News & Other Places You Can Read Me

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

best-food

At the moment I’m busy working on a variety of ‘things’. In mid-August last year the small company I worked for ran out of cash (the second time this has happened to me!). I finished up regular paid work just a few weeks before we were due to go on holiday so I didn’t invest too much effort in pursuing more work.

Before going on holiday I pitched a few story ideas around the place – I enjoy writing and it is obviously something that fits in with the somewhat erratic life of the primary aide of a pre-schooler. A lot of attitudes may have moved on but when it comes to small children and kindy and school hours the system very much favours having one parent who can do a lot of running around unfettered by things like a 9-5 job and, say, an hour commute each way.

I was very fortunate to pick up a few freelance writing gigs at the end of last year … some of which are now just hitting the press.

The current James Halliday’s Wine Companion Magazine contains a wine/travel feature I wrote about Kangaroo Island. Some friends and I celebrated a joint significant birthday there in early December and while I’m yet to blog about my adventures (and given the backlog don’t expect that to happen in a hurry!) you can just buy the magazine and enjoy my words and the stunning pictures (not mine).

I’ve also been lucky enough to be doing some work with the team at SA Life which has been great. It has covered quite a range of topics so you should by picking up the current issue of SA Gardens, watching out for some features in issues of SA Life AND absolutely you should be signing up for the new SA Life food and wine enews, which comes out monthly.

What is particularly pleasing is that all of these ventures have involved celebrating our fab state. No one needs the UK’s Times to tell us that Adelaide and South Australia are amongst the best places on the planet!

In between these things, I’m actually still cutting code (which I enjoy, so that’s a good thing), teaching wine courses and generally succeeding in keeping myself out of mischief.

I was also stoked that in March Eating Adelaide was named Winerist’s Best Food Blog for 2015. Winerist is a UK based wine travel website that helps wine lovers tailor their trips to wine regions. I met one of its founders, Diana, last year and I have been lucky enough to do a little work with them (test how much you know about Australian wine). If you’re planning a wine focussed holiday it’s definitely a site worth checking out.

For the foreseeable, I am planning on blog posts once a week. This won’t address the scary backlog but it will be achievable and keep me sane while working with so many great people and organisations.

However, the Eating Adelaide Facebook page will continue to have very frequent food related posts and if you follow me on instagram you’ll enjoy a sneak peek of all the eating I’m doing!

Have a happy and safe Easter!

Roasted Chicken with Garlic and Herbs

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

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How appetising does this look?

I think this recipe does rather count towards my healthy eating project. It’s cooked with a minimal amount of additional fat, and it’s easy to add plenty of vegetables. However, I didn’t choose it because of that.

I chose it because we are overrun with limes and I knew it was something I could prep in advance and just deal with the chicken at the last minute. We have recently extended our home grown herb selection to include oregano too (it’s an a pot and not only is it thriving, it looks great too!) so I liked that I wasn’t going to have to head to the shops to spend $3 or $4 on a packet of sad looking fresh herb.

The original comes from the excellent and reliable Delicious (UK) site. I substituted a lime for the lemon which I think is a good call, as even if you’re not drowning in limes, lemons can end up overpowering dishes like this whereas lime is a much more subtle flavour. Rather than using a whole head of garlic, I used a few cloves (skin on) and added carrots to my pan. We were going to steam some broccoli to serve as a side but you could also pop some broccoli florets in the pan for the last 10 or so minutes of cooking.

The beauty of cooking like this is that you do not have to worry about making a gravy or sauce to go with your meal. That magic just happens for you.

While this is not a true one-pot dish you could make it so by not bothering with browning the chicken. However, I urge you take the time to do so because not only does the finished dish look more attractive, I think it tastes better and the flavour of the self made gravy/sauce is much improved.

