There is a persistent misunderstanding about the unleavened kitchen during the festival season that I have spent a good part of my teaching career working to correct, and it is this: that the absence of biological leavening limits the baker to the production of plain breads and simple crackers, and that anyone wanting a more substantial or elaborate savory preparation must wait until the feast is over and the sourdough starter comes back out of the cellar. This misunderstanding is understandable, because it is true that the most visible and celebrated forms of leavened baking — the tall loaves, the airy rolls, the architecturally impressive pastries of the yeasted tradition — are simply not available in the unleavened kitchen. But the conclusion drawn from this observation is wrong, and it is wrong in a way that reveals how narrowly we sometimes think about what bread is for.
Bread, in the Bravian kitchen as in every other kitchen throughout the history of human cooking, is not primarily a monument to the baker’s skill. It is a vehicle. It wraps things, contains things, cradles things, and carries things from the table to the mouth with a reliability and a versatility that no other food preparation can quite match. And for this purpose — the purpose of wrapping and containing and carrying — an unleavened dough is not merely adequate. In many respects it is superior to a leavened one, because it is more pliable, more stable, and more willing to be shaped, filled, sealed, and handled without losing its structural integrity. The open, airy crumb of a yeasted bread, so attractive when the loaf is sliced at the table, is a positive liability when you are attempting to fold that bread around a filling of braised lamb and roasted onion without losing half of the filling to the table. The dense, coherent crumb of an unleavened flatbread or pastry shell holds everything together with a dependability that any honest cook will appreciate.
The preparations in this chapter represent the second great category of Level 1 festival baking after the flatbreads and crackers of Chapter 5: the savory pastries, wraps, and filled preparations that transform unleavened dough from a simple accompaniment to a complete and satisfying meal in itself. They range from the quick and flexible — the soft unleavened wrap that can be filled and eaten in minutes — to the more time-consuming and structurally ambitious hand pies and filled pastry pockets that are among the most impressive preparations the Level 1 unleavened kitchen can produce. All of them are appropriate for the festival table. All of them have been eaten in Bravian households during the Days of Unleavened Bread for as long as anyone can document, and most of them considerably longer than that.
We begin with the wrap, because the wrap is the foundation on which every other preparation in this chapter rests.
Recipe 6 — Soft Unleavened Wraps
Level: 1, 2, and 3
A note on this recipe: the soft unleavened wrap is the most versatile single preparation in the entire Level 1 kitchen, and arguably in the entire unleavened kitchen across all three levels. It is the preparation I recommend that every baker in every household and at every level of observance master first, before attempting any of the more complex preparations in this chapter or in the chapters that follow. A wrap made well is a remarkable thing: pliable enough to fold without cracking, strong enough to hold a generous filling without tearing, and flavorful enough to contribute positively to the eating experience rather than simply providing a neutral container. A wrap made poorly is frustrating to work with and unsatisfying to eat, and the difference between the two is almost entirely a matter of dough hydration, fat content, and the use of hot liquid in the mixing — the same principles that govern the plain table flatbread of Recipe 1, applied with a somewhat more deliberate emphasis on pliability over structure.
The wrap dough differs from the plain table flatbread dough in three important ways: it is somewhat more hydrated, meaning it contains a higher proportion of liquid relative to flour; it contains a higher proportion of fat, which is the primary source of the pliability that makes it useful as a wrap; and it is rolled thinner than the table flatbread, because a thick wrap is inflexible and cracks when folded around a filling regardless of how well the dough was made. Getting all three of these elements right simultaneously is the skill this recipe teaches, and the baker who masters it will find the rest of this chapter considerably more approachable.
Makes 10 wraps
Ingredients:
- 2 cups soft wheat flour
- 1 cup hard wheat flour
- 1¼ teaspoons fine salt
- 4 tablespoons olive oil, or melted rendered lamb fat for the hill country variation described below
- 1 cup water, heated until steaming but not boiling
- Additional soft wheat flour for the bench — soft wheat rather than hard for bench flour produces less toughening of the surface during rolling
Method:
Combine the soft wheat flour, hard wheat flour, and salt in a large mixing bowl and stir to distribute the salt. The proportion of soft to hard wheat in this dough is inverted from the plain table flatbread: here we want more soft wheat than hard, because the lower protein content of soft wheat produces a more extensible and pliable gluten network that will flex and fold with the filling rather than resisting it. The hard wheat component provides enough structural integrity to prevent the wrap from tearing during handling, but it is not in charge here. The soft wheat is in charge.
