Haddock curry cakes.

Hello! Sorry I've been MIA. I know I haven't posted the honey-chicken recipe but I'm afraid I didn't have so much time on my hands.

This is something I had tonight. It was so good I had to share it with you guys!

I know I've posted another haddock recipe. But this is completely different. You are going to love it if you try it out!

Here it is.

Ingredients/Directions:

Haddock cakes
2 haddock fillets

• cook the haddock in the oven prior to doing anything else. Cook it according to your taste/preference.

1/2 yellow corn mill
2 eggs
1/2 tsp bicarbonate soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp butter
vegetables - chopped

• Mix all these ingredients listed above into a nice smooth paste. This does not include the haddock! As for the vegetables, it really depends on what you want to put in it. We had some peppers, leek, parsley etc that we chopped up in it. You can put in something totally different!
• Add the haddock now. Cut it up/flake it and put in on top of the paste. To that, add:
•  2 tbsp teriyaki sauce
• 1/2 tbsp yellow curry powder
• Proceed to mix everything together until you have your ingredients evenly distributed throughout.

Place in the oven at 350 degrees F for 5-10 minutes, just so the eggs are cooked through.

Salad:
frozen vegetables - thawed
2 tbsp teriyaki sauce
a drizzle of olive oil
2 tbsp honey-mustard sauce. OR 1 tbsp mustard and 1 tbsp peanut butter

 With your thawed vegetables, place all the ingredients in a pan or pot of your choice and give them a light stir-frying.

That's it!

So simple. And so delicious! I urge you to give it a try!!
Let me know what you guys think.

:)

Choco-Rice Pudding

Hello everyone!

Sorry about my not updating lately. I had final exams and then I started a new job; needless to say I did not have that much time in my hands to sit down and write up recipes.

But, the Christmas break has begun and I have some delicious recipes to share with you.

Here is some rice pudding made for desert. The difference from the conventional rice pudding is that this isn't made with any milk.

Instead, it's made with almond milk and coconut milk. The choice is up to you, both almond and coconut milk is really good.

Also, you can add some raw brown sugar and cocoa powder in it, making it even better!

The rice used is glutinous rice (sticky rice), which makes it more sticky and much MUCH better for making any sort of rice pudding.

Start by cooking the rice in some water, half the dosage you would usually put and when it almost absorbs all of it, add the coconut or almond milk in it.

You can add the rest of the dosage you would add as water, but in reality you can keep adding as much as you want because the rice will keep on absorbing it, be the judge, it depends how firm you want your pudding to be.

 Keep on a medium fire and occasionally stir so as to prevent the rice from sticking to the pot. Add your sugar (2 tablespoons) and cocoa powder. Also, add a teaspoon or so of cinnamon, as well as some raising and dried cranberries.

And thats all folks. It's simple, lactose-free and a delicious desert for those who want a 'healthier' desert.

More recipes coming soon!

Let me know what you think and feel free to give this a try!

Rosemary Pork tenderloin in Crock-Pot.

 Here's a nice recipe done in the crock-pot. We got everything ready at night, turned the crock-pot on and left it for 6 hours on low. Today, we turned it on again to warm up for about 2 hours. It was delicious!



For the Marinade

• 1 clove garlic in the marinade used for the pork
• pork tenderloin - enough for 2 people
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1 cup red wine

Start by marinating the pork tenderloin (sliced up) in the wine, vinegar and garlic for about an hour. When marinaded, remove the marinade, lightly fry the tenderloin cuts in a pan with olive oil and add everything (including the left over marinade) to the crock-pot, set it on high until it warms up and then turn it back to low, letting it cook for the night with the rest of the ingredients.

• 4 medium-small potatoes cut up
• 1 onion in half
• rosemary
• thyme
• bay leaf- crushed and spread out
• water
• olive oil - enough to cover the surface
• 1 clove garlic in the potatoes

 Here's the result. Pair it with a homemade salad and use the sauce from the crock-pot as a dressing.  The pork tenderloin is so juicy, soft and just melts in your mouth. The taste of vinegar is not overpowering, it adds a great taste to the meat and potatoes.

Try it out and let me know what you think!

Shrimp-Herring dish

I love smoked herring. It's been an accompanying piece whenever I eat beans, black-eyed peas etc. My favourite part is the egg sack/roe. But in this case the store only sells small (really small) sliced herring fillets. Since it's so salty, we put it together in a dish containing shrimp and veggies.

• 1 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 small slices of smoked herring
• Shrimp
• Frozen vegetables of your choice

We eyeballed the vegetables and shrimp. You can put however many you want that will suit your needs. In this case, it served two.

We thawed the vegetables as well as the herring and shrimp.

Place everything together in a cookware (drizzle the olive oil and soy sauce on top) and set in a preheated oven at 300 degrees F for 10 minutes. Just ten. We don't want all the nutrients to go away.

