Slimming World Linguine with Crab and Chilli

This dish reminds me of something I would order in an Italian restaurant or better still, eat while on holiday somewhere sunny, ideally with a view of the ocean. It's actually based on a Slimming World recipe for the rather more prosaically named 'crab noodles' and is really quick to throw together.

Cook some linguine or spaghetti according to pack instructions; when is cooked, drain, and add some tinned crab (a small tin will do 1-2 people depending on how generous you want to be with the crab), a few dried red chilli flakes or a pinch of fresh chopped red chilli, some finely chopped red onion, a squeeze of lime juice, and the grated zest of the lime, and some fresh parsley on top. Serve with broccoli or a salad on the side. Delicious!

Slow Cooker Lemon Chilli Chicken

I've been using my slow cooker a lot lately as I work from home every Tuesday, meaning I can put something on at lunchtime, forget about it while I go back to my laptop and work for the rest of the day. When I work from home I pick my husband up from the train station which means I would otherwise have to wait until we were back to start dinner, so this way it's already cooked!
I mainly do chicken in the slow cooker as my husband is a very fussy eater and he likes chicken. I love lemon chicken but he doesn't like sweet and savoury food together, and lemon chicken often ends up tasting quite sweet and tangy at the same time. I came across a recipe for lemon chilli chicken on SlimmingEats.com which was ideal, as it's citrusy and spicy and not really sweet at all.

The recipe given is cooked in a pan while I did mine in the slow cooker, and I didn't reduce the sauce at the end so it was quite thin - I think it would be nicer thickened a little.

I browned the chicken in a pan and added the spices - coriander, cumin, chilli, turmeric:

and then put the chicken in the slow cooker on high for 4 hours, along with the stock, lemon zest and juice

Serve with rice and a green veg.

One-Pot Cheeseburger Chilli

I wanted to make spaghetti Bolognese for dinner but realised I’d run out of spaghetti, so instead of just using a different shape of pasta I decided to try out this recipe for “cheeseburger chilli”. It’s basically minced beef in a tomato sauce, served with pasta and topped with cheese. The chilli element comes from adding chopped red chilli and red kidney beans – I thought I had a tin in the cupboard but it turned out to be black eyed beans. I don’t really like those (it’s mainly the texture – I don’t eat baked beans either) so I pulsed them in a blender together with the passata to make a healthier tomato sauce with hidden veg. Both red kidney beans and black eyed beans are meant to be good to eat if you have high blood pressure, which I do, so that's another bonus.

 

The other thing about this recipe that stood out was the way that the pasta is cooked. This is a one-pot meal where you fry the mince and then add the pasta and water into the same pan. I used a bit too much water so it didn’t all get absorbed and I had to drain a little away, and I was worried that I was draining some of the flavour out of the meat, but it tasted really good. If you’re looking for a hearty, healthy meal that won’t mean a lot of washing up then I recommend you try this!
 

 

 

To serve two, you need:

half an onion, peeled and chopped

1 chilli or 1-2 tsp Very Lazy chopped chilli, to taste (err on the side of caution if you don't like it too hot!)

2 tbsp. olive oil or 1 tsp coconut oil which is what I used

300-400g minced beef depending on how big an appetite you have

100-150g pasta like penne or macaroni, ditto

300g passata

150g black eyed beans or red kidney beans (the latter is preferable)

2 tbsp. chopped fresh parsley

50g grated cheese like Cheddar or Emmental plus extra to sprinkle on top if you like

 

If using a whole chilli, carefully remove the stalk and seeds and chop it finely. Heat the oil in a large saucepan and fry the onion, chilli and mince until the mince has browned.

 

If you don't like the texture of the beans (or have children who won't eat it if they see them) then pulse in a blender with the passata and add to the mince. Or if you have more grown up tastes than I do, add the passata and beans straight into the pan. Season with salt and pepper.

