Over the past year or so crunchy chickpeas have been flooding the food blog world.  There’s a good reason for it too! They’re inexpensive, simple to make, delicious, and healthy.  You don’t really need a recipe to make them. I first made these crunchy chickpeas several months ago and I’ve been hooked ever since! I’m always on the lookout for tasty snacks especially ones that can be readily available at any given surge of hunger. A grab on the go or snag a few here and there snack. I keep these around the house and at work nearly always.

The crunchy chickpea snack concept is great because you can modify it to fit your taste and you can make as much or as little as you require.  The batch I make is plenty for the week with enough to share — spicy, and salty. The cooking process takes about an hour depending on your oven and the amount you are baking at once.  The entire process is simple and straight forward but it does require you to stand by in order to mix them up throughout baking.  A good timer is helpful.

Ingredients :

3 cups dried chickpeas
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon cumin powder
1½ – 2 teaspoons hot chili powder or cayenne

I use dried chickpeas to start but you can use canned as well. When using dry chickpeas pre-soak over night or all day.  I’ll usually just set them out to soak in the morning if I want to bake them in the evening. Once soaked for several hours, drain the chickpeas and put them in a pot with new water to boil.  Simmer until cooked.

Strain the chickpeas and pour them onto a clean towel to completely dry and cool off. I believe this step is extremely important, allowing them to air off and cool off helps eliminate a lot of steam which is moisture.  I have noticed a huge difference when I have not allowed them to cool down — the chickpeas have a harder crunch to them which to me is less pleasant to eat.  By eliminating as much moisture before you bake them I believe you get nicer light and crispy texture.

Preheat oven to about 400°

Once the chickpeas are cooked and cooled, place them into a baking dish. I use a 9 x 13 Pyrex lasagna dish.  I would recommend using something with sides because throughout baking the chickpeas will need to be stirred around.  I’ve used a regular baking sheet before and found it pretty difficult to stir them up adequately (while in a hot oven — wear a mitt!) without knocking them off the sides. I also felt that the chickpeas were quicker to burn on a thinner baking sheet — the glass dish just makes more sense to me especially when you are preparing several cups worth of snacks ;)

Season the chickpea directly in the baking dish. Pour oil, sprinkle spices & kosher salt to taste, stir up to evenly coat the batch. Give it a taste before popping it in the oven.

The baking time may vary slightly but will end up to be just over an hour to an hour and a half. Set the timer for 15 minutes and then stir the chickpeas well, repeat an additional 3 times.  This will take about 45 minutes ;) taste test a few for crispiness and keep a closer watch as they finish baking.  I just keep lessening the interval between mixings until they are done to avoid burning them at the end! You’ll know when they’re done because they will be super crispy and delicious; because there are so many chickpeas baking at once, the textures will vary slightly, some may be a little darker (burnt), others a bit lighter (chewy), and the rest of them will be perfectly crispy.

Make these your new savory snack!

Fall is slowly moving in on us and with it comes the urge to bake more bread! Joe and I love making bread. We don’t have much experience or a stand mixer, but we love to try out new bread recipes. While searching for ideas on how to use our fresh sage from the garden I stumbled across this Cheddar Sage Bread recipe.  Cheese, bread, & herbs… Yep- sounds good to me!

We have been growing sage all summer and haven’t done anything special with it (until now). I love the flavor of sage but just don’t know much about using it. I was excited to find this recipe because I have never tasted a sage bread before but it sounded delicious to me. We changed a few small things in the recipe and it turned out great! It wasn’t too much work and the rising time was only a couple of hours.  Sometimes when we make bread it feels like the rising time takes twice as long as it says it should. With this recipe I felt like everything went according to plan.

Cheddar Sage Bread
This recipe was found on thathomesite.com
(we slightly modified it in order to use ingredients on hand)

½ teaspoon dry mustard or 1½ teaspoons yellow mustard
3 tablespoons fresh sage, minced
3-3½ cups flour (we used bread flour, but all purpose will work just fine)
1½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon coarse black pepper
1 cup milk
3 oz shredded sharp cheddar or 3oz of other cheese
1 package active dry yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon oil
1 egg
2 tablespoons butter

Dissolve mustard in 1 teaspoon warm water – we didn’t have any dry mustard so we substituted it with 3 times as much yellow mustard (this recipe calls for ½ teaspoon dry mustard, we used 1½ teaspoons of yellow mustard instead).

Combine 3 cups flour with salt, pepper, and sage. Warm the milk.

In a large mixing bowl combine the milk, yeast, sugar, and oil. Stir or process to combine. Add the egg and mix well. Add mustard and flour mixtures, adding more flour as necessary so mixture forms a stiff dough and comes together in a ball.

Incorporate cheese into the dough — This recipe called for 3oz shredded sharp cheddar cheese; we used what we had on hand instead- which turned out to be about 4oz of a Gruyere & Colby cheese mix.

Turn dough out onto floured work surface and knead until smooth and elastic, add more flour as necessary, about 10 minutes.

Put dough in a lightly buttered bowl and turn to coat top. Cover and let rise until doubled, about an hour. Punch down, shape in a loaf, put in buttered loaf pan. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, another hour.

