Sometimes I crave something different for dinner. Yesterday was one of those days. When I have a friend over, I like to create a tasty meal to share. This recipe ticked both of those boxes for me.
Although I have made apricot chicken before, my original recipe wasn’t satisfying. So, I searched online and found one by Jamie Oliver which looked yummy. His recipe included cinnamon and honey to the mix, I also added curry. I think the spices give it a unique taste. The dried apricots could be replaced with the real thing, or tinned apricots without the juice to reduce the sweetness.
The original recipe can be found here: https://delishsides.com/apricot-chicken-recipe-jamie-oliver/
Easy meal preparation is important to me. I like to enjoy the process of cooking, not just the meal. I served this with steamed zucchini, green beans, capsicum, broccolini, carrot and pumpkin. We both enjoyed it and I hope you do too.
Ingredients:
Method:
Place the oil in a large pan, then add the curry powder, cumin, cinnamon, and stock cubes. Heat until the spices release their fragrance.
Add the onion and garlic and cook until the onion is transparent. Add the chicken to the pan. When the chicken has browned add the honey and stir.
Make a paste with some of the water and then add the remaining water and the paste to the chicken mix. Stir until the sauce thickens. Finally, add the dried apricots.
Simmer for half an hour.
It’s zucchini season again and they are in abundance. A few weeks ago, a friend gave me some of her home-grown zucchinis and a recipe for a zucchini cake. I set about adjusting the recipe to suit my diet and this was the result.
The original recipe contained both SR and plain flour, an egg and was not gluten-free. I have changed the ingredients to gluten-free SR flour, used hazelnut meal rather than plain flour and substituted two chia eggs for the chicken egg. Hence, this recipe is vegan.
The spices give the slice a unique flavour. I hope you enjoy it.
Ingredients:
Method:
Make the chia egg by combining the water and chia seeds. Put this aside for 5 minutes to set. Add the zucchini, oil and maple syrup to the chia egg and mix. Add the remaining ingredients and combine.
Place the mixture in a greased 16cm sq. baking tin. Bake in a 180-degree Celsius oven for 45 minutes.
Enjoy!
This recipe is a take on my Walnut and Hazelnut Biscuits which are very popular amongst my friends. I have replaced the walnuts in my original recipe with pecans.
Neither walnut or pecan paste is available locally, so I throw the nuts into my food processor and process them until they form a paste. This takes a little time and requires stopping the machine to remove the crushed nuts from the sides of the bowl periodically, but it is worth the effort.
The recipe includes chia seeds which add a crunchy texture to the mix. Chia seeds are high in omega-3 fatty acids and are a great source of fibre.
I love the taste of honey, not the cheap commercial stuff, but the more expensive brands. I mostly buy locally as the honey is raw and I like the flavours. The GI of honey can vary greatly, but raw honey has the lowest GI. The type of honey is important as it influences the taste of the biscuits. Honey adds flavour to the nutty mix without creating a sugar rush.
Ingredients:
Method:
Warm the honey to make it easier to mix, then place the pecan paste, hazelnut meal, honey, chia seeds and vanilla essence in a bowl. Mix the ingredients to combine them thoroughly. I used a hand mixer for this.
Form small balls of the mixture and place them on oven trays lined with baking paper. Using a fork, press each biscuit down to flatten. Sprinkle each biscuit with a small amount of the sea salt.
Place the trays in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees Celsius for 12 to 15 minutes, or until they brown slightly.
When the biscuits are cooked, remove them from the oven to cool.
Makes about 60 small biscuits.
It’s winter here in Australia, and it is the time of year we look for soup to warm our tummy! Chicken and corn soup is one of my favourites. I love the flavour of chicken and corn together.
Last night I felt like a warm bowl of soup to share with a friend, chicken and corn came to mind. I wanted more vegetables without watering down the chicken and corn flavour. Hence, in this recipe I have chosen vegetables without a strong flavour. Also, I have used half a kilo of chicken and two cans of corn kernels, including the juice from the cans to boost the chicken and corn flavour.
