Crunchy Toasted Chickpeas

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Higher Protein Popcorn

This is a great stock cupboard snack to have up your sleeve. Nice to serve with drinks, or while watching a film should you have been watching (god forbid) Heston Blumenthal pointless quest to rid cineworld of popcorn. The less said about that programme the better. You have to allow these to cool before eating as it's only once they're cooled that they gain their crunchiness. You can use any variety of herbs and spices for these - whatever you like just chuck it in there! The chickpea flour is not necessary, you can use ordinary flour. I used a mixture of chickpeas and other beans (kidney and haricot) - they didn't come out so well so I'd just stick with the chickpeas


Ingredients
1 can of chickpeas - well drained
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 tablespoon of chickpea flower
1/2 teaspoon of turmeric
1 teaspoon of garam masala
a dusting of dried chili flakes
A good bit of salt
Freshly milled pepper


Method
1) Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl, until all the chickpeas are evenly coated.
2) Toss onto a baking tray
3) Toast at 200c for 30 mins turning every 10 minutes
4) Allow to cool and serve. I served mine with a lemon and yogurt sauce though it was kind of tricky to eat, they're best eaten on their own with a nice beer - Helwick Gold maybe mmmmmmm beer! 

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Oven Roasted Tomato & Caramelised Garlic Bruschetta

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Never Mind the Electric Picnic here's the Acoustic Dinner Party

So to distract ourselves from the fact that we weren’t at Electric Picnic - we had some friends over for dinner on Saturday night - the menu was loosely summer Italian, I really enjoyed all the courses - especially the starter  which was inspired by a meal we had at Junior’s in Ringsend recently. If you haven’t been you should try it - it’s a great restaurant. I’ve been there twice recently - for dinner and brunch!

Pre-dinner Nibbles

Ingredients
Makes 9
1 head of garlic
18 baby tomatoes
3 teaspoons of Maldon Sea Salt
3 teaspoons of Caster Sugar/Light Brown Sugar
Olive Oil
Good quality sourdough bread
1 clove of garlic

Cut the whole head of garlic across the middle - so that each clove is cut in half. Mix together the salt and sugar in a bowl.  Then dip the head of garlic cut side down into the mixture - so that it sticks. Then on a oven proof tray - put the remaining sugar and salt in two piles. Place the two pieces of garlic cut side down on the two piles. Cover the garlic with tin foil. Place in the oven at gas mark 6 for 30 mins until they are tender.

While these are cooking - coat the tomatoes in a little olive oil and bake these along with the garlic - so they should be ready at the same time. If you have them on the vine keep them that way - as they’re less likely to loose their delicious juices in the roasting process.

Remove the garlic and tomatoes from the oven and allow to cool. Then pop them out of the skins, mix together in a small bowl to form a paste with a small bit of olive oil.

Toast the sour dough - spread each piece of toast with a little purred garlic and top with a  few torn basil leaves and two tomatoes.

This is the smallest part of the dinner but thought I’d better start today or we’ll never get it all down. Stay posted for the next five installments - yup 5! Wow we’re mad as a pastry brush around here

Guacamole

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Alex, a regular reader of this blog, asked me to post a recipe for Guacamole a long time ago. I made this ages ago and have only jut gotten around to blogging it...

Hope i can remember the recipe now!

Alex was also asking me where you can buy ripe avocados as she finds they are always too hard when she buys them. In my experience, this is just something you have to live with! Your best bet is to buy them 3 or 4 days before you need them, and then you can store ripe avocadies in the the fridge which will slow down their mushening process. Otherwise you can put the unripe avocados in a paper bag overnight with some ripe bananas and that should speed up the process.

Ingredients:

2 very ripe avocados

1 clove garlic

1 red chilli

2 tbsps sour cream

1 lemon

Cut the avocados in half around the pip and pull the two sides apart. Scoop out the flesh with a spoon, making sure to scrape all the green goo near the skin off, this will make your guacamole a nice bright green colour rather than, say, the colour of an avocado bathroom set!

Mash the avocados in a bowl with the juice of the lemon until it is the consistency you like, not too lumpy Crush the garlic and add to the mixture, chop the chili finely an stir in (depending on how hot you like it, thinly use half and de seed it first!). Finally stir in the sour cream and serve!

I ate my guacamole in a tortilla wrap with some strips of steak that I marinated in lime juice and garlic before flash frying them. Also in there was some rocket leaves and some cherry tomatoes. Super yum!

Pancake Dinner Extravaganza

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Course 1 - Potato Blinis with Smoked Salmon

So as pancake day approached we started to think of what we would make to mark this most singularly culinary celebration. If Christmas was changed to roast turkey day, and Halloween was barn brack day, when instead of going trick or treating/giving presents everyone would be at home making cakes/turkey. It will soon be national fish and chips day too - well in May! 

We thought we’d like to bring a random group of people together in our house, for a feast of pancakes. So we put an invite up on our own facebook, and within 15 minutes we’d reached our quota for the dinner.

