Lavash Chicken Salad Bowl

This is in continuation of my previous recipe - Doner Kebab @ Home. Over the weekend I wanted to experiment with something that I hadn't done previously and was super excited to see how close to perfection I was! 

I literally did a jig when I pulled it off. Well almost, I had a plating issue, but who cares! It still looks incredible and beautiful!! 

So I headed to the kitchen with the notion of making an edible salad bowl for the Turkish Kebabs I was making. With that idea I thought the most appropriate base for the bowl would be a Turkish unleavened flat bread- Yufka/ Lavash. Lavash is a large and very thin flatbread thats almost see through. When baked the bread turns crisp and is also known as Cracker bread. 

 The slightly tricky part is kneading the dough appropriately so it is really stretchy and elastic. The elasticity is what allows the bread to stretch to the extent that it becomes almost translucent while being rolled out. Now at any other time, I would have very well just rolled out the lavash, and made chicken and salad wraps like you probably could. Ambition knocked that idea out of my head and I made the salad bowl. 

Stunning, isn't it?! 

Excited and determined, I headed to my kitchen. Come, let me share the recipe with you

Serves: 3-4 lavash (about 15"-18" wide)

Time taken: 10 mins baking time + 1 1/2 hr kneading n dough resting time

Complexity: ****

You'll need

1 cup flour

3/4 cup wheat flour

3 tbsp olive oil

3/4 cup water (give or take a little)

extra flour for dusting

1 tsp salt

pinch of love and a whole lot of patience

Method

To begin, I needed to knead the dough. To start take the 2 flours and salt in a bowl

Add in the olive oil

Pour in half cup of water and start kneading slowly with your fingers. We are just going to bring the dough together at this point. Keep adding water as required, tbsp by tbsp so you don't go overboard. The dough should not be very springy or hard. 

This was after 3-4 minutes of kneading. 

Brush some oil over it and cover to let it rest for 30 mins

After 30 mins, remove the plastic wrap 

Pinch the side of the dough like this, stretch it out 

And fold it over the rest of the dough

Repeat this till you have incorporated dough from all sides. 

Turn over, cover and let it rest for another 30 minutes. 

After 30 minutes, uncover the dough, repeat the procedure once again and let it rest for 30 minutes. 

After the last resting time, preheat your oven at 100C or 200F 

You'll notice that the dough has become very smooth and stretchy. Take a golf ball size chunk of dough and shape it into a ball. With your rolling pin start rolling it out on a clean surface. 

Once its rolled out to about 5", dust some flour over it and under it so it doesn't stick. 

Keep rolling till the bread is rolled out quite thin, almost 1mm thick. It should be translucent by now. 

Take a large/ small -whatever sized bowl you want your final bowl to be, glass bowl thats oven proof. Very carefully, pick up that rolled out lavash and lay it on the bowl. If it tears, just pinch the dough together. 

Take a sharp knife and cut off the excess dough thats hanging on the side of the bowl. Place it in the oven to bake and cook. You can now raise the temp to 150C or 300F. It should take 5-7 minutes depending on the oven size for the lavash to cook. 

Cooked and ready!Allow this to cool for 10 minutes before you try taking it off the bowl. Once cooled, it should come off quite easily. I ofcourse tried once and was too eager, tried removing it before it cooled down and cracked the Cracker bread! Wasn't too happy about that. With some very wise advice from my mum, I kept the patience to let it cool down the second time and 

Voila!! Slipped off like magic! 

Sheer beauty! 

Looks like a dried sunflower.. or maybe its just me

The lavash, so crispy

Baked Golden perfection 

You can see how delicate this is. This is where I sort of had an issue. I wanted to plate the Doner kebabs straight over the salad filled bowl. But since this was literally feather like, I couldn't do that. Had to shave off the Doner Kebabs into bite sized pieces but hey, it all worked out! 

For the salad I used beetroot, red cabbage, pomegranate, cucumber, carrot, lettuce and yellow bell pepper. 

The dressing was a traditional yogurt based concoction called Cacik or as the Greeks call it Tzatziki. 

I stared at this for ages and the started cracking the bread and before i knew it, it was gone! It was VERY delicious and so rewarding! 

A view from the top

Indulge!