Cast Iron

Farinata

April  7, 2014
0
0 Ratings
  • Serves a small crowd
Author Notes

I was lucky enough to spend a month in Italy in Fall of 2012. One of my favorite restaurants where I ate several times served this as an appetizer. A muscular young man poured batter into a huge, shallow copper pan reminiscent of a paella pan, and slid it into a wood fire oven for a smokey flavor. When done, he pulled them out, and scraped a thin pancake-looking round into pieces using a spatula and served it in a pile. Perfect finger food for the table, and perfectly addictive. I tried duplicating it with my stove top smoker when I got home, but it didn't really work. So I decided to take my own tangent, added fried garlic and rosemary. It's now a mainstay app I serve at every party. I make the batter the night before, so it's ready to go into the pan just as the first guests arrive.

I make the rosemary oil by adding a bunch of fresh rosemary needles to olive oil and letting it sit overnight on the counter. It's a condiment I nearly always have on hand. —TheWimpyVegetarian

What You'll Need
Ingredients
  • 3.375 ounces (2/3 cup) chickpea flour
  • 6 ounces warm water
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon finely minced rosemary
  • few twists of fresh black pepper
  • 1 ounce (2 tablespoons) rosemary olive oil
  • ½ ounce (1 tablespoon) olive oil
  • 2 – 3 cloves of garlic, minced
Directions
  1. Whisk the warm water into the chickpea flour until smooth. Add the salt, pepper and minced rosemary and whisk again. Allow to sit on the counter for 4 hours (or overnight) to allow for a complete absorption of the water by the chickpea flour.
  2. A foam may develop on the surface of the batter. If so, gently remove with a spoon. Whisk in the Rosemary Olive Oil.
  3. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F, and move the rack to the top third of the oven.
  4. Add the olive oil to a very well seasoned pan that’s oven proof (I used a well used cast iron skillet). Sauté the garlic until it just starts to turn a golden brown. Pour in the batter and jiggle the pan to even out the batter. It will start to sizzle immediately. Cook on the stovetop another 30 seconds, and transfer the pan to the oven.
  5. Bake for 10 – 12 minutes, until the edges start to curl up and brown slightly. The top may lightly crack in a few places. Remove and immediately and either flip out with a spatula and slice into pie-shaped pieces, or scrape up roughly to break it up into irregular pieces, and toss onto a plate in a pile for picking up with the fingers.

See what other Food52ers are saying.

0 Reviews