 

 

Then - and this is the part I found weird - add the pasta to the pan and enough water to cover the pasta. Simmer until the pasta is cooked - you may have to drain off a bit of water. Finally stir in the cheese, and serve topped with fresh herbs and a sprinkling of cheese if you like.

 

Super-Fast Chilli and Cheese Beer Bread and Vegetable Soup

Last weekend I decided to make soup and bread for lunch. I had a packet of diced vegetables that were called 'soup mix', the idea being you just bung them all in a pan with some stock. I'd planned to set my breadmaker machine the night before so we could have nice fresh bread in time for lunch - and completely forgot.

Was I going to have to give up on the idea of having fresh bread with soup (or send the reluctant other half out to buy some)? Surely there must be a quick bread recipe out there that I could make in a couple of hours from start to finish (I didn't get up very early on the Sunday morning so lunch was only a couple of hours away!). Luckily, there was: there are bread recipes you don't need to leave to prove, and this is one of them.

It's a recipe from the Telegraph for 'easy beer bread with parmesan and garlic'. I think the beer replaces yeast and all you have to do is mix everything and cook it for just under an hour.

I did change the recipe a fair bit as I didn't have buckwheat flour, polenta, fresh thyme and couldn't be bothered to go into the garden to see if I still had any rosemary (it was raining!), oh and I did't have any parmesan either! Instead I looked in the fridge to see what I did have and decided to create my own flavour of mature cheddar and chilli. I also forgot to add the little bit of butter at the end but it was fine without. So here's what I did:

Super-Fast Chilli and Cheese Beer Bread - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

260g strong white bread flour
100g wholemeal plain flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
60g caster sugar
3 cloves garlic, crushed
50g mature cheddar, diced
2 tsp Very Lazy chopped red chillis
300ml bottle beer

Preheat oven to 190C and grease a loaf tin. Mix all the dry ingredients.

Add the beer and mix in well

Spoon into the prepared loaf tin and bake in the oven for 50 minutes

In the meantime here is my soup mix, which I simply simmered with some vegetable stock until the veg was soft, then put it in a blender.

I added some more water as it was a bit thick

 

 Here's the finished loaf of bread

The garlic, cheese and chilli flavours all came through really strongly, so this is a good bread to serve alongside a simple soup - one that perhaps doesn't have an overpowering flavour of its own.

Lunch! And possibly the fastest loaf of bread I've ever made.

I'm sending this to Bready Steady Go, hosted by Jen's Food and Michelle of Utterly Scrummy.

And also to Extra Veg, hosted this month by Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary on behalf of Michelle at Utterly Scrummy again, and Helen at Fuss Free Flavours.

Food Doctor Oriental Chicken

This weekend's Formula 1 Grand Prix takes place in China so in honour of the event - and for my challenge Formula 1 Foods - I wanted to cook something Chinese. I hadn't used my Food Doctor cookery book in a while so took it from the shelf and found a recipe for Oriental Chicken that looked really healthy and quick enough to make for a weeknight dinner. The recipe does suggest you marinade the chicken for half an hour but I didn't due to lack of time, and it tasted fine. I did have a confession to make though, I only realised at the last minute that I didn't have any lime, so I had to use lemon instead!

To serve 2, you need:
2 chicken breasts
half a fresh red chilli, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
zest and juice of 1 lime
2 tbsp. soy sauce

Preheat the oven to 180C. Mix the marinade ingredients and make some deep cuts in each chicken breast. Place the chicken on a large piece of foil and carefully spoon over the marinade, making sure it gets right into the cuts you have made.

Seal up the foil in a parcel and bake in the oven for 30 minutes. Slice the chicken to serve and spoon over a little of the sauce. This is really good served with green veg and rice.

I'm sending this to Formula 1 Foods, the blog challenge I host, as the theme is China.

