Moroccan flat bread

The oven man is coming tomorrow, and I can't wait. Lacking an oven for the past month has tried my patience and my bread-making skills. This morning, I decided to rise to the challenge (yet again) and pulled a recipe from my new cookbook, Mediterranean Street Food by Anissa Helou. This Moroccan flat bread's spicy filling appealed and was only slightly messy to make.

The filling
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup of flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
3 tbs (40gm) butter, softened
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tst paprika
1/8 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

Mix all the filling ingredients together, with a pinch of salt (to taste). I roughly chopped the onion and parsley, then put them in my mini-blender with the spices to cut them even finer before blending into the butter. You don't want large chunks of onion as they'll tear the dough.

The dough
1/4 tsp active dry yeast
1 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp salt

Mix the yeast with a pinch of sugar and 1/2 cup water and leave for 5 minutes. It won't go foamy, but that's fine. You just want the yeast to dissolve. Sift the flour and salt together and gradually stir in the yeast water. You probably won't use all of it, but the dough should be slightly wetter than bread dough. Knead for 10 minutes until smooth and pliable. I had to add about another 2 tbs flour during this to stop it sticking to everything.

Grease -- yes, really -- your worksurface and hands. Divide the dough into four pieces and stretch one out into a thin rectangle. Spread one-half with a quarter of the filling, fold over the plain side, and fold again to make a square. Press down with your hands to make it thinner. Helou warns you not to tear the dough, but I found it didn't make a big difference to the final product.

Heat a frying pan and add a little butter. Put one of our parcels in, press down to stretch it out a bit more, then leave to cook for about 3 minutes until golden brown. Flip over and repeat. Keep warm in an oven while you make the rest.

We had ours with fried eggs, a big mug of coffee, and Tottenham versus Chelsea in the FA Cup quarter-finals -- a near-perfect Sunday lunchtime. The breads were yeasty and spicy and worked really well with the runny yolks. No pictures, as I had very buttery hands and was constantly occupied over a hot stove -- and then we ate them really quickly. A veritable hit! For dinner, I'm making a couple of recipes from Gordon Ramsay's Sunday Lunch book -- a piquant mushroom and vegetable salad, followed by sea-bream with broccoli and a sorrel veloute. Only, I'm using halibut and tarragon. We'll see how it turns out.