Slimming World Creamy Coriander and Minted Chicken

This recipe comes from the Slimming World All In One cookbook. To me it tasted a lot like a curry, but perhaps a little bit different; I really liked the addition of fresh mint but my fiancé said afterwards it was nice but would have been better without the mint!

The recipe is Free on Extra Easy or Original and 9.5 syns on Green.

It does look like you need a lot of ingredients but a lot of them are store cupboard staples - if you like to cook from scratch you probably already have, or will easily use up, things like coriander, cumin, turmeric and chilli powder.

To serve 4, you need:
low calorie cooking spray, eg Fry Light
2 onions, peeled, halved and thinly sliced
2 cloves (I left these out)
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed (I used garlic puree)
2 cardamom pods
2cm piece root ginger, peeled and grated (I used ground ginger for convenience)
1 cinnamon stick (I snapped mine into two pieces)
1 bay leaf
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp chilli powder
700g skinless and boneless chicken breasts, cut into 2cm pieces
salt, pepper
4 ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped (neither of us eats whole tomatoes and I didn't think it was worth opening a tin of tomatoes so I left this out, which I'm sure did change the flavour of the finished dish but I preferred it this way)
200ml chicken stock
large handful of fresh coriander, chopped
small handful of fresh mint, chopped
100g fat free natural fromage frais

Spray a wok or large frying pan with the oil and add the onion, cloves, garlic and cardamom to the pan, stir-frying for a few minutes. Then add the other spices including the cinnamon stick and bay leaf and cook for a few minutes.

Add the chicken and cook for about 10 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes stock and simmer for 5-7 mins until the chicken is cooked through.

To serve, stir in the fromage frais, fresh coriander and mint.

Slow Food: Braised Lamb in Cider with Apple and Pear



This is a recipe I was asked to create as part of a campaign around “living slow”. This campaign couldn’t have come at a better time as I really do need to take time to slow down.

 

I’m always busy at work – my workload has at least doubled in the past year for various reasons -  I have a long and stressful commute (thank you, Southern Trains) and when I’m at home I'm running the house. I’m lucky to be able to afford a cleaner but between meal planning food shopping, cooking, tidying up, laundry, dishwasher, and all the little things – sending someone a birthday card, replying to emails, choosing a restaurant to go out to etc – I never seem to have any time to relax. On top of all that we are planning a wedding (there are so many additional things for the bride to think about than the groom!)- and linked to that, I’m now getting up even earlier before work to go for a run as I’m trying to lose weight for the wedding.

 

I’ve also found out recently that I have high blood pressure – some days it’s been extremely high. So I’m looking into ways to deal with that (including possibly medication) – but one thing that I know is important to reduce high blood pressure is to eat healthily, in particular eating less salt, and to do more exercise.

 

I took part in a ‘mindfulness’ session recently which was very relaxing – mindfulness has been shown to reduce stress and even mean employees take fewer sick days off work. But since then I haven’t felt like I’ve got the time to sit down and be mindful, even just for ten minutes – I am literally constantly on the go, and even when I am watching TV in the evening with my fiancé I am multi-tasking replying to emails or cutting out paper hearts for our wedding.

 

So before I keel over from stress I think it definitely is time that I ‘slow down and smell the roses’. I was asked by Simply Beef and Lamb to create a recipe for either beef or lamb, on the theme of ‘live slow’. You might already be familiar with their Red Tractor logo, which means you can find quality assured beef and lamb in the supermarket.

This doesn’t simply mean cooking something in a slow cooker – as well as being easy, one pot meals, it should be value for money and affordable, and reflect the ethos of ‘live slow’: stop living life in the fast lane and take it slow for a change.

 

That can relate to all aspects of our lives, whether that’s not rushing around trying to fit a million things in; spending time in nature or with friends; working on something handcrafted; travelling closer to home and enjoying the journey itself; sewing to repair or make your own clothing or being creative; and even spending your money wisely on things that really matter.

 

When I do feel able to push the ‘to do’ list to one side, I love to handmake greeting cards. I think (or hope) people really appreciate receiving something handmade as they know time and effort has gone into it. I also find it helps me switch off as I’m focused on cutting or stamping, and I enjoy feeling creative.

 

I also travel by train a lot – to work as I already mentioned, and when I’m lucky enough to get a seat I always read. Losing yourself in a good book is a great way to start the day or unwind after a day of work. I’m still a relatively new and pretty nervous driver, so when I have to travel longer distances on my own, I prefer to take the train. So again that gives me a lot of time to read; mobile reception is sometimes patchy so I resist the temptation to go on Facebook or reply to emails and instead pick up a decent-sized book I’ve been meaning to read but don’t want to carry on my daily commute (I do have a Kindle as well, but prefer actual books!). Recently I’ve been going to Salisbury by train a lot as it’s where my family live and also the nearest station to our wedding venue, and I always feel happy and relaxed to see the rolling Wiltshire countryside and the lovely views as we pull into Salisbury station. I’m sure that does help my blood pressure!

