(Viennese) Chicken in Apricot Sauce

So, you'll all be glad to hear I got Vienna safely this Thursday, and now that I've had a chance to buy some supplies, back to a more regular service of recipes. This first one is basically a variation on beef in plum sauce, but was so tasty, I thought it too needed its own post.
For 4:
6 Chicken Breasts (sechs Hühnerbrusten)
6 Apricots (sechs Aprikosen)
5 Small Onions (fünf Zweibeln)
2 Peppers (zwei Paprikas)
4 Garlic Cloves (vier Knoblauchzehen)
1 Saucepan (kochtopf)
1 Frying Pan (Bratpfanne)
Olive Oil (Oliveöl)

1. Chop onions finely. Fry in saucepan with olive oil on a low heat.
2. Chop garlic finely. Add to the onions.
3. Remove the stone from the apricots and chop into sixths or eighths, depending on size. Add to onions and garlic.

4. Almost cover these in hot water, and bring to the boil.

5. Chop chicken breasts and fry on high heat in frying pan.
6. Once lightly browned, add chicken to saucepan.
7. Mix chicken into sauce, and simmer/boil liquid until thickened.
7. Chop peppers into strips and fry in frying pan used for chicken.

8. Once peppers are cooked, add to saucepan for a minute or two, then serve.

Volumise: Mix some spinach into the sauce. Serve with cauliflower mash.
Add carbs: Use more peppers, use more apricots.
Add fat: Mix in some more olive oil or some coconut oil. Serve with roasted avocados.
Add protein: Mix some pieces of bacon in with the chicken.

P.S. If anyone wants to correct my German, leave a comment.

Short Hiatus

The blog won't be getting any posts for a little while.
I've moved to my parents from my Oxford digs for a week or so until I fly out to Vienna for the summer. Hopefully, I'll be settled there soon (as in start of July) and I'll be able to post some more new recipes. Until I'm sorted out in Vienna though, there will be no new recipes going up.
See you soon I hope,
Dan

Five spice pork marinade

Needed to make something quickly today (again due to exams), so I marinated some sliced pork overnight last night in olive oil, Chinese five spice (a mix of star anise, cinnamon, fennel, black pepper and cloves) and ginger.
For 2:

5 Pork Loin Steaks
1 Broccoli Head
2 Carrots
1 Clove of Ginger
Spinach
Chinese Five Spice
Ginger
Olive Oil
Wok

1. Mix 40 ml olive oil, some Chinese five spice and ginger in a measuring jug.
2. Chop pork into strips (as per picture) and marinate in above overnight.

3. Peel carrots. Chop carrots and broccoli into thin strips. Chop garlic into small pieces.

4. Place wok on heat, add pork to wok first, then other ingredients.
5. Stir-fry ingredients in wok until pork is browned. Add spinach to wok and wilt. Serve.

Volumise: Add more carrot and/or spinach.
Add carbs: Add peppers.
Add fat: Add coconut oil to stir-fry.
Add protein: Add some nuts to the stir fry just prior to serving, perhaps walnuts.

Warming Beef Stew

I struggled with a name for this. It was never meant to be a spicy dish, but it is full of spices, like cinnamon and cumin, so I went with something that sounds good given the current weather in the UK.
For 3:
3 Casserole Steaks
4 Onions
3 Cans of Chopped Tomatoes
2 Carrots
1 Clove of Garlic
Ground Cumin
Dried Coriander
Ground Nutmeg
Ground Cinnamon
1 Saucepan

1. Peel and chop the onions and garlic. Fry in saucepan until almost browned.
2. Chop casserole steak into pieces about a cubic inch (2.5 cm) in size. Fry the beef in the saucepan until brown.
3. Add the spices and mix into the onions and beef.
4. Once fully mixed in, add the tomatoes and carrots.

