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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/

An Easy Chickpea Summer Salad

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

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While the silly season is over (and thank goodness for that – I anticipate it will take me a good couple of months to recover!) summer feels like it’s just ramping up.

Here in South Australia, the mercury has already topped 44°C and brought with it an awful and devastating bushfire and we are facing some more scary (that’s “hot”) conditions this week.

This very easy chickpea salad is a perfect dinner in its own right on a hot night, or an ideal accompaniment to a BBQ. It’s also very flexible. At some point I read about a chickpea salad but I failed to find the recipe. However, a quick google reveals a ton of ideas. I think avocado would be a brilliant addition to this salad but in order to maintain a bright and colourful appearance you would have to add it at the last minute. This was no good for me as I was taking this to a New Year’s Eve BBQ and needed it made in advance. Add in any fresh herbs you have access to – I was intending to use mint from the garden but forgot (which I now regret, as the mint suffered during the heat). Consider the recipe that follows a bare-bones starting point and flesh it out as you wish. If you have fresh, warm, sunkissed tomatoes from the garden, why not add those? Work with what you have. In cooler months, tossing through some roasted vegetables such as pumpkin or courgette/zucchini could work well too.

For the dressing, I used some Cobram Estate chilli infused oil which I was given as a Christmas present. This gave the salad a lovely, warming chilli kick without being over the top. I have not been a big user of flavoured oils in the past, but this one definitely gets a bit tick from me.

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An Easy Chickpea Summer Salad

Ingredients

  • 1 tin of chickpeas, rinsed and well drained
  • ½ red onion, finely chopped
  • 50g Australian feta, finely chopped
  • ¼ red capsicum, finely chopped
  • fresh parsley, finely chopped
  • juice of half a lemon
  • olive oil
  • pepper
  • salt

Instructions

  1. Mix all the ingredients together and season to taste.
https://eatingadelaide.com/easy-chickpea-summer-salad/

Super Quick and Easy Chicken Wraps

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

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Action shot! Another awful photo but I have just acquired a new phone … will you be able to tell the difference?!

I’m not sure whether I should be putting a disclaimer on this piece or not … I received this product in a goody bag at a totally unrelated event (albeit one that celebrated South Australian produce). So while I didn’t pay for it, I have no relationship with either the producer or its marketing/PR people.

Anyway, wraps in one form or another are always a great hit for an easy dinner here. You do have to make sure you buy a decent wrap: the wrong form of carbohydrate can either ruin the flavour of your dinner or leave it all over your lap. But once you have sorted the bread part, you just need to cook a little meat, chop a little salad and find a dollop of yoghurt and you are good to go.

Of course, you do need to get flavour into the meat (or filling). Making felafel – especially if you decide to crack out the deep fat fryer – can be time consuming and even whipping up a Mexican inspired filling can take a little while.

I am not normally a fan of pre-prepared spice mixes because you are, by and large, paying for salt, salt, a bit more salt and then a few other bits and pieces. I’m fortunate to have a well stocked spice drawer and the inclination to mix-my-own which is not only more satisfying but also more cost effective.

However, Outback Pride’s Tanami Fire is a spice mix that I am not inclined to make myself and that both Andy and I have decided we would definitely part with our hard earned for.

For those not in the know, the Tanami Desert is 26 million hectares of desert in Australia’s Northern Territory and it is home to several endangered species.

Tanami Fire is described as a ‘hot spice sprinkle’ which is made from a variety of native Australian plants I can almost guarantee you won’t have kicking around your spice cupboard. The list of ingredients reads: ground Tanami apples, native pepperberry, lemon aspen, garlic, ginger, chilli flakes, salt and saltbush flakes. The label notes that the native Australian ingredients have been grown in a bio-dynamic environment. Outback Pride is a South Australian company that involves the state’s traditional communities in production and provides not only jobs but training in associated industries such as horticulture.

So it’s an all round feel good story.

Of course, that matters not a jot if the end product is not tasty. But tasty it is. We’ve used it several times now in different capacities, but by far the easiest has been to create a quick and tasty filling for a wrap.

No proper recipe today – simply dice or slice your meat (in our case, chicken) and sprinkle generously with the spice mix. A marinade for half an hour or so, if you can afford it, and then fry up. Serve in the wrap on top of salad and with some yoghurt. If you really want to do a bit more chopping, mix some finely minced garlic through that yoghurt!

The Tanami Fire mix has a citrussy spicy flavour – it is quite hot so if you’re a bit averse to chilli go easy. We’ve been thrashing it a bit and come BBQ time it will be perfect as a marinade or to use after the fact to jazz up some meat.