Unable to resolve table 'sqlite_master'

I have a seeder I'm working on in laravel that is doing conversions on a large amount of data. To make things go easier, I'm using a cache database as a middle-step to house the converted data prior to seeding.  I am having the seeder check if the cache database (sqlite3) exists then it creates it if it doesn't. It then looks for a script file that includes conditional table definitions which will create the tables needed only if they don't already exist.

In the event the table definitions script did not exist, I added one final condition that just checks when an sqlite file does already exist if it has any tables in it before attempting to insert data or bail out with an error (if there are no tables).

To do this, requires checking the built-in sqlite3 schema table ‘sqlite master’, but as soon as I add the sql to do this, PhpStorm marks the table name as an error saying: Unable to resolve table 'sqlite_master' 

$table_count = count(DB::connection('sqlcache')->select("SELECT name FROM `sqlite_master` WHERE type='table';"));
$table_sql = realpath($seedsdir . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . self::SQLITE_TABLES);
// throw error if there are no tables and is no sql code to create tables
if($table_sql == false) {
    if ($table_count == 0)
        throw new FException("Database is empty, but could not find sqlite tables script");

I see there is an option to ignore quoted identifiers, but I'd prefer not turn that on as it's useful in other queries. Is there any way to get PhpStorm to stop reporting this query as an error seeing as how it runs just find in sqlite3 on any sqlite database?  I tried setting the dialect for the whole file to sqlite and that didn't work either. (there is also mysql based SQL in this same seeder that runs from the cached data to populate the final database)

SW