Linguine with bacon & olives...

This is a tried and true recipe in our house... the healthy(ish) meal we can prepare quickly when we feel like something filling but 'fresh'.  Like many of our staples, it began its life as a Weight Watchers recipe that came from the pantry pull-togethers book (which is no longer available on their website, but you can find still find copies for sale on eBay - its quite a good book).

Since I can't find the original recipe anywhere online to link back to, I will duplicate (my variations are in italics in the ingredients list).

Ingredients
240g dried linguine pasta (I use more like 350g)
cooking oil spray
170g Weight Watchers bacon, finely chopped (I just use short cut bacon trimmed of all fat)
18 pitted black olives (in brine) (I put a lot more olives in!)
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice (I use juice of 2 lemons)
2 tsp finely grated lemon rind (I use zest of 1 whole lemon)
1/4 cup chopped parsley (I use a whole bunch of continental parsley)
4 tomatoes, all seeds removed, finely diced
1 onion finely diced

Method
::  Cook pasta in a large saucepan of salted boiling water according to instructions.  Drain.  Return to pan.
::  Meanwhile in a bowl combine parsley, olives, zest juice and olive oil.
::  Meanwhile spray a large non-stick frying pan with oil.  Add the bacon and onion - cook, stirring, until bacon is crispy.  Add tomatoes and stir until just warm (you don't want them actually cooked, just not cold!)
::  Throw the bacon, onion, tomato and herb mixture into the pasta pan and stir through.  Serve.

When finished, ours generally looks like this:

It's not the super low fat WW version, but its still not bad, and gives us some left overs for the next night and/or some lunches.  I have served this countless times to guests as well - you can tart it up by serving with a fresh salad and some crusty bread.  The bacon makes it taste more indulgent than it is, and the lemon gives it a real punchy freshness - delicious by all accounts!  It always delivers :)

Hope you enjoy it too!

Bye for now :)

Easy lamb cutlets & tabouleh...

As promised, here is another easy weeknight meal I cooked of late. I mentioned in my recent post about lamb cutlets that they are on the expensive side for us (and this is true), however I don't actually eat a lot of red meat other than cutlets, and they're so yummy... so sometimes its worth the splurge! 

Recently I found a lovely tray of cutlets that were just so nice looking and so lean, I could not pass them up! What to do with them? Cutlets with olives again? Tempting, but no... BBQ? No (Boofy had left the BBQ out in the rain and couldn't be bothered cleaning it! Lol) OK so they needed to be cooked inside in a pan... not my favourite way to cook meat, I much prefer BBQ (I'm very fussy with red meat, which is why I don't eat a lot of it).

I recalled that a couple of weeks ago when I was flicking for this cake recipe for Boofy's birthday, I came across a recipe for tabouleh and it briefly crossed my mind that I hadn't made it for ages! Its quick, easy and healthy if you make it yourself - so why not! So here is what I decided on:

EASY SPICED CUTLETS
Ingredients
Cutlets
Olive oil
Ground cumin
Ground coriander
Garam masala
Natural yoghurt to serve (or extra light sour cream if you prefer)

Method
If desired, bash your cutlets to flatten them a little (I would have done this… but my meat basher thingy has gone missing... No idea of its whereabouts!)

Mix together equal amounts of ground coriander and garam masala, and then put slightly more cumin than the others in. Put in only enough olive oil to make a dry-ish sort of paste and mix together. Rub the paste on the cutlets and cook in a non stick pan over a medium to high heat until done to your liking.

Note: I always put more cumin in than anything else because I'm totally addicted to it, but just do it to your taste… I have a thousand packets of ground cumin in the pantry at all times, because my personal opinion is that everything can be enhanced with cumin!! Lol… As an aside - the absolute best way to make a boring vegetable taste exciting and exotic is this… steam the vegetable in the microwave with cumin seeds and a little butter - this works especially well with things like zucchini, squash and choko which are cheap in season but don’t have a lot of flavour. I don't do that one for every night meals (can't justify putting butter on veges every night - eek!) but its nice if you're having a casual meal with friends and just want to tart it up a bit :)

So, onto the tabouleh. There are a million recipes for this - mine is the cheat's version, very plain, because I prefer it that way! I love the flavour of fresh herbs and I want to be able to taste them… Here is my recipe (of sorts!):

TABOULEH
Ingredients
2 decent size bunches of Continental Parsley
2 decent size bunches of Mint
4 small tomatoes
1 bag San Remo boil in the bag couscous
Lemon juice
Olive oil
Salt flakes

Method

Put the bag of couscous into a bowl and cover with boiling water. Leave for about 4 minutes, then empty water out, run under cold water and squeeze as much water out of the bag without burning yourself as you can! Dry off your bowl, split the bag and empty the couscous into the bowl. Give it a quick whip with a fork to separate it and wait for it to cool.

