Day 41: Mashed chickpeas on toast

A supper recipe it was tonight as I made Mashed chickpeas on toast. It was hitting 10 o’clock and I had to have a wee snack so I thought this recipe would be a good change to the usual tea and toast. I loved the fact that it was only going to take 5 minutes to make – yay!

First of all, I chopped up some fresh mint and put it in a large bowl along with the zest of a lemon, chopped garlic and a tin of chickpeas which I rinsed beforehand. In a small bowl, I mixed olive oil and paprika. I can’t get smoked paprika anywhere so I just used the ordinary stuff. I used a potato masher to mash the peas but, I must say, it was hard going and took a bit of ‘elbow grease’ as my mother calls it! I probably spent 10 minutes preparing it all. Next time I’ll have to get out my electric mini-chopper though. I toasted the sourdough bread, buttered it, spread the mash on it and drizzled with the paprika oil.

(Believe me, it tasted better than what it looked like!)

The verdict…

When I had made the mash in the bowl, I took a small spoonful of it and thought to myself that it was a bit bland. However, when I put it on toasted sourdough bread and drizzled the oil on top, I must say how tasty and filling it was. It was exactly what I needed. As far as suppers go, I would give this recipe 7 marks out of 10. Dear Husband wasn’t far behind – 6 marks out of 10 which isn’t bad considering the absence of meat! As I said, quite a bit of mashing to do so if you have a mini-chopper, use it! Even though there was garlic in the mash, it wasn’t too overpowering. I thought that the inclusion of the zest of a full lemon would make it very lemony but it didn’t and I have a real love of mint so all the flavours worked so well. Any time I eat sourdough bread, it’s usually got avocado and tomato on top so I ate a couple of slices of tomato on top of the mash too with salt. Can’t have tomatoes without salt!

To conclude, this was a nice surprise in the taste department and far more filling than plain old toast and butter. I’ll definitely make it again and that in itself is the best verdict of all!