Pear and Walnut Salad

When I'm making any salad I try to get as much flavour in as possible.

This salad is simple, healthy, tasty and keeps the hunger satisfied. 

Walnuts can go off quickly due to their high level of omega oils. The best idea is to store them in an air tight container away from any heat and light. You can even freeze walnuts or leave them in the fridge. If you are lucky enough to get them whole, you can crack them yourself and eat fresh from the shell.

Pear and Walnut Salad

Serve 1

2 cups baby spinach

1 pear sliced

4-5 cherry tomatoes

1 rasher bacon

1/4 C walnuts 

Vinaigrette

5T olive oil

1 clove garlic - crushed

2T balsamic vinegar

1t Dijon mustard

salt and pepper to taste

Prepare vinaigrette by whisking vinegar, garlic and mustard in a small bowl. Slowly whisk in oil. Season with salt and pepper

Grill bacon for 2-3 minutes each side. 

Slice pear, tomatoes and bacon.

Toss all ingredients into a bowl and mix vinaigrette through.

Serve immediately 

Honeyed Glazed Pumpkin

Hey Everyone! 

I love trying out new recipes with different vegetables to try mix things up a bit.

It can actually be so easy to enhance flavours of vegetables to make them not only taste amazing but so you can still get all the important nutrients from them.

It's well into spring here now (not that the weather is showing us that at the moment!) but we still had a couple of pumpkins to use up. 

I love pumpkin because it is so versatile. It can be sweet or savoury. Baked, roasted, boiled or steamed. You can eat it in pieces or it can make a really yummy puree. 

This recipe is inspired from a recipe I found in the My petite kitchen cookbook. She is a blogger from NZ who comes up with the most amazing nutritious, wholefood recipes! My copy of the book has post it notes in nearly every page for recipes that I want to try! Check out her blog here 

Honey Glazed Pumpkin

( Serves 3-4 side dishes )

Ingredients

1/4 pumpkin

1T Runny honey

Small handful of chopped coriander and Italian Parsley 

1/4 cup Chopped Olives( I wanted to use black olives but we only had stuffed green olives but they still tasted great!)

1T coconut oil melted

Salt and pepper

Method

Pre heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius 

Carefully slice the skin off the pumpkin. Using a sharp knife and a chopping board that is not wobbling around ( place a wet cloth underneath your board to help ).

Cut pumpkin into thin slices, roughly 10 - 5 mm thick.

Place pumpkin into a roasting dish.

Drizzle honey and coconut oil onto pumpkin.

 Season with salt and pepper.

Bake for 20-30 minutes or until pumpkin is cooked right through.

Place into a serving dish and sprinkle with chopped herbs and olives.

Serve while still warm.

Even my cat was trying to get in on this!

Enjoy!

Brit xo

Easter Holidays + Graduation!

Over the weekend the Easter holidays were celebrated!
What a great time of year to spend time with family and friends!
I was fortunate enough to spend time in Central Otago NZ, and what a lovely place it is there. Especially at this time of year, lovely colours of autumn leaves and such a calm atmosphere.  ☁ ☼ ❁

Easter friday was a day to relax for me and reflect back on what a crazy couple of years it has been studying to be a chef! My graduation was on Thursday! woohoo! chapter of my life complete ✔
Now bring on full time working!

Anywhooo.. I wanted to share a wee sample of the MANY pictures ( I have a new phone that I am addicted to taking waaay to many pictures on... clogs up everything but o well) that I took during my easter break.

I am very fortunate that my family loves to get outdoors and be active. This was a great way to clear my head from books, studying and work.

I had some old bread leftover in the freezer that I don't eat and no one in my house ever really eats so I took them with me cause there is this lovely wee duck pond not too far from where we stay. 

Over on my side if the world it is autumn! (Thumbs up for southern hemisphere!) ✌So the leaves were all over the ground, nice and crunchy ones too!

To your left are some pinot noir grapes. Central Otago is very well known for producing grapes for pinot noir wines. I'm not a big wine drinker but I can definitely appreciate these sweet grapes :)

Easter Friday lunch was Nana's Homemade vegetable soup with homemade wholegrain bread, Delish! You can check that out on my Instagram here Brits Instagram

I also made some hot cross buns! But that will be for another blog :)

I hope you all had a lovely Easter! Let me know what you got up to in the comments below 

Brit xx

What's for dinner!? - Warm Pumpkin and Chickpea Curry

Warm Pumpkin and Chickpea Curry

This Curry is so easy and quick to make with very little ingredients!

Lately it has been getting pretty cold here! Autumn is here and winter feels like it is not long around the corner!

I have a few pumpkins so thought I would use some for dinner!
You can make this curry as hot or as mild as you like (in terms of spicy-ness)

What you will need :

About half a pumpkin (Roughly 1kg)
1 can chickpeas
2 T chopped Coriander
1 cup coconut milk
1 onion - diced
1T oil

1/2 cup curry sauce ( My one is not very hot which is why I used 1/2 cup, you may want to use 1-2T of yellow curry paste instead - depending on how hot you want it)

Rice:
1 cup long grain rice
1 onion - Diced finely
50g butter
2 cups white stock (I used vegetable)


How to:
Pre-heat oven to 200 degrees Celsius
Chop the pumpkin (Carefully!!) and peel skin off( i find using a peeler works great)
dice into cubes

Roast off in the oven for about 20-30min or until semi tender - Note that they don't need to be completely cooked through at the moment as they will be cooked later :)


While they are cooking we can cook off the rice
Place butter and onion in a small saucepan and sweat off.

Add the rice and coat the rice in the butter

Add the white stock
Cover with a lid and bring to a boil then simmer
This is cooked once the rice is soft to bite and has soaked up all the liquid.

Back to the curry!

Place oil and onion in a large saucepan and sweat off

Add the curry sauce, coconut milk, roasted pumpkin, chickpeas and coriander,

Cover with a lid on a high simmer for about 20 minutes

Finish with cracked pepper for seasoning.

Serve with rice and enjoy!

Brit :)