Potato (3)

Flatbread with sweet potato/pumpkin

Ingredients (10-12 pieces):

* 1 medium-sized sweet potato (about 2 cups of pulp). Sweet potatoes can be replaced with ordinary potatoes, but the taste will certainly be different, and it can also be replaced with pumpkin, or a mixture of pumpkin and potatoes, then the taste will be very close to sweet potatoes;)

2 cups whole wheat flour. It is this flour that you need exactly as much as the sweet potato occupies in volume. You will get 1 cup of pulp, so you will need 1 cup of flour. In addition, you can safely experiment with flour, replacing part of the wheat with barley, spelt, rye, etc.

* 1 tsp salt

* Optionally, you can add any spices to your taste (chili, turmeric, paprika, cumin, curry, etc.).

How to do:

1. bake sweet potatoes. First, carefully wash it, pierce it with a fork in several places so that it does not crack, wrap it in foil or spread it on parchment. Bake for 40-60 minutes at a temperature of 180C-200C in the standard mode “top-bottom”. The temperature and time depends on the oven. The readiness of sweet potatoes is determined by a knife, if it is easily pierced – everything is ready. Do not turn off the oven, but put it to warm up to the maximum.

2. let the fruit cool slightly, peel it, then chop it with a fork in a large bowl, adding salt and spices.

Important. Do not knead it for too long, grinding it into porridge. So the mass will be too starchy, like paste, and the cakes will turn out to be rubber, not soft.

3. in the crushed sweet potato, gradually add flour and mix the contents. I first put half of the flour, mix, and then add portions. Add until the dough stops sticking. It is important not to overdo it with flour, so that the cakes do not become too dry and hard in the end.

And again, do not knead too intensively, it is not necessary.

4. cover the dough hermetically and let it stand for 30 minutes, after proofing it will become tender and pliable to Rolling.

5. dust the surface with flour, spread the dough on it and roll it into a sausage. Cut in half, then each piece into 5-6 equal parts. The result is 10-12 identical pieces, well, or almost identical.

Roll each piece into a smooth ball, put it to rest for another 10-15 minutes under a towel. This item can be omitted if you are in a hurry.

6. each ball is first flattened by hand, then on the surface dusted with flour we roll out with a rolling pin about 3 mm thick. As thin as possible, as thick as you like.

We fold the cakes in a pile under the towel so that they do not zavetrel.

7. then spread a few tortillas on a baking sheet with parchment in 1 layer and bake until they are inflated and baked. It’s 5-10 minutes, depends on the oven. After each batch, peel the parchment from the fallen flour so that it does not burn and does not spoil the taste of the next tortillas. Or fry in a dry preheated frying pan on medium-high heat for 2-3 minutes on each side until brown.

Put the finished cakes in a sealed container in a towel. It will keep them warm and soft.

They can be eaten with any dishes instead of bread, used as pita/Pita Bread for snacks with any fillings. Bon Appetit!

Baked French fries with homemade ketchup

Who doesn’t love French fries? I don’t know, honestly))) That’s just a classic recipe too fatty for me, so I make potatoes in the oven. It turns out with a crispy flavorful crust and tender middle. Not sluggish, not wet, not too dry.

Cool to cook fries in the oven need to know a few nuances. They have happened empirically, and not fail in 99% of cases:

• Selection and preparation of potatoes. Remove the starch.

You need a dense potatoes and a little starch. That is not too young, and the non-starchy varieties. But, I usually don’t bother and buy the potatoes, which like visually, and then just soaked it in the water.

My brush (this is optional), cut into sticks or slices, in water for 20-30 minutes. So any varieties of potatoes, a large part of the starch will be released into the water. Then it was washed, dried on a towel and then baked.

• Cutting.

If you’re a fan of straight crunch, slice the potatoes more thinly. If you like the softer core (like potatoes “country style”)– cut the slices thicker. And try to cut all pieces roughly the same thickness, otherwise the cooking will be uneven. I usually cut into bars with a width of up to 1 cm.

• Oil, salt, spices.

Spread prepared potatoes on a baking sheet with parchment and salt straight drop (it is better then to add salt), vegetable oil literally 1-2 tsp on a baking sheet, just to make the crust more appetizing spices (optional) and mix thoroughly. If oil and salt will be a lot when baking, the potatoes will turn out limp, boiled. All the spices to your taste and color.

I like to add paprika, turmeric, nutmeg, thyme, rosemary, oregano and other Italian herbs, parsley, dill, coriander, chili, chopped onions and garlic. Not simultaneously, of course, and the mood and depending on what potato dish to serve.

• The baking.

Put the potatoes must be strictly in a single layer and preferably not right next to each other, and then again get lethargic sticks, not fries))) Bake in a preheated(!) the oven on the middle shelf to the top and bottom are baked evenly with a fan at 220 °C. the baking Time will be about 20-25 minutes, it depends on oven and size of potato pieces. At the end of baking closely follow her that did not burn.

If your oven bakes unevenly (somewhere hotter, somewhere colder), it can be seen by the color of the potatoes, in the middle of the process just flip the pan 180 degrees. Ready potatoes salt, stir and serve.