Chop the parsley and mint - I chop it fairly coarsely as I prefer it this way, but you can do it finely chopped if you prefer - throw together into a bowl. Cut tomatoes in half and scoop out seeds (if you are cooking anything in a tomato based sauce in the next couple of days, put in a container in the fridge to use for that). Finely and evenly dice the de-seeded tomatoes.

Combine the couscous with the herb mixture and give it a good stir to combine. Pour over a small amount of olive oil and equal amount (or slightly more) of lemon juice - I use lemon squeeze if I've got no lemons. Put in a generous pinch of salt flakes. Stir to combine and then taste - add more lemon juice, olive oil or salt if required. I don't like my tabouleh too oily so I tend to go really easy with the first splash - you can always add more but you can't take it out!

If you wanted to, you could put some chopped spring onions in your tabouleh too, but I don't personally like the taste of raw onion, so I leave it out - up to you.  This actually makes a huge amount of tabouleh (about 4 serves for us - we had it for dinner, then both of us had a generous amount for lunch the next day).  If you can cope with it for dinner 2 nights in a row, an even easier meal is to shred some BBQ chook through the tabouleh and serve with yoghurt - so yummy!  So this is the sort of amount we're talking about - this is quite a large bowl:

To serve, I put a tablespoon of natural yoghurt (or in this case light sour cream - that's what we had!) on the plate with a mint sprig, then a generous serve of tabouleh.  When the cutlets are cooked, add them to the plate too. 

You could also serve this with some microwaved pappadums, which are very low in fat and would be yummy with this flavour combination.

Bye for now :)

Very Good Friday Atlantic Salmon...

As I'm sure you're aware, traditionally fish is eaten on Good Friday.  A couple of weeks ago I went to the local seafood shop and paid a fortune for bought some nice pieces of Atlantic salmon which I then froze - I tend to eat this whenever Boofy barbecues himself a steak, so I usually buy about 8 pieces at a time.

Boofy is not much of a fish eater (in fact he almost never eats it) and he's not at all religious either, so I was surprised when he said he'd join me in a fish dinner on Good Friday.

We always do our salmon on the BBQ - its pretty easy, just spray the plate with spray cooking oil and then put the salmon skin side down on the plate.  Wait until you can see its cooked halfway through (or a bit less if you prefer your fish on the medium-rare side, which many do) and then turn it over.  Done!

Note: most people I know think we're crazy to cook fish straight on the BBQ plate as it will flavour meat that is subsequently cooked there... not true!  The trick to ridding the plate of all fishy residue, odour and taste is to clean it with white vinegar while its hot...  I promise you this works!  My mum told us about it, and we've never had a fishy piece of meat since!

So, back to dinner!  This is the easiest sauce in the world... just incredible!

CREAMY CUMIN SAUCE

Ingredients
Thomy Mayonnaise
Ground cumin
Lemon squeeze

Method
Put a few good tablespoons of Thomy mayo in a jar.  Add a generous squirt of lemon squeeze for each tablespoon.  Put in a generous amount of ground cumin (more than you think you'd need).  Put the lid on the jar and mix it up til all combined.  Dip your finger in to taste and add more mayo if there's too much lemon/ cumin, more lemon if there isn't any bite, and more cumin if you think it lacks flavour.

Note: don't try this with your average Aussie mayo - our ones are much too sweet!  The European ones are not at all sweet, which really gives this sauce its flavour - it would be awful with a sweet mayo. 

If you were looking for a low fat version (because this is NOT a diet sauce!) you could do it with sour cream, but you need much less lemon juice.. it also doesn't taste nearly as nice - sometimes you've gotta be good, but my advice would be eat less of this one!! Lol

Once the fish is done, add some salad and plate it all up.  I really hate boring salads, so I always add as much as possible.  On this occasion I actually didn't think I really had much of a salad, but it turned out I had quite a bit.  Boofy wanted potato, but instead of serving it on the side, I boiled it, cooled it and put it in the salad, which tastes great, but does make the salad look a bit dull - you can see what I mean in the photo below - it takes that really crisp look off the salad.  Nevertheless, it still taste great.  So in this salad I had lettuce, parsley, Lebanese cucumber, mushrooms, sliced Spanish black olives, red capsicum, grape tomatoes, Spanish onion and potatoes.  I made waaay more than we needed, because its the weekend tomorrow and we have some left over chicken and ham, so this will be a lovely lunch for us Saturday and Sunday with cold meat :)  So without further ado... the salad:

I recently got a really wonderful compliment...  We had some friends over that we haven't seen for ages (hi Bec and Steve!)  It was a wonderful night, and we just had a casual BBQ, but when I served up the salad, Steve told me that he knew he could count on a good salad at our place - I was super chuffed :)  (Although my Mum still makes the best salads I've ever tasted... even her boring ones are better than anyone elses!)

