Lemon and Garlic Chicken | Salad

Very simple dish to make.

Using a griddle pan, cook the chicken until nearly cooked through with salt and pepper. In the last few minutes add a heaped tsp of chopped garlic and the rind & juice of 1 lemon (the rind really adds a whole different dimension so don't leave it out!). Let the juice sizzle in the pan and make sure all of the chicken is coated. DONE!

I served ours with salad but you could choose anything you like.

Eggs | Peas | Sweet Potato Chips

Easy as the title says and another vegetarian dinner for us!

Fried eggs, Peas, Sweet Potato Chips! I also had some sweet chilli jam and tomato ketchup on the side. Old school!

Haloumi | Vegetarian Tapas

We are trying to eat less meat. Not only do I think on the whole people eat too much meat but it is also much kinder on the environment to eat less.

I find Haloumi is a great alternative and I don't miss the meat aspect of a meal when Haloumi is involved.


I made this tapas style meal using fried Haloumi, Garlic Mushrooms, Chargrilled Red Peppers and Courgettes and Sweet Potato Chips.

Indian style Chicken Salad

There are a few steps to this salad so I'll try and break it down so it's easy to follow.

For the salad:

Baby spinach

Thinly sliced carrot and courgette - fry this in a little oil

with mustard and caraway seeds until soft. 

Green pepper - I grill it until charred and then remove the skin. It really is worth the extra effort!

For the dressing:

The juice and rind from 1 Lemon

1 tsp of Grated Ginger

1 tsp of Cumin

1 tsp of Chilli Flakes

1 tbsp of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

For the chicken:

Slice into large chunks and coat in curry paste all over.

I use a griddle pan to cook it so it chars.

When all the components are ready, just assemble on a plate and serve with a dollop of Greek Yoghurt!

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup | Poached Egg | Chorizo

This is soo easy and quick to make.
Roast 1 butternut squash, 1 onion and 1 red pepper with a little salt and pepper.
Make some chicken or vegetable stock using a stock cube.
Add the vegetables to a blender with some of the stock and blend. Keep adding stock until the soup is at the consisitency that you like.

I quickly fry some sliced chorizo and and poach an egg. This really changes the soup into a full meal rather than just a snack.

Ginger & Oyster Sauce Chicken Stir Fry

This is just another take on a stir fry with some slightly different flavours.
All the usual ingredients, carrots, mixed peppers, baby corn on the cob, sugar snap peas, spring onions, cashew nuts and obviously chicken! 
I chop ginger into slithers so they cook through but give a good hit when you bite into one. I use dried whole chillies for this dish too. When it's all nearly cooked add a good quality oyster sauce and a dash of water, heat through and serve!

When it comes to Asian cooking ingredients it really is worth a visit to your local Asian supermarket. Choose the oyster sauce with the highest content of oyster extract that you can and don't be scared - it's not in the slightest bit fishy!

Lemon & Herb Chicken | Courgettes | Sweet Potato Chips

This dinner was much nicer than it looks and is again very simple!
Cook chicken in a small amount of oil, once cooked squeeze in the juice of 2 lemons and sprinkle with dried mixed herbs. Leave to sizzle for 30 seconds and served.

Served with grilled courgettes with cherry tomatoes and sweet potato chips. 

Chicken | Mushroom & Cream Sauce | Vege

Fairly simple to do - cut up chicken breasts into large pieces, put in a frying pan with chopped onions and mushrooms and a small amount of olive oil and cook! Add stock and cream at the last minute and it will take up all the flavour from the pan.
I served this with cabbage, green beans and sweet potato mash. 

Break the Rules Chocolate Cake

It was Grants birthday and you have to break the rules sometimes! He loves cake and seen as we don't usually eat cake I wanted to make him a really good one that would be worth all the sugar! I found this Mary Berry recipe and it was lovely. I find a lot of chocolate cakes can be dry but this was wasn't at all - I'll definitely make it again!

For the recipe CLICK HERE

Five Spice Steak | Salad

This is one of my favourite meals and is taken from the Jamie Olive 15 minute meals book. It really is one of the nicest meals I think we have at home. 

