Jenny's "Coca de Recapte" (Flatbread with Roasted Veg & Anchovies)

Jenny’s “Coca de Recapte” (Flatbread with Roasted Veg & Anchovies)

Jenny Chandler

Featuring:

Aubergine

Peppers

Effort:

Complexity:

Cost:

In season now

Serves: 8

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 1 hr 30 mins

Ingredients:

For the topping:

4 medium red peppers

4 medium aubergines

3 medium red onions

2 tablespoons olive oil

salt, to taste

50g canned anchovies

50g small olives, ideally arbequina

For the dough (enough for 1 large coca):

1 tablespoon fresh yeast or 1 teaspoon of dried yeast

500g strong white flour

1 tablespoon salt

4 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons white wine

290ml water at room temperature

Veg Portions / Serving: 2

Recipe donated by Jenny Chandler/Borough Market for Veg Power. Photography by John Holdship.

This flat bread from Catalonia is really simple to make and you can chop and change with different vegetables on the top, depending on what you like best or what’s in season. How about adding tinned sardines instead of the anchovies if you find them a bit salty?

Coca is pretty similar to an Italian pizza, so you want to roll and stretch the dough fairly thin before adding your veg. Even though coca is usually baked on a big rectangular tray there’s nothing to stop you making smaller, individual servings. Give it a go, all those Mediterranean flavours taste like sunshine on your plate.

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Place the whole peppers, aubergines and onions in a roasting tray and cook in the hot oven for about 40 minutes, or until really soft. Take out of the oven and remove the skins and pepper seeds. Slice the sweet, soft vegetables into ribbons. Set the vegetables aside to cool.

Meanwhile, make the dough. Place the yeast in a small bowl with a little warm water and stir to make a loose paste. Tip the flour into a large mixing bowl and add the salt, olive oil, wine, yeast and enough water to make soft but not too sticky dough.

Knead the dough for about 5 minutes until silky and stretchy. Place it in a lightly greased bowl and cover with a baking sheet or some cling film. Leave to rise for at least an hour at room temperature or until it doubles in size.

Roll out the dough into a large rectangle, about 2cm thick, and lay on a greased baking sheet. Place all the topping ingredients in a bowl with the olive oil and salt.

Toss the vegetables to cover them with oil and then lay them attractively on top of the dough. Top with the anchovies and olives. Place in the oven for 25-30 minutes until the crust is crisp and browned.

Engaging Kids

Kids who engage regularly with veg through veg-themed activities, such as arts and crafts, sensory experiences, growing and cooking are shown to be more likely to eat the veg they engage with. Encouraging kids to engage and play with veg is the handy first step to them developing a good relationship with veg and life-long healthy eating.

Kids in the kitchen

Kids can make this really simple dough themselves, and they’ll love getting their hands sticky and bashing the dough on the work surface. Letting them mix the veg and arranging it on the dough gives the kids a chance to touch the food and decide how they want their flatbread to look, too. Time to get creative!

Activities

While getting kids to interact with veggies for real and using their senses to explore them is best, encouraging hands off activities like arts & crafts, puzzles & games or at-home science experiments can be a great start, particularly for those who are fussier eaters or struggle with anything too sensory. Use these veg-themed activities as a stepping stone to interacting with the veg themselves. We have loads of crafty downloads here, puzzles here, and quirky science with veg here.

Sensory

Once you feel your child is ready to engage a little more, you can show them how to explore the veg you have on hand with their senses, coming up with playful silly descriptions of how a veg smells, feels, looks, sounds and perhaps even tastes. Find ideas, videos and some simple sensory education session ideas to get you started here.

Serving

The moments before food is offered can be a perfect opportunity for engagement that can help make it more likely a child will eat it! Giving children a sense of ownership in the meal can make a big difference to their feelings going into it and the pride they take in it. You know your child best, but if you aren’t sure where to start, we have some fun and simple ideas for easy roles you can give them in the serving process over here.

Jenny Chandler

Food writer, cookery teacher and former UN FAO Special Ambassador for Pulses, Jenny (jennychandlerblog.com) hosts demonstrations and writes for Borough Market. Her latest book is Green Kids Cook.

Similar recipes