Easy Veggie Nuggets

These veggie nuggets are aimed at children but I think would be just as good for adults - and I wonder if instead of shaping into individual nuggets or patties, it would work made into a log and sliced - a bit like a nut roast for Sunday dinner.

The recipe came from an Instagram account called @zaynesplate - it’s really easy to make and you can adapt it with your own vegetables. You can see the recipe here.

I used broccoli, carrots, chickpeas, rolled oats and cheese as the recipe suggests. I think if you were making this for adults or older children I wouldn’t blend it and would leave the texture more varied, and perhaps add sweet corn as well. My daughter enjoyed these and there was plenty left to go into the freezer for next time.

Winter Warmer recipe - Cheesy Sausage, Broccoli and Quinoa Bake

I wanted to share this dish I made recently from a recipe by the Chunky Chef as it’s a perfect winter warmer and easy to make.

The quantities can be easily scaled up or down - prepare some quinoa according to the pack instructions (rinsing then simmering on the hob). When cool, fluff with a fork.

Fry some sausages in a pan and at the same time, briefly steam some broccoli (I did this in the microwave). 

You also need a cheese sauce which you can either make from scratch or use a packet mix.

Mix the sausages, broccoli and quinoa into a large greased ovenproof dish and pour over the cheese sauce. Sprinkle the top with breadcrumbs and grated cheese and bake in the oven until brown on top.

The quinoa is a nice change as I don’t eat it very often but it works really well in this recipe. The cheese sauce is what brings it all together and while I made it with regular pork sausages, I am tempted to try this again with chicken sausage!

Chicken Broccoli Pasta Soup

This soup is definitely a meal in itself - in fact it's barely a soup! The good thing about it is that you can thin it down as much as you like - so if you want something really chunky and filling (that's more like a bowl of pasta than soup) you can have it, or if you want to be able to drink your lunch rather than eat it with a fork (let alone a spoon) then you can do that too!

I came across a recipe for chicken broccoli alfredo soup on Food.com and decided to make it for my lunch last Sunday; I did reduce the quantity of the ingredients but still had enough left for the rest of the week!

Instead of half-and-half which you can't get in the UK, I used mainly milk with a dash of double cream. The resulting soup was deliciously creamy. I didn't have any farfalle pasta so I used macaroni which worked well.

This was a very filling soup that tasted rich and creamy and keeps well for a few days afterwards though you might find you need to add some water to thin it out again once it has been in the fridge for a while!

I'm sharing this with Cook Once Eat Twice, hosted by Corina at Searching for Spice.

Cheesy Broccoli Soup

I've made broccoli and stilton soup before but not used Cheddar in it. I decided to try another recipe from 'America's Most Wanted Recipes' - I went through a bit of a phase of using this book a few months back - and like many of the recipes in this book, it called for velveeta cheese. You can't get this in the UK and after reading a description online I decided that Cheddar was relatively close in flavour and texture.

Unusually, as broccoli soup is often vegetarian, and based on pretty much just broccoli and vegetable stock, this soup uses canned chicken soup as a base! It did taste really nice and though not as low calorie as the broccoli soup I would normally make it was very filling and would make a good lunch at this time of year - something you could take to work as well as enjoy at home.

To serve 4, you need:
4 cups water
2 cups potato, peeled and diced
1 chicken stock cube
I cup onion, peeled and diced
1 head broccoli, chopped
400ml can cream of chicken soup
300g Cheddar, grated

Heat the water, potato, stock cube, onion and broccoli in a large pan until the vegetables are tender. Stir in the soup and Cheddar and heat through, stirring occasionally, until the cheese has melted.

Cheesy Broccoli Bites

I found this recipe for broccoli bites in a book called America's Most Wanted Recipes, which aims to recreate dishes from popular US restaurant chains. This one comes from Bennigan;'s, which I've never heard of, despite having visited 21 US states over the years.

This is broccoli, but not as you know it! I guess this is one way to get people to eat their vegetables... it's mixed with bacon, cheese, onion, rolled in breadcrumbs and fried! So it's really not very healthy, but it is still broccoli I guess... and it tastes amazing! I made these to go with pasta and they worked really well; the recipe suggests to serve them with a honey mustard dressing.