I paired the soup with freshly baked scones which were packed with chia seeds, nutritional yeast, and grated cheese. One of my earlier recipe blogs contains the recipe for basic scones to which I add the ingredients.
I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!
Ingredients:
Method:
Warm a large saucepan or pan to medium. Add the oil, diced onion, and garlic along with the chicken stock cubes. Cook until the onion looks partially transparent. Add the diced chicken and cook it until it is browned.
Add the diced capsicum, zucchini, broccolini and carrots, along with the two tins of corn, including the juice from each can. Finally, add the water. Simmer for one hour, or until the vegetables are soft.
Using a stick mixer, carefully blend the hot mixture until all the lumps are gone and the soup is an even consistency.
Serve while hot.
Broccoli is one of my favourite vegetables. I like its earthy flavour.
This recipe is my take on a broccoli soup. It includes potato as a thickener, bacon to enhance the flavour, and MasseI salt-reduced chicken stock cubes. The stock cubes have a great taste, and they are vegan if you wish to leave the bacon out. Cumin is one of my favourite spices and adds a unique flavour to this recipe.
Bacon comes with some health risks, such as its high sodium content, the nitrates, and nitrites it contains and the fact that it is highly processed. However, in this instance, the quantity is small, and I think it is worth the risk for the flavour.
If you like broccoli as much as I do, make this recipe, and tell me what you think. I hope you enjoy it.
In love, Jenny
Ingredients:
Method:
Cut the vegetables and bacon into pieces small enough to cook.
Preheat a large saucepan or pan to medium. Add the teaspoon of oil, then the chicken stock, cumin, onion, garlic, and bacon. Stir, cooking until the onion and bacon are cooked.
Add the remaining vegetables, water, and lentils to the hot pan. Stir the lentils through the mixture. Simmer for one hour so that the vegetables are soft, and the lentils are cooked.
When the hot mixture is cooked, carefully use a stick mixer to blend the vegetables until all the lumps are gone and the soup is an even consistency. Serve while hot.
Over Christmas a friend gave me some unshelled walnuts. Recently another friend gave me more. So, this week I began a search for a new biscuit recipe containing walnuts. I came across a recipe for Healthy Peanut Butter Cookies at eatingbirdfood.com. Normally I look past recipes made with peanuts as I am intolerant. But this time I wondered what they would taste like if I made a the walnuts into a paste to replace the peanut butter.
One evening this week I sat down with the walnuts and proceeded to crack the shells using a nut cracker. As I attempted to break them open, I broke the nuts too, and I couldn’t separate all the nuts from the shells. I ended up with sore fingers and a mix of walnut pieces and cracked shells in the same bowl. Never again! The next day I took the bowl outside in the sunlight and picked out the walnut pieces. I had to add a bag of hulled walnut to the mix to give me enough for my recipe after my failed walnut cracking effort.
I placed the walnuts in my food processor and processed until the nuts were ground to a paste. I had to stop the processor and knock the crumbs from the walls of the bowl frequently so that they fell on to the blades. It took about 5 minutes of processing in all, but it worked.
The original recipe uses almond flour which I replaced with hazelnut meal. I increased the other ingredients to match my quantities of walnut paste and hazelnut meal.
The result is delicious! The biscuits have a rich, nutty flavour and although nutritious, are highly calorific, so my advice is to make them small.
Here is my version of the recipe. I hope you enjoy them.
Ingredients:
Method:
Place the walnut paste, hazelnut meal, maple syrup and vanilla essence in a bowl. Mix the ingredients to combine them thoroughly. I used a hand mixer for this.
Form small balls of the mixture and place them on oven trays lined with baking paper. Using a fork, press each biscuit down to flatten. Sprinkle each biscuit with a small amount of the sea salt.
Place the trays in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees Celsius for 12 to 15 minutes, or until they brown slightly.
When the biscuits are cooked, remove them from the oven to cool.
Makes about 60 small biscuits.
