Category: Healthy

Turkey chilli

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Serves: 6

For the past few months, I’ve cooked this at least once a month with plenty left for freezing until the next batch of cooking.

It is so good.

To the extent that I feel excited all day about getting home, heating it up, slicing in some avocado and mixing through some Greek yogurt. Some coriander and maybe even a chopped tomato.

It is healthy – 270 calories a cup – and it is hot.

And it’s mince! The final word in why you really should be whipping up a batch at least every month and drip-feeding the excitement when you need it most.

Lordy.

Ingredients

1kg turkey mince
1 onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp olive oil
1 can, crush tomatoes (no salt added as if you didn’t know!)
1 can, baby tomatoes (yes, you can get them at Coles if you look)
3 tbsp tomato paste
½ tsp hot/chilli sauce
1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 red capsicum (pepper), chopped
1 green capsicum, chopped
2 jalapenos chopped (you can get these in a jar, I substitute a big red bullhorn chilli)
½ tsp sea salt
Pinch of pepper
1 tsp sugar
2 tbsp chilli powder (3 makes it explosive, though sure, why not if you are so inclined)
2sp dry oregano
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

Method

  1. Heat the olive oil in a large heavy saucepan/pot and sauté the onions and garlic until fragrant – 3 or 4 minutes. Add the turkey and cook until browned and crumbled and the excess liquid has cooked off.
  2. Add the rest of the ingredients – boom – and cook for an hour or more until you can’t hold out anymore!

Oliver’s Guacamole

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Serves: Oliver

In a cooking blog that is meant to discover and inspire, it might seem a little odd to put up a guacamole recipe. According to Google, there are 2.380 million of the recipes out there and so it is safe to say that we don’t need another.

Except that it wasn’t until recently when I had a fresh guacamole and then made my own batch at home that  I remembered just how awesome guacamole is. It is so spirited and exciting and fresh. And so healthy that the top result about guacamole in Google describes it as almost ‘superfood’.

I’ll run with that!

Also, this blog being for my boys so that they have a bunch of tested recipes to cook for their friends and family, Oliver (8), the eldest who is really picky and plain about food, demolished this guacamole. By itself, he would never touch avocado, red onion or coriander… or any of the ingredients.

He would just eat the corn chips and be done with it.

But he will eat this guacamole by the bucket and that is a great way to get great foods into him.

It is also why it’s called Oliver’s Guacamole.

Enjoy it like he does and go all in with the flavour!

Ingredients

Avocados
Red onion, minced
Garlic, mashed with salt
Lime Juice
Cumin
Tomatoes, seeded and finely diced
Salt
Coriander leaves
Plain corn chips

Method

  1. Mash the avocados roughly with the lime juice.
  2. Mix through the remaining ingredients except the coriander and correct the seasoning.
  3. Garnish with the coriander.

Cucumber and Feta Dip

.Reading time 1 minute.

Serves: 8 snacking guests

There is something special about arriving at someone’s house and being presented with a few homemade dips. It says something nice about your host and it tells you how they feel about you.

I’ve been making my own skinny hommus of late, though I really should get into the habit of making more and more dips; a few dips on hand and a box of chopped carrot sticks in the fridge would be all I needed to bridge the lunch to dinner gap and it would be far more interesting than a boiled egg or an apple!

This wonderful dip is courtesy of my mother. I made it over the weekend with low-fat feta and geez it’s good with brown rice crackers and a glass of wine before dinner.

Get on it! Make your guests feel special!

Ingredients

2 large Lebanese cucumbers, peeled, deseeded and finely diced
Salt and pepper
225gm feta, crumbled
1/8 + cup olive oil
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp water
1 small red onion, finely diced
1 tbsp finely chopped parsley
2 tbsp finely chopped mint

  1. Place the diced cucumber in a colander, sprinkle with salt, allow to drain for 30 + minutes, and then rinse and pat dry.
  2. Mash together the feta, olive oil, lemon juice, water and some pepper, and then mix in the cucumber, onion and herbs.

Andalusian Pork

.Reading time 1 minute.

Serves: 4

What a simple, gutsy dish!

The Spanish certainly do have some fun with their food and after a day marinating and then chargrilled on a really hot grill, this pork is sensational.

And it’s healthy. Ha!

I’ve cooked this and served this a few times over the years though last night it was with eggplant chips, some steamed sugar snaps and a great Bobby Flay Spanish Potato Salad.

A great end to the week and fuel for the start of the new working year. Here is to 2016!

Ingredients

2 tbsp paprika
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried thyme
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tbsp coarse sea salt
1 tbsp olive oil
500g pork fillet, trimmed of any fat
2 lemons, cut into wedges, to serve

Method

  1. Mix the paprika, oregano, garlic and salt with the olive oil to make a thick paste.
  2. Spread the paste evenly over the pork, cover and marinate in the fridge for 24 hours.
  3. Cut the meat on the diagonal, around 2cm thick.
  4. Heat a griddle, heavy frying pan or a grill until very hot. Cook the pork for 3 – 4 minutes on each side until cooked through.
  5. Serve at once with the lemon wedges.