5. Simmer for about 1 hour and/or until the sauce is sufficiently thickened. Serve.

Volumise: Add more carrots. Add some spinach about 2 minutes before serving.
Add carbs: Use more tomatoes. Add some peppers roughly ten minutes before serving.
Add fat: Mix in some coconut oil, almond or coconut flour.
Add protein: Serve with bacon. Use more beef. I imagine everyone is sick of hearing "use more bacon", but unfortunately, it is a universal trueism that bacon improves pretty much everything.

Also, this will be posted to Fightback Friday at Food Renegade on Friday. Feel free to head over there and check out more recipes and food related articles.

Coq au vin

Classical French dish. I made it in my slow-cooker, which I know that not everybody has, but the size of the dish means you need a big container for it all, so it's a slow-cooker or a casserole dish. I needed the bottle of wine to make the dish, and I went to Tesco to get it. Annoyingly, I got ID'd and didn't have any on me, which meant I couldn't get some alcohol that I wasn't even going to drink, but evaporate into the air.
For about 4-6:
4 Large Chicken Legs
500 g Bacon
6 Onions
2 Carrots
8 Medium Mushrooms
1 Bottle of Wine (minus 3 Glugs for the Plum Sauce recipe of earlier)
Thyme
3 Bay Leaves
Frying Pan
Saucepan
Slow-Cooker

1. Fry the bacon in the frying pan until crispy.
2. Pour all but one glug of the bottle of wine into the slow-cooker. Add the bay-leaves and thyme.
3. Chop the onions and carrots roughly and add the onion, carrots and bacon and some thyme to the slow-cooker.
4. In the pan used for the bacon, fry the chicken legs until brown on both sides. Place the chicken legs into the slow-cooker.
5. Add water until all the ingredients are covered with liquid.

6. Cook for 6-8 hours.

7. Strain all the liquid from the pot into a saucepan and boil down into a thick sauce. Return the solids to the warm pot, but do not apply heat, to maintain temperature.
8. While this boils, chop the mushrooms into quarters and fry in butter. Once browned, add the remaining glug of wine. Boil this liquid down to a thick sauce also.

9. Once the mushrooms and sauce is ready, serve. Be careful of bones from the chicken legs (they can be reserved for stock).

Volumise: Use more carrots. Mix in some cauliflower, it may dissolve and thicken the sauce.
Add Carbs: Serve with roast sweet potatoes.
Add fat: Mix some coconut oil or coconut flour into the slow-cooker prior to 6-8 hour cooking.
Add protein: Use more bacon. Use more chicken legs.

Roast beef in plum sauce with mashed cauliflower

Good God! I thought I mightn't post this week because of exams and whatnot, but this was genuinely too good not to share. I really enjoyed this meal. The sauce was amazing.
Let's get straight to it.
For 2:
4 Small Beef Steaks
2 Plums
3 Glugs of red wine (yes, that's a unit!)
3 Onions
1 Cauliflower Head
1 Beef Stock cube (Knorr)
Coconut Oil
Roasting Dish
Frying pan
Saucepan

1. Heat the oven to about 150 degrees C. Once hot, put the steaks in with some coconut oil.
2. Slice the onions finely. Fry in the pan on a low heat with some oil.
3. Cut down to the plum stone, run the knife all the way round, then twist the plum apart and remove the stone. Chop each half plum into four pieces (so 16 plum pieces in all). Add them to the frying pan with the onions.
4. Put a saucepan of water on the boil.
5. Chop the cauliflower up into bit and start boiling it once the water is boiling.
6. Add two glugs of wine and the stock cube to the frying pan and one glug of wine to the beef in the oven. Stir the frying pan until the stock cube dissolves.

7. Once the sauce is thickened up and the beef has had roughly 40 minutes, add the liquid from the baking tray to the frying pan.
8. Once the cauliflower is boiled, drain it, then mash it.

9. Once the beef has had 1 hour total and the sauce is thick, serve.

Volumise: Use more cauliflower, boil or steam some broccoli.
Add Carbs: Boil and mash some sweet potato instead or as well.
Add fat: Add coconut oil to the mash.
Add Protein: Wrap the steaks in bacon and with cheese.

