Socca

Socca, one of my favorite snack foods, is a quick and easy crepe-like dish from the south of France. We actually use a crepe pan to make this dish, but with a little practice I'm sure that any oven safe pan will work. This is dish great if you follow the basic recipe (below), but it also can be flavored with any of a number of different things. We have tried both thinly sliced onions and fresh rosemary - the rosemary is my favorite.

What makes this dish unique is that it uses chickpea flour, which has a great flavor. For a while I had a hard time finding chickpea flour, but recently I have been seeing it in just about every gourmet store that I am in, including some everyday grocery stores as well. So, I hope you don't get discouraged if you can't find it right away it is out there, but unfortunately I don't think that this would work with regular flour at all. Although, I have also recently seen things like 50/50 chickpea flour and fava bean flour. I don't know what that is like but if you are feeling bold something like that might be worth a try as well.

Socca
1 cup chickpea flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon, at least, ground black pepper
4-6 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup lukewarm water

Heat your oven to 450 degrees and your stove-top to medium-high. Get your crepe pan, well seasoned cast iron, or non-stick pan hot enough on the stove top that a drop of water will lightly bounce off of the surface. Sift chickpea flour into a bowl and add salt and pepper. Slowly add water, whisking to eliminate lumps. Stir in 2 tablespoons of oil. Let the mixture sit covered while the oven and pan heat up, or up to 12 hours. The batter should be about the consistency of a thin sour cream.

Pour 2 tablespoons of oil into the pan, coating the entire surface evenly - I like to use a silicone brush to make sure everything is well coated on all sides. The next part can be a little tricky because there is no solid way to measure, but you want to pour just enough batter to cover the bottom with a even, thin coating. You accomplish this by pouring some into the middle of the pan and then quickly rolling around your wrist to dip and twist the pan so that the batter rolls all around. You will learn after a few tries how much is enough to just coat the bottom for a paper thin layer - it is pretty common for us to ruin the first one in a "practice round" as well. Place the pan to the oven and bake until the socca is firm and the edges have set, about 12-15 minutes. Finish the socca under the broiler, brushing the surface with a little oil, until the surface begins to brown.

Place the finished socca on a plate (or curled inside of a paper cone as they do in France), garnish with some fresh black pepper to taste, set it to the side and begin the next round. Unless you have several pans, it is difficult to do more than one at a time, and you definitely want to eat it hot. If you are serving them for guests, it is best served during an informal gathering in the kitchen in which each person can take their turn or share as they come out of the oven. Pepper is one of the secrets to this simple dish. If you like things spicy, then add a little more, or if you want a cleaner chickpea flavor you can add less.

If you choose to flavor with batter with onions or rosemary or anything else, you should add it to the batter at the very end. Remember when preparing the onion or rosemary that the finished pancakes will thin, so you don't want big hunks of onion or rosemary. Thin slices or a fine chop is the way to go.

I hope you enjoy this as much as we have, and look forward to hearing more about what other flavors people try.