Posted by Sylvia on September 4th, 2007 — Posted in Recipes
My boyfriend and his mother suddenly came down with summer colds, coughing and spluttering all around the house. I went off in search of something simple yet filling to offer them for dinner, using various search terms, including “healing”. It was a good search, I ended up on a site I probably would not have paid attention to normally: Karina’s Kitchen - “recipes from a gluten-free goddess.”
No one in our household needs a gluten-free diet but the dish, A Healing Curry, sounded just right: vegetables and garbanzos (chick peas) and lots of broth, just the thing for my unhappy patients. I don’t have a crock pot but cooked it at a very low simmer on the stove, which worked just fine. The only other change I made is to use home-made chicken broth instead of vegan broth, hoping for some more goodness to combat the evil viruses around the house.
The curry was a hit, even my carnivore boyfriend asked for more. And from my point of view, it was great to be able to prep everything in the morning and then just throw in in the pot. I cooked it for just over 3 hours, stirring it now and again during the evening. The next day I reheated it again and it was just as good, so the next time I’ll make a double batch so I have a pot full to freeze.
This was a timely reminder that “restricted diet” doesn’t have to be a dirty word and specialist sites can have some wonderful recipes too. I’ll be spending more time on Karina’s site!
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Posted by Sylvia on June 22nd, 2007 — Posted in Recipes
Part of eating a more healthy diet is eating seasonally but it can be easy to fall into a rut. My family can be more open minded to eating their veg when they are prepared with a bit of imagination rather than boiled and dumped at the side of the plate. On this occasion, I had courgettes / zucchini in mind when I started looking for new recipes to try.
I stumbled on Almost Turkish and found a wonderful assortment of fast and interesting meals. Burcu posts traditional and modern dishes with mouth-watering photographs, including the jackpot for our own dinner: her mother’s recipe for baked zucchini (courgette).
It may sound silly to base a meal around a side-dish but that’s exactly what I did. It was easy though, spoilt for choice on Burcu’s site. I opted for the traditional meatballs that Burcu has recreated as remembered from her hometown of Tekirdağ. These are made with a mixture of lamb and beef and mirror the pepper and mint flavour of the vegetables. The recipe as given would feed four with ease, I froze half for a future fast meal.
Unfortunately I was low on dried mint, so I used it on the zucchini and used fresh mint for the meatballs, a slight change which did not harm the flavour at all. I wouldn’t recommend trying fresh mint on the vegetables though as they would not stand up to the cooking time.
The turkish meatballs were really nice — however, I would cut the chile seeds right down if you are serving to young children. My partner thought they were fine but turned down my offer of extra chile sauce on the side. The zucchini was lovely, soft and spicy with the flavour of the mint really coming through. I took Burcu’s advice and added a bit of garlic to the yogurt.
We had a roasted pepper salad with some chopped up preserved lemons as a side dish. The sweet flavour balanced well with the rest of the meal - and the lemon was perfect. If I hadn’t used the preserved lemons then I think I would have used lemon juice in some way, as a salad dressing or mixed into the yogurt perhaps. The flavour really complimented the rest of the meal.
As a side-note, I made a small batch of these without the breadcrumbs/semolina in order to offer a low-carb meal. I would cut down the egg a bit and you need to take care when forming and serving the meatballs but the result still got positive reviews.
Almost Turkish has a wide variety of interesting (and simple) dishes to try, with an emphasis on vegetables. If you want to try to add a bit of unexpected spice to your meals, I certainly recommend giving her blog a browse.
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Posted by Sylvia on April 23rd, 2007 — Posted in Recipes
Albion Cooks is an blog by English ex-pat Catherine offering healthy and delicious vegetarian recipes.
For our taste-test we wanted to stay kid friendly, so we gave her Spinach and Red Onion Pizza a try.
Fast and easy, just the way we like it. And because it’s a pizza, the fussy child gave it a try! OK, so only after the haughty sounds of “Spinach? On a pizza? You must be kidding!” were completely ignored, I admit. But in the end he described it as “not bad at all” and cleared his plate.
Boboli is a fine thing but not available at our local shop. I bought pizza dough instead (yes, I can make pizza dough but I’ve found to my great disappointment that the bought stuff tastes better) and split the cooking into two stages. I baked the dough with the oil/garlic/mozzerella and onion for 10 minutes and then added the spinach and feta and baked it for another 8 minutes. Worked a treat.
If you are feeling more adventurous, I highly recommend giving her Chard, Cauliflower & Olive Soup a try.
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Posted by Dom on April 11th, 2007 — Posted in Recipes
This article is part of our Healthy Food Blogging series - an irregular series of articles featuring your own healthy recipes and tips which we’ve tried ourselves.
‘What’s the recipe today Jim?‘ is written by Rosie, “not so much wannabe chef as a wannabe food taster” with an eclectic combination of recipes, travel notes, and book reviews. The full set of recipes is listed down the left sidebar so you can quickly scan through to find an appealing dish.
I opted for Spiced Lamb Meatballs with Couscous for our recipe of the day. The instructions were easy to follow and the meal was quick to make. I like recipes where you can make ahead and reheat - the meatballs definitely fit this criteria. 15 minutes before dinner, my companion received a phone call and asked if we could eat late. Late ended up being an hour later but to no detriment to the meal: a winner in my book. When he was ready I just turned the heat back up on the stove and started on the couscous.
The meal itself was nice, although my son picked around the raisins in the couscous and seemed rather unimpressed with it in general. I think I might be more liberal with the lemon juice next time.
The tomato sauce was a little bit sweet, I’d be tempted to leave out the sugar next time. It got pleasant reviews from our test-tasters of all ages though, so there will be a next time!
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Posted by Sylvia on April 6th, 2007 — Posted in Recipes
This article is part of our Healthy Food Blogging series - an irregular series of articles featuring your own healthy recipes and tips which we’ve tried ourselves.
Chicken breasts have become a staple of the “need something to make for dinner fast” kitchen. But that doesn’t mean it has to be cut into nuggets!
Chickenrecipes.wordpress.com is exactly what it says on the tin: chicken recipes for every day. I decided to try the Chicken Provencale posted last year: it seemed quick and easy and a light flavour for the start of spring.
The instructions were nice and clear and the main time hit was the chopping. I didn’t worry too much about slicing the chicken breasts - just cut them large chunks which looked fine once they were cooked. I used the recommendation of pasta on the side, although at the last minute I realised that the sauce from the chicken wasn’t really what I expected. I tossed the pasta in butter and parmesan and served it on the side rather than underneath worked a treat.
Everyone enjoyed it: this is definitely one to save.
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