Add the olive oil to the hot water and stir briefly to combine, then pour this hot liquid into the flour mixture in a thin, steady stream, stirring as you pour. The dough will come together quickly. Turn it onto a lightly floured bench while it is still warm — work with it while the heat is doing its work of starch gelatinization — and knead gently for three to four minutes. The dough will be noticeably softer and more supple than the plain table flatbread dough, and it will feel slightly tacky. Do not add flour to correct the tackiness. A slightly tacky wrap dough is a correctly hydrated wrap dough, and the tackiness will resolve during the resting period.
Form the dough into a ball, oil the bowl lightly, return the dough to the bowl, and cover. Allow to rest for thirty minutes, which is ten minutes longer than the rest called for in Recipe 1. The additional rest time is necessary because the higher hydration and fat content of this dough require more time to fully relax and become extensible. A wrap dough that has been rested for only fifteen or twenty minutes will spring back during rolling and will be difficult to get thin enough. Thirty minutes is not too long. If you need to delay the cooking, the dough will hold under cover at room temperature for up to an hour without significant deterioration.
Divide the rested dough into ten equal portions. Keep the portions under cover as with the flatbread dough. Working one portion at a time, roll each on a lightly floured bench — use soft wheat flour on the bench — to a circle of approximately nine to ten inches in diameter and a thinness that is noticeably greater than the plain table flatbread: you should be able to see the color of the bench surface through the dough when it is held at an angle to the light.
Cook on a hot, dry griddle for approximately thirty seconds per side — slightly less than the table flatbread, because the wrap is thinner and requires less time at the heat. The correctly cooked wrap will show the same uneven spotting of the table flatbread but will remain flexible and pliable when lifted from the griddle rather than stiffening as a thicker flatbread does on cooling. As each wrap comes off the griddle, stack them on a clean cloth with the cloth folded between each wrap to prevent sticking, and keep the stack covered to maintain warmth and pliability. Covered wraps remain pliable for up to an hour.
Fillings for the festival table: The following combinations are standard in Bravian festival kitchens and are offered as guidance for the baker who is preparing wraps for a specific meal. None of them involves leavening of any kind, and all are appropriate at every level of unleavened observance.
Lamb and roasted onion is the most traditional Bravian filling for a festival wrap, particularly in the interior communities where lamb is the dominant meat. Thin slices of braised or roasted lamb shoulder, combined with onion that has been cooked slowly until it is soft and sweet and collapsed, a scattering of fresh herbs if available, and a spoonful of any pan juices as a sauce, make a filling of considerable depth and satisfaction. The wrap should be filled generously — this is not a preparation that benefits from restraint — and folded tightly at one end before eating.
Soft cheese and roasted vegetable is the traditional filling for households that are not preparing meat for a given festival meal, and it is one of the preparations I grew up eating most frequently during the feast. Fresh soft cheese of the kind easily made at home — a simple pressed curd of heated and cultured milk — is combined with whatever roasted or simply cooked vegetables are in season: in the spring of the festival season in the Western Reaches, this typically means roasted root vegetables from the winter stores, perhaps with some early herbs from the garden. Simple, honest, and good.
Poultry with bitter herbs is specifically associated with the Passover table in many Bravian households, where the commandment to eat bitter herbs alongside the unleavened bread and the lamb is observed in various ways. In the port towns, where access to a wider range of fresh greens makes the selection of bitter herbs less constrained than in the interior, watercress, endive, and certain wild greens are all used. Thinly sliced poultry, combined with whatever bitter herb preparation the household uses, wrapped in a soft unleavened wrap, is a way of satisfying the commandment in a form that is also a complete and satisfying meal.
Level 3 adaptation: This recipe requires no modification for Level 3 beyond the standard attentiveness to fat incorporation technique. The rubbing or liquid-mixing method described is already appropriate.