The recipe said to use  Monterey Jack and Colby cheese, neither of which I could get hold of, so I used cheddar. It also called for a 16 ounce box of frozen chopped broccoli, thawed and drained. You can of course get frozen broccoli here but I wanted to use fresh so I cooked it in a pan of boiling water then chopped it up. So this is what I did:

To serve 4, you need;
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup cheddar, grated

 

 

1 head broccoli, cooked and chopped
5 tbsp. bacon bits or pancetta
1 tbsp. finely diced onion
2 tbsp. plain flour
about 100g breadcrumbs
oil for frying

Mix the cheddar, broccoli, bacon, onion and flour in a bowl and refrigerate for an hour. Heat an inch of oil in a large frying pan. Meanwhile form the broccoli mixture into balls, roll in the beaten egg and then the breadcrumbs and fry each one in the hot oil. Drain on kitchen paper and serve hot.

Slimming World adapted Cheesy Broccoli and Cauliflower Bake

This broccoli and cauliflower bake can either be served as a side dish or as a main meal; it's a low-fat Slimming World recipe that is pretty filling and can be made in a large casserole dish to feed the whole family.

The recipe uses broccoli but I decided to make this with both broccoli and cauliflower and it worked really well - if you were having this as the main part of your meal, I think just having broccoli on its own would be a bit boring. I don't like cherry tomatoes so instead used tinned tomatoes.

 To serve 4, you need:
250g cauliflower florets
250g broccoli florets
200g cherry tomatoes, halved and quartered, or 200g tin chopped tomatoes
2 eggs, beaten
200g fat-free cottage cheese with onion and chives
3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
salt, pepper
4 tbsp. finely chopped parsley
110g reduced fat Cheddar, grated

This recipe has 4 syns per serving if you are following Slimming World's plan.

Preheat oven to 220C. Cook the cauliflower and broccoli in a pan of lightly salted water and drain.

Mix the broccoli, cauliflower, spring onions and tomato in a large ovenproof dish. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs with the cottage cheese and garlic. Season and add the parsley.

Pour over the vegetables and fold together. Sprinkle the cheese on top and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes.

Spiralized Vegetables with Broccoli Pesto

The lengths I go to for dieting… I wasn’t looking forward to my dinner recently as I’d decided to make pesto out of broccoli and serve it over spiralized veg, while my fiancé was tucking in to a pizza. Though as he correctly pointed out, it was a frozen pizza and he could have ordered Domino’s but didn’t as he knew it would make it harder for me - and I was the one who cooked him the pizza!

 

But when I actually started to eat my dinner I was surprised at how good it actually tasted, and I really enjoyed it. Which is not to say I wouldn’t rather have had a pizza but I have a wedding dress to get in to!

 

The recipe comes from I Quit Sugar by Sarah Wilson which has become a book I turn to a lot at the moment!

  

To serve one, you need:

Spiralized veg: I used half a tub of spiralized carrot from Tesco (it’s hard to put a carrot through a spiralizer unless it’s a really thick one), and I spiralized half a butternut squash to go with it.

For the pesto:

1 cup broccoli florets, steamed until tender

1 spring onion, peeled

1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed

2 tbsp olive oil

Juice of ½ lemon

15g grated parmesan or 30g cashews, soaked in water for 1-4 hours and drained – but I didn’t have time to do this and used them without soaking and it worked pretty much fine I think. I also cheated and used both the parmesan and the cashews which made the pesto more substantial and gave it a lovely flavour.

Salt and pepper to taste

Basically I put all the ingredients in a food processor

 

Pulse until you have a thick green paste

Serve over spiralized veg, which I find best gently steamed or stir fried so it isn't raw but it doesn't take much cooking:

I'm sending this to Meat Free Mondays, hosted by Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes. Also this recipe would be vegan if you left out the parmesan.

 

Spiralized Salmon and Broccoli Balls with Carrot Pineapple Rice

This recipe comes from Ali Maffucci's book Inspiralized, and takes a bit of preparation but the cooking time itself is minimal - and more importantly, it tastes amazing. If you've only spiralized courgette or butternut squash and used it instead of pasta so far, you are really missing out - there are so many ways you can use your spiralizer, but you could also make this recipe even if you don't have one.

I don't want to repeat the entire recipe as I'm sure Ali would appreciate it if you bought the book but I'm going to describe what I did. The recipe consist of three elements - salmon and broccoli balls, which I thought would be like fishcakes minus the potato but actually were quite different; homemade teriyaki sauce; and carrot 'rice' cooked with spring onion and pineapple.

