Spaghetti & lentil bolognaise

I like the addition of lentil to stretch this out as well as adding extra fibre. The good thing about using red lentils is that they break down and you don't even know they are in there! You decide if that is a good thing or not! I like to double this and freeze half of it. If you make double, 1 batch is 1.5kg in weight.(3 kg's altogether)

Serves 6

Ingredients

600g lean mince

1 brown onion, chopped

2-3 cloves of garlic or as much as you like, minced

150g red lentils

2 ½ cups of beef stock

210g tomato paste

2 tsp each of dried basil and oregano

Method

In a large pot heat a little oil and fry off your onion and garlic for 2 minutes, then add your mince and cook until it has changed color. Then add your tomato paste, lentils, stock and herbs and simmer with the lid on for about 30 minutes or until the lentils are nice and soft. Add more water or stock if needed. Serve with cooked spaghetti and parmesan cheese plus salad or veg.

For 6 portions I cooked 300g spaghetti in boiling salted water.

Stats- including 10g parmesan cheese (164 kJ) and 50g raw weight or 100g cooked weight spaghetti

Each portion should be around 250g.

1963 kJ

51g carbs

9 g fat

40g protein

Mandarin cupcakes

Makes 8-12 depending on size

Ingredients

125g butter, softened (the softened butter should be easy to cut through)

1/3 cup of sugar (70g)

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 large eggs at room temperature

1 cup of spelt or gluten free flour

175ml mandarin juice- zest them first if you can using a micro plane-for me this was 4 mandarins- plus you need 1 extra mandarin (squeezed) for the icing

Method

Preheat oven to 180 C

In a medium bowl with a hand beater, cream butter, vanilla and sugar until light and fluffy. Then one at a time your eggs. Continue beating until eggs are incorporated. Sift your flour, and baking powder into the butter mix, then zest and juice and fold into until combined, make sure there are no lumps, but don’t overmix. Spoon into 8- 12 holed greased or lined muffin tin and bake for 12-15 minutes. I use a silicone one then they just pop out.

Leave in tin to cool for 5 minutes and then turn out and leave to cool completely on a cake rack. Ice with your favourite icing when cool.

I used the juice of one mandarin with about ¼ cup or so of icing sugar and a heaped tsp of soft butter until you get a reasonably thick icing. Feel free to color with food coloring to make it orange- 2 drops yellow and 1 drop red. Sprinkles optional!

If you don’t want to ice you could add in some chocolate chips into the batter or on top for Jaffa cupcakes. You could swap mandarin for orange, lemon or lime.

Apple and pear anzac tart

Pastry dough

1 ½ cups spelt flour

125g cold butter, diced

1 tbsp rapadura sugar or another sugar

1 egg yolk (reserve eggwhite for the crumble)

Couple of pinches of salt

Ice cold water

Fruit filling

3 apple and 3 pears, peeled cored and 1 cm dice

1 tbsp rapadura or other sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp cinnamon

Optional 1 tbsp calvados

1 tbsp of corn flour

Crumble

½ cup oats

¼ cup of desiccated coconut

1 tbsp rapadura or another sugar

30g cold butter, finely diced

1 egg white

To make the pastry

In a food processor pulse the flour, salt and sugar, then add egg yolk, pulse again, add a tbsp. of iced water at a time, pulse until the dough comes together. Take the dough out and knead a couple of times to get the dough together, wrap up and let it rest in the fridge for 20 minutes.

When the dough has rested roll out between 2 pieces of baking paper. Roll out to a circle big enough to cover to tart tin (about 30 cm diameter) it should be nice and thin about 2-3mm. Take off the top piece of paper and have your hand underneath and then quickly turn it over onto your tin. Then peel off the paper and press your dough in. You should have a little dough leftover that you can use in your crumble topping. Put back in the fridge to rest for 10 minutes.

Preheat oven to 160 fan forced or 180 c normal. Blind bake for 15 minutes using uncooked rice/chickpeas/blind baking beads on top of baking paper. When cooked take off the paper and weights and bake a further 1-2 minutes to dry it out.

For the fruit cook your fruit in a pot with the rapadura, vanilla, cinnamon and calvados (if using) simmer for 7-10 minutes or until soft. When cooked sprinkle over cornflour while stirring, this will thicken up the juices in the pot and help stop your filling leaking too much into the pastry. Add a little more cornflour if your fruit very extra juicy!

For the crumble mix

Stir together the oats, coconut and sugar and using your fingers squish through the butter and any leftover pastry, leave some little chunks. Then stir through your egg white.

