Recipe for Potato Focaccia with Chuan’r Seasoning and Lap Cheong

One thing I miss in Beijing is good bread. It’s not impossible to find, but I rarely feel like trekking to the foreign grocery store, and the dry air here means if I don’t eat it the same day, the next day I’m left with a hunk of granite you could chip a tooth on. Upon finding a lone potato in my fridge I thought I would make a potato focaccia (I adapted mine from the Wednesday Chef’s focaccia di patate). Aside from the lonely potato, potato focaccia appealed to me because it’s quick (relatively, only about 2 hours resting time), the flattish focaccia will fit into my tiny toaster oven tray, and because it gives me an excuse to throw weird leftovers from my fridge on top. I found some cherry tomatoes, chopped onions, and a bit of lap cheong 香肠 (Chinese sausage or pepperoni, as I prefer to think of it), tossed all this with some chuan’r (Uighur barbecue) seasoning and squished this cuminy mixture on top of the focaccia.  A few hours later, I had some fresh Italian bread with Xinjiang seasonings and southern Chinese meat…an unlikely combination, but it tasted quite pleasing.

I happen to love cumin and strange Chinese preserved meats, and endeavor to prove they can taste good anywhere, but for those of you who disagree, just swap in some oregano/thyme/black pepper for the Chinese spices, omit the meat, and you still have a super tasty potato focaccia. It has a nice dense chew and thick crunchy crust from the potato, and would be great to eat with a big bowl of soup. Perfect for yet another freezing Beijing day.

A little about the toppings. It’s a little known fact, but cherry tomatoes are loved here in China, and are often eaten as fruit…like cherries, people just pop them into their mouths whole. Massage parlors often offer a bowl with some watermelon as refreshment after a massage. This means they are cheap here, and I love keeping a bag around and throwing them on top of things.

As for lap cheong, I think it’s quite an underappreciated. As a Hong Konger, I’m in love with this pepperoni-esque meat, but even though it’s at all the supermarkets in Beijing, I never see it in restaurants. I supposed it’s quite a comfort food, a simple dish served at home in small salty slivers to be eaten with rice. It’s pretty salty, a little bit sweet and sliced thin I thought it could serve as a cheap prosciutto substitute and add a bit of fatty salty flavor to beef up the focaccia.

As for the packet of seasoning, it’s a simple combination of cumin, chili, salt, pepper, MSG and five spice powder which is used often in Xinjiang barbecue, where chunks of lamb are tossed in these spices, skewered, and roasted. I love cumin, and figured you can’t go wrong doing a little focaccia-making with it.

RECIPE (makes about a 12×8 flat loaf)

• 1 medium potato
• 2 cups flour
• 3/4 cup of water
• 1/2 teaspoon dry instant yeast
• 1 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 5 or 6 cherry tomatoes, sliced
• handful of chopped onions
• half a handful of lap cheong
• Chinese barbecue seasoning (or just some cumin, chili powder, salt and pepper, in roughly equal proportions)

Cut the potato into quarters and boil in salted water until done, about 20 minutes, or when you can stab into it easily with a fork. Peel the potato, mash it finely with a fork in a bowl, and set aside. At the same time, finely slice up the cherry tomatoes, the onions, and the lap cheong.

Add one or two tablespoons of the barbecue seasoning, or just enough coat lightly coat the mixture. Set aside and prepare the dough.

In a larger mixing bowl, combine the flour, instant yeast, 3 tablespoons of olive oil, the salt and water. Stir the mixture a bit until the water is incorporated, and then add in the mashed potato. Mixed the dough together by hand and knead against the side of the bowl for a minute or two until all ingredients are well mixed. The dough should be quite soft and a little shaggy, but not too wet. If it’s sticky, add a little bit of flour until you can handle it easily.  If you’re in a humid climate, I would add 2/3 a cup of water instead of 3/4 a cup. Form the dough into a ball, and leave in the bowl covered with a towel to rise for about an hour. It should roughly double in size.

Line a tray with some aluminum foil, and grease with some olive oil. Put the dough into the tray, and gently pull and flatten to fill the tray (mine is approximately 8×12 inches) or until dough is roughly 1/2-1 inch thick.

Using your finger, press a dozen or so indents into the dough, and spread the tomato mixture evenly on top of the dough. 

Lightly press the mixture into the dough to help it stick, and then drizzle the remaining tablespoon of olive oil over the top. Sprinkle a little coarse salt over the dough, and leave it in the pan to rise for another 1/2 – 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 220C (in a toaster oven, in a regular oven, 240C). Put the bread in the oven and cover loosely with tin foil for the first 40 minutes, then bake uncovered for another 10 minutes or until toasty brown. In a regular oven, just bake for 40 minutes uncovered or until browned. Let the focaccia rest for 15 minutes before slicing it up and digging in.