Tuesday

Cooking With Spelt.

I try and eat as healthily as I can, for a given value of 'Oh for God's sake!' when the gluten-free, sugar-free, yeast-free, vegan, lactose-free (and sometimes even raw) effort collapses in the dish either before, during or after cooking or dehydrating. I will point out here that I am not vegan nor vegetarian so you will be facing bacon on this blog.

Like now.

This is a quiche made with with spelt flour. I love cooking with spelt and it tastes delicious and this turned out pretty well

It's a half-and-half quiche in that the left-hand side has cow cheese and the right-hand side has goat cheese. Luckily I only have slight intolerances so I can do that sort of thing — and it helps my husband who is an old-fashioned bloke when it comes to food and who finds quinoia, dehydrated kale and such stuff scarier than spiders in the bath.*

I also make wraps with just spelt, seasoning and a little water, flatten them with my bare hands and dry fry and they are just gorgeous.

Quiche Recipe:

  • 300 gms spelt or plain flour
  • 150 gms shortening (I used coconut oil)
  • 50 gms butter.
  • Two eggs, beaten.
  • 1.5 kilos Spanish onions
  • Cheese and bacon to taste.

Grease a flan base. Put flour, shortening and season in the food mixer and wizz (or, if you're being impressive, mix in a bowl).
Bake blind for 20 minutes. I use temperature of 325F for most things and guess for the others but all cookers are different so I can't really advise here...You'll know.
Heat the 50 gm of butter in a large pan or casserole. Quarter the onions and cook vigorously for about half an hour. Take care they do not burn - stir occasionally. Towards the end of the half hour, turn the heat up and stir continually until the onions start to brown and liquify.
Pour them on to the pastry and cover with the beaten eggs, grated cheese and slices of ham or bacon (or asparagus or whatever).
Cook for half an hour on 325 - or until nicely bronzed and gooey.
Eat warm.

However, I had forgotten the traditional custom of putting pastry into the fridge for half an hour before rolling it out. Do not try that with spelt flour.

This (right) is what happens when you do that. It shatters. This is another pie - a chicken pie made with spelt flour. I'd already made the base and it was already showing a tendency to shatter when I blind-baked it. So, I thought the fridge might help when it came to putting the top on.

Obviously not...

After I'd stopped laughing, I served the pie without a pastry topping.

A second attempt (below) was hardly more successful than the first aesthetics-wise. But both pies were yummy. No, I'll not post the recipe because they are just pastry, leftover chicken, frozen veg and some gravy from the freezer.
You can manage that :-)


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