Chocolate chip muesli bars with seeds and goji berries

Ingredients

1 cup of rolled oats

1 cup of puffed rice

¼ cup of desiccated coconut

¼ cup of sunflower seeds

¼ cup of pumpkin seeds

¼ cup of goji berries

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp honey

2 eggs

1-2 tbsp chocolate chips to press down on the top

Method

150 c fan forced or 160c normal oven

Line a 20 x 20 cm cake tin. A really good way to do this is to dampen and crumple up the baking paper, makes it easier to line your tin.

In a small bowl add your eggs, vanilla, honey and goji berries, whisk together. This helps rehydrate the goji berries a little.

I briefly blitzed the sunflower and pumpkin seeds, but you can leave them whole if you wanted. They were still chunky though, not crumbs J

In another bowl add your rolled oats, puffed rice, seeds and coconut.

Pour your egg mix into the oat mix and combine.

Press firmly into your tin and top with optional chocolate chips. Press them down into the mix.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, should be firm to the touch. 

Leave in the tin for 5 minutes then lift out and cut in half and then cut into 12 bars. You can do squares or smaller ones, whatever you want to do. You can have these in the fridge but I think the texture is better left at room temperature.

Mint, coriander and pecan pesto

Ingredients

1 bunch each of mint and coriander (or close to 1 bunch- I used about ¾ of a bunch)

60g parmesan cheese

2 cloves of garlic

½ cup of olive oil

½ cup of pecan nuts

Method

Blitz up your herbs, garlic, nuts, cheese and olive oil.  Then add enough water until you get your desired consistency. I used about ¼ of a cup. Check seasoning.

Tandoori fish curry

Ingredients

4 fillets of fish

2 tsp each of finely chopped fresh garlic, ginger and turmeric (optional chilli)

1 x 270ml of coconut milk

1 tbsp of tandoori spice mix

Method

In a large pan or wok, heat a little oil on a medium heat and fry off your garlic, ginger and turmeric (optional chilli) Cook for 30 seconds and then add your spice mix and cook for a few seconds more until fragrant. Should smell pretty good right now!

Then add you fish and push down, add a little water if it is too thick. Simmer for 5-8 minutes, this will depend on the thickness of your fish. It should flake easily when done.

Serve with brown rice or basmati rice. I also had with steamed cauliflower, broccoli and green beans.

Tandoori spice rub

Makes 1/3 cup

Use this for beef, lamb or prawns

Ingredients

2 teaspoons ground coriander

2 teaspoons ground cumin

2 teaspoons garam masala

2 teaspoons ground ginger

2 teaspoons paprika

2 teaspoons turmeric

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

1 teaspoon salt

1 ½ teaspoons white pepper

½ teaspoon cayenne or chilli powder

Method

Mix together and store in an airtight container.

Banana and carrot loaf

Ingredients

100g butter, room temperature

¼ cup of granulated sugar such as panella, white, brown, rapadura etc…

2 eggs

2 ripe bananas, mashed

1 large carrot, grated

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp baking powder

½ cup of LSA

1 cup of wholemeal spelt flour- you can use wholemeal wheat, white spelt or gluten free flour

Method

Preheat oven to 180 c

Cream butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy, then add the eggs and beat in well. Then using a wooden spoon stir in the vanilla, cinnamon, flour, carrot, baking powder, banana and LSA until combined. It should be quick thick, if it is too thick add a little milk. It’s not a pourable mix. Then spoon your loaf mix into a loaf tin and bake for 30-35 minutes. A skewer should come out clean. When cooked leave in tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a cake rack to cool. 

Serve sliced with butter or hot as a dessert with ice cream. 

You can ice with a lemon cream cheese icing also, yum yum!

You can make these as muffins but will take less time- about 15 minutes or so.

Corn fritters

Makes 8-10

Ingredients

The kernels from 3 cobs of cooked corn, this should be about 2 cups. You can use frozen corn that has been defrosted or canned corn. Whatever suits you.