Piri Piri Chicken

I've made peri peri chicken before which I think is a South African recipe- at least Nando's, which is famous for its peri peri chicken, is a South African restaurant chain. I wanted to make something to represent Portugal for Chris's Bloggers Around The World challenge and when I browsed for Portuguese recipes on the internet, I came across several piri piri chicken recipes. I'm not sure how much of a difference there is between peri peri and piri piri and wonder if anyone can enlighten me?

I wanted a simple recipe that I could make for a quick week night dinner and used this one from Taste.com.  and adapted it as this recipe was to marinade a whole chicken and I wanted to use breasts. To serve two, you need:

2 chicken breasts

1 clove garlic, crushed, or a squeeze of garlic paste

1cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and chopped or a squeeze of ginger paste (a great timesaver!)

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp dried chilli flakes

1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped

Put all the ingredients other than the chicken in a bowl and mix well.

Marinade the chicken either for a few hours or overnight. If you don't have time to do that, you can even cook the chicken straight away and it will still have a lovely flavour. Bake in a preheated oven for about 25-30 minutes until the chicken is cooked, which will depend on how large the pieces are. I sliced my chicken breasts through the middle to have four thin pieces.

The cooked chicken

I served the chicken in buns to make a quick, spicy and importantly fairly low-fat chicken burger. It was really nice and definitely had a bit of a kick!

I'm sending this to Chris at Cooking Around the World for his World Cup blog challenge.

Lemongrass Chilli Chicken

This is a Vietnamese recipe called Ga xao xa ot. It is a coconut milk-based curry using lemongrass, garlic and chilli - it was a lot lighter but also a lot spicier than the tomato-based Indian curries I usually make. I chose this recipe so I could take part in this month's Bloggers Around the World challenge, as the country this month is Vietnam.

I'm lucky enough to have been to Vietnam at someone else's expense - I used to be a financial journalist on one of the biggest newspapers in the UK. I wrote about insurance companies, among other things, and one company decided to take two leading (ahem) journalists to visit its Asian operations. So in my 20s I found myself flying business class to Hong Kong and Vietnam. Unfortunately I don't remember much about the food I ate there at all. It was a whirlwind trip - two days in Hong Kong visiting the company's office there and meeting with various people, and no sightseeing but I did squeeze in afternoon tea at our hotel (I was far too jet lagged for sightseeing anyway, I recall!). Then we flew to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam for two days, for more meetings but this time we also got taken to a market where I bought a handbag and to the War Museum which was fascinating - the Vietnam war told from the perspective of the Vietnamese. This would have been in 2006 I think... eight years ago is a long time when you are trying to remember what meals you ate. I do remember my first ever time doing karaoke was in a bar in Hong Kong with the journalist who accompanied me on the trip, watched by a very bemused PR from the company we were out there visiting!

Still, I enjoy Asian food of all varieties and it was a nice opportunity to browse the internet for Vietnamese dishes. I found this recipe for lemongrass chilli chicken on an Australian website called SBS. I adapted the recipe to use coconut milk instead of 'young coconut juice', whatever that is.

 To serve two, you need:

40 ml fish sauce
1 tbsp sugar
1 lemongrass stalk, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely diced
1 long red chilli, finely diced, or 1 tsp dried chilli flakes
300g mini chicken fillets
20 ml vegetable oil
100 ml coconut milk
1/4 onion, cut into wedges

Mix the fish sauce and sugar and finely chop the lemongrass - I found it easiest to do this by snipping with scissors. Crush the garlic and mix with the chopped chilli or chilli flakes and mix in with the fish sauce, sugar and lemongrass.

Mix with the chicken and leave to marinade for a few hours or overnight.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and tip the chicken and the marinade into the pan. Fry the chicken and the chopped onion until cooked.

When the chicken is cooked, stir in the coconut milk so it is combined with the other ingredients. Heat through until it has reduced a little.

I served this with rice and green veg though you could also serve it with noodles.

I'm sending this to Chris at Cooking Around the World for the challenge Bloggers Around the World, as the country this month is Vietnam.