Going haywire on a classic
Last summer I cooked a Pissaladière - aka Provençal onion pie - from one of my favorite cook books ever: Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking. While tasty, simple and quite healthy already - onions, tomatoes, olives, anchovies on a rich bread dough - I felt I could go further on the healthy side and completely transform this recipe into something equally tasty, plant exclusive, and sattvic friendly. Who knows, it could come handy in a future yoga retreat, and somehow in my head all the substitutions I had to make were making a lot of sense.
The substitutions
Starting with the dough, the original recipe asked for butter and egg. It’s surely a rich dough but I thought I could make it using just olive oil, very much like a focaccia. Then I subbed the plain flour for spelt flour (according with Ayurveda principles, it’s easier to digest) and drastically decreased the amount of yeast, compensating with more proofing time. For the filling, I used fennel instead of onions (onions tend to disturb the meditation practice), and butternut squash instead of tomatoes (tomatoes are a nightshade, thus believed to contain some inflammatory properties), cut thin stripes of homemade preserved lemons, because they’re as salty as anchovies (so no animal protein here, plus the preserved lemons were homemade and even homegrown), and since I was at it, I also switched from black to green olives (although I don’t have any particular healthy reason to do so).
Other than changing the ingredients, I followed the quantities and method of the original recipe as much as it made sense. The result is equally taste and juicy, but way softer not only in flavor, with less pungency which is what's wanted in a sattvic friendly dish, but also in texture because the dough turned out less heavy and the filling smoother.
Sattvic Pissaladière
Although this recipe is simple to make it does require some preparation and, of course, enough time for the dough to rise.
For the dough:
150g spelt flour
1/4 tsp yeast
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil
4-5 tbsp warm water
To make the dough, place the flour, yeast and salt in a bowl and mix well. Make a well in the centre and add the olive oil and 4 tbsp of warm water. Mix and knead until the dough is smooth, adding an extra tbsp of water if necessary. Alternatively you can mix it and knead in a Kitchen Aid (as I did). Make a ball with the dough, place it in a floured bowl or plate, covered with a floured cloth, and leave it in a warm place to rise for at least 12h, or until ready to bake.
For the filling:
1/2 small butternut squash
500g fennel, stems and leaves removed
4-5 tbsp olive oil
1 preserved lemon, flesh removed and rind cut into thin strips
18-20 green olives
Salt to taste
Pre-heat the oven to 200ºC. Remove the seeds of the butternut squash and cut it lengthwise in 4 pieces. Drizzle it with 1 tbsp of olive oil, sprinkle with a pinch of salt, and bake it for about 30 minutes or until soft. While the squash is baking, thinly slice the fennel with a knife or mandolina. Heat 3 tbsp of olive oil in a frying pan, add the thinly sliced fennel and cook it gently until very soft. When the butternut squash is ready, remove it from the oven, scoop it out of the skin and add to the cooked fennel. Mix well and season with just a bit of salt (note that both the preserved lemons and the olives are very salty so you might want to leave the veggies with less seasoning than normal). Remove the vegetables from the heat and leave them to cool slightly while preparing the dough. Sprinkle some flour on a clean surface and place the dough on top. Knead it once more into a ball and place it in the centre of an oiled tart tin. With your knuckles press it gently and outwards until it's spread all over the base of the tin. Put in the filling and make a criss-cross pattern all over the top with the preserved lemon strips. Then fill in the olives and leave it to rise another 15 minutes. Bake in the centre of the pre-heated oven at 200ºC for 20 minutes, and then turn down to 180ºC and cook another 20 minutes. Serve warm on its own or with a salad as a light meal.
Serves 4-6 as a light lunch or starter