Roasted Chickpea Snack

I am used to Italian cats eating almost anything, but New Zealand cats seem to be fussier, so I was very surprised when Marameo jumped on the bench to grab the cooked chickpeas that I was rinsing. I had to give her some, she could not wait, and ate them all. I gave them seconds and then she stopped bothering me. Strange cat!

With my remaining chickpeas, I wanted to make a spicy snack: this one from the blog of Araba Felice.

Smoked Paprika Chickpea Snack

The original recipe calls for:

400 g can of chickpeas,

1 tbsp flour

1 tsp sweet paprika, or your favourite spice (in my variation I used smoked paprika instead)

1 tsp salt, about

2-3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

I also added a few cumin seeds.

Rinse and pat dry the chickpeas, and mix with the other dried ingredients until the chickpeas are nicely coated. At this point I left the chickpeas in the bowl for about 30 minutes so that the flour and spices could really get 'caked' around each chickpea.

Pour the olive oil on a baking tray (no baking paper), add the chickpeas and roll them around so that they are not one on top of the other. Bake at 200°C, rolling them on the tray again from time to time to make sure that they get crispy all over. The original recipe says 30 minutes, but my canned chickpeas were quite small, I though, so 20 minutes were sufficient. Serve as a snack, warm or even cold (I think that they will go well with beer so I will make them again when my husband is back!)

But this time I just put them on the table for dinner (we didn't have time for a pre-dinner drinks, I rarely do during the week anyway, and without the husband organizing the drinks) so the chickpeas became 'part' of the meal, which was Indian: basmati rice with silver beet panir and flat bread, and mango lassi to drink. We ate the warm chickpeas with our fingers, but we also put them on our rice with the curry, and they were great! Thank you Araba Felice :-)

How to make Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum), and Sweet New Zealand

Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum) Before I start I would like to say that I don't have a sugar thermometer, essential if you are really into confectionery, and that I didn't use much sugar for these Turkish delights. Many recipes use much more sugar, and it is not that I wanted to make a low sugar treat here (it is still pretty sweet), it is just that making it at home really makes me realize how much sugar there is already in my diet, and if I can have something with a little less... well, why not! This method is 'home friendly' i.e. these can be made at home with very little effort and equipment, and the recipe comes from my book Sweet As... where I also have the recipe for lavender and orange blossom Turkish Delights. Ingredients 1 l water 300 g sugar 2 tbsp lemon juice 100 g cornflour 1 tbsp frozen raspberries 1 tbsp rose water icing sugar (very little) and cornflour (lots) to dust. In a pot put hal...

Mezze Maniche with Mushroom Cream Sauce

Since I had some left over mushroom sauce from yesterday's dish , today I made some pasta. I heard from other bloggers about the Garofalo pasta brand, in NZ I could only find it in one shop, and it was too expensive even to consider, so I thought that I should try it while I am in Italy. I choose mezze maniche for this dish. Mezze maniche with mushrooms I cooked the mezze maniche al dente. In the meantime I warmed up the pan with the left-over mushrooms and added 250 ml of cream. Then I added some freshly chopped Italian parsley and some freshly ground pepper. I drained the mezze maniche and passed them in the pan with the mushroom and cream sauce. They tasted great! Photos by Alessandra Zecchini©

Paccheri with tomato, parsley and garlic.

Paccheri are hollow pasta tubes that look like rigatoni or tortiglioni, but with a difference: the paccheri tubes flatten once they are cooked. Usually the have very rich sauces, but I am one for 'less is more' these days, and so here I just warmed up a ready made Italian tomato passata ( a good one ). Once the passata was hot I added some salt, extra virgin olive oil and finely chopped Italian parsley with garlic. These days I am chopping a lot of parsley and garlic together, it is too early for basil, and parsley taste really good in Italy! Also, I like the idea of having a cooked sauce but with raw herbs and garlic in it: the taste changes completely. Simple but really effective!!! If you are not vegan you can add some ricotta to this. Photos by Alessandra Zecchini©

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