I started by making the salmon balls. Preheat the oven, and pulse some broccoli in a food processor. Add a piece of salmon, some garlic and ginger and onion or shallot and pulse again. Turn the food processor off, and scoop the mixture into balls. Place on a foil-lined baking sheet and bake in the oven for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile make the teriyaki sauce by mixing soy sauce, mirin, honey, garlic and ginger.

After the salmon balls have baked for 15 minutes, drizzle over a couple of spoonfuls of the teriyaki sauce and bake for another 10 minutes.

Meanwhile spiralize some carrots -you need to choose quite thick ones otherwise it's tricky. I used three carrots; once they are spiralized, wash out the bowl of the food processor and pulse the carrots until you have a rice-like consistency.

In a small pan, heat a little coconut oil and fry some chopped spring onion, garlic and ginger. Add the carrot rice, some chopped pineapple and a little teriyaki sauce and stir fry for a few minutes. Serve the salmon and broccoli balls on top of the carrot. This was a delicious meal and I felt very healthy!

I'm entering this in Spiralizer Saturday, the blog challenge I run for all things spiralized. If you have any good recipes, link them up here!

I'm also sending this to Extra Veg, hosted by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours.

Sweet Potato and Halloumi Burger

Who doesn't love a good burger? But burgers don't have to be beef or even chicken - as my Burger recipe book with over 100 recipes shows. I made these when my boyfriend's mum came to dinner just before Christmas; she is vegetarian and I wanted to make something that would be different from the food we would be eating over Christmas. My mum and I - who are not vegetarians - really enjoyed these burgers too, while my boyfriend and dad had homemade beef burgers.

These burgers are soft -a little like fishcakes in texture - but as long as you are not expecting a firm burger like a beef burger, these are great.

To make three, you need:
200g sweet potatoes
100g broccoli
1 clove garlic, crushed
half a red onion, finely chopped
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
100g halloumi cheese, grated
1 tbsp. flour
1 tbsp. vegetable oil
burger buns

 

Cook the sweet potato in a pan of salted water until tender, then add the broccoli for the last few minutes and cook until tender. Drain and mash both together.

Add the garlic, chilli, cheese and season with salt and pepper. Use your hands to shape the mixture into patties, coat in the flour, and put on a plate in the fridge for about an hour to firm up.

Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the burgers on both sides and serve in bread rolls.

These were tasty, low in fat and a good way to get some extra vegetables into your meals! In fact it Is so virtuous compared to a regular burger that I am sending this to the Spice Trail challenge as the theme this month is 'temple food'. The challenge is hosted by Vanesther at Bangers and Mash.

I'm also sending this to Eat Your Greens, hosted by Shaheen at Allotment 2 Kitchen. The green vegetable in this is broccoli.

Shaheen also runs the Vegetable Palette challenge and this month the theme is any veg that you love - and I love broccoli and sweet potato!

Extra Veg, a challenge aimed at getting us to eat an extra portion of veg, is hosted by Kerry Cooks this month, on behalf of Helen at Fuss Free Flavours and Michelle at Utterly Scrummy.

Vegetarian Winter Crumble

Recently my parents came to stay for the first time since I moved house and we invited my boyfriend's mum over for dinner for the first time as well. She's vegetarian so I turned to a book called the Creative Vegetarian I picked up recently in a charity shop, in the hope that it would have some more interesting recipes. It's not illustrated so it's hard sometimes to imagine what a particular dish might be like, but this one caught my attention - it's basically a root vegetable pie, but instead of a pastry or mashed potato topping, it has crumble - like you'd have on an apple crumble, but savoury. It turned out to be really nice; the root vegetables are perfect for this time of year. It was filling and the cider sauce had a lovely flavour.

I did make one significant change from the recipe, as it called for a tin of black eyed beans which I just didn't think went with the English root vegetables, so I left it out. I also adjusted the quantities for the sauce as it didn't seem quite right. Finally, the last stage of the recipe after you have done the root veg and made the sauce - before you spoon over the topping - is to add some sliced tomatoes and I completely forgot! But I don't think the recipe needs them at all (you may disagree), so this is what I did.

