Braised Baby Lettuce
If you aren't sold on the idea of salad, you can cook your lettuce. This speedy cooking method keeps the lettuce quite crisp and it is a good side dish with a Chinese-style meal.
Green Garden Crackers
Get more vegetables into your diet with these green garden crackers. These are perfect for using up limp or wilted greens.
Don’t lose track while you’re cooking, click on an ingredient or step to tick it off so you know where you are up to.
Ingredients
- 1 bunch of greens (approximately 200g) e.g. silverbeet, spinach, kale, parsley, cavolo nero, cilantro or rocket
- ¼ cup olive oil
- ½ cup water
- 2 cups (approximately) flour
- ½ cup sunflower seeds
- 2 tablespoons flaxseeds
- 1 ½ teaspoons salt
- 1 egg
Method
- Preheat oven to 200°C.
- Remove the leaves of your greens from the stems and rip into smaller pieces.
- Place the greens in a food processor along with a tablespoon of olive oil and a little bit of water to help the blades move. Process until all of the greens are finely chopped. Add the remaining oil and water and process to combine.
- Tip the green mixture into a large bowl and add the flour, sunflower seeds, flaxseed, salt, and egg. Mix thoroughly until all the ingredients combine into a ball of dough. The dough will be sticky and wet. The trick is to find exactly the right balance – too sticky and it will not peel very easily off the baking paper, too dry and the crackers have less of a green taste.You may have to add a little bit more flour to the mixture but try to keep it as green as possible as that’s where all the amazing flavours are.
- Place a piece of baking paper onto a baking tray and sprinkle it with a little bit of flour. Divide your dough into three pieces. Place one of the pieces of dough on the baking paper. Take another piece of baking paper that has been brushed lightly with oil olive and put it face down on top of the dough. Use a rolling pin to roll out the dough until it is even (about 5mm thick).
- Carefully peel back the top layer of baking paper. Hopefully, the oil has stopped too much of the dough sticking but you may end up with lots of mixture on the paper – but don’t worry, just scrape it off and add to the remaining dough. If it really is too wet, then add a little bit more flour and see how the second one turns out. Repeat with the remaining dough.
- Gently cut guidelines horizontally and vertically, forming cracker shapes. This will help you break them into crackers easily one they have been baked. Sprinkle salt on top of the dough.
- Bake for 20 – 30 minutes until the crackers are a dark/brownish green. After 20 minutes, keep watch to prevent them from burning – check every five minutes. Once out of the oven let them cool and then using your knife lines, break them into crackers.