What does #slowliving mean to you and your family and what do you do to relax?

 

So finally onto the recipe. I was thinking about what slow living might mean in terms of cooking and came across the Slow Food movement, which promotes using local produce and eating less but better quality meat.

 

Thinking about what was local, I started with my own garden. I’m hoping to get a small vegetable patch started (I was growing peppers last year but slugs ate them all) but at the moment don’t have anything other than herbs. But what a good starting point for a recipe – I have rosemary and a lot of mint, and mint is of course well known as a pairing for lamb.

 

So that was my starting point: making a recipe with lamb and mint. I decided to braise the lamb, as that is a slow method of cooking that is fuss-free, but obviously there had to be more to it than that. Apples are abundant in a lot of areas – my late grandmother had apple and pear trees in her garden – and cider is very English (and to some, slow living might mean relaxing in the garden with a beer or cider…). Apple and mint does apparently go together – I found several mojito recipes online using those flavours! So my recipe was starting to take shape: spring lamb, mint, rosemary, apples and pears, cider. I used Pear cider in this recipe, and decided that because lamb is quite expensive I would go with a cheaper, bulking out ingredient: pearl barley. So you don't even need to serve this with potatoes as it's really filling and tasty.

Making the apples and pears at the start takes a little while but you don't need to do much; then you bung everything else into one casserole dish, put it in the oven and that's it - leaving you more time to relax and take it easy! This is what I came up with: I hope you enjoy it.

Braised lamb in cider with apple and pear - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

To serve 2, you need:

1 tbsp. butter
2 apples, peeled and chopped
1 large or 2 small pears, peeled and chopped
3 tbsp. sugar
3 tbsp. raisins or sultanas

4 lamb rump steaks
500ml cider
half an onion, peeled and cut into chunks
100g pearl barley
half a leek, trimmed and sliced
sprig of fresh rosemary
handful of fresh mint

First make the apple and pear accompaniment and pre-heat the oven to 180C. Melt the butter in a pan, add the apple and stir. Cook for 5 minutes until it has started to soften then add the pear and the raisins. Add the sugar and 50ml water; stew, stirring occasionally, until the water has evaporated and the fruit has softened. This can be made in advance and kept in the fridge or made at the same time as the meal.

Rub the bottom of a casserole dish with a little oil and place the lamb in the dish. Cover with cider and add the onion and leek, pearl barley and herbs. Put the lid on the casserole dish and put in the oven for 1-1.5 hours, until the liquid has been absorbed and the lamb is cooked through.

Serve with the apple and pear mixture on the side.

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The apple, pear and raisin mixture



The ingredients for the casserole

Ready to go in the oven

Just cooked



Close-up

Served with the apple and pear on the side

 

Fennel, chicken, pomegranate and mint salad

This a gorgeous salad that I had for dinner one hot sunny evening; the recipe came from a free newspaper I picked up from Waitrose and it is also available at Waitrose online.

The ingredients are not particularly cheap but I already had half a bulb of fennel left in the fridge from another recipe, and half a pack of pomegranate seeds from something else. I often buy cooked chicken to make easy lunches for work and I'm growing mint on my windowsill.

The recipe instructs you to marinade and then cook the chicken but as I used the pre-cooked slices I just had to throw the other ingredients together, which was great as it was too hot to cook. Slice the fennel thinly and layer on a plate with a bed of watercress on the bottom, then the fennel, chicken, pomegranate and mint. To make the sauce mix crème fraiche, oil, garlic, lemon juice and zest, and a little water so it is thin enough to pour over the salad.

I'm really not a salad person but I thoroughly enjoyed this - it tasted as good as it looks!

Pimms Cream Cake

Pimm's cake

Wimbledon is on, the new royal baby Princess Charlotte is being christened, the sun is shining, the barbecue is fired up and even the Formula 1 Grand Prix is taking place in the UK this weekend - it's a true celebration of all things British.

And where would we be at a British celebration without a glass (or three) of Pimm's and lemonade?

I've just discovered from Wikipedia (where else) that Pimm's has been around since 1823 and is named after the son of a farmer from Kent who owned an oyster bar in London. He served a gin-based drink made with a secret mixture of herbs and liqueurs as an aid to digestion, serving it in a small cup known as "no.1" - and that's why the full name of the drink we all love today is Pimm's No. 1 Cup.

