I’ve mentioned it before, over on Twitter I think, that I make the most incredible (and incredibly cheap!) accompaniment to pasta dishes. Finally, I made them again and actually remember to take a photograph! So here we go.
My local supermarket, ALWAYS (9 times out of 10) has pitta bread reduced if I go on an evening. So much so that our freezer has many packets of pitta bread chucked in there to use as and when. The purchase price always seems to be 17p. The normal price is around 50p, so it’s quite a good saving.
What I do is, take the required amount of pitta bread out of the packet, pop the rest back in the freezer. Leave to thaw or if you don’t have enough time, pop them in the microwave and defrost them. Whilst that’s happening, pop your oven on. My go-to gas mark is between 6/7. Around 200 degrees is probably fine. The thing is, they cook so quickly you have to keep an eye on them!
Once they’re defrosted, chop them into ‘soldier’ type pieces. Cut them width-ways about 2 cms apart, you can see what I mean from the photograph. Use a pair of scissors for ease. Once you’ve done that, put them in a dish, drizzle some oil on them and toss them around so they’ve all got a bit on. They don’t want to be swimming in oil nor do they want to be bone dry. After that, crank some sea salt over them, a bit of black pepper, some rosemary and if you have any, some Italian mixed herbs. Don’t go crazy, but once you’ve shaken them around again, they all need a bit of flavour sticking to them. Then simply, pop them in the oven.
They usually take no longer than 10 minutes. Check them after 5 minutes, give them a shake. Keep your eye on them because they tend to go from perfect to burnt pretty sharpish. They need to end up being slightly crispy, slightly chewy. The flavours on them are fantastic and my quite-often-fussy-nieces love them. They go brilliantly with pasta dishes, or with lasagne. Perfect if you’ve got a few folk round for pizzas too, a bowl of these on the table will go down a treat! It’s essentially taking the place of the garlic baguette, which is around 32p in the shops.
These are dirt cheap and absolutely delicious. Once you make them, I bet you will again. Let me know how you get on!
