Yogurt Flatbreads with Barley and Mushrooms

Yotam says that this serves six as a starter, which I can see being accurate. It certainly fed two as a main course with quite a bit of the barley and mushroom mixture left over. The flatbreads are not difficult to make, so you can double or even triple the recipe for those if you wanted to. Just be aware that the dough needs to chill in the fridge for an hour and plan accordingly.

Yogurt Flatbreads with Barley and Mushrooms

(p. 236, Plenty)

Serves 6 as a starter

Flatbreads

1 cup plus 2 tsp whole-wheat flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup Greek yogurt

3 tbsp fresh cilantro

4 tbsp clarified butter (or a mixture of melted butter and oil)

Mushroom Ragout

1/2 cup pearl barley

3/4 oz dried porcini mushrooms

3/4 cup lukewarm water

4 cups mixed shiitake and button mushrooms, halved

2 tbsp olive oil

5 tbsp butter

2 thyme sprigs

1 garlic clove, crushed

1/2 cup white wine

salt and black pepper

2 tbsp chopped parsley, plus extra to garnish

1/2 tbsp finely chopped preserved lemon

1 tbsp lemon juice

6 tbsp Greek yogurt

Start with making the flatbreads, as they will need to chill in the fridge for a while before they are ready to be cooked. Assemble the ingredients:

In a medium bowl, combine all of the ingredients except for the butter and mix them together into a dry dough. I found using my hands to be the most effective way of doing this. If you dislike cilantro, pretty much any green herb is going to taste good here. I'd recommend flat leaf parsley, basil (Thai basil if you've got it), or even mint.

Once the dough has come together in the bowl, knead it on the counter for a moment or two until it is smooth and uniform. Then wrap it in plastic wrap (or put it in a large enough container with a lid) and let it chill in the fridge for at least an hour.

 While the dough is chilling, start in on the mushroom ragout. Assemble the ingredients:

A few alterations for this part of the recipe: I had no white wine, so I substituted 1/4 cup apple cider and 1/4 cup water. Given the choice again, I'd go for the wine. I also could not open my jar of preserved lemon, so that was omitted.

To begin, rinse the barley with cold water and then place in a medium saucepan. Cover with plenty of fresh water and then simmer for 30 to 35 minutes, or until al dente. I found I needed a medium heat to really get things going here. When the barley is finished cooking, drain in a colander and let cool a bit.

While the barley is cooking, start preparing the mushrooms. Measure the dried porcini into a small bowl. I had only ~half an ounce of dried porcini, so I topped up the measurement with a mixture of dried oyster and shiitake mushrooms, figuring more variety was better than running short measure.

Cover the dried mushrooms with lukewarm water and set aside. You'll end up using the steeping water later in the recipe, so it's best to just cover the mushrooms at this stage - a lot of extra liquid here will add cooking time later as you try to evaporate it off while reducing the sauce.

While the dried mushrooms soak, dice the fresh mushrooms into halves or quarters, depending on how big they are. If the stems aren't too woody, include them. When the fresh mushrooms are cut, place them in a large, heavy bottomed sauce pan with the olive oil and heat to medium-high heat.

Add half the butter and the thyme (you can pick the leaves and add them or throw the whole sprig in and just fish out the woody stem after, it's up to you). Saute for ~4 minutes, stirring occasionally. Once the fresh mushrooms have softened, add the garlic (mine was finely diced rather than crushed), and the wine, and "allow to bubble away for about 5 minutes". I love Yotam's phrasing sometimes. ^_^

Add the remaining mushrooms and their soaking liquid, leaving behind any grit in the bottom of the soaking bowl. Season with salt and pepper and simmer on low heat for  ~10 minutes. Stir in the remaining butter with the parsley, preserved lemon, lemon juice, and cooked barley. You should now have a well-flavoured mushroom stew. Add more water if you need to thin the sauce at all, and then taste for seasoning. Set aside, and reheat briefly before serving.

Pre-barley: the butter wasn't quite done melting when I shot this.

To finish up the flatbreads, retrieve the dough from the fridge. Unwrap it and portion it into six balls. From here Yotam says to flatten them with a rolling pin into round disks about 1 inch thick. However, that made no visual sense to me after I'd portioned the dough into the balls, because the balls were roughly 1 inch thick. So I decided to flatten them with my hands into rounds roughly 1/2 inch thick and roughly 4 inches across.

It's a dense dough, and you aren't going to get a tremendous amount of rise from it, so the shape you put into the pan is pretty much what you are going to take out of the pan. Heat some clarified butter in a nonstick pan and fry the flatbreads on medium heat for about 2 minutes each side. I used straight olive oil as I had no clarified butter, and I cooked three of them at a time.

 Flip them at the two minute mark and you should have golden goodness on the just-fried side.

Keep the early flatbreads warm as you cook the remainder.

To serve, top each flatbread with some of the ragout, a spoonful of Greek yogurt, and a sprinkle of parsley.

I found that I didn't get the thick sauce that Yotam was talking about, and that my flatbread dimensions were really far off of what he was outlining. I have reviewed the recipe a number of times and can't see where things might have gone "wrong" - I am putting that in air quotes because this was still really delicious, despite the discrepancies. I'd definitely make this again. Don't omit the thyme (and fresh really is best) or the lemon juice, or the dish will seem quite flat. I look forward to making this again with the wine to see what kind of difference it would make, and I am also considering using my mushroom and sage oil as the initial olive oil in the pan when the fresh mushrooms start cooking. Could be fun.