Crisps

There are a few foods that I have made at home out of more than just sheer bloody mindedness and this is one of them. When my girlfriend was pregnant she had gall stone attacks. I can only imagine how painful these can be, watching them is horrible enough, and in contrast being there at the birth of our daughter was a picnic. We were told that fat triggered the attacks and so were both on a strict diet with no more than 3g of fat in one sitting. One day I'll write the complete fat free cookbook, but for now here is one of the things I made as a tasty low fat alternative to stuff you can buy.

Ingredients

A selection of root vegetables such as potato, carrot, parsnip and beetroot

A little Olive Oil (the low calorie spray on cooking stuff is excellent)

A little cider vinegar

Salt and pepper

For the vegetable crisps

Wash and peel your vegetables.

Using the peeler, shave off the largest pieces you can. Try and get a good diagonal slice across the carrot and the parsnip. This will give you the widest and longest strips. Place your cuts between 2 pieces of paper towel and leave them there to dry out for a bit, say half an hour.

Now line a baking tray with grease proof paper and lightly wipe some olive oil on the paper. Arrange your crisps on the baking sheet and season them well with salt and pepper. If you want to get a bit creative with the flavours then maybe sprinkle some onion powder over, or a bit of vegetable stock cube.

Bake at around 80degC for 45 mins, turn over and bake for another 45 mins, or until they have completely dried out and are just starting to singe at the edges.

Test them as often as you like throughout the baking for crispiness. No matter how crispy the look and feel to prod at the only way you're going to tell is by eating them. Pour into a bowl and adjust the seasoning if needed. Thats it!

Now, for the potato crisps

Again wash and peel the spuds and dry them between paper towel. Potatoes can be particularly juicy, so it pays to thoroughly dry them out and pat them dry. But try to work fast as they will start to brown as the air gets to them.

This time I'm going to brush them lightly with some cider vinegar before sprinkling over some salt.

These ones I, er, deliberately burnt to show you what happens if you turn the oven up towards the end of cooking (I had some bread to get in and they were taking forever). But even slightly overdone as these ones were they were too good to write off and all got eaten.

The story of how I discovered crisps is hardly as interesting as the invention.