More soup and curry!

What can I say- curry and soup are two of my favourite things! I’ve been eating the soup nearly each day for lunch; it’s thick, hearty, healthy and delicious.  I’ve had the curry twice this week as well- it’s definitely one of the best curries I’ve ever made.  Both of these recipes freeze/ defrost perfectly, so get any leftovers into the freezer for a quick microwave meal later in the week.

I also made a detox pasta dish this week which is a dish that uses very little pasta but is stodgy and heavy because of the amount of veg!  It’s hearty and filling without being a total carb overload.

Vegetable and Lentil soup

Ingredients:

1 onion, diced

2 sticks of celery, 150g of carrots, 200g sweet potato- all diced

150g dried lentils

400g tin of chopped tomatoes

800ml vegetable stock (about 2 stock cubes made according to instructions)

Some chilli flakes (about ½ a teaspoon) if you fancy giving the soup a bit of a kick.

Method:

If using a soup maker, place all of your prepared ingredients into the flask and select the ‘smooth’ setting. The soup is ready and blended in 20 minutes.  Add a splash of milk and give it another blend if you feel the soup is a bit too thick.

If cooking in a pan, fry your onion with the chilli flakes until softened. Add the rest of the vegetables and fry for ten minutes.  Throw in your lentils, tinned tomatoes and stock, then bring to the boil and simmer until the vegetables and lentils are cooked. Allow to cool a little before blending.

Vietnamese Chicken Curry

I got this recipe from Sarah Wilson’s ‘I Quit Sugar’.  It’s the first recipe I’ve cooked from this book and was really good.  Best of all, it’s done in the slow cooker- I cooked this on a Saturday, meaning that once the curry was on, I was free for the rest of the day! 

Ingredients:

500g chicken (the recipe says 700g so use this amount if you want to make a huge batch)

2 stalks of lemongrass- simply just throw this into the slow cooker whole and then fish out when the curry is cooked.

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

A 3cm knob of fresh ginger, peeled and grated

2 tablespoons of fish sauce

5 tablespoons mild curry powder (yes, 5 tablespoons- I did wonder but it tastes great)

250ml chicken stock

2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and diced into chunks

1 large carrot, peeled and sliced

400ml can of coconut milk

1 onion, diced

2 tablespoons of cornflour, or chia seeds if you are making a gluten free version

2 spring onions, chopped

Method:

  Place the chicken, lemongrass, ginger, fish sauce and half of the curry powder into the slow cooker.  Leave for an hour to marinade, or just carry on preparing the dish.

Mix the remaining curry powder with the stock and add to the slow cooker along with all of the remaining ingredients.  Give it all a good stir and cook on 'low' for 8 hours.

30 minutes before the dish is finished, stir through the cornflour or chia seeds to thicken your curry.   Serve with either brown rice or nann bread.

Detox pasta soup

I found this recipe years ago in a magazine- think it may have been a Gizzy Erskine recipe. Either way, I love it!

Ingredients:

Olive oil

150g pancetta

1 onion, diced

2 carrots and two sticks of celery, sliced.

2 leeks (white parts only) sliced

3 cloves of garlic, crushed

½ teaspoon of chilli flakes

1 tbsp tomato puree

1 400g tin of chopped tomatoes

1 litre of chicken stock (2 stock cubes made according to instructions)

1 400g tin of cannellini beans

150g whole wheat fusilli

Method:

1.        Heat the oil and fry the pancetta until golden. 

2.       Add all of the vegetables, garlic and chilli and fry until the vegetables have reduced in volume by half. 

3.       Stir in the tomato puree and add the tinned tomatoes, chicken stock, beans and pasta.  Simmer for around 30 minutes until the veg/ pasta is cooked.

Hope you enjoy these recipes.  Remember- I might be a ‘skinny bitch’ according to some, but eating real food like this and exercising simply allows your body to be its natural shape which is the result I have.  Obesity is a massive health risk, so better to be slim and healthy rather than treating your body like a dustbin and filling it with piles of rubbish!  Happy, healthy eating!

Preheat the oven!

I love baking and used to have my own little cupcake business before work got too busy and I became head of my department.  I adore desserts and definitely have 'regular' cake when I fancy some, though only as a treat.

To keep my sweet tooth at bay though, I have been following some recipes to bake sugar free cakes from my Hemsley Hemsley ‘The Art of Eating Well’ book.  My firm favourites are their lemon muffins and banana loaf.  I tend to cook these recipes on a weekend and then there’s a good stash of either loaf or  muffins to last me through the week- they are ideal for a dessert or mid-morning snack.  I’ve also really got into pastry free quiches too- a work colleague made one using a Slimming World recipe, but I adapted a recipe from BBC Good Food instead.  This is a really good lunch- full of protein and tasty!

Lemon Muffins:

Ingredients (some slightly different to the original recipe):

65g butter (or butter based spread)

1tbsp lemon juice (either freshly squeezed of from a bottle)

3 eggs

5 tbsp maple syrup

1tbsp poppy seeds

¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 pinches of turmeric

45g coconut flour

A pinch of sea salt

Method:

1.   Preheat the oven to 170 degrees and line a muffin tin with paper cases- I tend to do about 8 muffins from this recipe.

2.        Melt the butter, lemon juice and maple syrup in a pan, but don’t overheat it!  Once melted, whisk in the eggs into the melted mixture, followed by the remaining ingredients.