Well I can tell you the whole meal was super tasty... this sauce is great on anything (even red meat).  Almost every time I put it on the table when we have guests over, they end up pouring it on everything!  And here is the amazing part - it has to be tasted to be believed, you will not believe how good it is for something so simple!!

By the way, Alex won't eat Atlantic salmon yet, so we gave him some fish nuggets with a hash brown (just done in the oven) and salad... not the healthiest meal but he rarely eats this type of thing, so I'm sure it won't kill him!  His dinner looked like this:

Yeah I know, it did nothing for me either, but he liked it, so I guess beauty really is in the eye of the beholder!

Bye for now :)

Happy Boof-day...

I'm a bit late with this post, but yes that's right, Boofy had a birthday recently - Happy Birthday Boofy :)  It was mid-week and I was working, so a big elaborate meal was not on the cards!  But compared to last year's birthday, anything was going to be a major improvement... you see on Boofy's birthday last year, I was called into a work crisis and didn't end up getting home until about 10.30pm... by which time Boofy had got Alex off to bed, made himself an exciting birthday dinner of nuggets and chips, and packed himself off to bed as well!  Poor Boofy :(

So I was determined that, even if I couldn't cook Boofy a super special dinner, he would have something cooked with love by me at least!  We had invited over our friends Jackie and Sam for dinner as well to share the celebrations.  Enter 'Nigella Express'  :)

I decided on Nigella's Lamb cutlets with chilli and black olives.  We have had this dish many times in the past, but not for a while since lamb cutlets are pretty expensive these days.  We always enjoy it, so I thought this would be a winner.  Its great too because you can (and should in fact) marinate in advance - so I put the cutlets in to marinate the night before, then all I had to do was prepare veges and cook.  We would normally serve this with sugar snap peas and boiled potatoes - but I couldn't get any sugar snaps at all, and I was making a big batch of mash the night before anyway (for a Shepherd's pie with hidden veges!) so I decided to save myself some trouble!

Anyway, here is Nigella's recipe:

Ingredients
12 lamb rib chops
4 x 15ml tablespoons olive oil, plus 2 tablespoons for frying
3 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1 teaspoon dried chilli flakes
1 teaspoon dried oregano
Zest and juice of 1 small lemon
1 teaspoon Maldon salt or 1/2 teaspoon table salt
15 black olives, pitted and sliced
1 long red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped (optional)

Method
Layer the rib chops between clingfilm and flatten gently with a rolling pin or mallet. Unwrap and place the chops in a large dish, so that they all fit in a single layer.

Pour the 4 tablespoons of oil over the chops and add the sliced garlic, chilli flakes, oregano, lemon zest and juice. Sprinkle with the salt and the olives, then turn the rib chops in the marinade so that both sides are coated.

Cover and leave the lamb to marinate for 20 minutes at room temperature.

Heat the 2 tablespoons of oil in a large heavy-based frying pan, and add the chops, scraping off the marinade before you put them in the pan. (Reserve the marinade.) Fry them for a couple of minutes a side on quite a high heat so that they take on some colour.

Turn the heat down to medium and pour the reserved marinade into the pan over the now coloured chops. Add 2 tablespoons or so of water and cook for about 5 minutes for rare cutlets or a little longer if you like your lamb well done (this will also depend on the thickness of the chops).

Transfer the chops to a serving plate, pour over the juices from the pan and sprinkle with the chopped red chilli, should you feel like enhancing the dried chilli with the pep of fresh.

Serves: 4

That is exactly how it appears on Nigella's website - but as usual I do things a teensy bit differently...  all ingredients are the same, I just cook the cutlets for a bit longer (as I prefer them well cooked and a bit crispy).  When I've finished cooking the cutlets I take them all out and then pour in the left over marinade and fry it on high heat...  it does mean the cutlets don't have a 'sauce' as such, but the sliced garlic and olives go really crispy and are so yummy.  I then put the cutlets back in and toss it all together for a minute before serving. 

So there you go - a slight variation - depends on how you prefer things :)  As I said, I couldn't get sugar snap peas, so I settled on some steamed Dutch carrots and broccolini.  Mine doesn't look as pretty as Nigella's, but I can assure you it was super yum!  Here was my finished product:

I know that looks like enough food to feed an army - but I have always been an over-caterer!! :)

Neither Boofy or myself are really big on cakes (although if the right one comes along we can be persuaded!)but as far as Alex is concerned, your birthday is not finished until you've had a cake!  So Alex and I whipped up this little number for Boofy - which has the texture of cake but is eaten like a pudding (ie: warm with ice cream).  Its actually a Weight Watchers recipe believe it or not, and comes from The Really Contented Tummy Cookbook (which is no longer available on their website - but I notice a few copies floating around on eBay).  Anyway, its called a Warm upside-down cinnamon pear cake with maple syrup - here's the recipe:

Ingredients

Cooking oil spray

2 tbs maple syrup

8 (tinned) pear halves in natural juice, drained

3 eggs, at room temperature

2/3 cup (140g) firmly packed brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 cup (150g) self raising flour

1.5 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tbs skim milk

1/3 cup (80ml) maple syrup, extra, to serve

10 small scoops low-fat vanilla ice cream, to serve

Method

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius.  Spray a 20cm round cake pan with oil.  Line base with non stick baking paper.

