Roasted red bell pepper dip, designer saltine crackers



Two red bell peppers, two serrano chiles roasted and sweated for 20 minutes or so in bowl covered with a plate. The burnt skin pulls right off. 




Half Philadelphia cream cheese, half sour cream flavored with salt, pepper, cumin, coriander, fennel, but no garlic nor any onion. It is a very nice dip by itself. Thinned further with mayonnaise, milk, buttermilk or cream, even lemon juice,  it could be a dressing. 


The crackers are made with yeast, not leavened with baking soda as you'd expect. The technique of rolling out thinly is difficult and lot of work for just crackers and for that reason not recommended. The dough is allowed to rest, repeatedly, while being made into dough so that the flour begins digesting itself enzymatically after becoming wet, it kneads much more easily if partially broken down, and then rested after formed into dough to loosen, and rested again after stretching so the pizza-like dough relaxes to submission and rolls flatly, thinly and evenly to the edges, and all that takes a bit of feel for what's happening otherwise it's a real trial, but the flavors baked into the crackers make the whole effort worthwhile. The crackers are very good by themselves.

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