Finally, I want to say that sometimes, observing all these details – so sad Spud. At the same time, sometimes not respecting any of my tips – all of it, because in addition to technology much also depends on the type of potato from the oven, and your mood while cooking;)))

As for the ketchup. For the potatoes I use as ketchup – my tomato sauce for the pizza, or the sauce for shakshuka, punched in a blender.

The main sauce base (tomato, onion, garlic, salt, pepper, sweetener), but the flavors you can create the mood. In addition to the spices mentioned in the recipes above, I also like to use cinnamon and cloves. The most important thing is to add the spices when the sauce is already Uvarov not to overdo it.

Delicious Qutab and Kok-samsa with different fillings

I adore Dagestan miracles, and Azerbaijani kutabs, and Uzbek Kok-Samsa, and Turkish gozleme and others-other delicious flatbreads from unleavened dough with various fillings. If I knew earlier that they are so easy to do, and the result is so awesome, I would cook every day.Recipe (for 8 pieces):

Dough. Whole grain flour 300gr. + 200-250 ml. water (if desired, you can replace it with milk or something sour-milk like kefir) + 1 tsp. salts no slide (optional).

The amount of water is very dependent on the flour. I first pour 200 ml, and then gradually add water if the dough is too steep.

Flour is desirable to sift, withstir it with salt, pour water into the center of the mixture, mix everything without kneading, leave the dough for 25-30 minutes in an airtight container. This is necessary in order to strengthen the gluten and swell the coarse particles of wheat flour, since it is whole grain. After this time, you will notice that the dough will be slightly different, more plastic.

We continue kneading with our hands. Kwhen the dough has become elastic and strong (similar in consistency to heated plasticine), twist it into a sausage or ball and put it back in an airtight container so that it does not dry, and leave to rest for 30-40 minutes.

Then take out the dough, cut it in half, then these halves into 2 more parts and so on until there are 8 pieces, then knead them in your hands to the state of a thick cake and again put it in an airtight container so that the dough does not dry and let it rest for 20 minutes. This is necessary to make the dough more pliable and well rolled into thin cakes.

Next, take a piece of dough and roll it with a rolling pin from the center to the edges in a very thin layer (no more than 1 mm). I recommend sprinkling the surface and rolling pin with flour. In the process, I turn the dough on one side, then on the other, so that it does not stick to the surface. If desired, you can make smooth round cakes (I cut out The Shape of a salad bowl).

Do not throw out the remains, but crush and put them in an airtight container to the rest of the dough pieces. When they are enough to roll out another cake from them – roll out as described above.

Filling.

2 large bunches of cilantro, and one bunch of green onions, tarragon and parsley + 200 gr. suluguni or cottage cheese. Greens should be very much, its composition can be changed to your taste. All grind and mix. After careful mixing, the Greens will lose 2 times the volume – this is what we need.

How to do.

Put 1/8 of the filling on half of the cake, retreating 1 cm from the edge. Close the filling with the second half and, pressing with a fork on the edges, tightly fasten them. Do this with the rest of the potential kutabs.

Preheat a frying pan, fry without oil on medium heat for 3-4 minutes on each side. Hot kutab optionally lubricate with butter (I lubricate melted) and serve with a sauce of matsoni and garlic or with sour cream/Greek yogurt.

Sauce is required! It brilliantly shades the taste of the cake, without it it is absolutely not the same.

Also, these tortillas can be baked, not fried. In a well-heated 220C oven until golden brown. This is usually about 7-10 minutes. Look at your oven.

Important:

It is important to roll out the dough as thin as possible and constantly dust the work surface and rolling pin with flour so that it does not have to be painfully long to peel it off.

If the dough cake is the size of the bottom of the pan, then you can fry two pitchers at the same time, because you just fold them in half, and they will fit perfectly. I randomly did just that, and it turned out to be very convenient.

Experiment with the filling (cheese, cottage cheese, various greens, meat, eggs, potatoes, etc.)

From this dough I make Kok-Samsa.

For 8 pieces, I used exactly the same proportions of ingredients as in the recipe for kutabs, which is described above.

That is, only the type of cake changes, and the amount of dough and filling for them is the same.

How to make such a cake.

Divide the dough into 8 parts, roll each into a thin layer (1 mm), lay out the filling, mold the cake in the manner of dumplings, and then again walk on top with a rolling pin. Fry in a dry skillet over medium heat for 3-4 minutes on each side. Hot Kok-Samsa is also greased with melted butter and served with sour cream or any other sour-milk sauce .matsoni yogurt).

These cakes can similarly be baked. And this one with pumpkin, spices and walnuts:

Pumpkin filling recipe (also for 8 pieces):

Pumpkin 800 GR., onion 300 GR., walnuts – a generous handful, a couple of pinches of nutmeg, a little cinnamon, freshly ground black pepper, salt. To taste any herbs: hops-suneli, utsho-suneli, thyme, rosemary, oregano.

Onions need to be finely chopped, browned until golden, add grated pumpkin to it, press until the pumpkin is ready, add spices. In advance I wash nuts and Podsuzhivu nuts in the oven. Then chop the nuts with a knife and add to the filling. Let it stand for 20 minutes, then divide into 8 parts (I draw the same sectors with a spoon right in the container with the filling, so as not to be mistaken;)