To serve 4-6, you need:
90g butter or marg
120g flour
60g rolled oats
120g vegetarian cheese, grated
280ml cider
175ml vegetable stock
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp cornflour
2 parsnips
2 carrots
1 head broccoli
1/2 head cauliflower
1 stick celery

Preheat the oven to 175C. Make the topping by rubbing the butter into the flour to make breadcrumbs then mix in the oats and the cheese. Put to one side.

Peel and slice the parsnips and carrots, place in a pan of slightly salted water and bring to the boil. Add the broccoli, cauliflower and celery and parboil until slightly softened but not fully cooked.

In another pan bring the cider and stock to simmering point and add the sugar. Mix the cornflour with a little water and stir into the pan; keep stirring the liquid as it simmers until it has thickened. Remove from the heat.

Spoon the vegetables into a large casserole dish and pour over the liquid. Spoon the crumble topping evenly over the top and place in the oven for half an hour until the topping is crisp.

I served this with potato wedges but really it's a one-pot meal in itself, which you can prepare in advance and finish off in the oven later.  It's great for a winter's day!

I'm sending this to the Vegetable Palette challenge, hosted by Shaheen at Allotment2Kitchen, as the chosen colour this month is white vegetables and parsnips and cauliflowers are white.

She is also hosting the Eat Your Greens challenge which asks for recipes using green veg which this also includes.

Broccoli, Courgette and Stilton Soup

I'm trying to eat more veg this month, and I also wanted to use up some cheese from Christmas, so I decided broccoli and stilton soup would be a great idea. I am a pretty fussy eater and don't like a lot of veg, so had an idea of sneaking some hidden veg... into my own food! My theory was that if I couldn't see it, and hopefully couldn't taste it, I wouldn't mind eating it. Courgette (zucchini) seemed a good option!

I can only give rough quantities for this recipe as it depends how thick you like your soup. To serve 3/4 you need:

1 head broccoli

about 100g stilton or 6 Laughing Cow Light blue cheese triangles

about 1 pint vegetable stock

half a courgette (zucchini)

salt, pepper

crispy bacon pieces to serve (optional)

Chop the broccoli into florets

And slice the courgette

You can either use leftover Stilton...

... or if you want to make this soup low fat and Slimming World friendly, use Laughing Cow Light Blue Cheese.

Bring the vegetable stock to the boil in a pan and simmer the broccoli and courgette until tender. Add the cheese and stir until melted.

Blend to a smooth soup either using a hand blender in the saucepan or by transferring the soup to a standalone blender.

I had some leftover bits of crispy bacon I decided to serve on top of the soup, the different texture and taste complemented the flavour of the soup really well.

Most importantly, I couldn't taste the courgette - so I successfully squeezed an extra portion of veg into this meal. The soup lasted me three days and I took it into work for lunch so it was both healthy and thrifty, which is a great combination for January!

First I am sending this to Family Foodies, the blog challenge hosted by Vanesther at Bangers and Mash and Louisa at Eat Your Veg, as the theme this month is hidden goodies (that is, hidden fruit and veg).

The theme for this month's No Croutons Required, hosted by Lisa's Kitchen and Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes, is a vegetarian soup or salad. Obviously if you were making this for vegetarians, leave off the bacon! You should also check that the cheese is made with rennet that does not come from animals and is suitable for vegetarians.

Louisa at Eat Your Veg is also hosting the Four Seasons Food challenge along with Anneli at Delicieux, and they are looking for virtuous recipes this month, so I think my vegetable soup - with extra hidden veg - is a good example.

On a similar note, Helen at Fuss Free Flavours and Michelle at Utterly Scrummy are hosting a new challenge, Extra Veg. They want to encourage us to eat an extra portion of vegetables whenever we can - so while this broccoli soup alone would count, I've also added the extra portion of veg with the hidden courgette.

January's Feel Good Food challenge, hosted by A Kick at the Pantry Door, is tasty and inexpensive. You can use vegetables that are a little past their best in this soup, and it's a good way to use up leftover cheese (eg from Christmas) so this is a pretty frugal recipe.

I'm not done yet... January's Cheese Please challenge, hosted by Fromage Homage, is comfort food and winter warmers. Soup is a lovely winter warmer and since I've used stilton I am sending this over.

Simply Food is hosting the event Let's Cook with Green Vegetables, and since it has to be a vegetarian recipe, you'll need to leave out the bacon and check your cheese is vegetarian.

And finally I am sending this to Turquoise Lemons' No Waste Food Challenge as you can use leftover veg and the cheese was hanging around from Christmas.