I make a few changes as below:

I use Sirloin instead of Rump

I don't add noodles.

I use ginger puree instead of pickled ginger

Chicken | Mediterranean Veg | Sweet Potato Mash

I had some left over tinned tomatoes so I mixed up chicken dish with mushrooms, red peppers and spinach. All the pan with the chicken and add the tinned tomatoes, basil and chilli and cook through. Very simple and quick and gorgeous with sweet potato mash!
You can add whatever veg you have to make this dish, courgettes would be good.

If you haven't made sweet potato mash before you are missing a trick, it's so easy and really tasty:

Put the sweet potatoes in the microwave for about 5 minutes, turn, then put back in for a further 3 - 5 minutes or until soft to squeeze.
Slice down the middle and scrape out the middle with a spoon, mix with salt, pepper and a knob of butter. No masher required!

Beef Meatballs | Sweet Potato Chips | Salad

We bought some lovely beef mince from our local farmers market so wanted to make the best of it!
Simply made meatballs with finely chopped onion, salt and pepper - no egg or flour required!

Served with sweet potato chips with chilli on, plenty of salad and a bit of humus on the side.

Really quick & easy and not a simple carb in site! 

Red Thai Curry | Quinoa

I made a Red Thai Curry with the left over roast chicken, I used mange tout, baby corncobs and for the first time, baby aubergines as they use these in Thailand. They were lovely, I'd recommend them! 

I use 'Mae Ploy' red thai paste, it is the best and most authentic by a long long way. It's cheaper, lasts for ages and is easily found in the World food isle in most supermarkets. 
I also use creamed coconut in block form rather than tinned coconut milk. It is a little more time consuming as you have to dissolve it but its worth it in my opinion and is 100% pure coconut rather than the tinned milk, which has plenty of additives!

Served with Quinoa to soak up the sauce!

Roast Chicken | Corn Cob | Red Pepper Salsa

Roast Chicken - a whole chicken always tastes so much better and you can get another couple of meals out of it too. 
Corn on the Cob
Salad
Red Pepper and Basil Salsa - recipe here:

I roasted the chicken with 2 onions cut into large chunks. Once cooked, I removed the onions and used them for the salsa along with the below
2 roasted red peppers - the jarred variety are fine
1 handful of fresh basil leaves
1 teaspoon of capers
4 cherry tomatoes
1 red chilli - use less if you don't like it spicy!
Salt & Pepper

Chop all the ingredients into smallish pieces and mix together. This is so simple and really tasty, it's a really nice summery take on roast chicken! 

Chilli & Courgette Lasagne | No Pasta

With my left over Chilli I made this lasagne inspired dish. 
Instead of making a bechamel sauce like in standard lasagne, I used grated cheddar and chunks of mozzarella which means I avoided using flour. I definitely didn't miss out on any flavour by not using the standard sauce.
I used thinly sliced courgettes (lengthways) instead of pasta sheets and just layered it all up until there was none left.
Put in the over until golden and bubbling!

Chilli | Sweet Potato Chips

Last night I made Chilli but packed it out with lots of vegetables including carrot, celery, mushrooms and obviously kidney beans.
As we don't eat rice, I served it with sweet potato chips and a sprinkle of grated cheese.
It was lovely and we had loads left over! 

Steak | Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms | Salad

It's been a while but last week Grant cooked this for me. 

Sirloin Steak, those trusty sweet potato chips, salad and mushrooms stuffed with cheese then baked. I had blue cheese in mine and the whole thing was delicious!

Butternut Squash & Onion Frittata

I make this quite often as it's great to take to work cold with salad & a slice of ham.

1. Roast the butternut squash in the oven with salt & pepper.
2. Fry a whole onion slowly so it goes soft and caramlised.
3. Whisk 3 eggs in a jug & add about the same amount in volume of milk, grate in a good lump of cheddar cheese.Season..
4. Put the squash in the pan with the onion and turn it down to the lowest heat setting.
5. Add the egg mixture and cook  for around 12 minutes.
6. Put the pan under the grill until golden on top.
7. Leave to go cold!

