Recipe : Carrot & Baby Radish Salad - Vegan

This was another of our no-carb dinners.

Carrot & Baby Radish Salad

4 carrots - cut into circles

1 small packet baby radish - 200 gms - quartered

1-5 green chillies chop in circles(depending on spice tolerance)

2 tsp lime juice.

1 tsp salad/olive/avocado/nut oil

2 sprigs fresh coriander chopped

salt to taste

Soak the chopped green chillies in lime juice for a few minutes.

Add salt, oil and chopped coriander.

This is your dressing.

Mix this into the chopped carrot and baby radish.

This I let sit for awhile, tossing occasionally as I was cooking the chicken.

The carrots and radish are crunchy.

So it sits well and the flavours blend together if left for a bit.

The Masala fried chicken is just chicken cooked with onion, tomato, ginger, garlic and some spices I had on hand.

Recipe : Bean Sprout Salad (Vegan)

This salad is bean sprouts.

2 minutes stir fried in a hot pan (any more and you will lose the liquid as they start to turn soggy and soft). I’m not a fan of their raw taste, so just about 2 minutes.

You can use them raw if you like.

Dressing

2 tsp lime juice,

1 tsp soya sauce,

1 tsp chipotle chilli flakes,

1/2 tsp Chinese all spice powder

1 tsp of hazelnut oil - I need to finish this bottle, any olive oil or salad oil will work too.

Toss gently.

I served it warm, because sprouts once heated can turn soggy quite quickly.

It barely takes 5 minutes to put it together.

So glad the weather is turning warmer and we can eat a lot more salads.

I served it with a Texan slammer - jalapeño poppers with cheddar cheese, encased in pork mince / sausage meat and rolled in bacon from @marksandspencer Lightly pan fried at home.

Recipe : Butternut Squash Soup (Vegan Option Possible)

Now that we are officially in Autumn here in London, there are lovely squashes and pumpkins appearing in the market. I normally just roast them as a side with dinner, but with today's rain, I decided that what I wanted was a nice hearty soup.

I've garnished the soup with a bit of San Danielle prosciutto and Grana Padano Cheese for flavour, but that's completely optional. Without the cheese / prosciutto / bacon garnish, the dish is vegan.

Ingredients :

1 Butternut squash (about 1kg) - peeled, deseeded, chopped
2 red onions chopped large
6 garlic cloves halved
1 small - medium potato - skinned and chopped
4 - 5 red chillies (you can deseed them, if you don't want it spicy)
1.25 litres stock (chicken or vegetable)
2-3 pinches of rosemary (less if using the dried version)

Salt to taste

Garnish Options :

Use any combination you like, but don't use more than three

2 strips of prosciutto / bacon - the fattier the better 
A few slivers of cheese

Chives - chopped
Fresh cream
Extra Virgin Olive oil or a seed oil

Chilli Flakes

Roasted nuts

Method:
Take a large heavy bottom soup dish and heat it.
Crisp up the 2 bacon slices if using. (Prosciutto is used - as is)
Remove the bacon and let the oil remain in the pan.
Crumble the crisped bacon.

If not using bacon, add a little olive oil to the pan.

Fry the squash, potato, onions and garlic on low heat till they start to char a bit.

(You can roast them in an oven too if that is easier for you)

If you do not have a stick blender, cool the vegetables and puree them in a food processor / mixi with the chillies and rosemary.
Heat the stock in the same pan and slowly add the pureed mixture back to the pan, stirring well.

If you have a stick blender, add the stock to the vegetables.
Add the chillies and rosemary.
Give it a good boil.
Use a stick blender to puree the mixture.

Bring to a boil and cook well.

You can add a little cream or a melting cheese at this point, if you want to make the soup richer.

Serve in bowls, with your choice of garnish.

Freshly crumbled crispy bacon adds fantastic taste and texture.

Roasted nuts will givea good balance of texture too.

The chillies gave just the right amount of kick to elevate the sweetness of this soup.

The rosemary and chives worked well together. Don't overdo the rosemary as it can be quite a powerful flavour, you just want hints of it in the soup.

This recipe was inspired by a recipe in Delicious Magazine.

Without the bacon or cream, this is also a good soup to have on the GM diet.

Serve it with some bread, if you want to make a whole meal out of it.

Recipe : Pepper Chicken Stir Fry

This is a light recipe, quick to assemble, once you have the marinated chicken. It barely takes 15 minutes to get to the table once your marinated chicken is at room temperature. I used boneless chicken and this cooks much faster. If you use pieces with bone, you will need to cook it a little longer. You can make it less spicy, by decreasing the pepper powder and the chillies.

