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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Anne’s Wonderful Rich Chai Syrup
From Berlin with Love

Anne sent us over a lovely xmas package with some goodies- a yellow spatula, a cute re-usable spotty bag, and best of all some super tasty chai syrup which she knocked up her self. We promptly finished the bottle and then craving more, begged for the recipe, which she very kindly provided.

The syrup is deep with flavour and is sweet without being too sickly. Anne said it would make the house smell great - and by god it did!

Ingredients
2 teaspoon of pepper corns
3 stick of cinnamon
2 tablespoons of cardamon pods
Root ginger, thinly sliced - 3 inch section
2 teaspoons of cloves
3 jars of honey
1 litre of water
Clean and sterilised jars

Mix and crush gently all of the big spices - and then tip into1 liter of water - bring to the boil and simmer gently for 30 mins. Stir in 2 Barry’s tea-bag (Anne was very specific about this, had to be Barry's!) for two mins until a rich deep tea red color.

Sieve the water to rid it of any bits and pieces. Then add the three jars of honey. Bring this to a gently boil until it thickens up and darkens slightly.

Pour into sterilised jars. We did this by boiling them in a big pan of water for 20 minutes. The recipe makes in terms of volume about equal to the amount of honey that you put in – so if you like you could sterilize the jars that you took the honey from.

This syrup is great poured into hot milk, with blueberries over yogurt, on apple pancakes and also very, very good in tea. I’m tempted to use it as the sweetener in a fresh batch of granola also. We made two type on with Barry sand the other with green tea. The barry’s turned out a bit richer and a darer colour. Anne asked for a vanilla pod in the recipe – but we didn’t have one- maybe that’s the secret ingredient.

Thanks Anne I foresee this becoming a kitchen staple - see you for St Patricks Day!

Chicken Liver Pate

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Loads and loads of Lovely Little Livers for the Liver Lovers
(and by Liver Lovers we mean our friend Alan) My mum used to make this recipe for posh dinner parties in the early 90s. I LOVED it, but it always ran out too fast. Its not something that most people would allow themselves to eat much of, so for our dinner party I decided to make loads so that everyone could get a big generous slice. I made this a few days before the party (it keeps for up to a week in the fridge as long as you seal it with the melted butter) Ok, I wasn't sure how many people we would actually have to feed, but I knew it would be between 10 and 15, so I decided to err on the side of caution and make a huge batch. You could probably half or even quarter these measurements but actually, its so delicious that you will want to have loads. We even had some left overs and last night we benefited from a post pub midnight snack of pate on toast... It must have soaked up the booze good because this morning I am miraculously hang-over-less! I don't have a blender, just a humble stick blender but it worked perfectly for this and the pate was lovely and smooth. Ingredients:
2kg chicken livers
2 onions
(or 6 shallots)
3 cloves garlic
2 springs rosemary (other herbs like thyme or juniper berries would also work)
1/2 a wine class of hennessy (or similar cognac)
1 big block of butter

Method: Start by chopping the onions (shallots are better but they didn't have them in Tesco) really really finely. As fine as you can get them. Same thing for the garlic. Mely a big knob of butter in a frying pan and sweat the onions and garlic and herbs until they are translucent and soft. Don't brown them.

Transfer them to the bowl of a food processor ( or, if like me, you only have a stick blender, to a normal bowl) Rinse the chicken livers and trim off any fat or gristle (if you can possibly bear it... yek!) dry them on kitchen towels. Melt about an ounce knob of butter in the same pan, and gently fry the livers (i did them in two batches) turn them over, they should be browned on the outside and slightly pink in the middle (but not too pink! if you are not sure leave them in longer).

Transfer the cooked livers and the melted butter and cooking juices into the bowl with the onions. Then return the pan to the heat, pour in the cognac and allow it to bubble for a few seconds. Tip this into the bowl and whizz everything together until as smooth as you can get it. Then add about 1/2 of the butter you have left and whizz it all up again. The colour will go lighter and the consistency will be looser.

Line a bread tin with cling film and pour the mixture in. If you prefer, you could serve this in individual ramekins, in which case there is no need for the cling film.Using a palette knife, smooth down the top of the pate so its as flat and level as you can get it. Melt the rest of the butter in a clean pan or in the microwave. Pour the melted butter into the mold and make sure that it completely covers every bit of the pate. This will seal the pate so it will keep in the fridge for up to a week.

We served the pate with a little salad, a nasturtium each from the front garden (cause we're being wanky!) , and melba toast, which is great because it stops your guests from filling up too much on bread. To make melba toast, get a sliced pan of 'killer' white bread. Toast the slices as usual, then cut off the crusts and using a thin serrated knife, cut through the middle of the toast so you now have two thinner slices the same size. Toast the untoasted sides of these under the grill. Be careful, they burn quick!

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.

Mackerel Pate

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Lovely Pate for your Plate

Mackerel Pate

There were 3 of us for lunch, and we bought 4 big fillets, so there
was one left over. I cooked it and turned it into mackerel pate, like
so:

Flake the mackerel into a bowl with about 1 oz softened butter. add
half a lemon worth of juice, some chopped capers, chopped dill and
chives and mix well with a fork. Serve on crusty bread. Yum