Easy Colourful Roast Vegetable Medley

This is probably the most straight forward healthiest dish I'll post. Well..maybe.. we will see!?

One of my main focuses with food is to have a diverse and wide variety diet. And when I say 'diet' I'm not talking about losing weight or restricting calories. I'm talking about the food we eat daily.

The reason behind this is to be able to get as many essential nutrients, vitamins and minerals as possible from the food I eat every day.

I find vegetables are the easiest visual example and 'guide' for showing they have a variety of nutritional benefits. To sum it all up, I'm trying to say EAT YOUR COLOURS! 

You may be familiar with the saying "Eat your greens", but don't forget your whites, oranges, reds, yellows etc..

Roasting vegetables is definitely one of my 'go to' dishes in the winter. There are plenty of seasonal vegetables at this time of year that are great for roasting, and with the cold weather approaching it is the ultimate comfort way of cooking.
I don't like to add too much to this recipe as the flavours of the vegetables are good on their own.

Easy Colourful Roast Vegetable Medley

Pre heat oven to 200 C

Ingredients

3-4 garlic cloves - peeled
1 large or 2 small Orange Kumera - Sweet potato
2-3 onions
1 capsicum - I used green
3-4 potatoes
2-3  carrots
2 T oil - I use coconut oil
Salt and pepper

I garnished mine with Italian flat leaf parsley

Method

Roughly chop all vegetables into the same size for even cooking times.
Place in a roasting dish and drizzle with oil and season with salt and pepper.
Roast for 30-45 minutes

Serve as a side dish or as a complete meal

Enjoy!

Raw broccoli and salmon salad with Avocado dressing

This recipe was written in the NZ Herald back in April this year. If you are looking for a meal idea that is healthy and tastes great, you've found a winner! This recipe caters for everyone! Gluten free, Dairy free, Sugar free, Clean eaters! If you are vegetarian or vegan you can easily take out the salmon :)

This recipe is so easy and can be achieved in 3 steps!

You will Need:

1 Head of broccoli broken in to florets

1 red capsicum, roughly chopped

Handful fresh herbs of your choice (I used coriander, Italian parsley and Vietnamese mint)

200 g salmon (smoked if you wish, I prefer mine not to be smoked)

1 cup black pitted olives

1/2 cup seeds (toasted if you wish, I use pumpkin seeds and sunflower )

Dressing:

1 avocado

Juice of a lemon

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup water

2 cloves garlic*

sea salt

pepper

* Note that the 2 cloves of garlic is quite strong, change this to 1 clove if you don't want it too garlic-y :)

What to do:

Dressing:
1. Blend up all ingredients together until smooth.

Salad:
2. In a food processor, Pulse the broccoli, capsicum and herbs until a rice like consistency.

3. Transfer to a large bowl and toss in dressing, salmon, olives and seeds!

Enjoy!

I hope you like this recipe as much as I do! Let me know what you think!

Brit xx

Healthy Dinner Idea

Medallions of Beef Sirloin served with sesame seed coasted cauliflower, bok choy, baby carrots and a simple sauce.

I love this dish because of the great colours. It has wonderful textures and the sauce complements the beef.

This recipe is not restricting at all. I know what it is like to find a recipe and only have half the ingredients in the kitchen! Feel free to swap ingredients for ones you have. For example, Cauliflower for broccoli, Bok choy for spinach, carrots for beans. Sesame seeds for bread crumbs. Even the sauce you can change the chicken stock to a beef stock.
Have fun getting creative and playing around with your ideas :)

Serves 4

You will need:
8 cauliflower florets
600-800g beef sirloin
50g flour
1 egg
1T Turmeric ground
1/2 cup sesame seeds
12 leaves of bok choy
12 baby carrots
2 T butter
2 T oil
Radish cress for garnish

Simple Sauce
1/2 medium onion
300ml chicken stock
150ml soy sauce
100g crushed tomato
50g sugar
1/2 root ginger
1 clove garlic
90 ml sesame oil

What to do:
Pre heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius

Blanch cauliflower in boiling water until just semi cooked, drain and cool.Combine Turmeric and sesame seeds Coat cauliflower in flower then egg wash coat in sesame seed mix.

To make the sauce, add all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Simmer for 15 minutes, blend then pass.

Beef:
place oil in (oven proof- I like cast iron pans)  hot pan then pan fry your beef sirloin until it has a good colour on all sides.
Place in oven for 10 minutes or until medium rare.
Allow to rest for 5 minutes once cooked

Vegetables:
Place baby carrots in a saucepan. Just cover with water and add butter. Boil and simmer until cooked.
Add Bok choy and allow it to wilt.
You can either deep fry your cauliflower, or pan fry in oil until golden

Plate up with bok choy on the bottom, pour the sauce on, cauliflower, beef cut into 2 slices per plate, Carrot and garnish with cress.

Enjoy!

Brit xx

Easy Dinner Idea! Cumin-Crusted Turbot With Roast Vegetables.

