TAHINI DIP AND ALMOST RAW KALE CHIPS (V+, P, GF, NF, R, GRF, CHF)
No one can claim that opportunities to learn about cooking aren’t all around us. For starters, the internet is such a wonderful source of cooking inspiration; the array of creative food blogs out there is near to overwhelming! And then of course there are 100s of cookbooks to fall in love with, countless stylish cooking magazines to subscribe to and free recipe cards galore to grab hold of at your local supermarket. I mean, come on, there was never a better time to be a food geek.
And though I have indulged in all the options noted above, this week I thought I’d go all old school and do something a little bit different with this delicious vegan tahini dip and almost raw kale chips... To celebrate ‘Homemade Bread Day’ I decided to emulate what women did centuries ago i.e. hang out near a big fire, catch up on village gossip whilst preparing a delicious meal together. To recreate a modern day version of this girly tradition I invited some pretty cool female friends into my kitchen where we chatted, cried, giggled, moaned about the pressures of being working, middle-class moms and baked some yummy scrummy goodies.
First up on the menu was a sunflower seed sourdough bread (the recipe was taken from this book, which one of the women brought along on the day. I instantly bought my own copy as the bread was SUPER DEEELISH). Next we learned to make Swedish poppy seed crackers (OMG SO GOOD). Plus, I made 2 dips (my chunky avocado dip and today’s tahini dip) to go with the bread and crackers. Perfect combo if you ask me ;).
Baking a small batch of pita breads a few weeks ago (recipe here) was my first tentative step into the world of bread making. And with this week’s girly sharing and baking experience I think I have now truly earned my baker’s hat. In fact, I woke up this morning and made some little bread buns with my son (they weren’t bad, they weren’t bad at all). So you’ve been warned, there’s more where that came from.
(Sorry there aren’t any pictures of the bread baking day. I got caught up learning, laughing, chatting and eating. But I’ll try and recreate some of the recipes in the weeks to come and share them on the blog).
Thanks for reading everyone and happy bread baking.
IMPORTANT: The tahini dip recipe was taken from this blog post by Tori Avey.
TAHINI DIP RECIPE
Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 5-8 minutes for the onions (optional)
Serves: 6 as a starter
Ingredients:
1/4 cup (organic) light tahini
1/2 cup lukewarm water
1-2 (organic) garlic cloves
1/8 cup fresh lemon juice (you will need about 2 organic lemons)
A pinch of salt
1-2 tsp of sesame seeds to garnish (optional)
A small (organic) red onion, briefly stir fried in olive oil to garnish (optional)
Almost raw kale chips to garnish (optional, recipe below)
Instructions:
Place the tahini, water, salt and lemon juice in a bowl and mix gently with a spoon. Put the garlic clove(s) through a garlic press and add to the tahini mix. Mix everything together until all the liquid has been nicely absorbed and combined. Let the dip rest for 30 minutes, taste (add a little bit more salt, water or lemon juice if needed) and then serve.
Garnish with:
- Some sesame seeds for texture (optional)
- 1 small red onion, which I peeled and cut into rings, then briefly pan fried in a splash of olive oil (optional)
- Almost raw kale chips for crunch and a bit of fun (optional, recipe below)
ALMOST RAW KALE CHIPS
To be truly raw they should have been baked at no more than 42C, meaning these here are not far off ;). This version is just a little bit quicker.
Preparation Time: 5 minutes
Cooking Time: 60 minutes
Serves: 1-2
Ingredients:
3-4 large(organic) kale leaves (any variety will do)
A pinch of salt
Instructions:
Pre-heat the oven to 70C/50CFan/155F. Prepare 1-2 baking trays, by covering them with some grease-proof baking paper.
Wash the kale, remove the stem and cut the leaves into smallish pieces. Sprinkle the salt on top of the kale leaves and mix and massage with your hands so that the salt evenly covers the kale leaves. Pop the kale leaves onto the baking tray. Space the leaves out evenly. Pop into the oven.
Once done serve and eat them straight away.
Eat with... home-made pita bread and chunky avocado dip.
