Dark January nights can often leave us craving the comfort of warming, hearty food whilst trying to stick to our New Year diet. This recipe is perfect for just that kind of event, when you fancy something packed with flavour and nice and filling but light enough to stick within your points.
I have a slight obsession with lentils. I think they add the most amazing and unique flavour to a dish and always do a great job of filling you up. This week I decided to put together a new curry which could be adapted for a vegetarian or be made with fish or chicken. The recipe below therefore will tell you how to make the curry sauce itself which can be served with potatoes, chicken or fish (or anything else you fancy!). I served it with seabass for dinner and it was delicious so I’ve include the points and method for that below too.
Stir fries are my hubbie and I’s go to quick and easy meal. Usually on the plate in under 15 minutes, stir fries are the perfect way to fill up with veggies whilst enjoying a flavour packed meal. I’m always looking for new ways to jazz up my stir fries so this week I decided to go a little Malaysian. The stir fry sauce here is tasty and so easy to prepare, as simple as popping everything in a bowl and giving a little mix. I’ve used powdered peanut butter instead of the normal stuff as 1 tbsp of the normal stuff is 3sp and the powdered stuff is only 1sp for 2 tbsp! It is a little pricey to buy (mine was £4) but it lasts a lot longer than the regular stuff and is such a great points saving. Best of all, to prepare you simply mix with water and you end up with the same textured peanut butter as you would from a normal jar! Most supermarkets sell it now next to the normal stuff.
I’ve often got a packet of sausages lurking round in my freezer as I think they are a great ingredient for a speedy and tasty tea. I often defrost and then remove the skins, crumble and use them in pastas or risottos but this week, wanting to make something a little lighter that I could take to work for my lunch, I decided to give a new soup a go. The result was lovely. Pesto and tomato are one of my favourite combinations and whizzed together with sausages, they make for an overall tasty, fresh and summery soup.
This recipe was made at the special request of a lovely lady called Ruth who requested a recipe for a pea and ham soup a few weeks ago. Well ask and you shall receive, here it is Ruth!!
This recipe calls for 200g cooked gammon/ham. You can either buy this pre cooked or you can cook a joint yourself. I bought a huge joint for around £4, boiled it and then once shredded, froze the rest in portions to use in other meals. Cooking it myself also meant that I had the boiling water (aka homemade stock) which was lovely. A ham stock cube would be just as good though.
Fishcakes are something I love to have as a starter in a restaurant and are the perfect light lunch or dinner. Having not had them in a loooong time, tonight, with little else in the cupboards, I thought it was time to whip some together.
Having created quite a variety of burgers over the past couple of years, I realised this week that I hadn’t written any recipes for good old beef burgers. When scratching my head over what to pair with them I though the classic combo of beef and blue cheese would work quite nicely, and I was definitely right! These burgers are packed full of flavour and have just the right amount of blue cheese tang.
The main buffet restaurant in the hotel we stayed at in Mexico was amazing. I’m usually very fussy about ‘buffet’ style food (I often feel like you never get a proper meal) but there were so many areas where fabulous food was being cooked fresh in front of you, I would probably have been happy to eat here every night (I didn’t though, there were another 9 restaurants to choose from!).
Who doesn’t love guacamole. It basically a combination of all my favourite foods/flavours, avocado, lime, chilli and mexico. You can whip up this guacamole so quickly and whack it as an accompaniment to most dishes to up the flavour. I add a fresh chilli for some real heat but if you don’t like it too hot (or don’t have any chillies handy) it is just as good with a large pinch of chilli flakes. I keep everything nice and chunky so its got a good bite but if you prefer it smooth mash the avocado well and chop everything a bit smaller.
On New Year’s Eve the OH and I headed up to Scotland with friends for a celebration. Heading out for lunch, we ended up in a lovely cosy little pub with a mouth-watering food menu. Keen to not over indulge before the excess of the evening ahead, I picked out what I thought was the healthiest thing on the menu and hoped for the best. I was thrilled when the dish arrived and had both an abundance of 0sp elements, but was also bursting with flavour.