The result is a delicious, saucy meal that's been enriched by the aroma provided by the herring, which is hiding underneath the vegetables and shrimp. We placed 2 herring slices on each side of the dish.

Quich and easy, delicious and healthy!

Hope you like it :)

PS: There's a lot of sauce that will be left over in your cookware. Don't let it go to waste. I put it in along with the food and took some pita bread, tore it up and let it absorb the liquid. It was so good!

Pork in Red wine and honey-mustard sauce.

One of the best lunches I've had in some time!!

You can pair it with some bread but it's so good that I didn't want to ruin its taste with bread or anything else!

If you don't have an ingredient listed here then you can improvise with what you've got. Use what meat you have, or what wine you prefer. The spring rolls are not perfect, but we used what we had at home, i can imagine more onion would suit it, grated carrot, maybe rice inside? Next time they will be different.

But go on ahead and read the recipe! :)

Ingredients for 2 people

• 2 pork cutlets sliced up
• Olive oil for stir frying

For the Sauce

• 2 oranges
• 4 tablespoons red dry wine
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 tablespoon mustard
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder

For the fresh spring rolls

• 4 rice papers
• 1 package of bean sprouts
• parley chopped up 
• some leek
• onion
• black sesame

Peel the oranges, remove any seeds and cut them up. Put them in a blender along with all the ingredients for our sauce and blend until it's a puree.

Stir fry the pork strips for about 3 minutes with olive oil, then add the sauce and let it cook slowly for about half an hour, until it starts to thicken up. We had pork cutlets in hand, but you can just as easily pick up pork strips for stir frying at the store!

For the fresh spring rolls, we just used up what we had in the fridge. We chopped up some leek, onion, leek and parley and placed it along with black sesame and sprouts in a rice paper (you have to place it in warm water first so it becomes usable). You can eat them right away after wrapping them, or you may warm them up (just put them in the microwave for 3-5 minutes).


That's it! Hope you can try it out and let me know what you think :)

Curry Salmon with Vegetables.

Today we made delicious salmon fillets on a bed of greens, with some curry powder for the taste.
Salmon is one of the healthiest fish to eat.
When you cook it never throw away the oils left behind in your cookware before that oil is full of omega 3's!

Omega 3 helps with inflammation, reduce risk of heart disease, help with brain and memory performance, lowering cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes, lupus, osteoporosis, depression, asthma... the list goes on and on! It also helps in the prevention and treatment of cancer.

The point is, the fatty acid known as omega 3 is ESSENTIAL for our health and since our own bodies cannot naturally produce it, we have to ingest it through supplements and food.

What better way to have some omega 3's than salmon?

Go on ahead and read the recipe!

Ingredients for 2 portions

• 1 lemon
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 cup water
• 1 teaspoon curry powder
• 2 salmon fillets
• 1 red bell pepper
• 3 large celery stalks
• 6 asparagus
• 1 whole leek

Instructions

Start by preheating your oven at 350 degrees Farenheit.

Chop up you celery and leek (the leaves too!)  and place them in your cookware, place the asparagus (whole) in it as well.
Place your salmon fillets in .

Juice the lemon, and pour the juice along with pulp on top of your greens and salmon.

Put the water, olive oil, curry powder in and stir it all together in a separate bowl. When thouroughly mixed, pour it all over the salmon and greens.

Place in the pre-heated oven for 30 minutes or until cooked.

You can test if your salmon is ready by sticking a fork/knife in the flesh and if it flakes, it's done.

Take it out and place it in a plate, along with all the juices left at the bottom of your cookware, and cut up a red bell pepper, serving it together with the salmon.

Done!

Hope you like this one. It tasted divine!

I leave you with some more photos of the dish. Have a great day :)

See all the juice at the bottom of the plate? You can soak you salmon in them, it's great!

Delicious Vegetable Pie

So... the title of the blog entry is "Vegetable Pie"...Hm...what could we be using this time??

I'll give you a look first at the final product.

This is what i had for lunch today, vegetable pie with tofu! :)

 Like what you see?? The crust was so light and flaky, it was heaven. The question is, what did we use?

Kale, Spinach, Leek and Celery

Yup, we had some kale that was near the end of its life, so we made a large pie with it as well as the other veggies we had in the fridge.

Here's what we did.

Ingredients

• a whole bunch of kale
• a few stalks of celery
• spinach - about 2 handfuls
• Leek - chopped up, quantity is up to you
• half a halloumi cheese (in this case) - you many also use feta or any cheese of your choice
• salt for taste
• margarine/butter for coating the cookware
• butter puff pastry leaves - about 15 or more of them. 
• onion - quantity is up to you

Instructions

Start by pre-heating the oven at 350 degrees Farenheit.

Wash and chop the vegetables up. Chop up the onion. Grate or slice the cheese and mix it up if you wish. We layered the cheese on top of the vegetables instead. I find it preferable for my taste buds to suddenly get a nice chunk of halloumi rather than get a small constant dose of it throughout the pie. Mix the vegetables and onion up, add some salt to taste.