¾ -1 cup of rice flour

2 eggs
1 tsp baking powder

Salt and pepper

1/3 cup of milk

Method

Mix the corn, salt and pepper, eggs, baking powder and ½ a cup of the rice flour, mix well. Add more flour as needed the mixture needs to be really thick.

In a large pan heat a little oil. Spoon your mix in, about 4-5cm in diameter. Cook on a medium heat until golden brown underneath, then turn over and cook the other side. They don’t take long!

You can make these the night before and just heat in the morning. They are good in a child’s lunch box.

This is your basic mix- this to add to the mix include grated zucchini, diced red capsicum (which is what I used in there) diced mushrooms or other cooked vegetables like sweet potato, broccoli, grated haloumi, herbs like chives, parsley, basil. You can add jalapenos, diced olives, sundried tomato, cooked diced bacon…so many thing you can do here!

To serve you can do bacon, avocado and tomato. Just cook your bacon and tomato together in the pan. You can top with smoked salmon, sweet chilli sauce and sour cream. Top with poached, fried or scrambled egg and wilted spinach.

With your mix just remember that whatever you add it may have a higher water content which will make the mix more watery- when you are ready to cook you need the consistency to be really thick, if it’s not just add more rice flour. Easy as.

corn and capsicum fritters with smoked salmon, sweet chilli sauce and sour cream

With bacon, avocado and tomato

Lentil and vegetable bolognese sauce/nachos

I made this the other day and i'm using 1/4 of it for nachos and I still have another 1/4 to use up!!

The sauce is vegetarian which you can have without the meatballs if you prefer. I blended the sauce at the end so the kids could not see what was in it. I was delighted to tell them when they finished dinner that their most hated vegetables were in there, mwahahahaha! (zucchini, mushroom and pumpkin)
Lentils are a great addition to bolognese sauces as they break down and add extra nutrients plus extra fibre.

You can serve this with rice or mash or use it as a savory mince dish. Use as a baked potato topping with melted cheese, or jaffles, pies or shepherd's pie.
When you use the rest you can fry some more onion and garlic add some cumin and paprika and as well as some kidney beans and chopped tomatoes and simmer until really thick. Use for burritos, tacos or nachos.

Lentil and vegetable bolognese sauce
Ingredients
1 brown onion
4 cloves of garlic
2 zucchinis
300g pumpkin
150g broccoli
150g mushrooms
1200 ml tomato passata
½ cup of red lentils
3 tsp each of dried oregano and basil
Salt and pepper

Meatballs is just 500g mince, kneaded until sticky with some herbmare or salt and pepper. Roll into balls and fry in a pan for 6-7 minutes. You can either add the sauce to the meatballs in the pan and simmer a few minutes
- or you can stir the sauce through the pasta and serve the balls on top. If you do it this way you can set any leftover balls aside and make a meatball salad or stuffed into some pita bread and salad.

Method
I used the grater attachment on my food processor but you can finely chop by hand. It gets blended up at the end anyway (although you don’t have to).
Fry off onion and garlic for 30 seconds and then add everything else. Simmer for 25-30 minutes or until the lentils are tender. Use a stick mixer to blend until the sauce is to your liking. Serve with pasta like spaghetti, penne, rigatoni or whatever you like. Instead of parmesan cheese I used some feta.

Another idea to use this up is nachos

For the spaghetti above I used half the recipe then I used 1/4 to make nachos. (still have 1/4 of the mix left!)

In a large pot add 1 chopped brown onion, 3 cloves of crushed garlic, fry off in some olive oil for 30 seconds, then add 3 tsp paprika and 2 tsp ground cumin, stir again until fragrant. 

Then add on 1 x 400g can of rinsed and drained kidney beans, your leftover mix and 3 chopped tomatoes. Simmer for 25 minutes stirring occasionally. it should be nice and thick.

Now you have yourself some vegetarian nacho mix. You can also use for burritos or tacos or on a bed of brown rice.

Serve up with corn chips, melted cheese, guacamole and sour cream, so good!!