Nut 'Hedgehogs'

[nickys]

This is a variation on a medieval recipe.
There was a fashion for sculpting food and making it look like other things - examples include fake rashers of bacon made from red and white coloured marzipan.

Anyhow, the original 'hedgehogs' recipe was balls of spiced ground pork with almond slivers stuck in the top to look like hedgehog quills.

For this recipe I used
1 onion
1 carrot
3 tomatoes
1 clove of garlic
(all chopped finely)
300g mixed nuts (ground)
25g chopped almonds

Fry carrot, onion and garlic in oil until soft, add tomatoes and cook for a couple more minutes.
Remove from heat.
Mix in the ground up nuts.
Adding some porridge oats at this point helps with binding the mixture together, but this had to be gluten free, so I didn't put them in.
Form the mixture into oval balls about 2cm wide and 4cm long
Stick sliced almonds into the balls to give the appearance of spines of a hedgehog
bake in oven for 20 mins at gas 4



They work well with rice or salad, or as a starter on their own.

I'll be serving these ones at a medieval feast tonight.