Lay out the butter puff pastry leaves. The main difference between phyllo and butter puff pastries is in their name, "butter"; it makes it easier for me to work with since they are already buttered up. I bought one package of them and all of it was used to make this flaky pie.

Layer the halloumi and vegetable mix. Close up the pastry leaves into a shape you desire and place the pie in a margarine-coated cookware so it doesnt stick.

Place it in the oven for about 30 minutes or until flaky and golden-brown in color.

That's it!

Our Vegetable Pie is ready to be consumed. It's so good, I really recommend trying it out.
It doesnt matter what vegetables you have handy, it doesnt have to be anything specific, any green and leafy vegetable works (lettuce, cabbage, kale, spinach, you name it!).

Bonus!

In order to get our share of protein during our lunch, we cut up some tofu in 1cm-thick slices and put Masala curry powder on it, then lightly fried it, until it was crispy on the outside and light and fluffy on the inside. Tofu doesn't absorb much besides salt (so be careful when you marinade it in soy sauce), so the outside of our tofu is slightly spicy while the inside is pretty bland. Yummy!

 

Spicy Meat-alternative lunch.

Food is food. The combinations are endless as long as you let your fantasy roam.
But, in order to stay healthy, you have to ensure that you always have your serving of protein, greens and carbs.
A good guide is this :

vegetables 50%
protein 30%
starch 20%

To make it a little easier, just make sure the protein you are eating is as thick and wide as the palm of your hand. It's different for each individual. Opt for rice and potatoes for starch, instead of pasta. In my diet I've substituted pasta with rice noodles/egg noodles or rice.

In this case meat-alternatives made of tofu are being used as the source for protein.

You'll notice that in most recipes I will be listing frozen vegetables.
The reason is simple.:

• Frozen vegetables as cheaper than fresh ones. 
• They are washed at the collection site right before freezing (with water cleaner than tap water in your home).
• they are more fresh than "fresh" vegetables since they are frozen right after collecting them
•  therefore their nutrients are unaltered while for "fresh" vegetables a lot of nutrients are lost in transit.
• they last a loooong time in the freezer.

this is the final product:

Ingredients

• firm tofu - half the size of your palm, as thick as your palm.
• half a tofurky spicy italian sausage - google "tofurky" it's a company name
• frozen vegetables of your choice - thawed
• one portion rice vermicelli noodles
• masala curry powder for marinating the tofu in
• a smidge of oregano
• soy sauce to taste

Start by spreading some masala curry powder on your tofu and let it sit for about 5-10 minutes. 

In the meantime start making the rice vermicelli noodles in a pot, add some soy sauce in the water.

when they are ready, take it off the stove and drop in your vegetables. They will be warmed up but 

not boiled.

Take your tofu sausage and your masala curry tofu and lightly fry it in a heated pan with olive oil for 2-3 minutes on each side, depending how strong your heat is. It should get crispy on the outside while staying nice and soft on the inside. Sprinkle some oregano over it for the aroma - but careful, don't want to put too much since oregano is bitter!

And that's it!

The spicyness of the sausage is balanced by the vegetables and the noodles. Adjust it to your tastes.

Recipes should be your starting guideline. If you have any ideas then let me know! 

It's a delicious meal for cold days :)

Food for an upset stomach.

So i wasn't feeling too good the other day. I had an upset stomach and was feeling pretty weak.
You know the feeling when you're hungry but not hungry at the same time? Yea, I had that.

I found this lunch really helped my upset tummy.  It was light enough that it didn't make me feel
stuffed, but it was also filling and helped me feel better.

--- Apple contains pectin, which helps you with an upset stomach and can prevent diarrhea ---


Delicious shrimp with vermicelli noodles, apple, and vegetables. 

What you'll need for a single portion:

• kale chopped up - about a handful
• frozen vegetables of your choice thawed - half a handful ( in my case it was peppers with beans)
• shrimp - a handful
• one portion of rice vermicelli noodles (you can find them separated into portions in the store)
• one medium/small apple sliced
• soy sauce - to taste

Pretty simply, huh?

This is all about how YOU like your food. Be creative, dont be restricted to what a recipe tells you to do.

Mix things up, add spices if you want; in my case, it was kept simple because of my upset stomach. 

The shrimp was precooked so all to be done was to reheat it in a pot, while you are making the rice vermicelli noodles in another pot at the same time (rice vermicelli noodles cook really fast). When the shrimp is done, remove it from the pot and add the thawed frozen vegetables and the chopped up kale to be warmed up a little but not heated up too much or boiled!  

Serve it in a plate, add the sliced apple on top with some soy sauce, I liked the soy sauce on the apple, it added an extra zing to it.

That's it.

It's a fast meal, perfect for that day where you aren't feeling too good and it's really healthy!

Enjoy! 

Please help me out by spreading this around to anyone who might find it useful :)
Until i start getting enough traffic on this blog i'm going to be posting the same things to my other blog.