3.        Pour the mixture from the pan into a measuring jug and fill your cases. Bake in the oven for around 20 mins- when the tops are springy to the touch or a skewer poked into the centre of a cake comes away clean, you know they’re done.  They keep well in an airtight container and are just lovely and buttery- much better than over sweet, sugary cupcakes.

Banana Loaf

Ingredients:

300g ripe bananas, mashed

30g unsalted butter

2 tbsp maple syrup (add more if you wish, though the ripe bananas will be pretty sweet!)

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1tsp vanilla extract (or vanilla essence)

3 eggs

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

1tbsp lemon juice

220g ground almonds (now available in the baking section at Aldi, so cheap too!  In fact, pretty much all the ingredients for these cakes can be found in Aldi)

30g linseed

A pinch of sea salt

Method:

1.        Preheat the oven to 170 degrees and line a loaf tin with grease proof paper.

2.       Mash the bananas into a pulp then whisk in the maple syrup, cinnamon, vanilla, eggs, bicarbonate of soda, lemon juice and salt.

3.       Add the ground almonds and linseed and whisk again.  Pour into your tin and bake for about an hour, moving to a lower shelf of the oven if it looks as though the loaf is browning too quickly. Test in the same way as the muffins to see if it’s done.  Keeps well all week in an airtight container. One of my Instagram pics for you of the end result- feel free to follow me on there!

Pastry free quiche

Ingredients:

8 eggs

200ml milk (lactose free works fine, I assume skimmed milk would be ok too)

50g grated cheddar

175g of diced vegetables/ filling of your choice (peppers, onion, sweet corn, meats, ham, bacon- whatever you fancy but stick to the 175g of weight)

Salt and pepper

My Mexican version:

8 eggs

200ml milk (lactose free works fine, I assume skimmed milk would be ok too)

50g grated chilli cheese (Aldi)

175g of peppers and a few jalapeños (diced)

Salt and pepper

Method:

1.        Preheat the oven to 160 degrees.  Grease a Pyrex dish with butter and throw in your diced ingredients.

2.       Whisk your eggs and milk together until smooth, then stir your cheese and some salt and pepper into the mixture.  Pour into the dish with the veggies and bake in the oven for about half an hour or until golden.  To test it’s done, stick a skewer/ sharp knife into the centre of the quiche- if it comes away clean, it’s ready.  You can eat this hot or cold but I prefer it cold with salad (PS the soup maker was out whilst the quiche was in the oven- it's tomato and lentil soup today! Recipe to follow).

Totally yummy, real food with no refined sugar.  Big shout out to Hemsley Hemsley for their sugar free baking- their book is amazing and I’d highly recommend it.

My mission next is to perfect sugar free carrot cake muffins...I’m working on them! Happy eating everyone xxxx

Dinner and Dessert

I love desserts and if I'm going to the pub or eating out, I feel perfectly entitled to a big pudding since I usually eat well most of the time.  I'm a huge fan of baking and have really gotten into the whole sugar free baking lately, so will post about some of the cake recipes I've tried next week.

Last week though, I was pretty impressed with my skinny chicken korma, done in the slow cooker, followed by sugar free/dairy free ice cream.  I made the ice cream with the leftover coconut milk from the curry, meaning there was no wasted food to chuck out which is one of my absolute HATES when it comes to cooking.  The recipes were both taken from books, but I have adapted and changed them. Your first job is to get the slow cooker out of the cupboard and start on the curry!

Slow-cooked Chicken Korma
Ingredients:
500g chicken breast, diced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 onion, chopped
2 peppers, sliced- though chuck in any leftover veg you have lying around too!
2 tsp mild curry powder
1/2 a teaspoon of cumin, turmeric, paprika and salt
2 tbsp tomato puree
250ml passata
60ml coconut milk (go for the full fat version whilst you're using it to make ice cream. Also, the full fat alternatives aren't anywhere near as bad as their chemically engineered reduced-fat versions and a lot of people are now advocating full fat cheese, butter etc as a healthier, more natural choice).
1 tbsp ground almonds (very impressed that Aldi now stock these- get a couple of bags ready for your baking next week!)

In fact, I bought all of these ingredients from Aldi for absolute pittance- their range of curry sauces and Asian ingredients is really impressive and they even have a Thai curry spice kit (complete with lemon grass) in the fresh herb section!

Brown rice or courgetti noodles to serve.

Method:
Put all of the chopped ingredients into the slow cooker.  Mix together your spices, tomato puree, passata and coconut milk in a measuring jug. Pour over the remaining ingredients. Stir, cover and cook on low for 7-8 hrs.

Once all that's cooking, it's time to make your ice cream with the leftover coconut milk...

Chocolate Ice Cream (dairy free and refined sugar free!)
Ingredients:
400ml coconut milk (so you can either open another can of coconut milk for completely dairy free ice cream, or top up your 340ml of leftover coconut milk with regular milk- I used Arla Lactose free milk which was fine).
Half a teaspoon of vanilla extract
5 tablespoons of maple syrup
40g of raw cacao powder (I order mine from Amazon- it's hard core dark chocolate and completely unrefined)

Method:
Whisk together the coconut milk, regular milk, maple syrup and vanilla extract. Sieve your raw cacao powder into the mix and continue to whisk until smooth. Pour into a plastic container and freezer.  Be warned that this does freeze completely solid- like Mini Milk lollies- so take out of the freezer in plenty of time before serving so it can thaw a little.

Hope you enjoy these recipes until my next post- time for some baking I think! #notofaddiets