Tag Archives: Artichokes

Farinata

08 Wednesday Nov 2023

Posted by in Food for One, Main Courses, Starters, Vegan, Vegetable Dishes, Vegetarian

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or socca, torta di ceci or cecina is a thin savoury cake made from chickpea flour. This recipe originates in Italy, though due to the high nutritional quality and good flavour of chickpeas and their flour there are many recipes from many counties that use chickpea flour as their main ingredient. I’m going to give you a selection of these recipes in the next few posts.

This is a super easy and simple dish to make. A batter is made with chickpea flour and water, seasoned, poured into a shallow baking dish on top of smoking hot oil, topped with whichever flavouring you fancy and baked for ten minutes.
You can have your flavouring as simple as fresh herbs, rosemary is particularly good, or vegetables that are part cooked. In the photo below I sliced and fried fresh artichokes, the version above is spring onions and garlic with cima di rapa, a type of mustard green that has a lovely sweet and slightly bitter taste.

For 4 servings – cooked in a 36 centimetre diameter shallow pan

150 grams chickpea flour

450 ml water

4 tablespoons olive oil

salt and freshly ground black pepper

prepared topping for the farinata

Preheat the oven to 230c / 210c if a fan oven/ 450f /gas 8

Put the water into a bowl and slowly whisk in the sieved flour. Whisk to eliminate any lumps.

Put in a warm place for an hour or two when it should have bubbles on the surface.

Stir in 2 tablespoons of oil and season with salt and pepper

Put the other 2 tablespoons of oil in the pan and warm the pan in the oven until very hot and nearly smoking.

Take the pan out of the oven and quickly pour in the batter, arrange your topping evenly over the cake and put back in the oven for ten minutes until golden and crispy around the edges.

Serve straight away with a salad or two.

Buckwheat galette with artichokes

12 Thursday Dec 2019

Posted by in Food for One, Main Courses, Vegan, Vegetable Dishes

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The tender new season artichokes are now on sale at the market which made me think to cook this dish.

Per person

2 rounded tablespoons buckwheat flour

6 tablespoons vegetable stock

2 artichokes

olive oil

salt

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Firstly prepare the artichokes. The tough outer leaves and the stem will need to be trimmed off, but as the artichokes are tender right now you don’t need to take too much off. When I think I have taken enough of the leaves off to get to the tender ones, I take off an extra one and bite into it to see if it is fibrous or not.

Heat some olive oil in a frying pan. Cut the top of the leaves off the artichokes and discard, then slice the artichokes thinly and immediately toss into the frying pan.

Fry the artichokes for about ten minutes, tossing from time to time, until just cooked then turn off the heat. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Put the oven on at 175 C to warm up.

Make the batter. Add the stock to the buckwheat flour gradually to make a smooth batter.
Season with salt and pepper.

You will need a shallow tray the right size to take the batter in a thin layer.

Put a tablespoon or two of olive oil in the tray and put in the oven to heat up to almost smoking point as you would if you were making Yorkshire pudding.

Once the tray is heated up, remove from the oven and quickly pour in the batter, scatter over the artichokes, and put back in the oven.

Bake for 8 – 12 minutes until light brown and crispy round the edges.

Serve with a mixed salad.