Donna Hay - Chickpea patties

Ok, so a donna hay magazine miraculously landed on my desk recently (I don't buy it!) and it's full of table fashion, and food styling and recipes for sweet things and thing that we already make (presented fancily of course). Sorry to sound so disparaging, but it really feels to be almost content-free, although I don't read magazines much these days, so perhaps I'm just re-sensitized to the style-over-substance thing. Anyhow The Wine Dept saw a little recipe on the 'cheats and nibbles' page and thought it would be fun to make with the little guy, and after they had made them and we had enjoyed them I thought I might post the recipe here, so you can get the recipe without looking at any trendy white-on-white table layouts. I have, of course, incorporated our small changes.

Chickpea Patties

Put half a 400g tin of chickpeas in the bowl of a blender or food processor (the little bowl on our Braun stick blender was big enough) with:
1 egg
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/3 cup flat leaf parsley
a little bit of chilli
salt and pepper

Process that together, then add the rest of the chickpeas and give a few more pulses so the rest of the chickpeas are chopped up but not quite as mushy as the rest. Shape the mixture into patties (Our 2-year-old reckons small patties are best, I concur!) and fry the patties in a little olive oil. 'Donna' suggests serving the patties with shop-bought tzatziki and flatbread but we just mixed some plain greek yoghurt with salt and lemon juice and it was delicious.



The patties were literally childs-play to make and they were tasty. As they are, they would be a good source of vegetarian protein and would travel well for picnics and/or lunchboxes, if you could manage to have any left over (double the recipe if you have more than two people or if you want lunch the next day!).

I personally would also like to experiment with the addition of either a handful of cooked brown rice or some chicken mince (obviously *not* vegetarian) but they really are just fine as they are!

Love at first sight!

While we wait for our guest blogger to get his act together (!) I'd like to introduce you to my new love interest: Mealopedia. I only found it today so I haven't really explored it fully, but anything that is going to let me choose what type of food I want to eat (options like 'pasta' 'budget' 'vergetarian' 'meat' 'kid friendly') then give me a weekly meal planner that I can change around and then make a shopping list for me to print has to be good! Right? It's also got a recipe finder that lets you choose an ingedient and it will spit out a bunch of recipe options. I'm off to look at the recipes and check out the articles - no idea yet if the recipes are any good...

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After looking at the site a bit more I still really like it. It's not too fancy, more 'Good Taste' than 'Gourmet Traveller' and it really only offers main courses, no entrees or desserts so although it's excellent for weekly family meal plans it doesn't take into account that you might want something a bit fancier occasionally. The other truly excellent feature in the recipes is that although the default measurement is metric it will convert to UK Imperial or US Imperial at the touch of a button. I suspect that it is a relatively new site, from the slow conversation in the forums and the fact that no one has corrected their fairly dodgy article on making bread - hopefully the site will, like a good wine, mature nicely.

Fresh for Spring

Our friend Sean from Cafe Sopra got a really good review today, (to add to his growing list of reviews), and in celebration I'd like to introduce a new guest blogger. Cafe Sopra is becoming known for hearty portions of super-fresh, exceptional quality ingredients so I've asked Thetimbo2000 to inspire us this week with something Sopra-esque and appropriate for the lovely spring weather we've been having. TheTimbo2000 has been working in kitchens all of his adult life until recently when left the heat of the kitchen to work for one of Australia's premier meat wholesaler. Once we've got a recipe I might even talk the Wine Department out of his blogging hiatus to give us a few wine match suggestions...

(I'm also playing around with some new looks for spring - sorry if things look a bit ratty while I settle on something!)

Chocolate Brownies

I think this recipe came from a magazine many years ago. It was probably Cleo or Cosmopolitan something (does Cleo still exist?) but it has been my 'go to' Brownie recipe for so long I consider it mine. I will write it out here the way I do it, which I believe is superior!

When Sanj and I make this together it takes us less than 10 minutes to put together and around 20 minutes in the oven and because the ingredients are all usually kicking around our kitchen we make this recipe pretty quickly.

INGREDIENTS

• 100g good quality chocolate - this *must* be 40% cocoa or more, but I find the 80% Lindt slightly too bitter so we usually use a mix of whatever we have lying around.
• 2 large eggs
• 150g caster sugar - I either use vanilla sugar or put half a teaspoon of vanilla in
• 100g plain flour
• 125g butter
• 100g shelled walnuts - feel free to use any nuts you like here. I'm not particularly fond of walnuts, though they do make a nice grown-up flavoured brownie. I usually use hazelnuts for a kind of Nuttella richness or macadamias because the texture goes so well. The recipe doesn't specify using toasted nuts, but the flavour and texture are both superior if you do. If I have no nuts at home or there are going to be kids eating the finished product I use chunks of chocolate or even, on one memorable occasion, Smarties!

METHOD

• Pre-heat the oven to 180C
• Melt the chocolate and butter carefully in a glass or ceramic bowl in the microwave. You can of course use the traditional stovetop method if you don't have a microwave, but it isn't as easy.
• Carefully grease and flour the 25cm square tin. If I'm having the kind of day where everything is going wrong I might partially line the tin with paper so I can be a bit more confident it won't stick.
• Whisk the eggs, either by hand or preferably with an electric mixer. Add the sugar (and vanilla if you're using it) and if you are using a powerful stand mixer remember you aren't trying to make meringue.
• Stir in the flour.
• Stir in the nuts (or chocolate!)
• Pour all the mixture into your prepared tin and pop it in the oven.
• It should be done in around 20 minutes, coming away from the sides, looking cooked, not wobbling when you shake it and smelling delicious (and the skewer should come out relatively clean).
• Let it cool in the tin