As promised, here with two of Tom's delicious recipes!
To be ...
~William Shakespeare
Hummus Squommous
[Photo credit: wix.com]
~For two people Ingredients
Tom says... Okay, so, what you need is to add is a
1 400 gram tin of cooked chickpeas or you can use 200 grams dried chickpeas, or left over chick peas....in a nutshell - chickpeas.
Then add a BIG dollop of tahini, be generous, its important to be generous.
The juice of half a lemon, but actually be as lemony as you like.
Plenty of garlic, according your tastes but its important to be generous
Pinch of salt
Good few turns of black pepper and
special ingredient - pinch of cumin. If you want it to be super wonderful you will roast some whole cumin and grind it yourself and then add a glug of olive oil and
whiz it.
If you need to you can add some water to thin it out, or more lemon juice.
The important thing is to be generous and to eat it with a large chunk of crusty bread or some raw carrots celery peppers if you want to be healthy.
Or not to be.... Mushroom Miniaturisation
~ For lots of people!
This is a magic technique for miniaturising mushrooms...
You need a whole load of mushrooms, at least 2kg; button or brown capped are good. If they are large or medium sized cut them into quarters if they are button mushrooms leave them whole.
What you are going to do is make brine from half and half water and white wine vinegar (cider vinegar is also nice).
Then you can add a large pinch of salt and black pepper corn, bay leaves whole loaves of garlic peeled and pickled cloves. You need enough of that to JUST cover your mushrooms, it is important that you don't be generous with the spices!
Then you need to bring it all to the boil. For larger mushrooms simmer up to 10 minutes but basically they shrink lots. You aren't loosing any mushrooms, they are just becoming denser and firmer.
Once you have simmered them for about 5 mins for the little ones and 10 mins for the bigger ones get a nice perfectly clean tea towel, remove from them from the brine with a slotted spoon and leave them to dry.
Then get a large old jam jar, sterilise it, just enough to hold your mushrooms. The what you do it is to spoon the mushrooms into your jar along with a bit of bay leave and garlic and what have you. As you spoon it, you put in a couple of spoons of olive oil. So mushrooms, olive oils, mushrooms, olive oil etc.
So you want to pat then down each time as well. And then those will keep, and are probably best if they are kept for 2 or 3 weeks, because that kind of pickling tense to be harsh and it gets mellower over time.
And most importantly, be generous, and give a jar to someone else!