Apple, Chicken and Goats Cheese Salad with Peanut, Honey and Soy dressing

This is my go-to ginormous tastes-of-fresh-and-is-very-filling salad – it can be tweaked to suit what’s in the fridge and it can also be made in advance (but leave out the apples and keep the dressing separate until it’s being served)

Ingredients (1 huge portion or 2 more modest ones)

Salad

• Sharp green eating apple (like a granny smith), cored and cut into wedges
• 1/2 a cucumber, cut into a large dice
• 1 red pepper, cut into a large dice
• 4 sticks of celery, chopped
• 100g (1 cup) seedless grapes (red or green), halved
• 70g (1/2 cup) whole, blanched, almonds
• 1 poached chicken breast (per person), chopped into bite-sized pieces
• 60g (1/2cup) cubed goats cheese

Dressing

• 1 Tbsp Crunchy peanut butter
• 1 Tbsp Rapeseed oil (cold-pressed for preference)
• 1 Tbsp boiling water
• 1 tsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp honey
• 1/2 shallot, finely diced
• Lemon Juice to taste (but about 1tbsp)

Method

• Combine all the salad fruit and vegetables and mix well before plating up
• Add the chicken, cheese and almonds to the top of the vegetable mixture on the plate
• combine the peanut butter and boiling water – whisk it until it’s all together – add the oil, soy sauce and honey. Taste it and add lemon juice (keep whisking) until it tastes great. Add the shallots and let it cool a little
• Pour dressing on salad.

There is a LOT of dressing, particularly if there is only one serving being made. The extra can be kept in the fridge for about a week (unless you just drink it. It is very tasty).

Meal Planning (06/04 – 12/4)

Menu Planning with Pixie Eats

This is another slightly funny week as I’ve a visitor staying for a couple of days (and a couple of days off work, although not today as it’s not a bank holiday in Scotland). I suspect anything I plan for Tuesday and Wednesday is very likely to change, but here is the basic plan:

• Monday Lunch: Left-over GF Mac and Cheese (pre-bought. I’ve yet to make a GF cheese sauce that doesn’t make me want to cry. I’ll keep at it though)
• Monday Dinner: (toasted) genius bread with hazelnut butter & banana
• Tuesday Lunch: Out
• Tuesday Dinner: Out
• Wednesday Lunch: Out
• Wednesday Dinner: (Feeding visitors) Fajita Bowls (Rice/Quinoa topped with spinach leaves, with Chicken, peppers, tomatoes and onion cooked in Fajita spice mix and a sprinkling of cheese)
• Thursday Lunch: Rice Pot (in my drawer at work. I won’t have any time to prep)
• Thursday Dinner: Sweet Potato Fries and houmous
• Thursday Tasks: Buy Peppers and Cucumber
• Friday Lunch: Pumpkin seed rye bread with hazelnut butter & banana
• Friday Dinner: Apple, Chicken and Goats Cheese Salad with Peanut, Honey and Soy dressing
• Saturday Brunch: Oatmeal with fixings
  Saturday Dinner: Spag Bol
• Sunday Brunch: Oatmeal with fixings
• Sunday Dinner: Last Chance Dinner (anything in the fridge that needs eaten, made into dinner

Quick and Nommy Sweet Potato Wedges/Fries

This is a go-to easy side, snack, or even a main meal when served with humous (protein) and a salad or steamed veggies. The wedges take approximately 5 minutes to prep – it takes longer for the oven to heat! – unless you want to peel the potatoes, and they definitely don’t need to be peeled.

Ingredients

• Sweet Potatoes (the orange fleshed kind) – scrubbed but not peeled
• Oil (Rapeseed, Olive (not EVOO), Vegetable, Oil spray).

Method

• Pre-heat oven to 200c/180c fan/400F/GM6
• Chop sweet potato into chunks/wedges/fry shapes and lightly coat in oil
• Bake for 40-50 minutes, turning half-way through (40 minutes for thin fries, 50 for chunky wedges)

They may end up really quite dark brown, but unless they’re charcoal then that just means they’re crispy and delightfully caramelised. Optionally sprinkle with a selection of sea salt flakes, cumin, smoked paprika or garlic salt (for savoury)  or cinnamon, sugar, or vanilla sugar (for sweet).

Meal Planning (24/3 – 29/3)

Not even a full week to begin with and some slightly peculiar choices, but this is a use-it-up week after a weekend of visitors and excess so I hope to make out the week without buying terribly much in the way of groceries.

