Roasted Seed Mix

This delicious roasted seed mix is perfect for adding to salads, fresh hummus, or any other dish on which sprinkle of something extra would give it a lift and add some texture.

It took a few goes to get the proportions right, and the key here is to have twice as many sunflower as pumpkin seeds, otherwise the richer, darker flavour of the pumpkin dominates. The other thing is not to put in too much olive oil. It really is a small drizzle, just to help with the cooking process. Any more and it won’t be fully absorbed and the seed mix will end up greasy.

Ingredients

• 500 g sunflower seeds
• 250 g pumpkin seeds
• 100 g sesame seeds
• Drizzle of olive oil
• Generous slug of light soy sauce
• 2 tsp oregano
• 1/2 tsp rosemary
• Generous twist black pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to around 170º (150º for a fan oven).

Put the seeds to a heavy, ideally ceramic, oven dish, and mix. Add the herbs and pepper and make sure they are evenly distributed before drizzling over the olive oil and mixing thoroughly. Finally, add the soy sauce and stir until all the seeds have a light coating.

Place the dish in the middle of the oven. After 3-4 minutes, when the top layer of seeds are lightly browned, remove the dish, turn over the seeds until the browned ones are evenly distributed, and put back in the over. Repeat. At the beginning, there will be seeds and soy sauce stuck on the spoon when you have finished turning them over, but by the end, the spoon will be dry, as all the soy sauce and olive oil will have been absorbed.

Once all the seeds are equally brown, take the dish out the oven and leave on a cooling rack until completely cold. Then put into a storage jar, close and leave for 24 hours for the full flavour to develop.

Enjoy!