Thai Chicken Soup

With the rest of my left over roast chicken, I made this lovely Thai Chicken Soup. This soup is gorgeous and I will definately be making it again!
CLICK HERE for the recipe.

A few things to note:

+ As this recipe is American, it uses 'cups' as measurements. I used a small pot about 1/2 the size of your average kitchen mug.

+ Cilantro is Corriander
+ Scallions are Spring Onions

+ The recipe calls for Chicken thigh meat but I think it'd be easier to cook the thighs first rather than shred them raw. I've tried before and it's very time consuming.

+ I used fresh Beansprouts rather than tinned

+ Make sure you use decent quality peanut butter

+ I didn't put in the Rice Noodles and felt the soup was delicious and filling without them. To compensate I added extra green cabbage and extra bean sprouts.

Chicken Stir Fry

Yesterday I made a chicken stir fry with most of the left over roast chicken.
I added Sugarsnap peas, Baby corn cobs, Red pepper, Onion, Mushroom and Carrot.

It's good to have some stirfry staples in the cupboards to really make them tasty. I use garlic, ginger, a small tsp of tamarind paste, 3 tbsp of good quality oyster sauce, 2 tbsp of soy sauce, 1 tbsp of fish sauce and a drizzle of sesame oil. Once cooked off sprinkle with sesame seeds.
Delicious!

Roast Chicken | Creamy Leeks | Vege

Tonight I roasted a whole chicken with just salt and pepper.

I sweated off some leeks with salt and pepper and once nearly cooked through I added a little bit of chicken stock. I use the concentrated Knor liquid stock, you only need a tablespoon with a dash of water. I then added a tablespoon of mascapone cheese. This melts into the leeks and creates a lovely creamy sauce!

Served with carrots and savoy cabbage. I only use the outer leaves from the cabbage as the inner paler ones make a lovely coleslaw.

Delicious roast mid week and no simple carbs needed!

BBQ Pulled Pork | Vege | Sweet Potato Chips

Using the left over pulled pork from Saturday, I made this for dinner tonight. TASTY!!!!

Chop sweet potato into chips, lightly coat in olive oil and spread on a baking tray. Season and put in the oven at around Gas mark 6 for 45 minutes - turning half way.

For the BBQ sauce, I add a bit of everything and anything that I have in the cupboards! Roughly:
1 tbsp Olive oil
2 tbsp Soy sauce
3 tbsp Tomato Ketchup
1 tsp Mustard
1 tsp Ginger
1 tbsp Honey

I then fried mushrooms, onions and courgettes in a wok, once cooked add the left over pork and sauce and heat through.

Pulled Pork | Corn on the Cob | Coleslaw

On Saturday I made Pulled Pork for the first time using a recipe by Simon Rimmer from 'Something For The Weekend'. Click HERE to read it.
I served it with corn on the cob and homemade coleslaw.

Coleslaw is easy to make and so much nicer and healthier that the supermarket bought stuff:

Finely chop half a cabbage - I take the outer leaves from a savoy and use the inside leaves for the coleslaw
Grate a large carrot
Add salt and pepper and a dash of lemon juice
A squirt of mayonnaise - just enough to very lightly coat the vege.
Mix it all together
You can change this to your taste, some people prefer to use red cabbage, I sometimes add finely chopped fennel or radish.

Breakfast | Nuts | Fruits

My standard breakfast and it's delicious!

2 small handfuls of mixed nuts with raisins

1/2 a banana

1 handful of blueberries

4 chopped dried apricots

Milk

Today I added some strawberries that needed using up too. 

Sweet & Sour Chicken | Quinoa

I use the Hairy Bikers recipe from the BBC website. CLICK HERE to read it.

I make a few amendments such as leaving out the brown sugar, I don't think it needs it as the pineapple juice sweetens the sauce naturally. I add sugarsnap peas and baby corn cobs and I serve it with Quinoa as this is a healthier alternative to rice and in my opinion it's tastier too!