Recently, a friend offered me some rhubarb stalks from her garden. I took them gratefully and began searching for a suitable recipe to adapt for my diet. I came across one for Rhubarb Almond Flour Muffins at heartbeetkitchen.com.
I have changed quite a few of the ingredients from the original recipe, including the sugar content. To compensate for this, I used cinnamon. Cinnamon is a great substitute if you wish to reduce the sugar in a recipe. My favourite type is Dutch Cinnamon. I love its flavour and I think it adds something special.
Below is my version of rhubarb muffins, made with hazelnut meal. The original recipe contained two large eggs which I replaced with a chia egg. If you want to use eggs, just remove the water and chia from the recipe.
These muffins are fluffy in texture and comforting to eat. The tiny pieces of rhubarb spread through each muffin add a slight tart flavour.
I hope you enjoy them as much as my friends did.
In love, Jenny
Ingredients
Method
Mix the water and chia seeds in a bowl and leave for 5 minutes until it sets to a gel. Then add the maple syrup, coconut oil, vanilla, cinnamon and rice milk to the gel and mix the ingredients together.
Next add the hazelnut meal, flour, baking soda and baking powder to the mix and combine. Finally add the chopped rhubarb to the batter, ensuring the ingredients are combined.
Spoon the batter into a medium muffin tin. I used a soup spoon for this. Gently press the mixture into the tin so that it fills them to overflowing.
Place in a 180-degree oven. Cook for 25 minutes, turning the tray roughly half-way through.
Take the trays from the oven. Remove the muffins from the tin when cool.
Makes 12 muffins.
Over the last few weeks my friends have given me lots of zucchinis. There is often an excess supply here in Australia at this time of year. So, I needed a new recipe to use them.
While searching the internet I came across this recipe which I have adapted to suit my food intolerances: https://www.curatedlifestudio.com/zucchini-and-carrot-muffins/
I have used lactose free cheese, but any cheese would be suitable. The gluten free flour can be replaced with normal SR flour. The rice milk can be replaced with any plant or cow’s milk.
Chia seeds, pepita seeds or sunflower seeds would work well.
These muffins would make a great lunch time alternative to bread. Halve them and fill with salad and your choice of meat.
Enjoy!
Ingredients:
Method:
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.
Grate the zucchini then squeeze to remove excess fluid, then place all the ingredients in a large bowl. Mix the ingredients with a spoon until the dough sticks together.
Next, spoon the dough into greased, medium sized muffin tins, gently pressing the mixture down.
Place the muffins into the preheated oven. Cook for a total of 25 minutes, swapping tins halfway.
Insert a skewer into one of the muffins. If the skewer comes out clean, remove the muffins from the oven.
Leave to cool in the tins.
Makes 24 medium sized muffins.
Healthy and nutritious food does not have to be tasteless and boring. I enjoy making healthy alternatives to my old favourites. It is a relief to know that I can eat food which tastes delicious and is good for my health.
Christmas food is traditionally rich, but not always healthy. As this time of year looms, we all struggle to maintain our healthy eating patterns. But what if we could reinvent some of these recipes so that they not only taste good, but are good for us?
Improving our health does not always mean we have to give up the food we enjoy. We can change these foods to improve their nutrition.
This is my take on the traditional carrot cake. By reducing the sugar and flour, increasing the amount of grated carrot, and adding nut meal to the mix the glycaemic index is reduced and the nutritional value is improved.
This recipe is not only delicious, but it is healthy. I hope you enjoy it.
Ingredients:
Method:
Place the grated carrots, yoghurt, vanilla, oil, and maple syrup in a bowl then mix to combine. Add the remaining ingredients and combine thoroughly.
Spoon the mixture into greased muffin trays, ensuring each muffin contains the same amount. I used 2 trays making 24 small muffins in total.
Place the muffins in a 180-degree oven. Cook for 25 minutes, swapping the trays mid-way through the cooking process
Remove the trays from the oven. When cool the muffins should be easy to remove.
Makes 24 small muffins.
