What I love about pita is it's so fast. I hadn't fully decided if I was going to bake, or brave a store, or use tortillas, but when I googled and remembered I only needed one one-hour rise I went for it. I tweaked the NYT recipe a little, because what use is a 15 minute "poolish"? You can hardly call 15 minutes a pre-ferment.
Instead, I mixed all the flour and 1 cup water up front and let it sit (autolyse) half an hour to fully hydrate. I used 95 g ww and 250 g heritage red turkey white, because what use is 1/4 C of whole wheat?, and I didn't notice the instruction to hold back 1/2 c flour, so I didn't. Worked fine. Then I mixed the 2t yeast, 3T water (just a guess, it worked), 2T olive oil, 1t salt and 1/4t sugar, let it foam about 10 minutes, and hand-smooshed it into the autolyse. It was sticky, and I didn't want to add more flour, so just kneaded it a couple minutes in the bowl, if that, and then let it sit another 20 minutes or so to calm down. Then I did a turn, though I doubt it needed it. 30-40 minutes later it was more than doubled. I started the oven with a pizza stone in it, punched the dough, shaped into a round, cut into eight wedges, put those into balls and let it sit till the oven was hot, then roll and bake.
They didn't all poof 100% but most did, at least enough for a sandwich. My hunch is they do better when you just roll on one side, don't flip and roll again, and careful not to roll over the edges and pinch them down.
When the bread was done I flipped the oven to medium broil and threw in chopped garden zucchini and eggplant tossed with oil and salt. Meanwhile I chopped about four cups of parsley, some cucumbers, radish that had luckily gotten lost in the bottom of the veg drawer back in July, and a few tablespoons mint (all from the garden) some non-garden green onion, mixed with juice of one lemon, a lot of olive oil, salt and about a cup of millet I'd already cooked (1/2 c dry). I managed not to burn the eggplant and zuch.
Then I fried the falafel, which I'd mixed the day before from Ottolenghi and Tamimi's cookbook Jerusalem, subbing chickpea flour for wheat b/c why not. Many recipes will do, as long as they use soaked and NOT COOKED, NOT CANNED, chickpeas. You may be able to make something tasty out of cooked chickpeas but it won't be falafel.
To shape them I use a tool we bought in Egypt on our honeymoon 10 years ago, after seeing all the street vendors use one, but really I just use it for the memories - you can use your hands. The mix barely has to hold together, just long enough to be dropped in hot oil and get a crust that seals it.
I am too stingy and averse to dealing with a bunch of used oil to fry in as much as they say. I used a scant inch of canola oil with some coconut oil for heat tolerance, flipped once and then put them in the residual heat of the oven 15 minutes till we were ready to eat.
Forever grateful to all the falafel-vendors of Egypt (scroll down for a picture of one) who asked if I wanted eggplant in my falafel - the right answer is yes.
The sauces are 1. tahini mixed with a little olive oil, a big pinch of salt, and enough water until it seizes up and gets thick, and then more until it thins and gets nice and saucy. sometimes I add lemon and garlic too but today I didn't. 2. a tzatziki I made last week - yogurt, chopped seeded cucumber, mint (I used garden dried b/c that's what I had with me), lemon juice, fine lemon rind, salt, grated or pressed garlic, and a little olive oil, all to taste. I usually use coconut yogurt, sometimes with a little melted coconut oil to thicken it up, but this time I wasn't at home and I used greek yogurt.
And since where else do I get to show travel photos from 10 years ago and when will I get to travel again, here's a few favorites from December 2010:
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| falafel vendor in Luxor, Egypt, December 2010 |
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| pita vendor, Cairo, Egypt, December 2010 |
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| pita-transport, Cairo, Egypt, December 2010 |
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