Hill country variation: In the hill country tradition, this wrap is made with rendered lamb fat instead of olive oil, and a tablespoon of dried thyme is added to the dry flour mixture before combining with liquid. The result is a more robustly flavored wrap that is particularly well-suited to the lamb and roasted onion filling.
Recipe 7 — Unleavened Hand Pies
Level: 1 and 2
A note on this recipe: the hand pie is one of the great practical achievements of the unleavened kitchen. It is a complete meal in a portable package, requiring no utensils to eat, keeping reasonably well for several hours after baking, and capable of being varied almost without limit in its filling. The hand pie has a long history in Bravian working life — it is the traditional provision of the farm laborer, the traveling merchant, and the militia member in garrison — and during the festival season it appears on the festival table as well as in the provision pack, because it is simply a good and satisfying thing to eat regardless of the occasion.
This recipe produces a hand pie at Level 1. A Level 2 adaptation follows, using the fat and liquid management techniques described in Chapter 3 in place of the chemical leavening that gives the Level 1 version its particular character. The Level 3 hand pie does not appear in this chapter because the Level 3 pastry dough appropriate for a filled preparation is developed in Chapter 11, where the Level 3 pastry technique is addressed in full.
The hand pie consists of two elements: the pastry shell and the filling. Both require attention, but the pastry shell is the more technically demanding, because an unleavened pastry must be strong enough to contain a moist filling without dissolving during baking, pliable enough to be sealed at the edges without cracking, and sufficiently flavorful to contribute positively to the eating experience rather than simply serving as a container. Getting all three of these qualities simultaneously in an unleavened pastry is not difficult if you understand the principles at work, and the principles are the same ones we have been discussing throughout this book: the management of fat, liquid, and gluten development to produce a dough with the specific combination of tenderness and strength that the preparation requires.
Makes 8 hand pies
For the pastry shell:
Ingredients:
- 2½ cups hard wheat flour
- ½ cup soft wheat flour
- 1 teaspoon fine salt
- ½ teaspoon baking powder (omit entirely for Level 2; see adaptation note below)
- 6 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small cubes, or cold rendered fat
- 1 egg, beaten
- 6 to 8 tablespoons cold water — begin with six and add more only as needed
Method:
Combine the flours, salt, and baking powder in a mixing bowl. Add the cold fat and work it in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs with some pea-sized pieces of fat still visible — more thoroughly worked than the biscuit bread but less than the soda cracker. The visible fat pieces contribute to a slightly flaky, more tender shell that holds up better to a moist filling than a fully short pastry does.
Add the beaten egg and five tablespoons of cold water and stir until the dough begins to come together. Add additional cold water one tablespoon at a time until the dough just coheres into a firm, smooth ball that is not sticky. This dough should be firmer than the wrap dough and softer than the hard tack: it needs to be rollable to a moderate thickness, strong enough to seal at the edges, and tender enough to be pleasant to eat. Cover and rest for twenty minutes.
For the filling — Braised Lamb and Root Vegetable:
This is the most traditional filling for a Bravian festival hand pie and the one I recommend for the baker’s first attempt with this preparation. It is forgiving in its proportions, deeply flavored, and robust enough to hold its texture through the baking process without dissolving or becoming watery, which is the most common failure mode of hand pie fillings.
Ingredients:
- 1½ cups cooked braised lamb, pulled or cut into small pieces no larger than a thumbnail — the size matters, because pieces that are too large will prevent proper sealing of the pastry and cause the pie to burst during baking
- 1 cup mixed root vegetables — carrot, parsnip, turnip, or whatever is available from the winter stores — cut small and either par-cooked until barely tender or roasted until slightly caramelized
- 1 medium onion, finely diced and cooked in fat until soft and translucent
- 2 tablespoons of the braising liquid or stock from the lamb, reduced until syrupy — this concentrates the flavor and binds the filling without making it wet
- Salt and black pepper to taste
- 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh herbs if available, or ½ teaspoon dried thyme
Combine all filling ingredients in a bowl and taste for seasoning. The filling should be well-seasoned, because the pastry shell will dilute the apparent saltiness of the interior. It should also be neither wet nor dry: if a spoonful of filling holds its shape when pressed together but releases no visible liquid, it is correctly moistened. If it is wet and pools liquid, reduce the braising liquid further and allow the filling to cool completely before proceeding. A warm filling placed in raw pastry will begin to cook the pastry from the inside and produce a soggy shell.