Heat oven to 375°. Melt butter. Brush loaf with melted butter and bake until loaf is golden brown, about 50 minutes  — 50 minutes was just right for us. The bread seemed to turn a golden brown rather quickly and looked like it could be done after about 25 minutes, but we waited until it baked for the suggested amount of time and it turned out perfect. Cool on a rack before cutting into it.

While it was baking the whole house smelled amazing! It tasted just as nice!  We used it all week to eat as a simple toast and for a few breakfast sandwiches as well.

Week 3 of our organic produce delivery, received on August 25, 2009.  Last week the household was unable to make our weekly produce box meal together.  It seems as though scheduling may get in the way of our weekly meal so I may not post about it every week going forward. I thought I’d still share what was in the box anyway…

Contents : 2 local peaches, romaine lettuce, 1 banana, celery, 2 local apples, 2 ears of corn, 5 fingerling potatoes, mustard greens, and 6 local plums.

The evening after the box arrived we noticed that the plums should be used right away so we made banana plum muffins.  After we made the muffin mix we found out that we didn’t have enough cupcake cups so we moved to a new plan and made one giant muffin instead.  It turned out excellent- we lowered the cooking temperature and baked it for almost an hour.

We don’t have much experience in making loaves of bread. So, we have decided to start baking them more often to learn different methods.  When it’s time to make a new loaf we prowl the internet to find a recipe that sounds good to us.  In the past month we have made this jalepeño cheddar bread twice; we found it on epicurious.

One loaf of this bread takes almost 7 hours to make with only about 20 minutes of your actual attention.  It would have been much easier if we owned a Kitchen Aid stand mixer, but with our simple wooden spoon and metallic bowl we managed to get through it just fine.  The bread was delicious both times.  The first loaf turned out well but we thought it should be more spicy so the next time we added more jalepeño and more seeds; we may have put a bit too many peppers the second time even though it was still not very spicy.  The flavor, however, was great in both cases and we will make it again according to the recipe.

Ingredients:

1 teaspoon active dry yeast (less than a 1/4-ounce package)
1 3/4 cups plus 1 tablespoon warm water (105-115°F)
4 cups all-purpose flour plus additional for dusting
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons chopped fresh jalapeño, including seeds and ribs, plus 2 tablespoons
chopped fresh jalapeño, without seeds and ribs (from 3 medium total)
5 ounces coarsely grated extra-sharp Cheddar (1 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons)
1 1/2 ounces finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (3/4 cup)
1 large egg, beaten with a pinch of salt

* Special equipment: a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment

Below are the instruction from the original recipe along with our observations of the process….

Stir together yeast and 1 tablespoon warm water in a small bowl; let mixture stand until foamy, about 5 minutes. (If it doesn’t foam, discard and start over with new yeast.) °° We did this a few times and it never foamed so we decided to move on.  I was worried that it wouldn’t rise properly since the instructions specifically say to start over.  Well, we did start over and it never foamed for us ;( but it in the end it didn’t seem to matter much at all.
Mix together flour, salt, oil, yeast mixture, and remaining 1x cups warm water in bowl of mixer at low speed until a soft dough forms. Increase speed to medium-high and beat 3 minutes more. Add jalapeño, 1 1/2 cups Cheddar, and 1/2 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano and mix until combined. °° This is where a stand mixer would have been extremely helpful!

Scrape dough down side of bowl (all around) into center, then sprinkle lightly with flour. Cover bowl with a clean kitchen towel (not terry cloth) to keep a crust from forming and let dough rise in a draft-free place at warm room temperature until doubled in bulk, 2 to 2 1/2 hours. (Alternatively,let dough rise in bowl in refrigerator 8 to 12 hours.)

Turn dough out onto a well-floured surface and gently form into a roughly 11- by 8-inch rectangle with floured hands.

Fold dough in thirds (like a letter) with floured hands (dough will be sticky), pressing along seam of each fold to seal.

Put dough, seam side down, in an oiled 9- by 5-inch loaf pan. Cover pan with same clean kitchen towel and let dough rise in a draft-free place at warm room temperature until dough completely fills pan and rises above it slightly, 1 to 1 1/4 hours.

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 400°F.

Brush loaf with egg, then sprinkle remaining 2 tablespoons Cheddar and remaining 1/4 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano down center of loaf.

Bake until bread is golden and sounds hollow when tapped on bottom, 50 minutes to 1 hour. Run a knife around edge of pan to loosen loaf, then remove from pan to test for doneness. °° The Bread turned out to be beautiful after almost an hour of cooking.  I can’t say we tapped on the fresh out of the oven loaf to hear the hollow sound but it looked done to us and it was.

Return bread (not in pan) to oven and turn on its side, then bake 10 minutes more to crisp crust. Cool completely on a rack, about 1 1/2 hours. °° We didn’t do this step on the first loaf but we did on the second; I didn’t notice much of a difference.

We enjoyed this jalepeño cheddar bread all week in many fashions.  We made a delicious grilled swiss cheese with a mustard seed spread, garlic bread, and an eggs Florentine.   A flavored bread is definitely a nice way to spice up your everyday meals.  This makes me want to try more!