Live For Food

I was looking for a chicken recipe that I could adapt as low carb. Now on a low carb diet, fat is king, and I came across this chicken recipe that made a sauce using cream. Believe it or not I’ve never used cream in a sauce before, simply because following more conventional healthy eating one tends to keep fat content low. However I decided to go for it, and I have made the recipe low carb simply by not serving it with pasta, and adding a generous helping of steamed vegetables. Although I suppose I should say that I made pasta for my husband and did have a very few pieces myself!

I’ve typed out what I did, rather than the original recipe, as I did make a few changes. It felt quite odd to be cooking with so much fat, and consequently I did use a leaner cut of chicken, less cheese, and used oil spray instead of the real thing.

Ingredients (serves 2):

Frylight
1 medium/large chicken breast, cut into strips
4 small rashers of streaky bacon, chopped
5 mushrooms
1 garlic clove, crushed
salt and freshly ground black pepper
150ml double cream
40g pasta (dry weight) – (my share was about 10g!)
handful fresh basil, torn, plus extra for garnish
40g cheddar, grated

Method:

Cook the pasta according to packet instructions in a pan of salted boiling water, then drain.

Heat the Frylight in a pan, add the chicken strips, bacon and mushrooms, and cook for 5-10 minutes, or until the chicken is golden-brown and cooked through.

Add the garlic and cook for one minute. Season, to taste, with salt and freshly ground black pepper, add the cream and warm through.

To serve, stir in the basil and cheddar.  Pour on to your plate (on top of pasta if using), with a generous helping of steamed vegetables.

Garnish with basil leaves.

Verdict:

Unsurprisingly this was very rich! However it was also very tasty, and as the portion was not too large (unlike creamy pasta and sauce portions in restaurants) it was good. Even a fairly small helping was surprisingly filling and I don’t think I nibbled as much later in the evening compared with a carb rich meal, which I thought was interesting.

If you live with anyone else and share meals you will come across the issue of one person not liking, or not being able to eat certain foods, when the other people can. This can make the task of cooking a healthy meal into an ordeal!

I’m going to look at the issue of cooking for people who have various likes and dislikes. I’m not going to deal with situations where one person has an entirely different diet plan than the rest of the family, nor situations where one person has a serious allergy or illness associated with particular foods.

When dealing with food dislikes its important to assess the extent of the dislike. An adult can generally say whether they are prepared to tolerate a small amount of a certain food or whether its off the menu completely. This is more difficult to assess with children. Apparently one may have to present a new food to a child a number of times before they will like it, and children are more likely to chop and change their food preferences.

Once you have established definite foods or meals not on the menu it may be best to save meals containing those foods for days when the person who doesn’t like them is not in for dinner if you can’t compromise.

Meat

If one person doesn’t like a particular type of meat but the other does you may be able to get round this by cooking meat in individually wrapped parcels of foil or parchment in the oven. I have sometimes done a breaded fish fillet for my husband in the oven, with a salmon filled wrapped in foil for myself. These can be served with potatoes, vegetables and a sauce enjoyed by both.

Items such as chicken pieces, pork chops and sausages can also all be cooked in the oven or under a grill and a variety of meat can be cooked fairly easily.

You could also make meat and vegetable kebabs using cubes of your favorite meats and various different vegetables which can all be cooked under the grill together.

Vegetables

If you serve a variety of plain steamed or boiled vegetables with a meal its fairly easy to separate out the different types of vegetable. If you use a steamer you could make it even easier by using the different tiers for different vegetables.

If you are putting vegetables in a sauce or casserole it can be more difficult. I would say there are three main ways of dealing with this:

Chopping vegetables so small that you can’t really notice them or taste them as a separate flavor.

Chopping vegetables so large that the person can easily pick out the bits they don’t like.

Substituting vegetables in the recipe for other vegetables.

I tend to use onion, mushroom and bell peppers fairly interchangeably if it will suit the recipe. Watch out for mushrooms adding more liquid to a recipe as they cook.

I sometimes use onion granules instead of actual onion.

Many green vegetables are interchangeable – in a pie for example, broccoli, asparagus, green beans and peas all work well.

Root vegetables are often interchangeable too. In a casserole carrot, swede, parsnip, potato and sweet potato can all be switched.

Finally don’t forget to try new vegetables every now and again – you might just find something new that you all like!

What are your top tips for dealing with your family’s food preferences?

I always thought the term “bento box” referred to sushi – but actually it means a Japanese single portion packed meal. I have recently come across “character bento” where Japanese mums will spend time making little characters out of food in their children’s lunchboxes. The use of rice makes it possible to form little models. If you’ve eaten sushi you will know that the rice used is very sticky and molds together very well.

Check out these fantastic examples. I know there will be many Mums out there who will be thankful that this particular form of lunch art is not yet popular in the UK!