Assembly and baking:
Preheat the oven to hot, with a baking stone or heavy sheet inside. Divide the rested pastry dough into eight equal portions. Working one at a time and keeping the remainder covered, roll each portion on a lightly floured bench to a round of approximately seven inches in diameter, with an even thickness throughout.
Place a generous spoonful of filling — approximately three tablespoons — in the center of the round, leaving a border of at least an inch and a quarter around the entire edge. Do not be tempted to overfill: the pies will burst if the filling is excessive, and a hand pie that has burst is not, structurally speaking, a hand pie any longer.
Fold the pastry over the filling to form a half-moon shape. Press the edges firmly together, then crimp them closed by folding the edge over itself at small intervals and pressing firmly at each fold. The crimped edge should form a tight, continuous seal with no gaps or thin spots. Any gap in the seal is a point of failure during baking where steam from the filling will force its way out and carry filling with it. Run your thumb firmly along the entire crimped edge after completing it to ensure that the seal is consistent.
Cut two small slits in the top of each pie with the tip of a sharp knife, to allow steam to escape in a controlled way and prevent the pastry from bursting at a seam. These slits should be small — no more than half an inch — and placed toward the center of the top surface rather than near the crimped edge.
Place the assembled pies on the preheated baking surface and bake for twenty-two to twenty-six minutes, until the pastry is deeply golden across the entire surface and the crimped edge shows some browning. The filling inside will be steaming and hot. Allow the pies to cool on a rack for at least ten minutes before eating, because the interior of a freshly baked hand pie is hot enough to burn.
For provision hand pies intended for travel or militia rations, bake for the full twenty-six minutes and allow to cool completely before wrapping in clean cloth. They will keep for up to two days at cool temperatures and are best eaten within one day at the warmer temperatures of summer travel.
Level 2 adaptation: Omit the baking powder from the pastry shell entirely. To compensate for the loss of the slight lift and tenderness that baking powder contributes, increase the butter or rendered fat to seven tablespoons and substitute two tablespoons of cold buttermilk for two tablespoons of the cold water in the pastry formula. The Level 2 pastry shell will be somewhat denser and shorter than the Level 1 version — more crumbly against the tooth and less layered in character — but it is a very good pastry in its own right and holds a filling reliably. The assembly and baking instructions are identical. This Level 2 version is the formulation my Stone Hearth Bakery uses during the festival season, and it has never produced a complaint in the years we have offered it.
Alternative filling — Poultry and Preserved Lemon: For the port-town and coastal variation, substitute finely chopped cooked poultry for the lamb and add a teaspoon of finely minced preserved lemon rind and a tablespoon of fresh parsley or dried equivalent. Preserved lemons are readily available through the port-town markets and contribute a bright, slightly fermented citrus character that is very well-suited to poultry and that pairs particularly well with the herb-seasoned pastry shell produced by adding a quarter teaspoon of dried thyme to the dry flour mixture before combining. This is the variation most commonly found in the port-town bakeries during the feast season and the one my own Stone Hearth Bakery offers alongside the traditional lamb version.
Alternative filling — Cheese and Herb: A completely meat-free hand pie can be made with a filling of firm pressed cheese — a well-aged hard cheese that will not melt into a liquid pool during baking — combined with fresh or dried herbs, a small quantity of caramelized onion for sweetness and depth, and a beaten egg stirred through the filling to bind it. This filling is drier than the meat fillings and somewhat more forgiving of slight imprecision in the moisture balance, making it a good starting point for the baker who is working with the hand pie preparation for the first time.
Recipe 8 — Filled Pastry Pockets
Level: 1 and 2
A note on this recipe: the filled pastry pocket differs from the hand pie in scale, shape, and intended use. Where the hand pie is a substantial individual portion intended as a main course, the pastry pocket is a smaller preparation — two or three bites at most — intended as a component of a shared table, a snack, or a provision item for shorter journeys. The pastry shell for this preparation is thinner and more delicate than the hand pie shell, and the fillings are accordingly drier and more intensely flavored, because a small quantity of filling must carry the same flavor weight that a large quantity carries in the hand pie.
