Recipes

Roasted Chicken with Garlic and Herbs

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

20150319_174623

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

20150318_205531

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!

Print
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/

Fig and Sour Cream Cake

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

20150130_110538

A friend of mine has recently enjoyed a surfeit of fresh fruit. Apparently, the birds in his suburb aren’t quite as fat as those in my suburb (hello, denuded plum and pear trees) and he spent a weekend preserving fruit. The upshot of this was that I received a jar of fig jam as well as a big container full of figs.

I duly ate a ton of fresh figs, tried to share them with Master 4 (he refused, although I suspect that his curiosity would eventually have got the better of him) and then needed to think up a way to use up some more in a rather more bulk fashion. I also had some sour cream kicking around in the fridge that needed using up (we had planned to make some avocado cream to go with some quesadillas but lost interest) so I figured that a fig and sour cream cake would use up both figs and sour cream.

A quick recce of the internet didn’t turn up the ideal recipe but I figured I have enough cake baking experience to borrow a few ideas here and there and then wing it.

The result was excellent – not massively figgy (I was being a bit cautious as the extra moisture in fresh fruit can cause problems) but the cake had good flavour and has kept exceptionally well. Straight out of the oven it was very fragile and crumbly but by day 2 it had firmed up. It is beautifully moist and the mix of vanilla and fig flavours is just delicious.

Print
Fig and Sour Cream Cake

Ingredients

  • 125g unsalted butter, softened
  • 175g caster sugar
  • 200g self raising flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp vanilla paste (I used Heilala - that stuff is pretty good!)
  • 2 eggs
  • 150g sour cream
  • 4-6 figs, finely chopped

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 160°C fan (180°C conventional). Grease and base line a 20cm springform tin.
  2. Cream the butter and sugar. Add the vanilla paste. Combine the flour and baking powder and then add to the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time then beat through the sour cream.
  3. Finally, lightly beat through the chopped figs.
  4. It is a relatively loose mixture.
  5. Tip into the prepared cake tin nad bake for 40-45 minutes (45 minutes in my oven) - until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
  6. Allow to cool a little in the pan before cooling on a rack. The cake will sink but will sink EVENLY (if it collapses in the middle, it's underdone!).
  7. This cake doesn't need icing but you could serve with yoghurt or cream.
https://eatingadelaide.com/fig-sour-cream-cake/