The coca is more or less the Catalan pizza – a flat pastry base for wide variety of toppings (both sweet and savory), usually made of simple bread dough and usually in the shape of an elongated oval.
The world itself apparently derives from the Latin ‘coquere’ -to cook- and is used not only in Catalan but in the old Occitan tongue of neighboring Toulouse and vicinity.
Coques differ from pizzas not only in their usual shape but in the fact that cheese and herbs are rarely added, and they are traditional served at room temperature.
This season we are cooking a savory coca as a tapa portion. This morning we also added some fresh ‘rovellons’ -local wild mushrooms- that we bought in the market.
Ingredients (serves 4)
- 200 gr cod
- bouquet garni: little chili pepper, garlic, rosemary
For the spinach Catalan style
- ½ kg fresh spinach
- 4 sp Corintian raisins
- 3 sp pine nuts
- Moscatell sweet wine
- oil, pepper, salt
For the coca
- 200 gr of flour
- 100 ml of water
- 20 gr of yeast
- 20 ml olive oil
- salt
Method
For the flatbread, work all ingredients as a normal bread dough. Leave to rest until it grows for 1 hour.
Bake until golden brown.
Heat the oil in a saucepan. Add the bouquet of spices.
Cut the cod into pieces and confit, in infused oil at 80˚C until cod looses transparency and becomes flaky.
Clean the spinach under tap water removing the roots from the base.
Leave the raisins soaking in Moscatell wine for 30 minutes. Brown the pine nuts for 2 minutes in a nonstick frying pan with a few drops of olive oil.
Add the spinach and drained raisins, season lightly and cook together for 2 minutes, stirring often.
Place the spinach over the flatbread and the confit cod on top.