These pockets have a long history in Bravian communal eating: they appear at grange gatherings, at harvest meals, at the festival tables of households that prefer a varied spread of smaller preparations to a single large centrepiece dish, and in the pockets and provision bags of travelers throughout the year. During the feast season they are among the most practical of the festival preparations for the household that is entertaining guests, because they can be made in large quantities, held for several hours after baking, and offered to guests to eat without ceremony or utensils, which is a considerable practical advantage when the kitchen is already engaged with the preparation of multiple festival dishes simultaneously.
Makes approximately 24 pockets
For the pocket pastry:
Ingredients:
- 2 cups hard wheat flour
- ½ cup soft wheat flour
- 1 teaspoon fine salt
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder (omit for Level 2)
- 5 tablespoons cold butter or cold rendered fat
- 1 egg, beaten
- 5 to 7 tablespoons cold water
Method:
Prepare the pastry dough following the same method as the hand pie pastry shell: combine dry ingredients, work in cold fat to a coarse crumb, add beaten egg and cold water until the dough comes together into a firm, non-sticky ball. The pocket pastry is formulated slightly leaner than the hand pie pastry — less fat in proportion to flour — because the thinner rolling required for pockets benefits from a dough with a slightly more developed gluten network to prevent tearing.
Cover and rest for twenty minutes.
For the fillings:
The following three fillings are the most commonly offered pocket variations in my own bakery during the festival season, and they represent the range of flavor profiles appropriate to this preparation. Each makes enough filling for approximately eight pockets, so you will want to prepare all three simultaneously if you intend to offer a full batch of twenty-four.
Filling A — Spiced Lamb and Pine Nut:
- ¾ cup finely minced cooked lamb
- 3 tablespoons toasted pine nuts, roughly chopped
- 2 tablespoons finely diced dried fruit — raisins or dried apricot, chopped small
- 1 small onion, finely minced and cooked in fat until soft
- ¼ teaspoon ground coriander
- ¼ teaspoon ground cumin
- Salt and black pepper to taste
- 1 tablespoon of any available pan juices or broth, reduced until nearly dry before adding
Combine all ingredients. The filling should be nearly dry: there should be no liquid that pools when the filling is pressed together, because any excess moisture will soften the thin pocket pastry from within before it has time to bake through. This is the most important technical consideration for pocket fillings, even more so than for hand pie fillings, because the pocket pastry is thinner and therefore more vulnerable to moisture damage.
Filling B — Hard Cheese and Caramelized Onion:
- ¾ cup firmly grated or finely crumbled hard aged cheese — a well-aged pressed cheese of the kind produced in the hill country communities of the Western Reaches, or any firm, dry, strongly flavored hard cheese
- 3 tablespoons caramelized onion, cooked until very dark and sweet and nearly dry
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- Coarse black pepper to taste
Combine. This filling is naturally drier than the meat fillings and requires no further reduction or adjustment if the cheese is sufficiently aged and the onion is sufficiently reduced.
Filling C — Herb and Egg:
- 3 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and very finely chopped
- 2 tablespoons fresh soft herbs, finely minced — parsley, chives, or a combination — or 1 tablespoon dried herbs
- 1 tablespoon soft fresh cheese or well-drained yogurt, enough to bind the filling lightly without making it wet
- Salt and pepper to taste
This is the simplest and most quickly prepared of the three fillings and is the one I recommend for the baker who is assembling pockets for the first time and wants to practice the shaping technique without the added complexity of a filling that requires advance preparation.
Assembly and baking:
Preheat the oven to hot, with a baking stone or heavy sheet inside.
Divide the rested pastry dough into approximately twenty-four equal pieces — the pieces will be small and can be weighed if consistency of size is important. Working with four to six pieces at a time and keeping the remainder covered, roll each piece on a lightly floured bench to a round of approximately four inches in diameter, with an even thickness throughout that is noticeably thinner than the hand pie rounds. The pocket pastry should be thin enough to be semi-translucent when held to the light.
