Have I got a fabulous treat treat for you today! A two course affair, something for lunch and something for dessert. The savoury is up first, a great way to use up leftovers and turn it into a fabulous little lunch. For paid subscribers there is also a fabulous dessert using a classic chocolate cremeux.
For almost my entire professional life I have worked for myself, working mainly from home. Keeping lunches interesting, when you work from home, is difficult at the best of times but add in the fact that I spend most of those days in the kitchen, and I tend to want things that need very little preparation. I also get incredibly bored of the inevitable repetition, so when there are leftovers available, they open up the potential to turn last nights dinner into something different, something delicious, something new for lunch. Admittedly, the flatbreads I have for you today, might at first glance seem like a lot of work for lunch, but hear me out. The bread element takes just a couple of minutes to make and cooking the flatbread is equally speedy, so whilst it might seem to be more than you be bothered to make in your limited lunch break, its actually a quick affair that turns those leftovers into one hell of a treat at lunch.
These little flatbreads, which in some ways resemble Columbian and Venezuelan Arepas or even Lebanese Areyas, actually owe more in influence to India. Filled with a minced lamb dish inspired by Keema they’re clearly linked to the popular keema naan, but the filling here is just what I had on hand, the idea of the recipe is meant to be more of a vessel for using a wide variety of leftovers, they’d work great with leftover chilli, all manner of curries, fried rice and well, you get the idea. I almost always add cheese because, well, cheese makes everything better.
I wanted to take the leftovers I had on hand, and do something quick and easy to transform it into something entirely different, something I could easily make in my lunch break. The flatbread dough is a simple affair, no yeast and almost no kneading, it is a great flatbread recipe to have on hand, a great basic building block. Whilst the recipe is mainly about the assembly into a flat bread I thought you might find my keema style recipe useful. I don’t really follow much of a recipe when making this, over the years I have made lots of keema recipes, from people like Maunika Gowardhan and Chetna Makan, so I owe credit to those recipes for the basic framework. These days I kind of riff on that idea, depending on what I have on hand. If I have curry leaves, in they go. Sometimes I use tomato puree, sometimes I use chopped tomatoes, sometimes I add peas and sometimes not. The meat choice also often comes down to availability, I have made with lamb, beef and pork and all work well. Below is the recipe I made this week and is what I had leftover to use in the flatbreads.
Lamb Keema
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 white onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and crushed
1 green chilli diced (seeds removed or left, its up to you)
500g lamb mince
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp ground turmeric
2 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp chilli powder
400g tin of chopped tomatoes
Small handful of fresh coriander, finely chopped
Add 1 tbsp of the oil to a large frying pan set to medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, ginger and chilli and cook for 15 minutes or until the onion is starting to brown. Scrape the onion mixture out of the pan and set aside for the moment. Add the remaining oil and turn up the heat. Add the meat and break up with a wooden spoon, then leave alone to cook for a few minutes or until the meat is starting to brown, getting lots of delicious caramelisation. Add the cumin, turmeric, garam masala and chilli powder and cook for a couple minutes more until the meat is fully cooked. Add the onion mixture back to the pan along with the chopped tomatoes. Reduce to a simmer and cook until most of the moisture has been cooked out. Remove from the heat and stir through the coriander.
My Working From Home Leftover Flatbreads
Makes 2
175g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
175g greek yoghurt
Filling
150g leftover keema
50g grated mozzarella
Garlic Butter (optional I guess but you’ll really want to make this too)
50g unsalted butter
1 garlic clove, crushed
Large pinch flaked sea salt
1 tbsp finely hopped coriander
Preheat the oven to 190ºC (170ºC Fan).
For the bread dough add the flour, baking powder and salt and whisk to combine. Add the greek yoghurt and stir together until a shaggy dough is formed. Knead briefly until a uniform dough is formed this shouldn’t take you more than a minute. Cut the dough into two evenly sized pieces and form into rounds. Press or roll into a flat disc, roughly 17cm in diameter. Spoon the keema mixture atop the flatbreads and top with the cheese. Fold the edges over the filling and press to seal. Pat or roll the flat bread slightly to ensure a good seal and to flatten a little further. You want the filling to be distinct so you don’t want to roll these flat, they may be called flatbreads but in reality these are pretty chunky.
Heat a frying pan over medium heat and cook the flatbreads (one at a time if they both wont fit) and cook for 2-3 minutes per side until golden. Transfer the flatbreads to a baking tray and bake in the oven for 5-6 minutes until the sides of the flatbreads feel springy. Because the flatbreads have a bit of height, the sides can be a little undercooked if only pan fried, so the short bake in the oven finishes off the baking process.
If making the garlic butter, heat the butter, garlic and salt and cook until the butter is melted and then bubbling, cook for a minute or so more to properly infuse the garlic flavour into the butter. Remove from the heat and stir through the parsley. You wont need the full amount of butter for the two flatbreads but the leftovers can be refrigerated and used for another recipe.
Remove the flatbreads from the oven and brush liberally with the butter. Perfect WFH lunch if you ask me!
And for dessert? Let me introduce you to the hero element, chocolate cremeux. Sounds fancy right? Well really, it’s a simple ganache made with custard instead of cream and it makes the most luxuriously, super silky, ganache that is served a little like chocolate mousse (it also makes for a brilliant cake and pastry filling). To turn this element into a fully fledged plated dessert, we need a couple other elements.
Mascarpone Vanilla Whipped Cream - a great base for this dessert
Lime Macerated Blackberries - a bright tangy element to balance out the richer elements
Chocolate Crumb - to add a textural element as everything else is on the softer side
Over the last couple of weeks we have found ourselves travelling back and forth between London and the south coast, to visit family and, specifically, to get as many hugs with our newborn nephew as possible. Because of this, I have been spending a lot of time in the kitchen cooking for family, and batch cooking for the new parents. This particular dessert was one of the things I made whilst visiting them recently; it was something easy to make and something which could be assembled last minute depending on when it would eventually be served. Because of this, the dessert is a perfect dinner party affair; all of the elements can be made well ahead and when ready to plate, all you need to do is whip up the mascarpone cream.
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