Italian Piadina Sandwich with Roasted Vegetables

Blogging Marathon# 64: Week 2/ Day 3
Theme: Cook from 1 European Cuisine -- Italian

Dish: Italian Piadina Sandwich

After posting 2 well known Italian dishes (Risotto & Pizza), today's Italian dish is not very popular outside of Italy. It is a thin flatbread called Piada or Piadina and is typically made in the Romagna region. The flatbreads are then filled variety of cheeses, meats, vegetables and also with sweet fillings like bananas and Nutella. These are sold as soon as they are made in specialized kiosks called piadineri.

Traditional piada are made with white flour, lard or olive oil, salt and water. I subbed some of the white flour with wholewheat flour and the lard with vegetable shortening. These piada are very much like our kulchas and are leavened with baking powder. These are rolled out very thin unlike the kulchas that are a bit thicker.

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Cheese and Potato Gözleme for #BreadBakers

I almost forgot that today's the posting day for #BreadBakers. I'm glad that I checked Facebook to see our lovely Host, Anshie's post about the event, otherwise I would have totally forgotten about it. So thank you Anshie for reminding and also for being such a gracious host.

Our theme for this month is 'Griddle breads' and I almost wanted to make an Indian bread. But then as I was looking through my Pinterest boards, I found these Turkish Gözleme that I had pinned a while back.

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Homemade flatbread

Blogging Marathon# 60: Week 4/ Day 3

Theme: Bookmarked Dishes

Dish: Homemade flatbread
For the final day of this week's BM under 'bookmarked recipes' theme, I made these soft and multipurpose flatbread. Recipe is bookmarked from Mel's Kitchen.

I usually buy pita bread, but do take the time to make them at home sometimes. I also have couple of pita bread recipes on the blog already. They are like our very own naans but thinner and not as fluffy.

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Vegetarian Gyros with Jackfruit

Blogging Marathon# 60: Week 2/ Day 2

Theme: Take-Away dishes from Metropulos, Santa Barbara

Dish: Vegetarian Gyros with Jackfruit
Gyro (pronounced as jiro) literally means 'turn' in Greek. But basically it is a dish made of meat cooked in a vertical rotisserie and then served wrapped in a pita with toppings. Gyro is out and out meat centered dish and this vegetarian version is far far away from it's origins.

All this talk about Gyro is because I'm cooking from a Greek take-out restaurant, Metropulos, in Santa Barbara for this week's BM and Gyro happens to be one of their specialties. But they make it meat and I made mine with jackfruit.

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Khamiri Roti with Shahi Mixed Vegetable and Paneer Curry

Buffet on Table: Week 2 -- Indian States

Day 10: Uttar Pradesh -- Khamiri Roti

After yesterday's simple Karnataka meal, I've 2 delicious Mughalai dishes from Uttar Pradesh today. Uttar Pradesh cuisine is influenced greatly by Mughal cooking techniques. In the Mughal era, Uttar Pradesh became the heartland of the empire.
Mughlai cuisine is rich with the use of spices and different cooking techniques. I decided to make a simple flatbread and a creamy vegetable & paneer curry.

Khamiri roti is a Mughlai leavened bread. Khamir means 'yeast' and it is used in this roti to make it thick and spongy. I thought it is similar to naan, but these are made with wholewheat flour and are not made as thick as naans.

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Corn Pizza on Multigrain Crust for #BreadBakers

'Whole Grain breads' is the theme for this month's #BreadBakers challenge. Thanks to Cali's Cuisine for choosing this interesting theme. Any yeasted or chemically leavened bread using at least half of the grains whole is what we need to come up for the challenge.

So I did the easiest thing I can do, opened my Whole Grain Baking cookbook by King Arthur Flour and found this Corn Pizza recipe with Multi grain crust. The crust has cornmeal, barley flour and wholewheat flour along with a little bit of bread flour. Per serving there are 43gms of whole grains in this recipe.

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Thalipeeth (Maharashtrian flat bread)

Buffet on Table: Week 2 -- Indian States

Day 1: Maharashtra -- Thalipeeth

After a week of combo meals from around the world, our theme for the second week of our mega marathon, Buffet on Table, is Indian States. So each day of this week, I will be sharing a dish from different states in India.

With the amount of time we had to plan for this marathon, I should have made elaborate dishes and meals for this week. Though I had plans to make it 'mega', when reality really hit me it was a little too late in the game. I stuck to very simple dishes, but I have to say I enjoyed them all very much and I will be making them often in the future.

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Cast-Iron Skillet Pita Bread

Pita bread is a quintessential element for any Middle Eastern meal. I already have a recipe for pita bread that is baked in the oven. This one is made on the skillet and the pitas turned out soft and delicious.

These pitas involve quite a bit of work, read the recipe thoroughly and plan accordingly. I don't usually add cooking and prep times to my recipes, but I thought it is important to add them here because I miscalculated the time and it took me past dinner time to make these pitas.
A 'Sponge' made by mixing some of the flour before preparing the dough is the secret to the success of these homemade pitas. Try these and I'm sure you'll love them.

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Tabbouleh, Hummus and Pita Platter

Buffet on Table: Week 1 -- Combos from Countries

Day 4: Middle East -- Tabbouleh, Hummus & Pita Platter

Our next stop for an amazing International Combo meal is in the Middle East. This Tabbouleh, Hummus, pita and falafel platter has been something I have planned to make for a very long time. Finally I made them all for the Mega marathon :-)

Tabbouleh is a traditional Middle Eastern dish. There are many versions for this bulgur wheat salad. This recipe is from Vegetarian Times magazine and I'm assuming it is from Lebanon since it is more about the herbs and less about the bulgur grain itself.

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Roti Canai with Curry Sauce (Vegetarian Recipe)

Buffet on Table: Week 1 -- Combos from Countries

Day 2: Malaysia -- Roti Telur with Curry Sauce

Next we stop in Malaysia for an addictive combo of Roti Canai with Curry sauce. Some influence of Indian cuisine can be seen in Malaysian cuisine and this combo of roti with curry reflects a lot of it.

We have a really good Penang restaurant near us and they serve delicious roti canai. Unfortunately the curry sauce has chicken in it, so we end up eating just the bread. Penang is a state in Malaysia and is touted as the food capital of Malaysia.

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Za'atar spiced Khobez/ Khobz (Arabic Flat bread) for #BreadBakers

For this month's #BreadBakers challenge, our host for the month Mireille picked 'Yeasted Flatbread' as the theme. I had this Khobez or Arabic flatbread bookmarked from 'The New Middle Eastern Vegetarian' cookbook by Sally Butcher.
Khobez or Khubz is the most common Arabic word for bread. It is also known as Aish in Egypt and Samoon in Iraq. It comes in different shapes and thicknesses -- make it small and oval and you've got pita bread. It is the same basic recipe or principle -- soft dough, which when toasted, puffs up to form a neat pocket.

Za'atar is not traditionally added to the dough, but it definitely adds a lot of flavor and texture. I included the recipe for Zaatar at the end.

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