Ingredients:
500 gms chicken (boneless better)
1-2 tbsp pepper powder
1 tsp red chilli powder
1-2 tbsp ginger garlic paste
2-3 tbsp soya sauce
1 tbsp olive oil (or any healthy oil)
1 tbsp fennel seeds / saunf (optional - its good for digestion and iron content)
5-10 cloves garlic chopped
1 large onion chopped
4 green chillies chopped
2 - 3 red or yellow capsicums/ bell peppers in bite sized pieces
100 gms baby corn chopped same size as capsicum
natural vinegar / lime juice to taste

Method:
Clean and chop the chicken to bite sized pieces.
Marinate chicken in a paste of pepper powder, chilli powder, ginger garlic paste and soya sauce for an hour or longer. (if longer, then marinate it in the fridge)

When ready to cook, bring the chicken back to room temperature (otherwise you will have hard, stringy chicken)
In a pan, heat the oil, add the fennel seeds.
When the fennel seeds splutter, add garlic and brown lightly.
Then add the onions and cook it to your required level of doneness (we preferred a bit of crunch in our onions, but you can even caramelise them completely.
Add the chicken and stir fry on high heat.
When half cooked, add the green chillies.
When chicken is almost cooked, add the baby corn and capsicums and give one good toss in the pan, so it all reaches a good temperature, before turning off.
Add some vinegar or lemon juice to your taste, give a good stir and serve hot.

You do not need to add salt in this dish, as the soya sauce will provide the saltiness.

Kim's Tips:

We eat this dish as an entire meal, on the days that we are avoiding carbs. But you can serve it with noodles or fried rice.

You can experiment with other vegetables too - broccoli, green beans, carrots etc.

Recipe : Vegetable Stir Fry (Vegan)

Since we are now trying to be a bit cautious about our weight, whenever we have over indulged ( by eating out, eating late, eating heavy, eating dessert), the next day I keep the food really light and healthy. so most Mondays end up being fruit or salad days.

One of B's favourite dishes are stir fry's. He loves the fact that the veggies remain crisp, so he doesn't crave something fried for texture.

You can use any combination of vegetables for a stir fry, but the crisper ones are what work best - cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, baby corn, capsicum, beans, carrots are all great options. I love adding mushrooms too for their deeper, earthier flavours.

Your seasoning, can be anything that you like, I am partial to garlic, black pepper, star anise and sichuan pepper in various combinations.

I also tend to use soya sauce for flavouring at the end, so I don't add any salt. You can use your choice of homemade dressings or ready made stir fry / oyster sauce or any combination of sauces that you like. I often add some drops of tabasco sauce, just to up the heat a bit.

While I was making this stir fry last night, husband promised to help with taking some photos. He was very excited with his new phone and its camera features, hence there are some whacky images, that did look interesting, so I'm going to add them at the end. Let me know what you think.

Stir fry's are one of the few rare dishes that i prep for completely before I start to cook. Most times, I keep chopping, washing, cleaning through the process. But given how quickly the veggies cook in this dish, I like to keep my mis-en-place ready before i start.

The order in which the veggies go into the pan is dependent on how long each one needs to cook to your level of doneness.

Ingredients :
1 large bowl of mixed chopped vegetables of your choice
(in this instance I used broccoli, red & yellow peppers, baby corn, cabbage and mushrooms)

 1/2 tsp olive oil
2 tbsp chopped garlic
1" ginger grated
1 tsp pepper pounded coarsely
5-6 Sichuan Peppers pounded coarsely
1 star anise pounded coarsely
soya sauce to taste
natural vinegar / lime juice to taste

Method:
Warm the pan on high heat and add the oil
Drop the chopped garlic and pounded spices into the hot oil and let them splutter and the garlic brown a bit.
Now add the mushrooms, broccoli, cabbage, baby corn and bell peppers in order (intervals depend on how well you want each one cooked)
Keep stir frying on high heat until done.
Take the stir fry out into a serving bowl and season with soya sauce, vinegar or sauce of your choice.

Your meal is ready

Below are some of the pictures B took, using the special effects on his phone.

And my favourites of the lot - The Kaleidoscope Effect

This post is also submitted for the Indiblogger & Borosil #BeautifulFood contest

Recipe : Roasted Pumpkin (Vegan)

When we visited Canada a couple of years ago for a cousins wedding, we had a BBQ at U Ossie & Aunty Aureen's house and one of my (many, many) aunts - Belinda (who hates being called "Aunty" by me cause it makes her feel "old" LOL) roasted some butternut squash which was amazingly tasty.

Seeing that we don't get a variety of squashes in India, I hadn't had the opportunity to try making this myself. Today though, I saw some lovely red baby pumpkins in the market and remembering this recipe, I picked one up.

Sadly for me, the pumpkin wasn't ripe enough, so the end product was missing the sweetness, but I think the flavours worked very well and I will ask for help to select a ripe pumpkin next time and retry this recipe.

I could have added some brown sugar to this while baking, but this week is diet week and sugar and sweeteners are off the menu.