Place a scant teaspoon of filling — less than you think is necessary — in the center of each round. The filling quantity for a pocket is considerably smaller than for a hand pie, and the temptation to be more generous should be resisted firmly, because pockets that are overfilled cannot be sealed reliably at their thin size.
Fold and seal each pocket using either the half-moon fold used for hand pies, with a firmly pressed and crimped edge, or a triangular fold if preferred: fold the round into thirds over the filling to form a triangle, pressing the edges firmly at each seam. The triangular fold produces a more stable pocket for baking because the three sealed seams distribute the internal pressure of steaming filling more evenly than the single seam of the half-moon fold. Both are traditional in different Bravian communities, and I offer both as options rather than prescribing one.
Cut a small slit in the top of each assembled pocket. Place on the preheated baking surface and bake for fifteen to eighteen minutes, until the pastry is golden and firm. Allow to cool for five minutes before serving. These are good warm or at room temperature and keep well for up to half a day after baking, making them practical for a table that will be set and served over an extended period.
Level 2 adaptation: As with the hand pie, omit the baking powder and increase the fat slightly — to six tablespoons — and substitute one tablespoon of the cold water for cold buttermilk. The Level 2 pocket pastry is somewhat more delicate to handle than the Level 1 version, because the absence of baking powder means there is less structural help during baking. Roll and handle with care, and do not try to push the thinness beyond what the dough accommodates without tearing.
Recipe 9 — Savory Unleavened Tarts
Level: 1 and 2
A note on this recipe: the unleavened tart is the most architecturally ambitious preparation in this chapter, and I want to be honest with the reader about what that means before she begins. It is not a difficult preparation in terms of technique: the pastry shell is made by the same principles as the hand pie and pocket pastry, and the filling requires straightforward cooking rather than any specialized skill. What makes the tart more ambitious is its structure: unlike the hand pie and the pocket, which are self-contained and sealed, the tart is an open vessel, and an open vessel must have sides that hold themselves upright during baking without the support of a sealed top. This requires a pastry with enough structural integrity to maintain its shape through the full baking time, and achieving that structural integrity in an unleavened pastry requires careful attention to the specific formulation and technique described below.
The Bravian unleavened tart has a long tradition in the festival kitchen of the Western Reaches, where the open-faced preparation is associated particularly with the grange hall gatherings and communal festival meals that are a feature of Amphoe community life. A large tart presented at the center of a communal table is a generous and visually appealing thing, and it has the considerable practical virtue of being shareable in a way that individual hand pies and pockets are not. It is also a good vehicle for the kinds of slowly cooked, deeply flavored vegetable and meat preparations that benefit from being displayed rather than concealed inside a sealed pastry shell.
Makes one large tart serving 8 to 10, or two smaller tarts serving 4 to 5 each
For the tart shell:
Ingredients:
- 2 cups hard wheat flour
- ½ cup soft wheat flour
- 1 teaspoon fine salt
- ½ teaspoon baking powder (omit for Level 2)
- 7 tablespoons cold butter, cut into cubes, or cold rendered fat
- 1 egg, beaten
- 4 to 6 tablespoons cold water
Method:
Combine the dry ingredients and work in the cold fat until the mixture resembles fine, irregular crumbs with a few pea-sized pieces of fat still visible. Add the beaten egg and four tablespoons of cold water and bring the dough together, adding more water gradually until it coheres into a firm ball. This pastry dough is the firmest and leanest of the three pastry formulas in this chapter, because a tart shell must be structurally capable of holding its shape as a vessel. A short, tender pastry that produces a good hand pie may not have enough structural integrity to hold a tart’s sides upright through twenty-five minutes of baking.
Cover the dough and rest for twenty-five minutes — slightly longer than the hand pie pastry rest — because the firmer dough requires more time to relax sufficiently for clean rolling.
For a large single tart, roll the rested dough on a lightly floured bench to a round of approximately thirteen to fourteen inches in diameter and a thickness that is even throughout and somewhat thicker than the pocket pastry — approximately the thickness of three stacked coins. Transfer to a tart form or a shallow baking dish with sides approximately an inch and a half high, pressing the pastry firmly into the base and up the sides. The pastry will extend above the rim of the form; fold the excess over itself to form a slightly thickened rim rather than trimming it away, because this thickened rim provides additional structural support during baking and gives the finished tart an appealing rustic appearance.
