Avocado Pasta

Do you ever get to that point in winter where you just get cravings for fresh foods? I've been feeling that way for the past week or so, I think because I'm starting to get sick of all the wintery foods I've been eating. I was browsing through Pinterest for some inspiration when I found this recipe for avocado pasta. I can't get enough of avocados and this just sounded like a quick, healthy way to have pasta (also another favourite).

I loved the taste - the combination of the basil, lemon and avocado was great. I think the next time I make it though the addition of some chicken and mushrooms would round it out nicely.

Would you add anything else to this recipe? Or would you keep it simple?

Avocado Pasta
[Printable Recipe]
INGREDIENTS:
300g Pasta
2 ripe avocados, halved, seeded and peeled
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves
2 cloves garlic
2 tbsp lemon juice
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1/3 cup olive oil
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved

INSTRUCTIONS:
1. In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta according to package instructions; drain well.
2. To make the pasta sauce, combine avocados, basil, garlic and lemon juice in the bowl of a food processor, season with salt and pepper, to taste. With the motor running, add olive oil in a slow stream until emulsified.
3. In a large bowl, combine pasta, avocado sauce and cherry tomatoes
4. Serve immediately

Recipe Source:
Damn Delicious

Individual Chicken, Leek & Mushroom Pies

I know! It's amazing right? I'm actually posting a recipe for something savoury. It might surprise you to find out that I actually do cook most of the evening meals for my family, it's just that most of them don't seem postable - whether it's because the photos would come out too ugly or because I just think they're too boring. Every now and then, though, I like to try a new recipe that I'm proud to share with you lovely readers. And this recipe, that I found on Jane Kennedy's app 'OMG I can eat that?', is one of those. It is a low carb version of the chicken, leek and mushroom pie, which I know is never the same as a good old fashioned pie with flaky pastry, but it still turned out to be a delicious meal.
You see, readers, I'm actually trying to 'be good' at the moment. I've put on a lot of weight over the last year and it's really time that I did something about it. Not because I want to be a stick thin model or anything, but I just feel like I have to do this for me. I will still be posting lots of sweet treats in the future (they might just be for other people - not me), but they might be mixed in with more healthy meals, like this, as well.

To make the crust:
1 small zucchini, peeled and grated
1 egg, beaten
50g light mozzarella cheese, grated
50g parmesan cheese, grated

Preheat the oven to 180C and line a baking tray with paper. Trace circles onto the baking paper using a ramekin - trace a circle for each ramekin. In a bowl combine the zucchini, egg and mozzarella cheese. Spread this mixture onto the baking paper, using your traced circles as a guideline for the correct size and shape.

Bake the zucchini lids in your oven for about 20 minutes, or until they start to change colour. Once you remove them from the oven allow to cool on the baking tray.
Leave your oven at 180C so you can cook the pies later on.

To make the pie filling:
1tbsp olive oil
2 small skinless chicken fillets, cut into cubes
2 cloves garlic
2 leeks, finely sliced
12 mushrooms, sliced
1 sprig thyme, finely chopped
1 sprig rosemary, finely chopped
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
2 tbsp greek yoghurt

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and cook the chicken pieces for about 5-6 minutes. Once cooked, remove the chicken from the frying pan with a slotted spoon, leaving the juices in the pan, and set aside

Add the garlic and leeks to the pan, and cook for about 5 minutes. Make sure the leeks and garlic don't brown too much.

Add the mushroom slices, thyme (I only had dried thyme, not fresh, but I found this was fine to use), rosemary, sea salt and pepper and cook for another 6-8 minutes. Then stir in the yoghurt.

Divide the mixture between your ramekins - I was only serving three people so I squished my mixture in a little bit so it would fit into my three ramekins - and top each pie with a zucchini lid. Sprinkle the lid with parmesan cheese and bake for about 10-12 minutes - or until brown and bubbling (hmmm!!)

Warning - your house will be left with the most delicious smell. You'll want more pie even after you're finished - or maybe it's just because I'm greedy ;)

Recipe Source:
Jane Kennedy's app: OMG I can eat that?
recipe for Chicken, Leek and Mushroom piemakins

