Blasta Books: Recipes to add to your regular kitchen repertoire

If you’re Irish and a foodie, the chances are you know all about the Nine Bean Rows publishing house and their series of small but perfectly formed Blasta cookbooks.

If you haven’t, well, you’re in for a serious culinary treat!

Kicking off in 2022 with Lily Ramirez-Foran’s brilliant Tacos – we’re seriously addicted to her mouthwatering De Árbol and Tamarind Pork ones! – Nine Bean Rows will by the end of 2026 have published twenty beautifully illustrated tomes.

Sinéad Sheehy and Ann Ní Chiobháin. Credit: Declan Malone

The authors range from such well-known restaurateurs as Kai Galway’s Jess Murphy (The United Nations Of Cookies) and Afro-Caribbean food evangelist Alistair Jeje (Socafro) to fish fanatic Aishling Moore (Whole Catch) and Facundo Rodulfo and Pam Neumann (Tango) whose love of Argentine and Italian street food jumps off the page.

Like children, you shouldn’t have favourites but the Blasta book we go back to most is Jibrin: A Culinary Journey Through Our Palestinian Homeland.

“Make hummus, not war,” declare its co-authors Izzeddeen Alkarajeh and Eman Aburabi who run Cork’s amazing Izz Café, which is equal parts restaurant and community hub.

You really haven’t lived until you’ve tried their Magloubeh, AKA Upside-Down Rice Casserole, which has a special place in Palestinian ‘lore.

As for afters, their Aish as-Saraya take on bread pudding is comfort food of the very highest order.

Blasta’s busiest year yet continues with the unleashing of Alice Kelly’s From Scratch: 80 Foolproof Recipes From Easy Traybakes To Showstopping Cakes (July 23); Sinéad Sheehy and Ann Ní Chíobháin’s Toasties: The Alchemy Of Cheese, Bread, Butter And Heat (July 23); Kate Ryan’s Blood, Guts And Black Pudding: Ireland’s Dying Art Of Blood As Food (September 10); Oisín Davis’ The Irish Whiskey Cookbook: 50 Recipes To Cook, Sip And Savour (October 8); and Erica Drum’s Dinner: Meals To Match The Day You’re Having (October 29).

To whet your appetites for these and other oh-so-delicious Blasta titles, here are three recipes that we suspect you’ll be adding to your regular kitchen repertoire!

Recipe: Roast Tomato Gazpacho with Crispy Beans & Pesto

There are few better foods than a ripe tomato at the height of tomato season. And on a hot summer day, there are few better ways to enjoy them than in a bowl of gazpacho. I make the crispy beans all the time as a topping for salads, soups and even granola (yes, really!). The herb stalk pesto is a way of never wasting a thing and is handy to have in the fridge for absolutely anything.

Serves 4
• 1kg (2lb) vine-ripened tomatoes, kept whole and on the vine
• 1 medium onion, unpeeled and quartered
• 4 garlic cloves, left whole and unpeeled
• a handful of fresh herbs, such as thyme or oregano
• 2 tbsp olive oil, plus extra to serve
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 500ml (2 cups + 4 tsp) water (or as needed)
• freshly ground black pepper

For The Crispy Beans:
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 200g (1 cup) cooked beans (butter beans, cannellini, fava, haricots, Carlin peas or brown lentils all work well)

For The Herb Stalk Pesto:
• 20g (oz) fresh herb stalks (basil and/or parsley, though a few bits of rocket work too)
• 1 garlic clove (optional)
• 60ml ( cup) olive oil juice of lemon (or a little water)
• 1 tbsp toasted nuts or seeds (pumpkin or sunflower)
• tsp sea salt

Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F).

To make the gazpacho, put the whole tomatoes on the vine, the quartered onion, unpeeled garlic cloves and herbs on a baking tray. Drizzle with the oil and sprinkle with the salt, then roast in the preheated oven for 30–40 minutes, until the tomatoes are soft and slightly caramelised.

Remove and discard the onion skins, then pop the roasted onion into a blender.

Squeeze the roasted garlic from its skins and add it to the blender along with the roasted tomatoes, herbs, water and any juices that have collected on the baking tray. Blend until smooth. It will be thick, so add more water if needed to get it to the consistency you want. Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper. Chill in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

Meanwhile, to make the crispy beans, heat the oil in a frying pan on a medium-high heat. Add the beans and cook for 5–7 minutes, until they are all crispy and golden. Sprinkle with salt and set aside. (Or you can cook them in an air fryer on high for 4–6 minutes with no oil.)

To make the pesto, put everything in a blender and blitz until combined but still with a bit of texture.

To serve, pour the soup into bowls. Top each one with crispy beans, then drizzle with the herb stalk pesto and an extra swirl of oil.

Try This
Instead of serving this as a cold gazpacho, you could heat the soup and use it as a sauce for pasta or fish.

