce for around 15 minutes. 

Caponata

Frying aubergines

While that was reducing, I chopped up a couple of aubergines into relatively small pieces (about 1.5 cm square) and fried until golden in some olive oil. 

I then combined the aubergine with the onions/celery/tomato mixture, Topped it with fresh parsley.  Though, I did think belatedly that rosemary would have been nice as well and might be worth a try next time.

gram flour pancakes batter

For no particular reason, I decided that it would be good to have the caponata in pancakes and I haven't made gram flour pancakes for ages, so that's what I went for.  Went for a gram flour/plain flour mix - 2:1 ratio - added a dash of milk, and then enough water to make it a pouring consistency (just slightly thicker than single cream), spiced it a bit with salt, chilli flakes and black pepper.

gram flour pancake about to be filled with caponata

Heated up about a table spoon of olive oil in a large frying pan, cooked the pancakes (it takes around a couple of mins each side, depending obviously on how thick you want your pancakes), filled them with the caponata and put them in the oven for about 5 mins to warm through before serving.

It was pretty good.  Nice fun dish to cook on a Sunday afternoon.  In retrospect, I'm not sure that it's really worth bothering with the pancakes - I think bread would have been just as nice with the caponata and a bit less of a faff but I like my gram flour pancakes so I don't really repine!

Gram flour pancakes with caponata

Brunch - gram flour, feta, spring onion, bell pepper and carrot pancakes

Inspired by previous adventures in gram flour pancake making, I decided to try making some more but, this time, for brunch rather than dinner.

Mixture

I went for a similar basic mixture to Maria Elia's recipe - gram flour, semolina and water - but spring onions, bell pepper, carrots and feta instead of just carrots.  To be honest, this was mostly because this was what we had in the house - I think the spring onions and feta were lovely but that the other vegetables, you could substitute in with other vegetables.  Mushrooms would be nice, I think.

Tasty pancakes

Since it was brunch, I also kept the spicing more minimal - just salt and black pepper rather than chilli and ginger and stuff. 

They were fun to make - I love the way that they sizzle in the pan and it's a childish pleasure to compete with myself to see how many I can get to turn over without breaking at all.

I'm not sure why but they tasted rather like omlettes - same kind of squishy texture.  One to make again, perhaps when I have some fresh herbs to use up, as I think that that would convert these from tasty to delicious.

Gujarati dinner - shak, rice, kadhi

At the weekend, I had a bit of a craving for kadhi, which is a Gujarati spiced yoghurt soup.  It is warming and comforting and tasty.  Since it isn't really a meal on its own, I made some shak and rice to go with it too

Shak, rice and kadhi

 In Gujarati, there is no word for "curry". You would use exactly the same word to refer to "vegetables" in the generic sense as you would for "curry" - there is no other way of eating vegetables. The word in question is "shak" which I find easier to use in this context. Shak is not vegetables in a sauce, shak is not any one particular dish, shak is just what happens when you do some stuff to some vegetables.

Basic Gujarati recipe - you alter this depending on what you're cooking, e.g. spinach and chickpeas both need more tumeric than most veg -

Heat up 2-3 tablespoons of oil with some mustard seeds and cumin seeds - about a heaped teaspoon of each
When they start popping, put in your veg.
Let it cook
Add some tomatoes if you want and/or some water if it's a bit dry
Spice with 3-4 teaspoons of ground cumin/coriander mix (I've tried to do this with the two individual spices but it never tastes right), a 1/4 teaspoon ot tumeric and red chilli powder/fresh chillis to taste.
Optional: garlic, ginger, fresh coriander, lemon juice, sugar. Garlic and fresh coriander should go in at the last minute though to avoid losing the flavour during cooking.

I made aubergine and pea shak, which was pretty tasty.  Lots of garlic!

Just  shak

 The kadhi turned out pretty good, though it was a bit spicy for my long suffering husband!

Recipe:

Mix a cup of yoghurt and a cup of water together, mix in a couple of tablespoons of gram flour, bring it to a boil.  In a separate pan, heat some mustard seeds and cumin seeds with some oil.  When it starts popping, pour it into the yoghurt mixture.   Add ginger, chilli, salt to the mixture and a small amount of sugar.  Fresh coriander on top is tasty.  But that applies to anything!

Basically, the only way to go wrong is to let it split, which will only happen if you don't stir it enough.  If it somehow splits on you anyway, you can sometimes ressurect it by liquidising it, though that is not recommended a) because it doesn't always work and b) because it means you have to wash up the liquidiser!

Just kadhi

On lazy Sundays, I buy lots of fresh ginger and chillis, whiz them in the food processor and freeze them in ice cube trays, which really speeds up recipes of this sort.

carrot and gram flour pancakes, hummous and salad

Batter

One of the rather too many cookbooks I've acquired recently is The Modern Vegetarian by Maria Elia.  On the very first page is a recipe for carrot and gram flour pancakes that I've been meaning to try out for ages.

So, today, I did.  It was really good!

It reminded me a lot of a Gujarati dish called "poodla" that my nanima (maternal grandmother) taught me to make.  It's interesting to me that a) a lot of dishes exist the world over in different formats and b) that they can taste so different in different contexts.

Pancakes

Spiced gram flour pancakes (with fresh coriander and chilli in the batter) seem instinctively to me an Indian flavour and I can imagine my namima knocking these out, "measuring" everything by eye, and serving them with natural yoghurt or tamarind chutney or green chutney (coriander, chillis and green apple.)  I'm quite tempted to do that next time. 

Pancakes with hummous

But, this time, I followed Maria Elia's idea and went for topping them with hummous and salad.

She suggests carrot hummous (basically normal hummous with roasted carrots blended in) but I decided that I didn't really fancy carrot and chickpea pancakes topped with blended carrot and chickpea as that seemed rather too much carrot and chickpea for me.  So, I just made my normal hummous (the classic way) which I think worked pretty well.

Pancakes and hummous and salad

I also didn't quite follow her suggestion on the salad because I had a few things to use up - I went for pea shoots, baby plum tomatoes, spring onions and feta with some black pepper and olive oil on top.  Yum.

Next time, I might try a blend of flour (nanima recommends 1/4 chapati flour 3/4 gram flour for poodla which might work nicely), adding in some spring onions, maybe courgette rather than carrots...?