We were recently sent a fruit basket at work containing among other things a large punnet of strawberries. I had some cream at home (long story - I was asked to make my malteser cake by a colleague so bought the ingredients though I warned him in this weather the chocolate would melt; he then agreed and cancelled the order but I had already bought the cream and chocolate!). Most people would think of strawberries and cream, but I don't particularly like strawberries and neither does my boyfriend (I know, we're weird). I then remembered that I had some cucumber in the fridge from another recipe - and I don't like cucumber much either. But my mind had started whirring as I thought of the mint on my windowsill and that all I was missing was an orange for a nice Pimm's!

I knew that the fruit wouldn't really keep until we next had people over and there wasn't much point making a pitcher of Pimm's with all the fruit just for me so the logical conclusion was a cake! I can't believe I haven't made a Pimm's cake before :-)

Pimms Cream Cake - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

175g butter, softened
175g caster sugar
175g self-raising flour
3 eggs
8 tbsp. Pimm's
8 tbsp. lemonade
About 450ml double cream
To decorate - strawberries, orange, cucumber, mint leaves

This quantity makes two thin layers - with the rich cream in the middle this was plenty but you might want to scale up the quantities to make three thin layers, or double the ingredients and make two thick layers.

Preheat oven to 175C.

Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl and beat in the eggs and flour.

Add the Pimm's and lemonade and mix until you have a pourable batter.

Grease two 8-inch cake tins and pour half the batter into each tin. Bake in the oven for around 25 minutes until cooked. Test the middle with a skewer if you are not sure.

When the cake has cooled, whip the cream until stiff and use half to fill the cake and half to spread on top. Decorate the top with chopped cucumber, orange, strawberries and fresh mint leaves.

The cake has a hint of Pimm's and was really light; the cream was a better choice than buttercream. I was tempted to add a dash of Pimm's to the cream but wasn't sure how much this would have altered the consistency so if you do try that, let me know how it turns out!

 

I'm using this for Formula 1 Foods, the blog challenge I started to celebrate each location for the F1 Grand Prix, as this weekend is the UK.

I'm also sending it to the Food Year Linkup, hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen.

This is the perfect cake to enjoy at a barbecue so I am sending it to Tea Time Treats, hosted by Jane at the Hedgecombers and Karen at Lavender and Lovage.

The theme for Love Cake, hosted by Ness at JibberJabber UK, is cakes from around the world, and this is very much a British cake.

The theme for Vegetable Palette is glorious reds and Shaheen at Allotment 2 Kitchen said she will accept fruits as well so since this cake uses strawberries I'm sending it in.

There's also a new challenge called Cake Club hosted by Kerry Cooks so this is my first entry.

Virgin Mojito - Non-alcoholic drink for BBQ

This is a very simple non-alcoholic cocktail but is so good I had to share it with you! I adapted it from a recipe I found online that involved Ginger Beer, as I didn't have and don't really like Ginger Beer. I wanted a non-alcoholic drink that would be refreshing and feel summery to serve at a barbecue and this proved very popular.

Mix two parts lemonade to one part apple juice - I used Sprite and Innocent apple juice which was really nice.

Muddle in a jug with some ice cubes, one lime chopped into several segments and a handful of fresh mint leaves. Serve and enjoy!

Vegan Mint Chocolate Cupcakes, a Vegan Potluck and meeting Ms Cupcake

Me (left) and Ms Cupcake Mellissa Morgan.
The luminous green cake she's holding is the one I made from her recipe

Ms. Cupcake is a south-London based vegan baker, originally from Canada. Her real name is Mellissa Morgan and her first recipe book, called "The Naughtiest Vegan Cakes in Town", has just been published by Random House. Ms. Cupcake started selling her cakes on a market stall in Greenwich and now has her own shop in Brixton, but I first discovered her at the annual environmental fair in the south London village where I live. Her cake stall looked so tempting and as I was there with a vegan friend we decided to try one of her bakes- it was awesome!

So when I saw her cookery book had come out, I had to buy it - partly so I would have some great recipes I could make for my vegan friend and partly because I knew Ms. Cupcake's cakes tasted great. Then I was lucky enough to meet her a second time...

I somehow came across a group called the London Vegan Meetup - given I'm neither vegetarian nor vegan I'm not actually sure how I originally found out about it. I saw that they were holding a potluck dinner one evening in London, and advertised that Mellissa would be attending and holding a book signing. My vegan friend was actually on holiday so I decided to venture along by myself - hoping desperately that nobody would find out or mind that I am a very happy meat eater! But I thought it would be a good way for me to find out more about vegan food and try some dishes - and I learnt that not all wine is vegan which had never occured to me before. As it was a potluck, the idea was that everyone would bring a vegan dish to share - and to me the obvious choice was to make a cake from Ms. Cupcake's book.

The carrot cake  Ms. Cupcake made for the potluck. I had a slice and it was delicious!