Spoon maple syrup evenly over base.  Arrange the pear halves on top, cut side down.

Use an electric beater with whisk attachment to whisk eggs, brown sugar and vanilla essence until thick and pale.  Sift flour and cinnamon over egg mixture.  Pour milk down the side of the bowl.  Use large metal spoon to fold until just combined.

Carefully spoon mixture over pears.  Smooth the surface.  Bake for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.  Remove from oven.  Set aside for 10 mins before turning onto a serving plate.  Drizzle with maple syrup.  Serve warm with ice cream.

According to WW it serves 10, and is 3 points per serve (on the old scale - not the new ProPoints program) for anyone playing at home!

I followed the recipe meticulously, but here are a couple of things to note from my experience:

• I took my cake out after 50 mins and it ended up a bit dry, so I would check it around 40 mins
• I left my cake sitting for much longer than 10 mins before turning it out (a couple of hours to be exact) and it was soggy on top when I turned it out (tastes the same, doesn't look as pretty!)
• Don't cook this in a spring form cake tin - the maple syrup will leak out (do as I say, not as I do! Lol)

But it was a delicious cake... although we probably added a little more maple syrup at the end than what WW recommend!!  Hee hee...

So here was my finished product:

What do you think?  Yes I know, not the most attractive cake - but I think that is largely to do with how long I let it sit before I turned it out.  And I promise you, it does taste really good, and Boofy enjoyed it, which is the main thing!

Bye for now :)

Recipe: Tom Ka Gai...

On the weekend Boofy went away with our friend Tony for a boys fishing weekend... they did the usual boy things (jumped in the boat and went fishing, ate a ridiculous amount of snack food and Hungry Jack's for dinner!) and totally enjoyed themselves :)

While they were away, Julie and the twins came over to our place for a sleepover.  We all had a great time and the kids were beside themselves with excitement!  Julie took care of the kids dinners and I decided to actually pull out one of my old favourites to make something special for dinner (no Hungry Jack's for us!  Lol). 

Back in 2007 when I was pregnant, I was watching '9am with David & Kim' (remember that show?) when a guy called Anthony Telford came on and cooked a Thai soup called Tom Ka Gai.  I liked the look of it so I gave it a go... and it was delicious!  My version of it has evolved over the years, so not exactly the same as the original, but I like it :)  It does take a long time to chop everything, even with our super slick Global knives (and particularly because I am fond of making double or triple batches), but I promise it's worth it!

So here is the recipe....

Ingredients
700ml water
800ml coconut cream
10g sugar
2 lemon grass stalks, cut into 3 lengths
6 shallots (or spring onions - chopped finely, keep chopped white parts and green parts separate)
6 coriander roots (wash well and chop)
Sprinkle of chilli flakes (to your taste)
120g chopped ginger
5 kaffir lime leaf (this is 5 'double' leaves, don't separate them)

60ml fish sauce
30ml lime juice
30ml soy sauce
300g chicken breast, sliced thinly
1 punnet fresh baby corn
1 bunch coriander
150g snow peas, sliced
1 packet bean shoots
Steamed rice to serve

Method
In a large pot, heat the water, coconut cream and all ingredients down to the kaffir lime leaf.  Simmer for around half an hour.

While the soup is simmering, fry chicken in a fry pan until just cooked.  Add to soup.  (You can let it cook in the soup if you like instead, but I am fussy about meat, so prefer to make sure its totally cooked!)

Add fish sauce, lime juice, soy sauce, baby corn and half the coriander to soup and simmer for another half an hour or so.

Just before serving, throw in the snow peas, bean shoots and half the remaining coriander, give it a good stir.  I also remove the lemon grass and kaffir lime leaves, but up to you.

Dish up rice, then soup - sprinkle coriander over the top to serve (and also chilli flakes if desired).

It is lovely to get a small spoonful of rice and sort of sink it into the soup so it surrounds the rice on your spoon... very yummy!

Here is how mine looks:

You can find the original recipe here if you're interested.  It is quite different in method (he only cooks his for about 20 minutes total) and some ingredients, but I stick pretty closely to the ingredients of the base soup, it's so yummy...  the other stuff is just a matter of personal preference :)  (Although I probably would use galangal in place of ginger if it was more readily available).

Hope you give it a go and enjoy it!

Bye for now :)