Cha Ca (Ling Fillets marinated with dill and tumeric)

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Serves 6

According to Google translate, ‘kinh ngạc’ is amazing in Vietnamese and I do hope it is because this dish is a-mazing.

It’s got it all.

Healthy, hot, filling, so tasty.

Seriously, copy paste these ingredients and clear your schedule for tonight because this is going to make tonight – and every night you cook it – very special.

Mark Jensen of Red Lantern is a genius!

Ingredients

1kg ling fillets
8 spring onions (scallions)
4 garlic cloves
1 tbsp ground turmeric
2 tsp hot curry power
2 tbsp plain yoghurt
1/2 cup fish sauce
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tbsp vegetable oil
1 bunch dill
125g rice vermicelli
1 cup fish stock
1 lemon
300g bean sprouts

Method

  1. Cut the fish into 4cm pieces, place in a bowl and set aside.
  2. Put the white heads of the spring onions (reserving the stalks) and garlic in a mortar and pound to a paste.
  3. Add the paste, turmeric, curry powder, yoghurt, fish sauce, sugar, 2 tablespoons of the oil and a third of the dill, roughly chopped) to the fish and mix well. Cover and marinate in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
  4. Cook the vermicelli in boiling water for 5 minutes, turn off the heat and let sit for a further 5 minutes. Strain, refresh under cold water a set aside. (This may contradict instructions on pack, though don’t worry!).
  5. Thinly, diagonally slice 4 or 5 of the green spring onion stalks.
  6. Heat a large frying pan over medium heat, add the remaining oil and fry the fillets for 30 seconds on one side.
  7. Turn the fillets over, add the fish stock and simmer for 3-5 minutes until the fish is cooked through.
  8. Remove the fish and squeeze over the juice from the lemon.
  9. Mix the bean sprouts, sliced spring onion, remaining dill and vermicelli together, place into bowls and spoon over the fish fillets and sauce.

Omelette of Pork Mince, Preserved Radish and Spring Onion (Trung Chien Thit Bam)

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Serves 2

I am so impressed with the Red Lantern cookbook (Secrets of the Red Lantern, Pauline Nguyen).

Having not cooked from it for a few years, I am back into it and everything I have cooked so far has been quite outstanding; the recipes are clear to follow and the book is generally an excellent read, with many stories behind the authors and the food.

This omelette is great and reminded me of Neil Perry’s Blue Swimmer Crab omelette, not because they are similar in taste, but because of the freshness and lightness of the end-production. The spring onions with the fish sauce and browned pork is just great, surrounded by the fluffiness of the egg.

I had the omelette with sliced green chillis and spring onions, and a bowl of rice on the side.

This should become one of the long-day, too-hard-to-cook-but-should-cook-something recipes in your repertoire.

Ingredients

4 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cracked black pepper
1 teaspoon fish sauce
2 spring onions, white part only, sliced
1 tablespoon oil
1/2 small red onion (I used an eschalot)
2 garlic cloves, crushed
100g minced (ground) pork
1 tablespoon preserved radish (available from Asian Supermarkets, I found a Japanese brand providing a whole, slated radish and chopped it finely)

Method

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, salt, pepper, fish sauce and sliced spring onions.
  2. Place a large non-stick frying pan over medium heat, add the oil and then fry the onion and garlic until soft and fragrant.
  3. Add the pork and preserved radish and continue to fry until browned.
  4. Pour the omelette mixture into the pan and cover with a lid; foil or a same-size fry pan will do.
  5. Cook until the base is golden brown and the top just set, slide out onto a plate folding if desired and serve.

Terry Durack’s Thai Chicken and Basil

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Serves 4

This is a Terry Durack recipe from his book Yum, a $1 purchase from St Vincent de Paul. (Seriously, St Vincent de Paul has to be one of the best cook book chains in Sydney!)

Up until I tried this recipe, I had admired Terry Durack as a food critic though had been less impressed by his recipes. Though I am sure that this was about me and not you Terry!

He opens his book with this dish and describes it as one that changed his cooking life just because it is so unbelievably simple; I have to agree that cooking this and tasting it, it really did open my eyes too. Genuinely, like tasting the snow-egg at Quay or eating at Per Se in New York, cooking this recipe really is one of the seminal moments in my cooking life.

It is hard to believe that this recipe could taste combined, complex or even good. Instead, it really is an amazing dish that demonstrates that with only a few of the right flavours, you can produce a wonderful dish without any complaints.

To put it as Terry Durack does, ‘this dish taught me that you could toss things in the wok while half-drunk and without a care in the world, and still be able to feed people without killing them…’

I have always been lazy with this dish and substituted 3 chicken breasts for the a whole chicken (and I’ll keep doing it) and I have altered (as I usually do) the recipe to be slightly easier to follow.