I decided to kill two birds with one stone and make something I could enter in one of this month's blog challenges; one of the first recipes in the book is for mint chocolate cupcakes and mint is the ingredient to be paired with chocolate for this month's We Should Cocoa. Also, I don't like mint 
so taking cakes along to an event where other people would eat them was ideal!

When I arrived one of the organisers came over to say hello and I told her what I'd made and that it was from Ms. Cupcake's book, and she immediately went and got Mellissa who came over for a chat. We spoke for several minutes and then I was staggered when Mellissa said she'd never actually eaten a cake someone else had made from one of her recipes. 

That put me under quite a lot of pressure and I was really nervous! Luckily, Mellissa really liked the cake and said it had an "excellent crumb". She was lovely and I was really pleased to have had the chance to speak to her - and her mum who was also there - and I'm thrilled to be able to say mine was the first cake she had tasted made by someone who had bought the Ms. Cupcake recipe book!

She even signed my book and wrote that my cupcakes were divine, which is pretty cool and very kind of Mellissa to say so.

I also met some guys from a vegan bakery called the Vegan Tart, who made this awesome cake. They also have a stall in Brixton, where Ms. Cupcake is based, so I think I'll need to make a trip there soon!

Here's an overview of how I made the cupcakes; I made some small adaptions and I'm not giving you the whole recipe here, you will just have to buy the book!

Mint Chocolate Cupcakes

Mix soya milk and vinegar and leave for ten minutes - it will start to bubble a little. Preheat oven to 180C.

Mix flour, cocoa powder, sugar, salt, bicarb of soda and baking powder.

Add the milk and vinegar, oil, vanilla and mint flavour and mix well.

Fill a dozen cupcake cases and bake for about 15 minutes

Some of mine sank a little in the middle; I discovered from the troubleshooting section of the recipe book that I had probably been too heavy-handed with the baking powder as this can cause cakes to sink.
In the end this actually helped when I was piling the filling onto the cakes anyway!

The book also has a recipe for the most amazing vegan chocolate spread which I've never come across before but it tasted fantastic. It only has three ingredients but I'm not telling you what they are, you'll have to buy the book!

I spread the chocolate icing onto the cakes, taking advantage of those which had sunk a little in the middle so I could pile in the filling but keep the top fairly level.

I then made some vegan buttercream using Vitalite which is vegan, though I didn't have as much left as I thought so I was unable to follow the exact quantities in the recipe. I flavoured it with peppermint and added a little mint green gel food colour.

I piped swirls of the buttercream on top of the cakes, though it was a little softer than I would have liked, which I'm sure is because I didn't follow the recipe exactly.

Ms. Cupcake's recipe uses vegan chocolate chips which don't seem to be that easy to get hold of - she suggested Wholefoods when we were chatting at the potluck. You could grate a bar of plain vegan chocolate over the cakes, or get these dairy-free chocolate buttons which are easier to find in supermarkets than the chocolate chips.

I decorated the cupcakes with chocolate chips; they went down very well at the potluck and disappeared very quickly!

I'm sending these to We Should Cocoa as the ingredient this month is mint. Victoria from A Kick at the Pantry Door is the guest host for June, on behalf of Choclette from Chocolate Log Blog  and Chele of Chocolate Teapot.

I'm also sending this to the Four Seasons Food challenge, hosted by Anneli from Delicieux and Louisa from Chez Foti. Their theme this month is picnic food and outdoor nibbles, and cupcakes are perfect for a picnic.

Lamb with pomegranate and mint

When I saw that the One Ingredient Challenge's ingredient this month was the pomegranate, I decided I had to enter, as I've never actually eaten pomegranate, let alone cooked with it! I think I was always slightly put off by the fact that the part you eat is the seeds, whereas with most other fruits I leave the seeds, but I love the way they look and I know you can use pomegranate in both sweet and savoury recipes - so I decided to make one of each.

I knew pomegranate paired well with lamb (I remember for instance a Nigella recipe of a shredded lamb salad with pomegranate) so I bought a couple of lamb chops and browsed online until I found a few recipes which I could adapt.

I started off mixing a couple of tablespoons of oil with some ground cumin, chilli flakes and salt

Spread over the lamb chops and leave to marinate (I only left them about half an hour but if you're organised enough to prepare this in advance I think it would work well marinaded overnight).

Cook the lamb in the oven for 15-20 minutes. Then cut the pomegranate in half. Doesn't it look Christmassy?

I simply squeezed the juice and seeds over the lamb and topped with fresh mint

Dinner!

I am sending this to the One Ingredient Challenge where the ingredient this month is pomegranate, hosted by Laura of How to Cook Good Food.

Pomegranates are in season at the moment so I am also sending this to Simple and In Season, hosted by Ren of Fabulicious Food.