The Plan

• Tuesday Dinner:Sweet potato fries and humous with salad
• Wednesday Lunch: (toasted) genius bread with sun butter & banana
• Wednesday Dinner: (Feeding visitors!) Quorn bolognese
• Wednesday Tasks: defrost salmon
• Thursday Lunch: Tuna (GF) Pasta
• Thursday Dinner: Salmon en papillote (cooked as per white fish recipe with timings for salmon), easy roasties & broccoli
• Thursday Tasks: Buy cheese
• Friday Lunch:Tuna Pasta
• Friday Dinner: Chips, cheese and pickled onions
• Saturday Brunch: Oatmeal with fixings
• Saturday Dinner: Out
• Sunday Brunch: Oatmeal with fixings
• Sunday Dinner: use it up chilli & fixings

I’ll add recipe links as I create the posts.

Very Cheaty Roast Potatoes

Ingredients

• New/Smallish Potatoes, scrubbed clean (however many you like to eat)
• Spray Oil/Frylight/Vegetable Oil and a Poly Bag

Tools

• Oven Tray
• Microwavable Plate
• Sharp Knife and Board
• Fork

Method

Pierce the potatoes all over with a fork, place on plate. Nuke on high for 3/5/8 minutes (pearl/new/small potatoes. It’s not an exact science).

Once nuked and cooled enough for you to handle: leave Pearl potatoes alone, cut the new potatoes in half (or smaller, if they’re big new potatoes) and cut the small potatoes in 1/3s, 1/4s or smaller. The bits should be all near the same size.

Place on baking tray and spray with oil (or put roughly a tsp of oil per portion in a poly bag, add the potatoes and shake gently to coat, THEN place on baking tray).

Oven for about 30 minutes at about 200C (check at around 20 minutes. It’ll depend how big your bits are).

 

 

Very good if flakes of Maldon salt are sprinkled on immediately you take them out of the oven. Serve with Roast Chicken or anything else that needs a potato side dish. Or on their own.  Or covered in cheese.

Related articles

• All the Flavour is Not on the Skin Roast Chicken (pixieeats.wordpress.com)

All the Flavour is Not on the Skin Roast Chicken

Ingredients

• 1 Whole Chicken (defrosted if frozen)
• 2 Lemons, quartered
• 25-50g Fat Free Natural Yogurt (quantity depends on size of chicken)
• 1-2 Tbsp Sumac (or Thyme)

Tools

• Cooking Foil
• Roasting Tin, ideally with a rack/trivet inside
• Scissors
• Sharp Knife and Board

Method

Take the chicken out of the fridge an hour before you intend to start cooking it to allow it to come to room temperature.

Pre-heat the oven to the temperature suggested on the wrapping (or as per http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/glossary/chicken)

Loosen the skin from the chicken and pull it off like a sock, using the scissors to free any bits that get stuck. The wings and the ends of the drumsticks are difficult and can be left with their skin on.

Shove as many bits of lemon as physically possible into the bird, this helps keep it moister in the absence of the skin.

Mix the sumac and yogurt together and smear it all over the bird, place the bird on the rack in the roasting tray and tent foil over the tray and bird (normally this will need two strips of foil). Put the bird into the oven for as long as suggested on the wrapping (or as per the BBC’s suggestion).

When the cooking time is over, remove the bird from the oven and gently (carefully!) open the foil, check with a knife that te juices run clear when the breast is pierced (the more usual joint at breast and leg tends to splay open with the skin removed, so it’s less useful), replace the foil and cover the whole thing with a towel to allow it to rest for 15 minutes before carving and serving.

Serve with roast or boiled potatoes and green veg, also nice with cranberry sauce and gravy.

Remaining meat useful for a billion different things, carcass useful for stock.

Get Rid of This Stupid Cold Prawns

Ingredients

• Ready cooked prawns, roughly 100g (defrosted if frozen and not “cook from frozen”)
• 2 red peppers, cut into postage stamp sized bits
• 1 green pepper, cut into postage stamp sized bits
• 1/2 to 1 chilli cut finely (I de-seeded and used half. I’m a whimp, though)
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp 5 spice powder (or 1/2 tsp cumin & 1/2 tsp ginger, which is in no way the same but will taste nice)
• 1 portion noodles of choice, cooked
• 1 tbsp of oil or Sprays of Oil or Oil substitute as preferred

Tools

• Frying pan
• Spoon to stir
• Sharp Knife and Board (and gloves, if you’re a chilli whimp like me)
• Tbsp & tsp measure
• Cooking & Draining Requirements for Noodles

Method

Cook the noodles as to the packet instructions and set to one side.

Add the oil, spray or substitute to the frying pan and heat to a medium high (not hottest available) temperature. Add peppers, chillies and garlic and soften for about 8 minutes- keep stirring and don’t allow the garlic to colour. If the garlic starts to colour, turn the heat down.

