Carrot and Hummus Crunch on Sourdough (or Irish Soda Bread)

The final sandwich, complete with my mangled hand.

The national airline of Belgium is called SABENA. I know this because when I was 9, my family took me on a coach trip to the Black Forest in Germany. Obviously, it would have been very tiring to do the trip all in one go, so we had little overnight stops along the way. One such stop was in Brussels, where we stayed in a hotel that was rather close to the airport.

Upon arriving at the hotel, you couldn’t help but notice a big fuck-off sign spelling out SABENA on the side of the terminal. Obviously spotting a good opportunity for a quick quip, the coach driver’s sidekick announced “That’s the Belgian airline. It stands for Such A Bloody Experience, Never Again!”

Oh and how everyone chuckled. Especially me because a) that is what you do when a grown-up joke is made, to show that you “get it” and b) I was still at the stage where “bloody” was a bit risqué, as was “piss”.

Anyway, as I was making this sandwich and everything was going wrong, I thought about SABENA. I mean, the final deal was, well, okaaay…although perhaps my enjoyment was thwarted by the various disasters along the way. I have lots of leftovers so have a few more opportunities to work out whether I actually do like this meal or not.

I was initially attracted to the recipe, by Nick Sandler and featured in the Meat Free Monday cookbook, because it was very short. For a lazy cook, this is always a deciding factor (along with How Much Washing Up Will This Create?). The meal used soda bread (can be bought ready made), hummus (can be bought ready made) and some carrot/garlic/seedy thing, which I would of course make by myself.

However, I had read on Twitter and stuff that soda bread was really easy and that homemade hummus was in a completely different league to the supermarket stuff! So, in an attempt to impress my readers (ha ha), I boldly decided to make everything myself….from scratch!

Off I toddled down to Rotherham town centre to pick up the ingredients. I already had most of the stuff that I needed for the soda bread and the only outstanding ingredient, buttermilk, was surprisingly in stock. I also soon had everything I needed, in my basket, for the hummus, until I went off to find the tahini (ground sesame seeds and olive oil).

Buttermilk sourced from Rotherham!

 After a long, drawn-out search involving various staff members, every aisle in existence and Tesco computer databases, my search ended with a “Sorry love, this one is new on me. If it’s not with the curry stuff, I don’t think we will have it.” So, I put the chickpeas and other hummus-y stuff back and picked up a tub of ready made stuff. SABENA.

Back at home, it was time to make the soda bread. This actually wasn’t a disaster at all, despite the finished goods looking somewhat like the elephant man’s head. This is the easiest bread IN THE WORLD. The recipe says it takes an hour (including cooking time) and usually these timings are ambitious because not everyone has ingredients measured out in endless mini bowls. Anyway, it actually DID take an hour because it couldn’t possibly take longer!

Dah-dah!

I used the Irish Soda Bread recipe from Good Food and it was great. The method urges you not to overwork the dough and so my “loaf” did go into the oven looking more like a collection of pieces of dough, although it did work out well in the end.

Before cooking (a hodge-podge of bits of dough)

 To add another complication to the most complicated sandwich I have ever attempted, I had decided to join a band. Not in a serious way (eg; no one in this band would ever consider music as a career) but in a “let’s hang out in some really cold practice rooms and jam!” sort of way. Which is basically an excuse for some guys to smoke doobies…and that is why everyone joins a band, isn’t it?

My boyfriend was going to pick me up at 6.45pm and it was 4.45pm, so there was plenty of time BUT I had no carrots. “Don’t worry,” my Dad said “I’m going out, so I’ll pick you some up!” All was good, so I began to cut up my chilli and garlic. Over an hour later my Dad finally arrived home because there seemed to have been some kind of northern carrot shortage, so it was all rush rush rush and then, for some INSANEEE reason (self-sabotage), I decided to a) double the quantities and b) manually grate the carrots instead of using the food processor because I thought it would be too much washing up. SABENA.

Look how much fucking carrot there is and I STILL had more to do :-(

 The root vegetable God had forsaken me because the carrot grating step took just over half an hour. My hand was about to fall off, a bit of finger had been grated into the mound of orange stuff and wet carrot was sticking to every surface, towel, tap and floor tile in the house. This shambles went on for such a ridiculously long time that I missed band practice and spent another boring half an hour washing up instead. SABENA.

A literal MOUNTAIN of hand-grated carrot.

 So, feeling all sweary, sweaty and frustrated, I bundled the sandwich together and gobbled it down. SABENA! SABENA! I think, what with the sophisticated ingredient of caraway seeds, I was hoping to be a bit more bowled over by the taste than I was. I didn’t let the carrot mixture fully cool, so that may have been a problem. Like I say, I think I should try it all again another day, when I’m feeling a little less besieged, and then make my final judgement.

The carrots, cooking (obviously).

 Serves 2 (I doubled these quantities) (SABENA)

“Fry 2 coarsely grated large carrots in a pan with 1 tablespoon olive oil, 2 chopped garlic cloves, ½ chopped red chilli and 1 teaspoon caraway seeds over moderate heat for 5-8 minutes, stirring frequently. Cool before using in the sandwich. Cut 4 slices of sourdough bread. Spread 100g hummus onto the bread, followed by the carrots. Remember to scrape in the caraway seeds and chilli. Add 2 tablespoons Greek yoghurt to the bread in blobs, followed by a handful of chopped coriander. Season with freshly ground pepper.”

I just mixed the coriander into my carrot mix and I also forgot to season with pepper. Please note also, that after watching Jamie Oliver on (I think it was) the Jonathan Ross show, I jazzed up my lame supermarket hummus with cumin and paprika, plus a little parsley. It tasted a bit nuttier, I think. SABENA. Also, this dish is super garlicky, when you consider the hummus (which is enough to repel all people for at least a day aka very useful) AND the cloves added to the carrots. So handle with care, my friends.

Pimped hummus (cumin and paprika).

 NB: OH MY WORD, I JUST READ THAT BACK (proof-reading, you see) AND SAW THAT IT SAID SOURDOUGH, NOT SODA BREAD!!! What an unmitigated DISASTER! I baked and wrote about the wrong bread, which just shows how completely and unreservedly SABENA the whole thing is.

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