Prick the base of the pastry shell all over with a fork. Place the form in a hot oven and bake the empty shell for eight minutes before adding the filling. This partial pre-baking — which bakers sometimes call blind baking, though that term is not common in Bravian household vocabulary — sets the base of the shell and ensures that the pastry directly under the filling does not remain raw, which is a common problem with unleavened tart pastry because it lacks the chemical leavening that gives the base of a leavened pastry its structure under the weight of a moist filling.
For the filling — Caramelized Onion and Roasted Root Vegetable:
This is the standard filling for the Bravian festival tart in the interior Amphoe communities and is the filling I prepare most frequently in the months of the spring feast season when root vegetables from the winter stores are still available and the early spring garden has not yet produced its first fresh greens. It is a deeply savory, well-rounded filling whose sweetness comes entirely from the long cooking of the onions and from the caramelization of the vegetables in the oven, and it requires no sauce, no binder beyond the eggs that set it, and no ingredient that is not straightforwardly available in any Bravian household at this time of year.
Ingredients:
- 4 large onions, thinly sliced
- 3 tablespoons fat — olive oil or rendered fat according to regional preference
- 2 cups mixed root vegetables, cut into pieces approximately an inch across — carrot, parsnip, turnip, beetroot if available
- 3 eggs, beaten
- ½ cup fresh whole milk or cream
- 1 teaspoon fine salt
- ½ teaspoon dried thyme or 1 teaspoon fresh thyme, finely chopped
- Coarse black pepper to taste
- Optional: a handful of crumbled hard cheese scattered over the surface before baking
Cook the onions in fat over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, for forty to fifty minutes — considerably longer than most cooks expect is necessary. The onions should be very dark, sweet, collapsed, and almost jamlike by the end of this cooking time. They must be cooked to this point before going into the tart shell, because they will not cook further to any significant degree once the egg custard sets around them, and undercooked onion in a tart is a disappointment that no amount of seasoning can correct. This long onion-cooking step cannot be hurried, and I recommend beginning it well before you start the pastry so that both components are ready at approximately the same time.
While the onions cook, toss the root vegetable pieces in a small quantity of fat, season with salt and pepper, and roast in a hot oven until they are tender and have developed some caramelized color at their edges. Set aside.
Whisk together the beaten eggs, milk or cream, salt, thyme, and pepper. This is the custard that will set the filling and hold it together when the tart is cut. It should be well-seasoned — taste it before it goes into the tart and adjust — because this is the binding element of the filling and its seasoning affects everything it touches.
Spread the caramelized onions evenly over the pre-baked pastry base. Distribute the roasted root vegetables over the onions. Pour the egg custard over the filling, allowing it to find its level and settle into the spaces between the vegetables. Scatter the crumbled cheese over the surface if using.
Bake in a moderate-to-hot oven for twenty-five to thirty minutes, until the custard is set — it should not wobble when the tart form is gently moved — and the surface is golden and fragrant. Allow to rest for ten minutes before cutting, because the custard continues to set during this resting period and a tart cut too soon will lose its structure when served.
Serve at the table in the form, cut into generous wedges. This is festival food, which is to say it is food meant to be eaten in good company and at some leisure, and it should be presented accordingly.
Level 2 adaptation: Omit the baking powder from the tart shell formula. Increase the cold butter or rendered fat to eight tablespoons to compensate for the loss of tenderness that the baking powder otherwise provides, and substitute two tablespoons of the cold water for cold buttermilk. The Level 2 tart shell will be slightly denser and more fragile than the Level 1 version, and particular care should be taken during the transfer of the rolled pastry to the tart form to avoid cracking. If a crack appears during transfer, press it back together firmly with wet fingers before proceeding, and the crack will seal sufficiently during the blind-bake stage to hold the filling without leaking.