Individual Chicken, Leek & Mushroom Pies Zucchini crust: 1 small zucchini, peeled and grated 1 egg, beaten 50g light mozzarella cheese, grated 50g parmesan cheese, grated 1. Preheat the oven to 180C 2. Line a baking tray with baking paper 3. To make the zucchini crust, combine the zucchini, egg and mozzarella cheese in a bowl 4. Spread this mixture onto the baking paper, making circles in the shape of a pie lid - to do this I traced around my ramekins to get the correct shape and size. 5. Bake for about 20 minutes, or just until the zucchini crust starts to change colour 6. Remove from the oven and leave on the baking paper to cool. Pie Filling: 2 small skinless chicken fillets, cut into cubes 2 cloves garlic 2 leeks, finely sliced 12 mushrooms, sliced 1 sprig thyme, finely chopped 1 sprig rosemary, finely chopped sea salt and freshly ground pepper 2 tbsp greek yoghurt 1. Preheat the oven to 180C 2. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat and cook the chicken pieces for about 5-6 minutes 3. Remove the chicken with a slotted spoon, leaving the juices in the pan, and set aside. 4. Add the garlic and leeks to the pan. Saute for about 5 minutes, stirring constantly and making sure leeks and garlic don't brown too much. 5. Add the mushrooms, thyme, rosemary, sea salt and pepper and cook for another 6-8 minutes. 6. Stir in the yoghurt 7. Divide the mixture between your ramekins and top each one with a zucchini lid. Sprinkle the lid with parmesan cheese and bake for about 10-12 minutes, or until brown and blubbling 8. Serve immediately.

Sausages in (onion) gravy

Do you ever have those days when all you feel like is some good old comfort food, no matter how good or bad it is for you? I had one of those days the other day. I was tired and not feeling very well and all I felt like was one of my favourite dishes from my childhood - Sausages in onion gravy. I know some of you will be horrified by the sound of this dish, but no matter how bad it sounds (and looks) it's really very tasty. Plus it's very easy and fairly quick to make.

Yes, I know, it's not the greatest looking meal...but it's comfort food! :)
You start off with as many BBQ sausages you need. You can use whatever sausages you want here - flavoured or plain, but we usually just get plain ones for this meal. In a frying pan with a little bit of oil fry the sausages until they're brown and cooked through.

Usually I slice a large onion into rings and cook it in the pan with the sausages, however on this occassion we were all out of onions so I decided to replace them with mushrooms. I sliced a few large mushrooms up and added them to the pan with the sausages to cook.
While these were cooking, I put 3 tablespoons of gravy powder (I know, I know) in a small bowl and filled it with water and whisked the two together. Once the sausages and mushrooms were cooked, I poured this gravy mixture over the top and stirred occassionally until the mixture thickened.

And that was it! Very simple, very quick. While I was cooking the sausages I also steamed some vegetables to have on the side - zucchini, carrots and potatoes which I mashed. Mashed potatoes with Sausages in Onion Gravy is a fantastic combination.
I must admit it tasted a little different to how it usually tastes - I'm guessing this is because of the use of mushrooms instead of onions. It was still very nice, but just not as good as usual.

Recipe Source: Family recipe

Salt and Pepper Calamari

I'm going a little bit healthy with todays post! I've actually been trying to eat healthier lately. I just got back to work a couple of weeks ago because school holidays are over and I felt like I'd been eating too much of the good stuff over my break. So here we are. I promise I'm not going to fill the blog with healthy food - I love my baking too much for that, it's just that every now and then I might add a healthy recipe that I try out. Although this Salt & Pepper Calamari recipe I found goes to show that eating healthy doesn't necessarily mean eating boring food.

This recipe was surprisingly easy. To be honest I've always been very nervous about cooking seafood for some reason. I've heard that it's very easy to overcook, but I'm also afraid that I'll under cook it in my trying not to overcook it! I've tried to cook calamari a couple of times before, but I've never known what to put on it. When I saw this recipe in the Nigella Lawson cookbook 'Nigella Bites' I knew I had to try it. 

I started off by cutting my calamari tubes in half so I could get to the inside. I cleaned out what I needed from the inside of the tubes, although luckily there wasn't much left there. Once I'd done that I sliced each half into rectangular shaped pieces.

Then in a zip lock bag I added the corn flour and ground up salt and pepper which I shook up to combine. I then added the calamari and shook the bag again until the calamari was coated in the flour mixture. 

I added the calamari, in a couple of batches, to a hot frying pan with plenty of oil in it to cook. I only needed to cook the calamari for about 2 minutes on each side before it was ready.

Before I served the calamari I added it to a plate with some paper towel on it to absorb some of the oil. The calamari had crisped up very nicely - it was golden brown, and crunchy because of the corn flour mixture. Then I added it to the plate with a little salad I'd made up. And voila! A very quick, easy, light and healthy meal. Perfect for a hot summers night dinner.

Recipe Source:

'Nigella Bites' by Nigella Lawson

Roast Turkey with Brown Sugar and Mustard glaze

I'd have to say that the Turkey was the part of my Christmas cooking I was most nervous about. I had never cooked a Turkey before in my life, and I think I've only cooked a couple of roast chickens before. That's the extent of my roasting abilities! I was fine with getting the stuffing ready, and the glaze and all that, but I was worried that I wouldn't get the timing right and that I'd either over or under cook the turkey. I posted on twitter the night before saying that I was nervous about the Turkey and got some lovely responses that made me feel a lot better about it. I can't say that it completely took my nerves away though!

