Street food

The street food trend just keeps growing. Everywhere I go, or look, there is news of a new food truck or a restaurant specializing in street food. Over the weekend, I went to Paladar in the Annapolis Towne Centre at Parole (primarily because there was a sign advertising a Rum Bar and I've had a cold and sore throat for over 4 days now and rum seemed appealing).

A dark and stormy should fix things!

The restaurant has a happy hour menu that features "Latin street food"...which is sort of a mix of all kinds of things that may not be actual "street food", but it's cute that they're catering to a trend. The black bean empanadas I had, along with an entire bowl of gucamole, were delish!

So on this topic of being surrounded by "street food" wherever I seem to go, I was in The Fresh Market recently and spotted this:

Lucini Cinque e' Cinque

Now even the pasta companies are joining the bandwagon. It sounded intriguing so I thought I'd give it a whirl. I've had other products by Lucini and they were all very good, so I figured this wouldn't be a bust. Of course, I first had to Google the word farinata to see what exactly I  purchased. It was described as a flat bread made of chickpea flour and is common in Italy, as well as southern France (where it is called socca). And as a logical next step, I searched Pinterest for posts containing the word farinata or socca. Most of the recipes used the baked farinata as a base for creating a sauce-less pizza.

This is what I did with mine:

Just one quick not about preparing the farinata...the directions have you placing the pan (I used a round metal cookie/pizza pan--with sides) in the oven first and then while it's hot pour the batter into the pan. Be very careful doing this. The directions don't mention that you might burn yourself as the batter sizzles when it hits the very hot pan. And make sure you pull the hot pan out of the oven and place it on a flat heat-resistant surface.

So here it is straight out of the oven (ignore the burned edges on the far side of the pan, we can blame that on my oven/me chasing a toddler around while it was baking and not being good about checking the oven). While it was baking I lightly sauteed a zucchini and some sun-dried tomatoes with pancetta.

Then I topped my farinata with the veggies, sprinkled it with parmesan cheese, and fresh ground black pepper (which was suggested in other recipes and on the package).

Very tasty and apparently good for you too!

Definitely give it a try if you spot it at the grocery store. The Fresh Market carried the rosemary (which I used) and a traditional variety, but a fiery Tuscan chili option is listed on the website. Buon appetito!