Category: Healthy

Simple (wonderful) fish stew

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Simple (wonderful) fish stew

Serves: 6

Nat and I had lunch at Rick Stein’s restaurant in Mollymook NSW over the weekend and what a treat it was. Just as good as the first time we visited a few years back.

The highlight was a brilliant fish and shellfish soup with rouille and croutons, something I have promised to recreate. A wonderful fish stock, infused with saffron, chilli and orange, it was just excellent.

The only problem – returning early Monday morning to work after a long drive back up the South Coast – being that a fish stock isn’t the sort of thing you can quickly whip up on a Monday night. All we had in the fridge was some Parmesan cheese, bacon and assorted vegetables!

We also needed something healthy for dinner on account of a long weekend consisting of several late dinners remit with red wines, slow cooked meats and more than a handful of desserts.

This simple, wonderful fish stew is your Monday night cheater’s recipe and an adaptation of something I found online.

It is incredibly healthy, super simple and packing flavour if you can find the time to caramelise the vegetables and let the stock and tomatoes simmer.

Finish with some chopped parsley and some croutons and you are getting very close to something you’d be happy to have in a good bistro. Seriously, with a cold beer and a good show on the TV, it just made our night.

I’ll do Rick’s wonderful soup one weekend coming up, though for your Monday night fix, this just cannot be beaten.

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp fennel seeds
1 onion, diced
4 carrots, diced
4 celery sticks, diced
4 cloves garlic, crushed
4 leeks, white part only, thinly sliced
2 cans, tomatoes
1 liter, good quality fish stock
600gm firm white fish, cut into pieces
250gm raw prawns
Flat leaf parsley, chopped to serve

Method

  1. Heat the olive oil over a low, medium heat in a large saucepan and saute the fennel seeds, onion, carrots, celery and garlic. Cook as slowly as you can until softening.
  2. Add the leeks, tomato and stock and season. Bring to the boil and then simmer on a low, medium heat for around 20 minutes.
  3. Add the fish and prawns and cook for a few minutes. Check the seasoning and serve with the parsley (and croutons if you have managed to avoid the the wines the weekend prior!).

Boost Juice’s Banana Buzz

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Boost Juice’s Banana Buzz

Serves: 1

The only drink I ever order from Boost Juice is a medium, Banana Buzz; I had one just yesterday and they’re just awesome.

Here is your way to try the amazing Boost Banana Buzz and save $6.40.

It is spot-on.

Ingredients

1 large banana
1 cup (skim) milk
2 large scoops Bulla Frozen Yoghurt (original flavour) or similar, frozen, plain Greek Yoghurt
½ tbsp honey
1 cup ice cubes

Method

  1. Combine all and blend to a smoothie.

Warmed Red Cabbage Salad with Toasted Walnuts and Goats Cheese

.Reading time 1 minute.

Warmed Red Cabbage Salad with Toasted Walnuts and Goats Cheese

Serves: 6

This is a really great salad.

Really, really great.

The melting goat cheese, the toasted walnuts, the apple, the balsamic vinegar. It’s warm, crunchy, rich and sweet.

This is a real treat.

Serve with lamb koftas, beef or chicken kebabs, BBQed pork tenderloin.

Ingredients

1 small head, red cabbage, cored and sliced into strips
1 small apple, cored and sliced
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
1 clove garlic, thinly sliced
2 – 3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil
200gm goats cheese
½ cup walnuts, toasted
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Method

  1. In a frypan, heat the olive oil over a medium heat and add the garlic and cook until fragrant though not browned. Add the onion and 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar and cook for a minute.
  2. Add cabbage and stir well; cook for 5 minutes or so until slightly wilted and softened though still bright coloured.
  3. Add apple, walnuts, season and stir well. Add the goats cheese and stir to gently incorporate. Taste for seasoning and add additional balsamic vinegar if it needs some acidity.
  4. Serve immediately.

Bulgar with Pomegranate Salad

.Reading time 1 minute.

Bulgar with Pomegranate Salad

Serves: 4 – 6

This is a recipe I pulled from the Weekend Australian Magazine by David Herbert and it is really quite good. I’ve been more hit than miss with his stuff in the past, though as far as a clean, healthy, spring salad goes, this is a winner.

If you haven’t cooked with bulgar, it is worth the effort to find it in your local organics shop.

It is less abrasive than quinoa, healthy, packed full of protein and fibre, and filling. Add the fresh herbs and vegetables and you have a salad that looks great, tastes great and is easy to prepare.

Try it with steak or lamb and you’ll be pleased you did.