So this is the Turkey I used. It was a 4.8kg one that I'd just bought from the supermarket. I'd had to thaw it for about three days by this time. It was a little overwhelming at first, the idea of touching all this raw meat kind of freaked me out a little, but I found once I got going I got more comfortable. I'd decided to try the turkey from the Martha Stewart website with Brown Sugar and Mustard glaze.

Ingredients:

1 whole turkey, thawed if frozen, rinsed and patted dry

course salt and ground pepper

4 cups Pecan Cornbread Dressing

2 tbsp butter, room temperature

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

1/4 cup spicy brown mustard

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C with rack in lowest position. Place turkey on roasting rack set in a large roasting pan. Season inside of turkey with salt and pepper. Loosely fill neck and large cavity with dressing; fold skin over, and secure with skewers or trussing needles, if necessary. Bend wing tips forward, and tuck under neck cavity. Using kitchen twine, the legs together securely. Rub turkey all over with butter, season with salt and pepper.

2. Add neck, giblets, and 3 cups water to roasting pan. Cover turkey loosely with aluminium foil. Roast 1 hour, and then baste with pan juices every 30 minutes, until an instant-read thermometer inserted in thickest part of a thigh (avoiding bone) registers 52 degrees C (125 degrees F), 1 to 2 hours more.

3. Remove foil; increase heat to 205 degrees C (400 F). In a small bowl, stir together sugar and mustard; brush turkey with glaze. Rotate pan, and continue to roast turkey, brushing with glaze 2 to 3 more times, until thermometer registers 165 degrees, 45 minutes to 1 hour more.

4. Transfer turkey to a platter; reserve pan with drippings for gravy. Cover turkey loosely with foil, and let rest at least 30 minutes (or up to 1 hour). Before serving, remove dressing, and carve.

Finally the turkey was done. I was so nervous when we took it out of the oven and later went to carve it. I was so crushed when we took the legs off and found they weren't completely cooked. But then my Dad carved into the breast and it was cooked perfectly. I found out later that this had happened to a friend of mine who had decided to cook a turkey this year too. I'm so glad that I went with the brown sugar and mustard glaze, it was very sweet and added such a lovely taste to the turkey. The Pecan Cornbread stuffing was really nice too, it had a very nice subtle flavour to it which I really liked and it had contrasting textures of soft bread and crunchy pecans. 

I also found a Turkey Gravy from the Martha Stewart website which I decided to use. The only problem was that in all my worries about the Turkey, I'd actually forgotten to make sure there was enough water in the bottom of the pan so once I went to make the gravy there was hardly any juices left in the pan. I ended up deciding to use whatever I had left there, which I'm not sure was the greatest idea but it didn't seem to effect the gravy in a bad way. I did find though that this recipe didn't make enough gravy for all the people we had attending our Christmas lunch so I had to mix up more or the flour/chicken brother mix and added a little gravy powder in for a little bit of extra flavour. In the end I was really happy with how the gravy worked out, it had a nice flavour and there was plenty to go around for everyone.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup plain flour

3 to 4 cups chicken broth

Pan drippings from 1 roast turkey

1. In a jar with a lid, shake the flour together with 1 cup of the broth. Place the pan with drippings over medium heat until it begins to bubble. Whisk in the flour mixture. Cook to thicken, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the remaining broth and simmer to reach desired thickness. Strain through a cheesecloth-lined sieve. Serve with roasted turkey.

Rosemary Meatballs

I was struggling to come up with something to cook for dinner last night, when I remembered Martha's Rosemary Meatballs that I'd made once before. I like these because they're a little bit different to how we normally cook meatballs. They actually have lemon rind and juice in them which gives them a really nice tang and flavour. You can find the recipe on the Martha Stewart website.

These are a few of the ingredients that go in. The recipe calls for pork mince as well as beef mince but I ended up just using beef mince since we didn't have any pork. I thought the meatballs still turned out really well, but I haven't tried them with pork mince to be able to tell the difference. Someone else out there might be able to tell me if I'm missing something!

I had to cook them in batches as you can see, because I got quite a few meatballs. They smelt amazing, with the mixture of lemon, rosemary and garlic wafting through the kitchen!

And here's the finished product. I swear, these meatballs are such an easy meal to make. You just throw everything into the bowl and mix it all together for the meatballs. The mixtures is easy to roll into balls and then you just fry them up. The sauce on top is just a jar of tomato pasta sauce which you can buy from any supermarket and I just steamed up some carrot, broccoli and potatoes (which I mashed) to go with them. A very easy, quick and delicious meal!

A little side tip: While I was searching for the meatball recipe I noticed a recipe for buttermilk mashed potatoes. I didn't get to have a proper look at that recipe but later on when I was making the mashed potatoes I remembered it and decided to try adding some buttermilk to my potatoes. I didn't notice much of a difference in the flavour of the potatoes but they did turn out nice and creamy and smooth.