• From Ali Honour’s Beans: Recipes For A Pulse-Powered Future

Recipe: Ful Mudammas (Fava Bean Dip)

Ful mudammas is a beloved Middle Eastern dish of stewed fava beans seasoned with lemon, garlic and olive oil, resulting in a creamy, hearty staple.

Originating in Egypt, it’s popular throughout the region, particularly at breakfast, accompanied by bread, vegetables and fresh herbs.

Ful (or fava beans) are high in protein, so they need a lot of energy to digest them. This lowers the amount of energy supplied to the brain, so if a teacher thinks a student sounds lazy, the teacher will say, “Why aren’t you paying attention? Did you have ful for breakfast?”

Serves 4
• 400g (2 cups) dried fava beans or 2 x 400g (14oz) tins of fava beans
• 60ml ( cup) hot water
• 1–2 fresh green chillies, chopped
• 1 garlic clove, peeled and chopped
• a pinch of salt
• 1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 tbsp tahini
• 2 tbsp olive oil, plus extra to garnish

To Garnish:
• a pinch of sumac
• chopped fresh parsley

To Serve:

Warm pitta and fresh vegetables pickles

Transfer the ful mudammas to a serving bowl. Drizzle with olive oil and garnish with a pinch of sumac and chopped fresh mint or parsley. Serve with warm pitta, fresh vegetables and pickles.

If you’re using dried fava beans, soak them overnight in cold water.

The next day, drain and rinse the fava beans. Put them in a large saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, uncovered, then reduce the heat and simmer for 1–2 hours, until tender.

Reserve 60ml ( cup) of the cooking water, then drain and set aside.

If you’re using tinned fava beans, drain and rinse them. Put them in a saucepan with the hot water and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Even though the tinned beans are already cooked, we soften them in the hot water because we don’t want the ful to be too dry.

Put the chillies, garlic and a generous pinch of salt in a pestle and mortar and pound into a paste. Mix in the lemon juice – you now have a daqqa, which is the foundation of many Palestinian dishes.

Add the hot fava beans, the cooking water and the tahini to the pestle and mortar and pound together until it’s the consistency you like. It can be served smooth or with some texture. Some people don’t pound it at all but rather chop everything instead. Just don’t use a blender or food processor to make ful, as you don’t want it to be completely smooth.

Try This:
You could also add chopped fresh tomatoes, chopped fresh mint or 2 tablespoons hummus. Serve the ful with boiled eggs for a filling breakfast. Alternatively, put some hummus in a serving bowl and make a well in the centre, then add the ful and garnish with chopped fresh mint, parsley and olive oil.

• From Izzeddeen Alkarajeh and Eman Aburabi’s Jibrin: A Culinary Journey Through Our Palestinian Homeland

Recipe: Bolo De Fub com Calda De Goiabada (Cornmeal Cake with Guava Sauce)

“Fica que vai ter bolo!” (“Stay, we’re having cake!”) Add a simple “Eu vou passar um café’ (‘I’ll make some coffee”) and you know what that means: a long afternoon full of gossip. And if the cake on the table is cornmeal cake with guava sauce, that’s guaranteed to be the best kind of gossip. Cake with coffee is pure grandma’s house vibes, and I don’t just mean my grandma. Ask any Brazilian and they’ll say the same thing.

In Brazil, our love for corn-based treats comes from the Indigenous people, while the word ‘fubá’ itself comes from Kimbundu, an African language, where it means ‘flour’.

This cornmeal cake was born in colonial times as a more affordable alternative to the fancy cakes made with expensive wheat flour imported from Portugal. Over time, the Portuguese helped spread corn-based baking across the country and fubá became a staple in Brazilian kitchens

Serves 10–12
• 150g (1 cups) fubá (finely ground cornmeal)
• 200ml ( cup + 4 tsp) hot milk
• 2 eggs
• 150g ( cup) caster sugar
• 60g ( cup) grated mozzarella cheese
• 120ml ( cup) vegetable oil, plus extra for greasing
• melted butter, for greasing
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• tsp salt

For The Guava Sauce:
• 150g ( cup) guava paste
• 160ml ( cup) water

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Grease a Bundt tin with melted butter and oil using a pastry brush. You won’t need to dust the tin with flour, and the result will be a clean release and a much neater-looking cake.

Put the cornmeal and hot milk in a mixing bowl. Stir to combine, then let it rest for 10 minutes to hydrate the cornmeal. Transfer to a blender or food processor, then add the eggs, sugar, cheese, oil, baking powder and salt. Blend until smooth.

Pour the batter into the greased Bundt tin. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Let the cake cool slightly before turning it upside down and removing it from the tin.

Meanwhile, to make the guava sauce, put the guava paste and water in a small saucepan on a low heat. Stir constantly until the paste melts and forms a smooth sauce (or you can do this in a microwave).

Drizzle the warm guava sauce over the cake before cutting into slices to serve.

• From Giselle Makinde’s Samba: A Celebration Of Brazilian Food