Its quite easy to assemble and takes about 10 minutes to prep (depending on the size of your pumpkin) and then another 45 minutes in the oven that you can use to prepare the rest of your meal or just have a bath or a glass of wine while the pumpkin is roasting.

Ingredients :
1/2 kg ripe pumpkin or Squash
6-8 cloves garlic chopped
1/2 tsp cinnamon powder (you can also use all spice)
1 tsp chilli flakes
sea salt to taste
1/2 tsp of olive oil

Method:
Preheat your oven to 180C / 355F.
Clean and chop the pumpkin (you can retain the separated seeds for roasting)
Place the pumpkin pieces in an ovenproof bowl
Add the chopped garlic, cinnamon powder, chilli flakes, sea salt and olive oil.

Toss or stir till it is all well combined.
I used my hands and gave all the pieces a light massage with the spices.
If you feel the pumpkin isn't sweet enough, add a bit of brown sugar too.

Roast in the oven for 30-55 minutes.
(if you have cut your pumpkin into chunks, it will take closer to 55minutes, if you have sliced it fine, it should be done in around 30 minutes - ripeness of the pumpkin is also a factor in how long it will take to cook)
Serve hot

Kim's Tips for Leftovers :
While, I was roasting the pumpkin in the microwave, I placed the seeds in an ovenproof glass lid and slid it under the wire rack on which the pumpkin dish was placed. The roasted seeds can be lightly seasoned and eaten as a healthy snack or tossed into salads where they provide fibre and crunch.

If you don't feel like eating leftover roasted pumpkin for a second meal, give the pumpkin a whiz in the food processor until finely blended. Add some chicken or vegetable stock (till you get your desired consistency) and bring to a boil with some fresh herbs and cream to garnish.

You can even mix the roasted pumpkin pieces into a green leafy salad for an alternate texture and a sweet flavour that goes well with bitter leaves.

Kim's Tips:
While I piled all the pumpkin into one dish (given the limited size of my microwave oven), the better spaced the pumpkin pieces are, the better will be the caramelisation of the pumpkin.

The skin adds fiber to the dish, but you can remove it if you prefer.

This post is also being submitted for Round 2 of the Indiblogger & Borosil #BeautifulFood Competition

Recipe : Stovetop Chicken and Mushrooms (Bonus : Sausage Pulao from leftovers)

I marinated the chicken for this dish, the night before and cooked it for lunch the following day. I used a lot of ingredients I had lying around like the pickled peppers and Kolahs sugarcane vinegar, you can substitute with fresh black pepper and any Italian herbs of your choice. The marinade is quite yummy, so you can even pop the marinated chicken on the grill/BBQ if you want a drier dish and omit the mushrooms.

I used skinless chicken, so it was very low in fat too.

Ingredients:
1 kg chicken
1 packet (400gms) button mushrooms (washed and sliced in half)
a few grams of sliced dried Shitake mushrooms (optional)
a few grams of dried oyster mushrooms (optional)

Marinade:
10 garlic cloves
3-4 strands of pickled green peppers (or 1 tsp black pepper)
a pinch of oregano
2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp Kolah's sugarcane vinegar (substitute with balsamic vinegar to taste)
salt to taste

Method:
Roughly pound the garlic cloves and the pepper.
Add the herbs of choice and roughly pound a bit more.
Remove the strands holding the green peppers together, if you like, I removed them after cooking.
Add olive oil, salt and vinegar and mix well.

Marinate the chicken in this marinade for a couple of hours or overnight.

Take a large pan, pour out a bit of oil from the marinated chicken onto the pan.
Brown the chicken on both sides.

Then add the remaining marinade to the pan.
Now add whichever dried mushrooms you are using (if any) and cover the chicken with a tight lid.
Since you haven't re-hydrated the mushrooms, make sure they are sitting in some of the liquid marinade when you close the pan. (I find this gives much stronger flavours than rehydrating the mushrooms and then adding them to the pan)

After, the chicken is half cooked, add the fresh mushrooms.

(I initially don't let the mushrooms touch the pan surface directly, instead they steam on top of the chicken pieces, only when the chicken is cooked do I give it a stir and let the mushrooms come in contact with the pan.)

Cover and cook till done.
Once cooked, open the lid and serve immediately if you like some gravy, else cook without a cover until it thickens / dries up to your choice.

Serve hot with foccacia or on its own.

Bonus Recipe with Leftovers:

When we were done with the chicken, there was some oil left in the pan and it had great flavour, that I didn't want to wash out. If you find yourself in a similar situation, you can try this recipe.

Add a piece of cinnamon to the hot oil, then add a bit of chopped garlic and onions and fry till browned.
Add some sliced sausages and saute till cooked.
Now add the cooked rice (I used brown rice), salt and some green peas.
Saute until peas are cooked and serve hot.