Whenever I have fish at home I will most likely crumb it. I find it quick and easy and I always know it will taste good! I would usually use the classic method of flour, egg wash and bread crumbs.
This method doesn't involve the egg or the crumbs therefore making it quicker! Not only that, but it tastes great! 

This recipe uses a flat fish called a turbot but you can use any fish that is suitable for you at the time.
This recipe has a rose' wine "vinaigrette" that is made during the cooking process in the pan which saves time.

Recipe serves 4 main meals
Ingredients
4-8 fillets Turbot (depending if you want 1 or 2 per portion
3 T cumin seeds, toasted and crushed
3 T olive oil
1 cup rose' wine or red wine
1 shallot - chopped finely
2 T chopped fresh chervil
2 T chopped fresh chives
2 cups wild watercress
1 T butter
salt and pepper
100g each of potato, beetroot, Carrot and parsnip (or any vegetable you want to roast)
peeled and chopped into chunks

Cooking
Toss roast vegetables in a roasting dish with 1 T oil. Roast in oven at 180 degrees for 30-40 mins or until cooked and golden.

Turbot - Sprinkle both sides with cumin and salt and pepper. ( If you want you can sprinkle some flour over this)
Fry the turbot in a hot pan with 1 T oil for 1-2 minutes on each side. Remove from pan. Place the shallots in the pan and slightly caramelise. Then deglaze the pan with the rose' and simmer for 5 minutes or until reduced to 1/2 cup. Quickly whisk in the olive oil and stir in chives and chervil and season with salt and pepper.
Remove from pan.
Add butter and watercress and wilter quickly. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve Turbot on the roast vegetables and watercress, drizzle on the glaze.

Enjoy!

Brit xx

Sensational Soups!

After a good 4 week break from my chef course, it's time to get started again.

Following my level 3 course that I started in February, I am now onto level 4.

The first lesson was breads but today I'm sharing my first soup lesson.

We made:
Oxtail consommé
Crab Bisque
Borscht
Seafood Chowder

Oxtail consommé
A consomme is a clear soup. To make the soup clear and 'grease free' there is a strict process throughout the making of the soup. You must constantly skim the 'skum' off the stock when you are reducing it down with the oxtail bones. This is so the stock is as clear as possible when you serve it. 
The 2nd process for getting the clear soup made is to make a raft from mince. For this we mixed egg whites with mince and finely chopped vegetables and placed them in our strained oxtail soup. Bring this to the boil and simmer once the raft of mince has risen. It is important at this stage not to stir it and break up the mince raft. Then you must carefully strain out the liquid soup from under the mince.
I love making this soup as it is a very cleaver way of getting a clear soup. It also brings out the perfectionist side of me to get the clearest soup possible!!




Crab Bisque
This soup has ALOT of flavour. and as a big seafood fan, I LOVED this soup. Unfortunately there were no crabs available in the area at the time so we used whole prawns and crab meat. We broke up the prawns with there shell still on and all. I'm guessing this is what gives the soup a great flavour! Luckily the shells are all strained out at the end :) so no crispy shells in your soup..!

Borscht 
To my understanding Borscht is a popular soup around Eastern Europe. There are lots of different versions of this soup that all slightly differ from the other. The main ingredient in this soup is the beetroot which gives it a vibrant bright red. Our version used spanish onions and red wine. We garnished this soup with sour cream, soft boiled egg wedges, and chives.
I had never made this soup before but I found it interesting but definitely an enjoyable soup! Very healthy too :) Its great to get colours in the diet!



Seafood ChowderYum!
Like I mentioned above, I'm a big seafood fan. So I loved this chowder. We put shrimps, blue cod, salmon, mussels,  clams, cockles and smoked blue cod into our chowder.It is very easy to make and I highly recommend it to all seafood lovers out there!

Healthy Lunch Idea!

Hey everyone!

Just a quick post today of a healthy lunch idea :)

I know what its like when your busy throughout the day and you have no idea what to whip up for lunch. Something healthy, easy, tasty and quick would be ideal! Right?

My lunch today was an easy toastie which had chicken, pumpkin and feta cheese in it.

The reason why this was so quick was because I used leftovers from last nights tea :)
Sometimes it does pay to make a wee bit extra for tea so then you can have something ready for lunch the next day!

What I ate for Dinner!

Stir Fry Beans with Chili

Get your greens with this yummy meal!

I love green vegetables because they are full of essential vitamins.

Personally, I love to have chili in my diet when I'm sick or it has cold weather because I feel like they warm me up as they have a big kick on the palate. :)

If you would like the recipe, feel free to leave a comment :)

Farmers Market Haul!

So today I went to my local farmers market,

I love to go there every Sunday
I like to walk there to get some early morning Sunday fitness in :)

I was originally only after some sage for the garden , but I was tempted by some fresh fruit and veges!

I purchased, some fresh plums, cherry tomatos, onions and courgettes.

oh I also got the sage, can't wait to plant it.
The sage was $2
Plums and courgettes $3.90
Onions 1kg - $2
sage plant - $2
(all NZ$)

so pretty cheap shop overall :)