CHUNKY HUMMUS

I have always wanted to make my own hummus. I'm not going to lie - the first time I set eyes on it, I was a bit skeptical, but after that first taste, I was completely sold! 

Hummus is made by crushing/blending chickpeas with a few other kitchen cupboard ingredients and can be used as a dip or a spread. It's a great source of protein, fibre and numerous essential vitamins.

Like peanut butter, you can have it super smooth or, as I like it, with chunky bits. I've served mine up with a few carrot sticks and some home-made flatbread (recipe also below) but of course you can eat it with just about any other crunchy vegetable out there (sliced cucumber, raw pepper etc.). They also go well with baked chips, crackers or, as fellow blogger Berry Dakara cleverly suggested in my mini pizza post, as a topping for your veggie pizza.

 

Ingredients

(serves 2)

- 1 cup cooked chickpeas

- 2 cloves garlic (crushed)

- Juice of 1/2 a lemon

- 2 tbsp olive oil

- 1/2 tsp chilli powder (optional)

- Pinch of salt

To make the hummus, place the chickpeas in a large bowl and crush with the back of a fork to form a chunky paste.

Add the crushed garlic, salt, lemon juice, olive oil and chilli powder (optional), and give it a good mix.

Serve in a little dish and drizzle a little extra olive oil over the top.

For the flatbread:

- 1 cup self-raising flour 

- 1/2 cup warm water 

- 3 tbsp olive oil 

- Pinch of salt

- 1 tsp sunflower oil to coat the bottom of the frying pan

Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl, making sure to add the water a little at a time until you have a soft dough.

Heat a large frying pan and coat the bottom with a little sunflower oil.

Divide the dough into 4-5 parts and use your hands to form a flat, roughly round or oval shape with each piece. Once the pan is hot enough, drop the bread in and cook for about 2 minutes or until it starts to form brown spots all over. Turn over and brown the other side.

CREAMY AVOCADO PASTA

Nothing beats the creaminess of a fully ripe avocado. Here's a neat way to exploit this in a simple yet tasty pasta dish. It's worth using good quality olive oil in this recipe as it adds a certain depth of flavour to the dish.

Ingredients

- 1 cup pasta 

- 1 ripe avocado 

- 1/2 red onion (sliced in circles)

- 6 cherry tomatoes (halved)

- 1/4 cup sweetcorn

- 2 tbsp olive oil

- 1 tbsp dried mixed herbs

- 1 vegetable stock cube

- Salt to taste

Fill a saucepan with lightly salted water and bring to a boil. Add your pasta and cook for 8-10 minutes, or until soft.

In another saucepan, sauté the onions and tomatoes in olive oil for 5 minutes, stirring frequently on medium heat until the onions soften. Add the sweetcorn, stock cube and mixed herbs. 

Toss the cooked pasta with the vegetables and scoop in the avocado. Mix well to break down the avocado so it coats the pasta nicely. Cook for a further 5 minutes.

Serve hot with a little extra drizzle of olive oil (optional).

AGEGE BREAD

I'm a little torn about this recipe. On the one hand, I am incredibly proud that I was able to recreate THE agege bread - down to the taste, texture, everything... On the other hand, making it from scratch has made me realise just how nutritionally void it is. Sure, you can replace the usual white flour with brown, but there's no escaping the copious amount of salt and sugar that goes into it.

Enough of the sad talk.

If you'd like to tear into Nigeria's scrumptious and signature take on bread, then keep reading.
For the uninitiated, agege bread is named after a suburb in Lagos State. It is loved for its dense texture and 'moreishly' sweet taste. You'd be hard-pressed to find a Lagosian who isn't fond of it and who hasn't used it to mop up some peppery stew or steeped it in a mug of hot tea.

Now you get to enjoy it any time you want, made in the intimate and hygienic (hopefully!) space of your own kitchen. It's also stupidly easy to make - so much so that I kept wondering if it would actually turn out like soft agege bread as I waited for it to bake in the oven.

Bread is such a hands-on thing to make and so my top tip as you embark on this recipe is to really rely on your instincts in terms of the dough texture. You want it soft and stretchy, but not sticky; most certainly not hard as a rock.

Ingredients
- 4 cups bread flour
- 2 tbsp dried yeast
- 2 tsp salt
- 4 tbsp sugar
- warm water

Mix all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Start to add the warm water a little at a time, mixing with your hand as you go along. You want to form a soft and stretchy dough that isn't too sticky. I used roughly a third to half a glass of water.

Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for a few minutes until smooth then place back in the bowl and cover with a damp napkin. Leave to rise for about an hour.

Knead the dough lightly and place in a loaf tin (lined with greaseproof paper, if possible).

Bake in a pre-heated oven, gas mark 4, for 40-45 minutes.

When done, leave to cool on a wire rack. Or tear at it immediately if you really can't wait (to which I must add: I take no responsibility for burnt fingers).

Mint Iced Tea | Easy and Refreshing Summer Drink

There's just something special about a glass of fresh mint tea. The delicate flavour and intoxicatingly sweet scent make for a perfect chill-out drink on a lazy mid-August day.

This iced mint tea is fresh, easy to make, anti-inflammatory and wonderful for digestive system.