Ingredients

1 small chicken, meat from the breast, thighs and legs removed, sliced into strips
3 or 4 green (or red) chillies, deseeded and sliced into thin slivers
2 tbsp of finely chopped parsley
Bunch of basil leaves, removed from stem
4 tbsp vegetable oil
3 tbsp fish sauce

Method

  1. Heat the oil in a wok and cook the chicken over a moderate heat for a few minutes, then add the chillis, most of the basil and the parsley.
  2. Cook, stirring as you go for another 3 or 4 minutes.
  3. Splash in the fish sauce and stir through.
  4. Add remaining basil and serve with jasmine rice.

Zuppa Di Pesce (Italian Seafood Stew)

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Serves: 4

Mama mia! Every time I have cooked this, it gets better and better. The flavours, the experience, the fun of eating anything that you get to mop up with crusty bread.

The recipe is from Armando Percuoco of Buon Ricordo Restaurant in Paddington, famous for his truffle egg pasta and long lunches.

I swear that if you cook this once, you will cook it again the next weekend, inviting friends around for it.

It looks the part, it tastes so goddam good and it’s fun to share with some salads, maybe some potatoes, some chargrilled asparagus with chilli and garlic and plenty of bread.

No excuses, cook it!

Ingredients

3 cloves of garlic, sliced thinly
½ cup of olive oil
1 rock cod (250gm) (substitute with leatherjacket)
Blue eye (150gm piece)
Kingfish (150gm piece)
6 mussels (I used 10)
2 baby octopus
8 rings of calamari (obviously, more can be used and I would)
½ Blue Swimmer Crab
8 clams
1 cup of white wine (I used 1 ½ cups)
½ punnet cherry tomatoes (halved)
4 tablespoons chopped Roma tomatoes
1 bunch of Italian parsley, chopped
Sea salt and pepper
Grilled crusty bread to serve

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 180.
  2. In a heavy saucepan or casserole, sauté the garlic in the olive oil until it is just about to go golden.
  3. Add the calamari (and octopus) and toss.
  4. Add the balance of the seafood, and the white wine.
  5. Cook until the white wine has effectively evaporated.
  6. Remove all the seafood except for the calamari (octopus) and add the tomatoes.
  7. Place in the oven for 10 minutes, stirring once.
  8. Add the rest of the seafood, and place in the oven for a further 10 minutes, again stirring once.
  9. Sprinkle with parsley and serve.

Jamie Oliver’s Real Mushroom Soup

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Serves: 6 – 8

It is true – I think – that at its most basic, mushroom soup is mushroom soup. It’s tasty enough, it is nice warm or cold, it’s filling and it’s healthy.

This spin on mushroom soup by Jamie Oliver not only adds a bit of zing to the whole thing, it is one of those cannot-be-ignored opportunities to use truffle oil!

And it’s still healthy which is why I must have two gallons of it frozen and ready for dethaw on any given night where I am too tired to cook.

You should consider the same!

(Slight adaptation of the recipe where I increased mushrooms from 600gm to 1kg.)

Ingredients

1 small handful dried porcini (I also used some shiitake)
Extra virgin olive oil
1kg mixed fresh wild mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely sliced
1 red onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 handful fresh thyme, leaves picked
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 litre chicken stock (or vegetable stock)
1 handful fresh flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked and roughly chopped
1 tablespoon mascarpone cheese
1 lemon
Truffle oil (optional)
Sliced loaf of bread, brushed with olive oil and grilled

 

Method

  1. Place the porcini in a small dish, cover with boiling water and leave aside.
  2. Heat a heavy saucepan medium-hot and as Jamie Oliver famously puts it, ‘add a good couple of lugs’ of the olive oil and add your mushrooms. Stir for a minute or so and then add the garlic, onion, thyme and season. Meanwhile, chop half your porcini, reserving the liquid.
  3. After a minute or so of cooking, add the chopped and whole porcini and the reserved liquid. Continue cooking on a medium heat for 20 minutes or until most of the liquid has disappeared.
  4. Season again and add the stock. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 20 minutes.
  5. Remove half of the soup and whiz in a blender until smooth. Reintroduce to the remaining soup together with the parsley, mascarpone and a final seasoning as needed.
  6. To serve, a small drizzle of truffle oil, maybe a squeeze of lemon, chopped parsley, perhaps a few reserved and cooked slices of mushroom, a crack of pepper and some oiled and grilled sliced bread.

Veal with Fennel Salt

.Reading time 1 minute.

Serves: 2

I pulled this recipe from a Sunday paper.

Assuming you’re good with veal, this is a great number to whip up on a Sunday night.

I oven roasted some thinly sliced potatoes to go with it plus a glass of Pinot Gris.

Sunday papers are OK!

Ingredients

1 tbsp sea flakes
1 tbsp of fennel seeds
2 veal cutlets
Green leaves (rocket, spinach, lettuce)
1 Fennel
Squeeze of lemon
Olive Oil

Method

  1. Pound the salt and fennel seeds in a mortal and pestle.
  2. Brush the veal cutlets with olive oil and rub the salt mixture into the veal. Set aside for 15 minutes.
  3. Grill the veal for 3 – 4 minutes on each side over a medium-high heat until medium-rare.
  4. Thinly slice the fennel and combine with the green leaves. Just before serving, dress with olive oil and a squeeze of lemon.