Pitta Crisps - a selection of flavours

A delicious, quick and healthy alternative crunchy snack, or tasty appetiser with dips before a Turkish or Greek meal.

Really simple and quick to make, these are just wholemeal (you could use white if you prefered) pitta breads, halved and cut into triangles with a selection of different toppings, toasted in the oven until crispy and light.

You could serve them with my Hummus (with tips for perfectionists!) and Tzatziki / Cacik along with some sticks of raw vegetables such as cucumber, carrots, peppers and celery for a really healthy, balanced snack or light lunch, or as part of a spread. They will keep in an airtight container for a day quite happily, although if you want them fresh and crispy, I wouldn't keep longer than this to serve to other people (although they will last quite happily a couple more days, just lose a little crispness).

Serving sizes are easy - served with raw vegetables, half a pitta bread will do per person (each half cuts into 6 crisps - half a wholemeal pitta from e.g. Sainsbury's would be 77 calories) for a snack; or use a whole one per person for something more substantial to eat, (154 calories), plus dips - see Notes below for more information. (Slimming World - SuperValu Round Wholemeal Pitta Breads 8 pack (1 x 48g) can be used as a healthy extra - therefore provided you choose a pitta bread without any added oil, a 48g portion before cooking could be used).

If you fancy putting together a nice Turkish feast, with a shopping list and preparation plan, then have a look here!

Hummus - with Tips for Perfectionists

Well, I wouldn't dare to claim to have perfected hummus itself - that's far too subjective!

However, everyone's taste is different and I hope that here many people will find either a great recipe for fantastic-tasting hummus (100% of home tasters preferred it to Sainsbury's organic hummus in a blind test!), or you will find some tips to improve your own home-made hummus to something approaching perfection, as I did, when researching it. Certainly, having the olive oil drizzled over the top, rather than an ingredient of the hummus was a real eye-opener!

I think one of the best tips (when making your own hummus) as far as flavour is concerned, is to cook your own chickpeas, rather than using tinned. If that really is too much trouble, then search out chickpeas in jars rather than tins, and ones which don't contain any chemicals, for a better flavour (I find tinned chick peas deeply unpleasant in flavour, tinny and slightly fishy, and I've only ever tried making hummus with them the once! However that's my taste, and not everyone else's, so I've scaled my recipe to a quantity which will be compatible with one tin of drained chickpeas).

This recipe makes a quantity of 410 grams (400 by the time you've had a few tastes to get the seasoning right!), which gives you eight 50g servings of 86 calories each (78 calories if you don't add sesame or extra virgin olive oil to the hummus; then add an extra 41 calories for each 5ml teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil you drizzle on top of your serving), perfect to serve as a dip with crudites (raw vegetable sticks) and pitta bread oven-baked sticks / crisps etc.- see here for my spiced Pitta Crisps recipe, and maybe treat yourself and have some Tzatziki / Cacik to dip into as well...

Let's be realistic though - who's going to stop at 50g! [Calories in square brackets]

If you fancy putting together a nice Turkish feast, with a shopping list and preparation plan, then have a look here!