Method

Steep 4-5 whole stalks of mint leaves in 1 litre jug of boiling hot water for 10 minutes. Strain and dissolve 1/4 cup maple syrup or fruit syrup into the tea for a hint of sweetness.

Place in the fridge and allow to cool until ready to serve.

To serve, pour into individual glasses, top with ice and a squeeze of fresh lemon or lime. Enjoy!

PLANTAIN MOSA

Every once in a while, I let that one plantain get away. A week or two passes by and the skin turns from a healthy yellow to a worrying dark brown with white fluff starting to form at the tips. Eugh!

Before you chuck that over-ripe plantain in the bin, here's a neat and simple recipe that restores the last bit of the plantain's dignity. Mosa is a yummy Nigerian snack that reminds me of a doughnut. Eggs are used in some recipes, but I've skipped out on that and find that the soft plantain acts as a good enough binder anyway.

Ingredients

- 1 ripe plantain
- 4 tbsp wholegrain flour
- Salt to taste
- 1 tsp chilli powder (optional)
- Sunflower oil

Place the ripe plantain in a large mixing bowl and mash to form a smooth purée. Add the rest of the dry ingredients.

Heat some sunflower oil in a frying pan and add the mixture one tablespoon at a time. You can fry in batches, but be careful not to overcrowd the pan. Fry on medium heat, turning over once or twice to brown both sides.

Drain on some kitchen paper and serve hot or warm.

PAWPAW CRUMBLE

I'm a little annoyed because I'm pretty sure I posted this recipe a while back. A quick glance through my archives made me realise that the post had somehow been deleted. Never mind! Better late than never.

I made this back in May when I put on a lunch spread for some friends who had never tried Nigerian food before. I made sure the mains were typical Nigerian fare - jollof rice, plantain, stew, efo riro etc. etc. (it was quite a feast) - but when it came to dessert, I wanted to try something different.
I suppose I'll have to call this one a fusion dish because a crumble really is the quintessential English pudding. I've just given it an exotic twist with some juicy pawpaw (a.k.a. papaya) instead of the traditional apple.

Once upon a time, we had a pawpaw tree in our backyard. It served us well and was a source of many glorious moments spent gnawing through refrigerated mounds of bright orange goodness. Then one day its roots went out of control and nearly destroyed a part of the wall surrounding our compound. It got chopped down and uprooted and I doubt I've ever really gotten over it. Pawpaw is high up there on my list of favourite fruits, along with mango and orange. It's packed with a load of vitamins (A, B, C), potassium, calcium and fibre. It's also low in calories at around 40 calories/100 g. Sweet!

Ingredients
- 1 ripe pawpaw (cut into bite-size cubes)
- Freshly squeezed juice of 1 lemon
- 1 cup wholegrain flour
- 1 cup rolled oats
- 1/2 cup raw cane sugar
- 3/4 cup vegan margarine
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon

Place the cubed pawpaw at the bottom of a baking dish and squeeze on some lemon juice and sprinkle on 1 tsp of cinnamon. Give it a good mix and leave to the side.

To make the topping, place the flour, oats, sugar, 1 tsp of cinnamon and vegan butter in a large mixing bowl. With clean hands, bring the mixture together gently until it resembles thick breadcrumbs.

Spread the crumble mix evenly over the top of the pawpaw and bake in a pre-heated oven, gas mark 6, for about 30 mins, making sure the top is nice and golden brown.

BOLI

Here's an idea - the next time you're invited to a barbecue, why not turn up with an armful of plantain. Yes, you'll probably look a bit strange, but at least you'll be guaranteed a tasty, filling alternative while everyone chows down on hot-dogs and drumsticks.

Boli (a.k.a. roasted plantain) is a popular Nigerian street food. Nothing fancy or complicated. Just a whole plantain thrown on a grill and turned around a few times to get it all brown and crispy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside. It is then wrapped up in old newspaper and handed over with some roasted peanuts.

What's so great is that it can be recreated at home, whether in a conventional oven-grill or out on the barbecue.

BREAKFAST #5 - OAT BARS

It's not every morning that you're in the mood to make porridge from scratch - even with the wonderful invention that is the microwave. These days, I grab a breakfast bar with a piece of fruit or two and I'm good to go. But not just any old shop-bought breakfast bar where half the ingredients are chemicals you've never heard of. These are homemade and packed full of all the good stuff. Sugar-free and sweetened with 100% natural apple sauce and raisins, these will give you the energy you need to start the day off, without the mid-morning sugar-induced crash.

Ingredients

(makes 10-12)

- 2 cups organic oats

- 1/4 cup raisins

- 1/4 cup sunflower seeds

- 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds

- 1 tsp cinammon

- 1/4 cup almond milk

- 3-4 tbsp wholegrain flour

- 4 apples (cored and chopped)

- 2 tbsp lemon juice

- Water

Start by making the apple sauce. Add the chopped apples to a saucepan and cover with a little water and the lemon juice. Cover and bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 25-30 mins.

Give it a good mix and leave to cool.

Place the rest of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and add the cooled apple sauce. Mix well and spread evenly onto a lined baking dish (flat and rectangular)

Bake in a pre-heated oven, gas mark 5, for 40-45 mins or until set and golden brown on top.

Leave to cool for an hour or so then cut into bars. 

Can be stored in an airtight container for up to a week.