We decided on a menu that encompassed a different type of pancake for each course
Starters were smoked salmon blinis
Main course was pancake cannelloni with bolognaise sauce
and ricotta and leek cannelloni with tomato sauce for the veggies
Dessert was Crepe Suzette - kaboom!

Smoked  Salmon and Potato Blinis

Ingredients

6 boiled potatoes
2 eggs
1/2 pint of milk 
about 2 tbsps four
creme fraiche (or cream cheese)
smoked salmon
chives 

The potato blinis were made by mashing about 6 boiled potatoes and combining this with 2 eggs, about 1/2 pint of milk and about 2 tbsps four. I just added things until I got the right consistency- very instinctive of me but not so good for blogging recipes! The batter should be thick in consistency, like whipped cream. I cooked them by getting a heavy frying pan really hot, smearing on some butter with a wadded up paper towel, and putting a tablespoon on the mixture at a time in the pan. I could do about 8 at a time. Cook on one side for about 3 or 4 mins, until golden brown and then flip. 

We served with creme fraiche and smoked salmon but you could top with anything- I was thinking cream cheese would be nice with roasted tomatoes. 

Recipes for pancake cannelloni and crepe suzette to follow before Easter I promise!

Spicy Bean Quesadilla

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The Happy Mexican

There’s no accounting for cravings now is there? Mushed up kidneys beans, yeah that’s pretty much what I want right now, oh yes. So I decided upon a Mexican quesadilla with a nice spicy bean mixture in. It satisfied my craving nicely - even if it refused to photograph well - so I went photoshop crazy on it - sorry the photos are a state - but I didn't want to do them twice.

Recently I have been using fresh tomatoes in sauces when I can, instead of tinned, which really gives the flavour a nice edge. They cook down faster than you think. Cooking tomatoes actually increases their anti-oxidant levels unlike most veg, which is great news. Lycopene the anti-oxidant found in tomatoes, is specifically known for decreasing the risk of heart-disease, happy Mexicans.

Ingredients
5 fresh tomatoes
4 spring onions
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
Fresh thyme
1 tin of kidney beans drained
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 peppers roasted/grilled and skinned see here for instructions
Grated Cheese
Flour tortillas

Fry up your onion and garlic in a little oil until translucent. Add in your thyme and cayenne pepper, stir for about 1 min before adding in the chopped tomatoes and beans, stir until the tomatoes begin to cook down a little. Season. Turn down, cover and leave to cook for a 10 minutes or so. It’s done when the tomatoes are cooked down nice - it’ll be pretty thick, because you want a nice paste texture. Squish down the beans with the back of the spoon.

In a clean frying pan place one tortilla, add on top a layer of beany mush, a few roasted peppers, spring onions and some grated cheese. Top with another tortilla and give it a bit of a squash down. Place over a medium head - cook for 2/3 minutes, turn over (carefully) and give the next side 2/3 mins. Keep your eye on it or it’ll burn (not looking at anyone in particular here!) Serve with sour cream with chives or guacamole (neither of which I had sadly) but it was still really good.

This would be great to use up some leftover chicken, or chili. Throw in whatever beans you like or have to hand, some courgette and corn would also work well. Fresh chilli's would also be great in the sauce or de-seeded as a topping

Home-made Nachos

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Saturday Scrabble Snacks

This recipe came from the lovely Miss Anna Sheehy who cooked us up a Mexican feast and served these up as starters, with dips of guacamole and salsa. Great for anyone who like nachos but hates the synthetic taste/colour/staleness whatever of bought nacho chips.

You're about to have an afternoon game of scrabble, you have beer, you have scrabble, but alas no snacks, pop these in the oven and it'll be ready before you're arguing over it's 'wigar' or 'wigger'.

I packet of flour tortillas (the kind you use for making fajitas, the squashy ones)
A little olive oil
Smoked Cayenne pepper
3 cloves of garlic crushed
Mixed Cajun Spice
Salt and lots of pepper

Pre-heat oven to cut your tortillas into wedges – whatever size you like – I went for a bit bigger than regular nachos. Lay onto a lightly greased baking sheet, you may need to use more than one as you need to avoid them overlapping too much to ensure even crispiness. Drizzle with oil and sprinkle over the spices and salt and pepper. Pop in the oven bake for 10-15mins till tuning browning at the edges.

Serve with sour cream, with freshly snipped chives and tomato salsa

1 tin of chopped tomatoes – drained
2/3 spring onions finely sliced
1 teaspoon of oregano dried
1 teaspoon
½ teaspoon sugar
salt and lots of freshly milled black pepper
½ teaspoon dried chilli – fresh if you have it
Fresh coriander

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl, smashing up extra large chunks of tomato as you go. I thought the tesco value tin of tomato we had in the cupboard would be gross but nope they weren’t. it would be nice to have used fresh tomatoes but sadly no were to hand. You can always substitute the dried herbs if you have the fresh variety and you can also replace the spring onion with red onion.

In case you’re wondering ‘dizelmine’ is in the Oxford English dictionary.