Soak Your Nuts

I’ve often come across advice to soak nuts and seeds before eating them. I soaked almonds for a short while (and noticed how much nicer they tasted after soaking!) but then got lazy and stopped soaking them again. I guess I never really took the advice to soak nuts and seeds so seriously as it was never given with any convincing enough facts about the benefits of soaking. If any reason was given, it was the greater ease of digesting soaked nuts. Great! But kind of vague...

Today, I finally came across something that was convincing enough for me. Apparently, raw nuts and seeds contain phytic acid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytic_acid), which actually makes iron, zinc, magnesium and calcium unabsorbable. That’s no good for vegetarians, who might already be struggling to get enough iron from their diet! I personally do not use milk products, either, and had sort of assumed that I would be getting a fair bit of magnesium and calsium from all the almonds I eat but I guess that all that magnesium and calsium is not absorbing as well as it could...

Anyway, I’ve decided to start soaking nuts again. This is how I do it at the moment. Please say tuned for updates as I’m looking into methods of drying the soaked nuts, as well.

SOAK YOUR NUTS

Daily portion of nuts of your choice

Water

1. Rinse your nuts well.

2. Put your nuts in a glass, bowl or the like, cover them with water, and let them soak overnight.

3. Rinse your soaked nuts well.

4. Enjoy.

Annika

Pumpkin Jack Flash - Baked Pumpkin Seeds

I often snack on pumpkin seeds, so I wanted to learn how to prepare fresh pumpkin seeds. The past weekend was the perfect weekend for experimentation, as I had just bought two different kinds of winter squash. I suppose there are other ways to prepare fresh pumpkin seeds but I decided to bake them, and the result was very nice.




PUMPKIN JACK FLASH

fresh pumpkin seeds
sunflower seed oil
sea salt

1. Rinse the pumplin seeds until they are clean, and pat them dry between two sheets of kitchen roll.

2. Sprinkle a little bit of sunflower seed oil on baking paper.

3. Put the pumpkin seeds on the baking paper and sprinkle some sea salt on them.

4. Toss the pumpkin seeds using a spatula to make sure that they all get a bit of oil on them. Then use the spatula to spread the pumpkin seeds evenly on the baking paper.

5. Bake the pumpkin seeds in 175 degrees for about 15 minutes, turning them once.

6. Pat the baked pumpkin seeds between two sheets of kitchen roll to remove excess oil.

7. Enjoy your salty snack!

Annika

Ginger Pop - Spicy Popcorn

I've been in a bit of a popcorn phase recently - so much so that I've started feeling a bit guilty about my "carby" habit (I should avoid excessive carbs). So, I thought I'd make my popcorn a bit healthier somehow. Here's what I came up with (google "ginger" for its health benefits).







GINGER POP

Sunflower seed oil
Popcorn kernels
Sea salt
Ginger powder

1. Add a thin layer of sunflower seed oil at the bottom of a pan with a reasonably thick bottom.

2. Add one popcorn kernel in the pan and cover the pan with a lid.

3. Heat the oil using a high temperature until the test kernel pops.

4. Wait for about 15 seconds, add the rest of the kernels, and cover the pan with a lid again.

5. When the kernels start popping, make sure to shake the pan vigorously on a regular basis, to avoid the popped kernels to get burned. You might also want to lower the temperature a bit.

6. When the popping has stopped, take the pan off the stove, and pour the popcorn into a bowl.

7. Put cold water in the empty, hot pan, and enjoy the resulting "ksssshhhhh" sound.

8. Add sea salt and ginger powder to taste, and enjoy your spicy snack.

Annika

Wankers Crisps – DIY Crisps

Excuse the name of the crisps but there is a story behind it. After yet another late night at the lab during my MSc course in Edinburgh, I was craving crisps – badly. On the way back home, I walked into one of the night shops on Clerk Street and, unimpressed by the look of the Scottish brands they had on offer, was trying to think of the name of the crisps I used to have in England so that I could ask the shop assistant if they really didn’t have them. I was thinking and thinking but the name just wouldn’t come to me... until, finally, I remembered it: Wankers! As I was about to ask the shop assistant for Wankers crisps, I suddenly realised that something about the name wasn’t quite right. In fact, something about the name was horribly wrong; the crisps couldn’t possibly be called Wankers crisps! And so what would have been one of my worst English language blunders to date was narrowly avoided.

On another note, I find my mistake quite interesting as it suggests that I retrieve English words from my memory using their orthography rather than their pronunciation (the real name of the brand is Walkers, and the words “Wankers” and “Walkers” are much more similar to each other orthographically than phonetically). This is sort of supported by the fact that, to be able to memorise and/or reproduce a new foreign word, I usually need to see it written down.

Wankers Crisps

4 medium-sized red potatoes

sunflower oil

sea salt

freshly ground pepper

1. Wash the potatoes (you don’t necessarily have to peel them) and slice them as thinly as you can.

2. Wash the potato slices in cold water and dry them by placing them one by one on one half of a kitchen towel. Fold the other half of the kitchen towel on top and pat the potato slices dry.

3. Place the potato slices in a baking tray covered with baking paper, and sprinkle oil, salt and pepper on top of them. Toss them around using a spatula to make sure that there is oil and spices everywhere.

4. Cook the potato slices in a preheated 250° oven, tossing them around every 5 minutes. I think the total cooking time in my case was about 25 min. However, because of differences in size/thickness, some crisps were ready before others.  Anyway, you have to keep an eye on them as you don’t want to burn them!

5. When crisp enough, let your crisps cool down a bit (not in the baking tray, though, as they might get soft from the remaining oil on the baking paper), then enjoy them as long as they last – which, unfortunately, isn’t very long at all!

Annika

Paradis du chocolat - Pure Chocolate

Ground-breaking news. I was just alerted to the existence of chocolate with a 99% cocoa content. I still don't know how to get my hands on it but I'm almost hoping for a rainy day for when I'm going climbing in Fontainbleau at Easter; I might get the chance to pop into the Michel Cluizel shop in Paris! Noir Infini. Paradis Infini.

http://www.cluizel.com/

Annika