Bookmarked! - Tuscan fries for the fryer-phobic

 

Bookmarked! From BBC Food by Nigella Lawson, these are the Tuscan Fries from her latest Italian food series. The idea is hob-top skinny fries, started in cold oil, with garlic and herbs thrown into the boiling oil for that extra thrill of white hot fat spatter. 

I bookmarked this recipe because it looks like a fryer-phobic friendly gateway project. I blooming love fried food but had never before taken the greasy plunge into making it at home. And the sort of oven chips I can buy in supermarkets I can walk to (so not the big ones) are just nasty.

What I changed: I scaled the quantities down to suit a two person portion. Then I ate it all myself. I have no shame. I also used a fresh basil and dried thyme mix and less garlic than vampire-slayer Lawson. And my frying method was definitely the wimp's way out, using a saucepan and small batches instead of the recommended heavy frying pan. I think it worked very nicely though so I'm sharing it here. 

Sort of hummus with sort of flatbreads (with semolina 'no knead' pizza dough)

This was a potato and chickpea curry. 
But apparently Rome is the Land that Cumin Forgot, so this was hummus and flatbread.
Then, when I came to convert all the regular partygoers into a smooth, hummus-y dip. I struck a problem. No blender. No masher, no processor, no nuttin'. Nuts. 
(Quite literally; nuts, but more on that later). 
Very well, back to the pot with a fork to mash a tin of chickpeas and all their bestest friends into a sort of smearable 'smashed hummus'. Sort of like when restaurants fob you off with crushed potatoes with the skins on when all you wanted was to fill your face with mash. But I digress.