For every party we are looking for new dishes to prepare and dishes to experiment. The New Year's Eve dinner certainly represents a challenge in this sense: finding recipes that satisfy all palates and at the same time represent a novelty is not at all easy.
So why not focus on lesser known spices, such as Nigella seeds, to revisit traditional preparations giving them an exotic touch?
Nigella sativa seeds have an intense flavor , which is ideal for flavoring doughs or as a garnish for both sweet and savory baked goods. To this proposal, the main use is very similar to that of sesame: the seeds are in fact mostly used to flavor bread and breadsticks or combined with dough to give an exotic taste and give a refined touch.
Here a recipe is proposed to prepare bread flavored with black cumin seeds, ideal as a base for appetizers and canapes based on low-fat cheeses and fresh or smoked fish.
Ingredients
- 1 kg of wheat flour
- 7.5 dl of warm water
- 20 g of salt
- 50 g of yeast
- 20 g of honey
- 2 tablespoons of black cumin seeds
- 1 tablespoon of olive oil
Method
Combine the flour, yeast dissolved in water, black cumin seeds, salt, honey and olive oil in a bowl. Mix everything gradually adding the remaining water gradually, in order to obtain a soft, elastic and homogeneous mixture. Knead with your hands for 10 minutes, in order to then activate the leavening process.
Cover the dough with a damp cloth to prevent it from drying too much and let it rest until it has doubled its volume (about 3 hours at room temperature; if you want to speed up the process, you can put it in the oven at 30 ° C) .
After this time, flour the work surface and, after having worked the dough for a few minutes, form small rolls and arrange them, spaced apart, on a baking sheet covered with baking paper. If you like, you can decorate its surface with some seeds.
Finally bake in a preheated oven at 200 ° C for about 30 minutes.
Once taken out of the oven and cooled, they can be eaten as they are or cut into slices to make perfect canapes and savory snacks with a fresh and oriental flavor.
Nigella sativa is not only useful in cooking: the oil extracted from its seeds boasts numerous properties.
Discover Nigella sativa oil .