A break from looking at numbers – here’s a recipe I love making when I’m hosting at home
Vegan seaweed and nut snacks
A healthy, easy, fast, flexible and mostly vegan table-top snack of roasted nuts baked in seaweed sheets
Prep Time
15 minutes
Cook time
15 mins
Serves
2-4
Meal
Snacks and games
Ingredients
- Seaweed sheets x 2
- Cashew nuts – 20 g
- Walnuts – 20 g
- Almonds – 20 g
- Olive oil – 2.5 tsp
- [Choice] Marmite – 25 g
- [Choice] Tahini paste – 25 g
- [Choice] Honey – 25 g
- [Choice] Other binder – approx. 25 g
Directions
- Preheat oven to 180 °C fan
- Blitz nuts together in a food processor to desired consistency – I prefer a coarse grind so there are still pieces of nut left over
- Gently dry roast the nut pieces together in a pan until fragrant
- While hot, mix with the binder of your choice – I love Marmite here
- Oil the seaweed sheets, place one on a baking tray, and spread the hot nut mix over it. Sandwich with the other sheet
- Place a second baking tray or dish on top to squish it down, and bake for 15 mins
- Remove from oven, and cut into squares approx. 2 cm big. Serve hot and enjoy!
The life story
Now that the recipe is over, the story behind it. It all started, as such stories do, in the summer of 1973. The Watergate scandal had broken, Skylabs had been launched, and everything was looking up.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t been born yet – and wouldn’t be for another few decades – so I can’t say that this directly impacted things. My board games cohort, for whom I created this recipe, also hadn’t been born. But the game was afoot!
In reality, I felt guilty that the vegan member of our team couldn’t eat all the crisps we were furiously stuffing into our faces to make sure we managed to get more but not have to take the last ones. I also felt a bit guilty about the volume of crisps I was stuffing into my face. I decided to see if I could come up with a better alternative.
The requirements:
- Easy
- Vegan
- Tasty
- Snacky and finger-food capable
- Vaguely healthy. A hand waving idea that it wasn’t the worst thing to be eating
What I ended up with was making something akin to snack squares from a blend of roasted nuts, mixed with a flavoursome binder, and sandwiched in seaweed for finger-food-ability. My binder of choice is Marmite partly because I love it and partly because our resident vegan happened to have mentioned they add it to dishes to make them taste a bit meatier (ergo – they were on the side of liking marmite, as is correct).
The Marmite is entirely replaceable (as are the nut mixes), and I’ve had success with Tahini paste (made from sesame seeds) and honey (which obviously stops this being a vegan recipe).
By my calculations, using Marmite, it has the following nutritional info:
| Macro | Qty per 100 g serving |
| Energy | 559 kCal / 2,340 kJ |
| Protein | 22.9 g |
| Fat | 14.5 g |
| Carbs | 44.5 g |
| Fibre | 5.3 g |
It’s easy to make, requires very little active prep (the hardest bit is spreading the mix – use an oiled spatula) and is incredibly moreish. I don’t recommend making this the entire meal but it’s a great snack to throw in a bowl!
Eating cheap 
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