Print
Roasted Chicken with Garlic and Herbs

Ingredients

  • 3 or 4 potatoes, cut into chunks
  • 2 carrots, cut into quarters
  • 4-6 cloves of garlic, skin on (as many or as few as you want, really)
  • 1 lime, sliced (about 4 or 5 slices)
  • 2 sprigs of oregano
  • 2 sprigs of thyme
  • handful of pitted kalamata olives
  • ~ 100 mL dry white wine
  • olive oil
  • 4-5 chicken thighs

Instructions

  1. Pre-heat oven to 200°C (180°C fan).
  2. In a large, lidded baking or roasting dish, drizzle a little olive oil and then arrange the vegetables and herbs on top. This can be done in advance.
  3. On the stove, heat a pan with a little oil, season the chicken thighs and brown them on both sides.
  4. When the chicken thighs are browned, place them on top of the vegetables. Put on the lid and place in the oven.
  5. Cook until the chicken juices run clear and the vegetables are done - this will probably be about 30-40 minutes.
  6. Serve with additional steamed vegetables on the side and the sauce from the pan poured over the top.
https://eatingadelaide.com/roasted-chicken-garlic-herbs/

Pork Tacos – Easy and Healthy

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

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I like to think that we eat very healthily and while it’s true that we eat very little processed food, in many ways our diet leaves a lot to be desired. The other week, for example, I made a really delicious kale and chorizo pasta sauce. And finished it off with great dollops of cream. Unprocessed – apart from the chorizo, yes. Healthy – well, yes, because KALE and also tomato and onion … but how many of those brownie points would have been taken away by the chorizo and cream? And you know what – I put bacon in it too! It tasted really good!

After that, I figured I should probably put a bit more effort into ensuring some balance in our diet. I told Andy this and the look of horror he gave me suggested he thought we were about to start eating celery (I love it, he hates it) and lettuce.

I’m not guaranteeing that this is going to last but in a burst of initial enthusiasm I had a look around for ‘healthy’ recipes. There are tons of them – and let’s face it, while fat does indeed mean flavour, I also have an obscenely well stacked spice drawer so there are other ways of making food fun.

Andy loves things in wraps – tacos, tortillas, quesadillas, yiros, all that kind of stuff. Weirdly, because I am a carbohydrate junkie, I am not so bothered about this style of eating so when he suggests it I usually pull a face and try to convince him that something else would be good.

So when I found this pork tacos recipe, a light bulb went off. I can produce something healthy that he will like, with very little effort. Naturally, I had to play around with this. Not least of all the fact that the original recipe uses only kidney beans for the salsa. Despite my love of legumes, kidney beans I am not a fan of. Fortunately, four bean mix to the rescue. Kidney, cannellini, chickpea and butter beans.

With tinned beans ALWAYS rinse them before use. While you can buy ones that are low salt, tipping the beans into a sieve and giving them a rinse in some running water washes off the horrible ‘tinned’ smell, and gets rid of the often quite thick (and salty) water that they’re in.

We’ll be having this again (although I will remember to buy fresh coriander next time!) because it was super quick and delicious. Never mind healthy – even I enjoyed it and enthused about it! With our four small pork schnitzels we had plenty for dinner, with left overs for Andy’s lunch and some left over bean salsa for me. The quantities in the original recipe might just stretch to 4 people but you would probably want some extra salad or not be particularly hungry.

Also, this can be a very easy prepare ahead dinner as the salsa can be made in advance and the pork can sit in the fridge in its marinade. By using pork schnitzels (rather than the original recipe’s choice of pork steaks) you really reduce the cooking time too!

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Pork Tacos – Easy and Healthy

Ingredients

    pork
  • 4 smallish pork schnitzels - about 400g of meat all up
  • olive oil
  • 2 tsp ground cumin
  • 1 tsp ground coriander
  • 1 tsp chilli powder (or to taste)
  • 2 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
  • juice of one lime
    • salsa
  • 1 tin of four bean mix, rinsed and drained
  • ½ ripe avocodo, chopped
  • ½ red onion, finely chopped
  • 2 medium ripe tomatoes, chopped
  • ½ red chilli, finely chopped (seeds removed)
  • juice of one lime
  • fresh coriander - roughly torn or cut
  • salt - to taste
  • 1 packet (6) of small tortillas

Instructions

  1. Place the pork schnitzels in a bowl with the oil, cumin, coriander, chilli powder, garlic and lime juice. Mix well and set aside while you make the salsa and heat a pan.
  2. To make the salsa - mix all the ingredients together and season to taste.
  3. Heat a non stick pan with a little oil and cook the pork schnitzels. Allow them to rest before slicing them.
  4. To serve, place the meat and salsa on a wrap and eat!
  5. I added a smear of sour cream to mine, Andy added sriracha sauce and we both added some sliced lettuce.
https://eatingadelaide.com/pork-tacos-easy-healthy/