Add the spice(s), soy sauce and prawns. If the prawns are cook from frozen, cook for as long as suggested on the pack, if not, cook (keep stirring!) for another 5-10 minutes until the liquid is a little reduced (it should be slightly sticky, not watery) and add the noodles. Keep over the heat and stirring until the noodles are coated and warmed through.

Serve immediately, needs no accompaniment, nice cold the next day, reheats badly as the prawns turn rubbery.

Complicated Tasting Very Easy Moroccan Spiced Pork with Preserved Lemons

Ingredients

• 1 Pack extra-lean Pork Mince (can use fattier, but be prepared to brown off a little before adding any other ingredients and to pour off the fat. Could also use lamb or chicken mince)
• 3 tbsp Ras-el-Hanout
• 6 Small Preserved Lemons, quartered (or about 1 whole big one sliced into wedges) (the kind that comes in brine, not the oily ones)

Tools

• Large frying pan, non-stick for preference
• Spoon – silicone or wooden ideally but a dessert spoon would do (don’t use metal on non-stick)
• Sharp knife and board

Method

Gently fry off the meat and Ras-el-hanout, stirring constantly and breaking up any lumps, until the pink is mostly gone. 

Add the lemons. 

Continue to cook until the pink is entirely gone and the meat is beginning to brown a little. 

Serve with rice, cous cous, quinoa, potatoes of any kind, roast butternut squash (my favourite option) and some green veg (for the colour contrast. Barely cooked sugar snap peas are a delight). Can be kept in an airtight box in the fridge for several days. Reheats delightfully as the lemons keep it quite moist. 

Expensive Tasting Cheap White Fish With Capers and Tomatoes

Ingredients

• Frozen Fillet of White Fish that can be cooked from frozen (Coley, Cod, Sole, etc. Whatever is cheap and/or tasty)
• 2 tbsp Capers (the kind that comes pickled in a jar. Drain before measuring)
• 3 Standard tomatoes/ 6 Cherry tomatoes

Tools

• Kitchen foil (the kind to cook with, not the “wrapping” stuff)
• Knife and board
• Baking tray
• Oven

Method

Take a fillet of fish from the bag of frozen fish, noting the cooking time and temperature. Pre-heat the oven to this temperature.

Cut a length of foil approximately 6 times as big as the fillet (it’s to wrap around it securely and allow a little space for steam. More is better, it will scrumple down)

Place the fillet on the foil. Put the capers over the fish, it doesn’t matter if they roll off as long as they stay on the foil.

Chop the tomatoes into quarters (or halves if using cherry tomatoes), cutting the green bit out if you can be bothered and add to the fish

Fold and crumple in the foil to make a secure parcel, with some space for steam to develop and place the foil packet on the baking tray.

Cook in the oven at the temperature and for the time suggested on the pack the fish came in.

Once the time is up, carefully remove the foil packet and put it on a plate that can cope with hot food (I usually use the one I’m intending to eat from), then VERY CAREFULLY unwrap the fish – it will be FULL of liquid. Very, very tasty liquid, but I usually pour a reasonable amount of it down the drain so I don’t spill whilst eating.

Serve with Baked potato, chips, roast potatoes, rice, boiled potatoes, cous cous, quinoa, roast butternut squash, or possibly even toast.

The World’s Easiest Very Yummy Lentil Soup

Ingredients

• 100g Red lentils
• 4 Large carrots (or 5 medium), peeled and roughly chopped
• 2 * Ham stock cubes (can use veggie, nicer with ham)
• 50g of packet sandwich ham, chopped up with scissors into large postage stamp sized bits

Tools

(Use what you have)

• Medium/Large Saucepan with a well fitting lid
• Vegetable peeler, sharp knife and board
• Scissors (or use the knife again)
• Spoon – silicone or wooden ideally but a dessert spoon would do
• Hand blender, food processor or a fine sieve and the back of the spoon.

Method

Dissolve the stock cubes in 2pts of boiling water – this is easiest if you add the water to the pan, put it on the heat and crumble the cubes in – add the lentils, put the lid on the pot and bring to a rapid boil.

Boil for ten minutes.

Stir.

Add another pint of boiling water and the carrots. Put the lid back on and bring back to a gentle simmer. Simmer for half an hour, stirring infrequently.

Add the ham, take off the heat and blend (use a hand stick or cool and put through a processor or through a fineish sieve pushing the bits through with the back of a wooden spoon). Bring back to the boil before serving.

Good for a couple of days in the fridge, actually better the 2nd day and nukes like a dream