Yogurt Flatbreads and Meatball Soup

Plus a really easy chilli sauce

Feb 24, 2023

Hello!

This issue has taken a minute to get together due to a combination of deadlines, some other work things, and also the fact I completely lost the recipe for the chilli sauce I featured this week. I couldn’t find the original source at all, and spent days trying to triangulate it via: the date I took a photo of the sauce, the food I made that week, and the browsing history on my iPhone. It took forever but I did find it!

Anyway let me know what you’re making, what you’re struggling to use up, and what you plan to do with all the turnips in your fridge.

C x

1. Meatball noodle soup

So pleased with how this turned out. I made Alison Roman’s ginger and garlic meatballs this week, which we had with rice and crunchy veg. But I knew we’d end up making more than we needed, so once I’d rolled out enough for Rob and I, I started making some conker-sized meatballs that I shoved in the bottom of the oven to cook alongside.

I wanted to use the leftovers in a clear broth with noodles — the meatballs already contain ginger, garlic, and fish sauce, so the hope was the cooked meatballs, simmered in a chicken stock I’d made a week or so prior, would release some of these rich flavours into the dish. I used dried egg noodles, fresh coriander, and a drizzle of chilli sauce (see below).

These are pork meatballs, but I think turkey ones would be good too. And if you don’t have a vat of golden stock lying around, you could always shove these meatballs in a pitta with some shredded lettuce instead.

2. Greek Yogurt Flatbreads

Has this happened to you? You buy Greek yogurt (maybe for breakfast, maybe for a recipe) and then half a tub sits in the fridge for a while and then it goes off, and smells bad. When we needed some (for an Alison Roman meatball recipe — I know, I never heard of it being used as a binding agent either) I decided to find a way to use up the leftovers.

I saw a few different recipes online for yogurt flatbreads, and the one I settled on was the most simple: one cup of Greek yogurt, and one cup of flour. That’s it. I added a generous amount of nigella and fennel seeds (cumin seeds might also be nice) and plenty of salt — I’ve done variants on these before and when you don’t salt the flatbreads they taste really awful. Mix and knead ingredients into a dough, divide into four, and on a floured surface, roll each one out as thin as you can without tearing them.

All you need to do is heat them in a pan. I lightly oil the breads, not the pan, which I keep as dry as possible. You can easily double this recipe and freeze a few of these when you need something to dunk in your soup,, but if you do keep them out, wrap them in a tea towel and keep in your bread bin. If they start to go stale, cut them up and toast them and use them as a vehicle for hummus or something. Below, the flatbreads with a white bean and miso soup I made.

3. An incredibly useful chilli sauce

I saw this in the Observer last month — it’s used in Mandy Yin’s recipe for anchovy fried rice (which, if you need a quick and cheap meal, I would really recommend. It’s delicious). I decided to double the quantities and keep it in the fridge for drizzling on any and every edible surface I could find.

My favourite thing about it is that it’s simple and endlessly customisable. 60g of dried chilli flakes, 2 tbsp of dark brown sugar, half a teaspoon of salt, and 420ml of water. You put everything in a saucepan, bring to the boil, then turn off the heat and let it settle for an hour. Then, bring it to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes before blending it into a sauce.

It’s a good condiment because it’s kind of warm and roasty and sweet but it isn’t “hot”. You could add different chilli flakes (alleppo pepper for something fruitier, a pinch of urfa for a rich smokiness) or even a splash of vinegar if you want it more puckerish. I put it on pizzas, in soups, and over sheet pans of chicken and vegetables.