Ingredients

150gm bulgar
¾ cup roughly chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
½ cup roughly chopped fresh mint
200gm cherry tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 Lebanese cucumber, peeled and diced
1 clove garlic, crushed
Seeds 1 pomegranate
3 spring onions, chopped
Juice, 1 lemon
2 – 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Method

  1. Place bulgar in a bowl and cover with 500ml boiling water. Soak for 30 minutes and then drain well, removing all excess water.
  2. Combine cooled bulgar, parsley, mint, tomatoes, cucumber, garlic, pomegranate, spring onions and lemon juice in a large bowl. Season well with the salt and freshly ground pepper. Pour over olive oil and toss well.

Pad Kee Mao

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Pad Kee Mao

Serves: 4

As we dished this up tonight, Nat professed her love for stir fries and a past when she whipped them up almost nightly: fast, healthy, Asian cooking.

And based on tonight’s dinner – this recipe – we are aligned.

My issue with stir fries was that I had never regarded this simple, clever Thai dish to be a stir fry.

Instead, I had horrific memories of those bags of pre-cut ‘Asian slaw’, combined with pre-cut beef tenderloin and a whack of sugary, tasteless, bottled ‘stir-fry’ sauce from Woolies.

The sort of Aussie stir-fry that taste terrible.

Thankfully, this number is the complete opposite.

It tastes real. It is fast to prepare. It looks awesome.

In fact, it tastes awesome.

If this is a stir-fry, then count me in. Because this is the sort of weekday dish I’d happily do again and again, something my beautiful Natalie was happy to hear.

(I have doubled the ingredients so you have two lunches the next day.)

Ingredients

6 garlic cloves, crushed
4 long red chillies, finely sliced
4 tbsp grated ginger
2 tbsp peanut oil
2 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp dark soy sauce (we used light which I generally prefer)
2 chicken breast, thinly sliced
Bunch, Chinese broccoli, roughly chopped
2 tsp brown sugar
300gm (fresh) thick rice noodles
8 spring onions, white part finely chopped, green part shredded

Method

  1. Pound garlic, chilli and ginger with half the peanut oil.
  2. Heat remaining peanut oil in a wok over a high heat; stir in the garlic paste, oyster, fish and soy sauces and sesame oil.
  3. Add chicken and stir-fry for a few minutes and then remove.
  4. Add broccoli, sugar, noodles and spring onions. Toss and cook for 2 – 3 minutes, return the chicken and any remaining liquid and cook for a further minutes.

Rosemary-Crusted Pork Tenderloin

.Reading time 1 minute.

Serves: 4

I think anything with breadcrumbs will be pretty good.

Add Parmesan, chilli, herbs, spices, whatever you have and get it right – and not too doughy or oily – and you have yourself a great meal.

Stuck tonight with a piece of pork loin, we scrambled for options and here is what we came up with.

Served with some green beans in stewed tomato, garlic and olives and some roasted pumpkin with rosemary and we really did have a hit on our hands.

It won’t set the world on fire, though at the end of a long day, it was a little bit fancy, a little like a pork roast and just fine with a glass of vino and the lights turned down.

Ingredients

750gm pork loin
¼ cup breadcrumbs
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tbsp chopped rosemary
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 180c.
  2. Combine all the ingredients except the pork and oil and spread out across a plate.
  3. Oil the pork. Roll in the breadcrumb mixture, ensuring that all the flesh is covered in breadcrumb mixture. Shake excess mixture off.
  4. Place on a baking-paper lined tray and cook for 25 – 40 minutes until cooked through.

Spicy Mince and Lettuce Cups

.Reading time 1 minute.

Serves: 4

This is a great weekday meal.

We used pork mince and with the lime juice, lime leaf, brown sugar and fish sauce, you’re left with a sweet, sour and sticky mince, just right for the contrasting crunch of the lettuce, herbs and shallots. And the crunch of the peanuts.

Yum!

253 calories a serve, beautiful and fun to plate, easily doubled for lunch like we did… you can’t go wrong here.

Ingredients

1 tbsp canola oil
Large piece of ginger, grated
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
500gm chicken, turkey or pork mince
85gm light brown sugar
2 tbsp fish sauce
Juice of a lime
2 lime leaf, finely shredded

To serve

Lettuce leaves (we used cos, though iceberg just as good)
Good handful of mint and coriander, roughly chopped
Handful of toasted peanuts, roughly chopped
2 shallots, finely sliced
1 lime, quartered

Method

  1. Heat the oil in a pan. Fry the garlic, ginger and chillis for a minute and then add the mince and turn the heat up high; cook until the meat is golden.
  2. Add the brown sugar, fish sauce, lime juice and lime leaf and cook down until everything is sticky.
  3. Serve the mince in the lettuce leaves, topped with the herbs, peanuts, shallots and a squeeze of the lime.

