This is a VERY cheap and easy way to make this, for those who are gluten free but don't want to break the bank by buying lots of chickpea flour, and don't have a grinder to make it themselves.
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| Socca with hummus, cucumbers, and dill |
Soaked Socca
Ingredients:
1 pound dried chickpeas
2-4 Tb oil (I've used olive oil and rendered beef fat, both)
salt to taste - I'm using at least a tsp or two, here.
water
(I told you it was cheap, didn't I?)
Directions:
1. Soak the chickpeas 10-24 hours in water. If you want a slightly different flavor, maybe a little sour or cheesy smelling, soak them for 2-3 days, changing out the water once a day. They begin to slightly ferment and it changes the flavor.
2. Turn the oven to the broiler setting (or 500 F) and put an iron skillet in to preheat with it.
3. Drain the chickpeas. Put 1/3-1/2 of the soaked chickpeas into a blender. The weaker your blender motor, the less you put in. Add enough water to almost cover. Add in 1-2 Tb oil. Add salt to taste. Now blend this sucker until you have a nice looking batter. Keep blending until the chunkiness looks appealing. If it won't blend, you can add in a little more water, but it may increase cooking time.
4. Take out the skillet, pour a tiny bit of oil on it and move it around until it's coated the pan, and then pour out the batter into the skillet. How much batter you put in depends on how big a skillet you use. You want to make the socca bread about the same thickness, or even a bit thicker, than a thick pancake. Mine are usually 1/4 inch-ish.
5. Put it into the oven about 6 inches from the broiler for 15-20 min, or until the top no longer looks 'wet.' Then put it closer, about 2-3 inches from the broiler, for another 5 minutes, or until the edges are just barely brown. Then carefully flip it over and continue to cook , still 2-3 inches from broiler, until the underside looks done, usually between 5-10 minutes.
6. You can add herbs and other spices to this or eat as-is. It can be served plain as a side dish, used as crude sandwich bread, used as a pizza base, or even eaten like I did above, with hummus plus cucumbers and dill (it's really pseudo-hummus, without many of the things that would make it low histamine noncompliant).
Notes:
1. This tastes the same as regular socca, but it takes longer to cook and the texture is a bit different. Usually a little thinner and a bit less bready, but still nice. If you want a slightly breadier socca, I would go with the old recipe. But if you don't want to grind chickpeas, or can't, and want to make this without spending a lot of money on chickpea flour, this is totally the way to go.
2. Fair disclosure: I think the picture above may be from the socca bread I made with ground up dried chickpeas, but I can't remember since it's been so long ago that I took it. >_<
3. Since I first used this recipe, I have come across other recipes that involve soaked legumes to make into a flatbread. Some common traditional ones, aside from chickpeas, are mungo beans (black gram) and fava beans (with the skins removed, of course). This recipe, from 'Oatmealwithafork.com,' is a nice example of an almost identical bread with lentils rather than chickpeas. It involves a lower temperature cooking so that the bread doesn't need to be flipped during baking. I'm experimenting with what may work with chickpeas to achieve the same thing, and I'll add that information when it is working for me. ^_^
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