Recipe 10 — Open-Faced Flatbread Preparations
Level: 1, 2, and 3
A note on this recipe: the open-faced flatbread preparation is the simplest and most quickly executed member of the savory pastry and wrap family, and it deserves a place in this chapter because it occupies a position in Bravian festival cooking that the more elaborate preparations cannot fill: it is the preparation that can be assembled in minutes from whatever is at hand, that requires no advance planning or time-consuming filling preparation, and that feeds a table quickly and well when the more elaborate preparations are not possible or not practical. It is also the preparation most directly descended from the ancient tradition of flat bread eaten with toppings that has been part of covenant-keeping households since long before the Bravian nation existed in its current form.
The open-faced flatbread is assembled on top of a fully baked plain flatbread — any of the variants in Chapter 5 are appropriate, or the wraps from Recipe 6 if a thinner base is preferred — and finished either by returning the topped flatbread to the oven or griddle for a brief period to warm the topping and meld it with the bread, or by serving it at room temperature if the topping does not require heat.
Because this preparation is more a technique and a framework than a recipe in the strict sense, I offer it here in the form of three topping combinations that represent the range of what the open-faced preparation can accomplish, from the most quickly assembled to the most carefully prepared.
Topping A — Herb Oil and Salt (Assembly time: 5 minutes)
The simplest and most ancient open-faced preparation: a baked flatbread brushed generously with good olive oil in which fresh or dried herbs have been steeped, scattered with coarse salt, and served at once. In the coastal tradition of the Western Reaches, the herbs steeped in the oil are rosemary and thyme; in the Delta settlements, coriander and cumin seeds are toasted briefly in the oil before it is applied. Neither preparation requires oven time after assembly. The herb oil should be applied to the flatbread while the bread is still warm from the griddle, because the warm bread absorbs the oil more readily and releases the herb fragrance more fully than a cold flatbread does.
This is the preparation I make at the end of a long day of festival baking when there is nothing left in me for anything more complicated, and it is never a disappointment. Good oil, good herbs, good salt, good bread. The simplicity is the point.
Topping B — Slow-Cooked Lamb with Roasted Garlic (Assembly time: 20 minutes active, plus cooking time for the lamb)
A more substantial open-faced preparation that is best understood as a deconstructed hand pie: all the elements of a hand pie filling, assembled on top of a flatbread rather than sealed within one. Slow-cooked or braised lamb, pulled into small irregular pieces, is combined with roasted garlic — whole heads of garlic roasted in a low oven until the cloves are soft, sweet, and almost jamlike, then squeezed from their skins — and a small quantity of the braising liquid reduced to a concentrated sauce. This combination is spread over a warm flatbread, scattered with fresh herbs if available, and served immediately. The flatbread softens slightly under the moist topping and absorbs some of the braising liquid, and the result is a preparation of considerable depth and satisfaction that requires no plates, no cutlery, and no ceremony to enjoy well.
Return to the oven briefly — three to four minutes in a hot oven — after topping to warm everything through and allow the edges of the flatbread to crisp slightly, which provides a textural contrast to the soft topping that improves the eating considerably.
Topping C — Caramelized Onion, Herb, and Egg (Assembly time: 30 minutes)
The most elaborate of the three open-faced preparations and the one most appropriate for the festival table when a more substantial presentation is wanted without the effort of an enclosed tart. Caramelized onions, prepared by the same long slow-cooking method described in Recipe 9, are spread over the warm flatbread in a generous layer. Two or three eggs are beaten with a small quantity of salt and fresh herbs and poured over the onion layer; the assembled preparation is then placed in a moderate oven for eight to ten minutes, until the egg is just set — still slightly trembling at the center, fully set at the edges. The egg provides a custardlike layer over the onion that is reminiscent of the tart filling but requires no pastry shell, and the whole preparation can be cut into portions and served directly from the pan in which it was finished.
This preparation is appropriate at all three levels of unleavened observance. It contains no leavening of any kind — the egg is not beaten to any significant degree of aeration, only until the white and yolk are combined — and it requires no technique that approaches mechanical leavening. My mother would have served this without hesitation from her Level 3 kitchen, and I have done the same in my own home during those years when I have chosen to observe the feast at the strictest standard.
Chapter 7: Sweet and Celebratory Level 1 Baked Goods begins on the following page.