If only my lunch looked like this every day. Sadly I think it would take me all morning to make one of these!

Today I’ve tried out another recipe with minced beef (ground beef).  This time it’s a recipe for meatballs.  I tend to avoid making burgers because they always seem to fall apart but I have more success with meatballs.  This recipe also used a new ingredient that I had never tried before – a Romero pepper. I think I bought the right thing, judging by pictures on the internet, but this pepper was actually called a “sweet, pointed pepper” in the supermarket:

Ingredients:

For the meatballs

• 250g/9oz beef mince
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• ½ onion, finely chopped
• 1 free-range egg, lightly beaten
• ½ tsp chilli powder
• flour, for dredging

For the sauce

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• ½ onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 romero pepper, seeds removed, chopped
• 1 tbsp tomato purée
• 1 tsp chilli flakes
• 150ml/¼ pint white wine

For the rice

• 200g/7oz basmati rice, washed
• handful chopped fresh parsley
• handful chopped fresh dill
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tbsp olive oil

Method:

1. For the meatballs, mix together the beef mince, garlic, onion, egg and chilli powder in a bowl.
2. With wet hands, shape the mixture into 4-5 golfball-sized balls and dredge in flour.
3. For the sauce, heat the olive oil in a frying pan and sweat the onion until soft but not coloured.
4. Add the garlic and the romero pepper and fry for 2-3 minutes.
5. Add the remaining ingredients and bring to the boil. Cook to reduce the volume of wine by half.
6. Add the meatballs, cover and cook for 15 minutes, turning the meatballs occasionally in the sauce, until cooked through.
7. For the rice, place the rice in a saucepan and cover with 2½cm/1in cold water. Bring slowly up to the boil.
8. Once the rice is boiling, stir once, turn the heat to very low and cover with a tight fitting lid for 10 minutes, or until all the water is absorbed and the rice cooked through.
9. When the rice is cooked, stir through the herbs and season, to taste, with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
10. Rub the oil over the inside of a small Pyrex bowl. Press the rice into the bowl, then tip out onto a serving plate.
11. To serve, arrange the meatballs around the rice and pour over the sauce.

Substitutions and comments:

I reduced the amount of onion in the recipe – I generally tend to do this as my husband isn’t that keen on onion.  I used real chillis instead of chilli flakes in the sauce.  In my opinion there was way too much rice for 2 people – if the weight was dry weight.  I use between 30 – 50g per person.  When I reduced the wine I ended up reducing it too far – probably because I had a large pan, so I had to add more wine (oh no!).

Verdict:

This was very tasty.  The pepper did taste sweeter than a bell pepper and we enjoyed it, but I don’t expect I’ll be buying one very often as it was more expensive than bell peppers.  The meatballs were a nice flavour, and by virtue of stirring them very carefully I managed to keep them whole. Using wine as a base for the sauce made a nice change to using a tomato or beef stock base.

 

Are you having a party for the Jubilee weekend?  Need a last minute recipe? Check out the links below for great Jubilee recipe ideas:

Jubilee Ham
Gammon joint roasted with a cherry glaze – from Tesco Real Food

Diamond Jubilee Chicken
“Update Coronation chicken with this salad of mild spices, apple, walnuts, yoghurt sauce and pomegranate” – from BBC Good Food

Three-pea and Wensleydale Salad
“Toss together the pea shoot salad, sugar snap peas, petit pois, spring onions and most of the cheese in a large bowl.” – from Tesco Real Food

Salsa Verde Jersey Royals
“Royals are the kings of new potatoes.” – from the Jewish Chronicle

Fruity Flag Tray Bake
“A fail-safe sponge that’s easier than it looks – almonds and yoghurt keep it moist while its fruity decoration is suitably patriotic” – A Mary Berry recipe

Strawberry Lemon and Cream Cupcakes
“Summer in a cupcake case with lemon sponge, sweet whipped cream and sticky lemon curd, all topped off with a juicy strawberry” – – from the Good Food Channel

Blueberry and Coconut Pudding
A fruity zesty sponge pudding – original recipe from Easy Cook magazine

Cherries Jubilee with Panna Cotta
“Celebrate the jubilee or any royal celebration with this dessert – originally served to Queen Victoria for her own jubilee by famed chef Auguste Escoffier” – by Matthew Tomkinson

Jammy Jubilee Diamond Biscuits
“Bring some nostalgia to your Jubilee celebrations with these delicious jammy biscuits.” – from Red magazine online

Very Berry Pimms
“Celebrate the Jubilee and the summer months in style with this berry version of Pimms – the fruit is refreshingly delicious and so is the Pimms!” – from Good to Know recipes

Whatever you’re doing this weekend, I hope you have fun!