Dahl with spinach

.Reading time 1 minute.

Serves: 6

This is a really tasty, really healthy, down the line dahl.

A Valli Little recipe, it has a nice hint of spice and is packing flavour. Perfect for a quick Saturday lunch or lunch at work.

As with any lentil number, you know it will be good.

So just do it.

Ingredients

2 tbsp sunflower oil
2 onions, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tsp grated ginger
1 long green chilli, finely chopped
1 tbsp mustard seeds
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp ground coriander
2 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp garam masala
400g yellow split peas, rinsed, soaked in water for 1 hour, drained
800g can chopped tomatoes
3 cups (750ml) chicken stock
1 tsp caster sugar
100g baby spinach leaves

Method

  1. Heat oil in the pan over a medium heat. Add onion and cook for 2 – 3 minutes, stirring, until softened. Add ginger, chilli and garlic and cook for a further minute. Stir in the spices and cook for 30 seconds until fragrant.
  2. Add peas, stock, tomatoes, sugar and 1 ½ (375ml) water. Bring to a simmer then reduce heat to low and cook for 1 ½ hours, stirring occasionally until peas are tender and dahl is thick and rich.
  3. Stir through the spinach and serve.

Easy grilled chicken

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Serves: 4

This is a pretty awesome marinade.

Though it needs context.

With so much going on, planning more elaborate meals has escaped us of late. Indeed, we’ve been eating out with friends and family, doing work functions, finding little time to plan and shop ahead.

Which brings us to Friday night where, having spent the week up and down calorie and meal-wise and rarely in the kitchen, a grilled piece of chicken and a salad is almost all we want. You know, wanting to gain a small footing on the healthy boat before the inevitable weekend of cheese and wine and goodness.

Grilled chicken seems the option

But grilled chicken? It’s Friday after all, right?!

So introducing this marinade.

The pretense that marinade means nothing on chicken when it comes to the searing BBQ is completely lost on this marinade. A piece of bland chicken breast you are most definitely not left with.

Closer to a pork rib.

It ain’t subtle yet underneath it’s (healthy) chicken. And underneath that it’s Friday night, so you sort of need better than a bland chicken breast. Life is just too short.

Baste the chicken breast on the BBQ as you go, do some potatoes and a salad and nobody would know this was a last minute hack. Plus it’s healthy and it tastes pretty amazing and… it’s Friday!

Ingredients

¼ cup balsamic vinegar
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp Dijon mustard
2 tbsp brown sugar, packed
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ tsp dried thyme
½ tsp dried oregano
¼ tsp dried rosemary
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Chicken

4 chicken breasts
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley leaves to serve

Method

  1. Slice the chicken breasts in half length-ways.
  2. Combine the marinade ingredients in a bowl and marinade the chicken; we used a large ziplock back. Refrigerate for at least an hour or overnight, mixing the chicken about every so often.
  3. Over a hot grill, cook the chicken, marinating with the remaining sauce.
  4. Set aside the chicken for a few minutes once cooked, slice and serve, sprinkled with the parsley.
  5. It’s Friday!

Chicken with harissa and tomatoes

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Serves: 4

We are backwards when it comes to cooking effort throughout the week.

My understanding is that Monday is that day when you should keep it super simple; first day back at work and last thing you want to do it spend two hours in the kitchen.

Whereas for us – well me at least – nothing could be better than spending time in the kitchen on a Monday night, free from the shackles of ‘the man’. Easy dishes are instead left for later in the week when you’re priorities are changing; it’s almost Thursday, you’re organising the weekend, the latest Batchelor has been uploaded to TenPlay for streaming.

No time to cook.

Which is where this sweet little number comes in.

I know it looks simple and it is. I know it looks a bit too simple, though it’s not.

Served with some steamed green beans and some baby potatoes, wow. Indeed, anything you served this with – from couscous to a green salad to polenta – would only make it more amazing; once the tomatoes break down and combine with the oregano and harissa, you have one tasty – and healthy – meal on your hands.

Whether you do it Monday or Wednesday, this is a tick.

Ingredients

4 skinless chicken breasts
2 tsp harissa
1 tsp olive oil
1 tsp dried oregano
250g pack cherry tomatoes
Handful olives (kalamatas or similar)

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 200c. Put the chicken in a medium roasting tray, then rub with harissa, oil and oregano.
  2. Cover with foil and roast for 5 minutes then remove the foil and add the cherry tomatoes and olives to the tray. Roast for 10 minutes or more until the tomato skins start to split and the chicken is cooked through.