Fill your pastry shell with the cooked fruit and then dot over the crumble mix and bake for 20 minutes at 160 c fan forced or 180c normal. Serve with ice cream or cream, hot or cold.

Poached chicken in a coconut, lime, lemongrass and ginger broth

I made this the other day, in mind I was thinking a beautiful poached chicken in a lemongrass, ginger and lime broth. After I made it I realised I had pretty much made Tom Kha Gai! lol

This is pretty easy and you don't need to make a paste or anything, its really just infusing the flavors into the coconut.

It is a sexy soup:)

In a large pot or wok ( I am using Aus-Ion wok made by solidtekniks)

Everything goes in chunky

To serve 4

Ingredients

Put in 1 x 270ml can coconut milk and 1 x cans worth of water.

1x bruised stalk of lemongrass

6 slices of ginger (or galangal)

1/2 red onion, thick slice

6 cloves of garlic cut into half

A handful of thai basil if you can get it

A few lime leaves if you have it, I didn't use any

1/2 lime, cut in half

1-2 red chillis, always optional here

Method

Simmer all this in a large pot or wok for about 20 minutes to infuse.

Then put in your chicken to poach. I have used 2 chicken breast, each cut into 3.(700g) This included chicken to have as a leftover to make salad or pulled chicken burgers etc

If you are in a hurry you can just cook the chicken the same time you start the infusing.

You can use any vegetables you like, I did some whole button mushrooms, asian leafy greens and bean sprouts.

The chicken should simmer for about 15-20 minutes or until no longer pink inside. Check the flavor and use some fish sauce to taste. I serve up with noodles on the bottom, the veg and broth plus the poached chicken on top with some extra lime. You can also garnish with coriander and extra chili if you like.

Slow cooker Spanish chorizo, tomato and bean soup

Ingredients

2 carrots, small dice

2 stalks celery, small dice

1-2 zucchinis, 1 cm dice

1 red and 1 green capsicum, 1 cm dice

1 brown onion, diced

6 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 tbsp paprika and 1 tbsp smoked paprika (or use 2 tbsp of one if you don’t have both paprikas.

700g tomato passata

2 x 400g can rinsed and drained mixed beans

1-2 chorizo, small dice

Water

You can add chopped chili if you would like it spicy, add in with the onion

Method

Put your passata in a large measuring jug and make the total liquid 1200ml (1.2 litres) by adding water. You can adjust how liquidy you want your soup at the end.

Starting in a cold pan, fry off your chorizo to start rendering the fat out, after about 2-3 minutes you can add your paprika onion and garlic and cook for about 1 minute until softened.

Then add your chorizo mix plus your other veg, passata/water to your slow cooker, give it a stir and leave on low for 8 hours. Adjust consistency by adding more water at the end if you need to.

If you want stove top method cook the chorizo in a large pot instead of a pan and carry on with the rest of the recipe. Simmer for about 30 minutes or until all the veg is tender.

Curried red lentil soup

Trying to increase my legume intake and I am finding that you can eat a smaller amount of calories yet be so full. 

I have not been able to eat much of it because it's so filling, so good for managing your appetite:)
I think lentils are quite underutilised which is a shame as lentils are high fibre, packed with nutrients and dirt cheap and that's why I am loving them! Anyone else??

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

1 cup of dried red lentils

1 brown onion, finely chopped

6 cloves of garlic, chopped

2 carrots, small dice

3 stalk celery, diced

3 bay leaves

1 x 400g can tomatoes

Enough chicken of vegetable stock to add to the tomatoes to make 1200ml liquid altogether. You can also use come coconut milk as some of the liquid.

This amount of liquid will yield a very thick casserole style soup, you can adjust the consistency when it’s cooked. I added about 200 ml of extra liquid at the end.

For the curry bit this is pretty flexible you can use any Thai or Indian style paste or I used a mild curry powder. Use as much or as little as you like anywhere from 1-2 tbsp, up to you! Just add a little, taste and add more as needed.

Method

In a large pot heat some olive oil and fry off your onion, garlic, celery, and carrot for 1-2 minutes until softened. Then add your curry powder/paste and fry a further few seconds until it smells good! Then add stock, tomatoes, bay leaves and lentils. Bring to the boil and then turn down to a simmer. Simmer for about 20 minutes covered. Check soup and make sure everything is tender. Season with salt and pepper. If you like you can blend this soup.

For the bread, using small wholemeal pita breads, brush over some garlic butter/olive oil and sprinkle with either pizza cheese or grated parmesan cheese and bake in a hot oven for 4-5 minutes.