PS Most of these recipes are now going up on Chowstalker. Two points come to mind:
1. They have a ratings system. If you enjoyed the recipe, let them know.
2. They have a butt-load more good recipes.
Enjoy.

Vinegar-Poached Salmon Stir Fry

Given a choice between revision and cooking, it's pretty clear which one I pick!

For 3:
6 Salmon Steaks
100 g Spinach
2 Red Peppers
1 Chilli
1 Garlic Clove
Vinegar
Coconut Oil
1 Wok
1 Saucepan
1 Baking Tray
Slotted Spoon
Paper Towels

1. Heat the oven to 200 degrees C. Chop peppers into 4 pieces. Put peppers and some coconut oil in baking tray and baking tray in oven.
2. Fill saucepan with vinegar to height of thickest piece of salmon, heat to simmering.
3. Submerge three salmon steaks in vinegar and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove salmon steaks with slotted spoon and place on paper towels to dry. Repeat with other three salmon steaks.

4. Chop chilli and garlic clove into small pieces. Melt some coconut oil in the wok. Sweat the chilli and garlic in the wok.
5. Add the salmon to the wok and stir fry. While frying, break the salmon into small flakes.

6. Once salmon is cooked, quickly wilt spinach in wok.

7. Take wok off heat. Remove peppers from oven and place in plastic container with the lid on. Shake vigorously. The heat and shaking will loosen the skin from the peppers, allowing the burnt skin to be peeled off.

8. Serve.

Volumise: More spinach in the stir-fry.
Add carbs: Use more peppers.
Add fat: Roast some avocado with the peppers.
Add protein: Mix some bacon into the stir-fry.

Orange Chicken and Sweet Poato Mash

I thought I'd make a variant on the lemon chicken from a while back.
A quick congratulations to my friends who have just finished their finals here at Oxford! Can't believe we've all been here for 4 years!
This recipe is going up in a blog carnival over at Food Renegade, so go check it out over there for more recipes and food-based discussions.

For 3:
3 Chicken Breasts
4 Clementines (I know, not oranges)
1 Bunch Spring Onions
1 Chilli
2 Medium Sweet Potatoes
Ground Ginger
Butter
1 Frying Pan
1 Saucepan
Paper Towels
Slotted Spoon

1. Slice the chicken into small strips.
2. Skin the clementines.
3. Boil some water in the saucepan along with some clementine skin. Remove the skin from the water.
4. Poach the chicken strips in the water briefly (30-60 s). Remove the chicken from the water with the slotted spoon and dry on the paper towels.
5. Chop the spring onions and chilli. Sweat these in the butter in one of the frying pans along with some ginger.
6. Skin and chop the sweet potatoes into small chunks and add to the boiling water.
7. Increase the heat on the frying pan and stir fry the chicken into the mix.
8. Once the chicken is browned, juice the clementines (or squeeze the juice out with your hands if you lack a juicer, like me) and add the juice to the pan. Simmer this slowly.

9. Once the potatoes are boiled, drain them then mash them with some butter.

10. Serve

Volumise: Boil some cauliflower with the sweet potatoes to make cauliflower-sweet potato mash. Serve with some stir-fried broccoli and cabbage.
Add carbs: Add some honey to the orange sauce and/or to the sweet potatoes while mashing.
Add fat: Mix some coconut oil or more butter into the mash.
Add protein: Add bacon bits to sweet potato mash.

Pork and Sweet Potato Stew

It's less than a week til my final exams start here in Oxford, so obviously, it's time for comfort food. What better way than a nice thick stew?
I came up with this recipe a while back, an experiment with a beef stew would not thicken in time, so I saved the beefy tomato-y sauce in the freezer, then I used this as the basis for the original of this dish.
As failing to make beef stew to make sauce for another dish seems a little wasteful, I just used stock cubes and tomato puree this time.
For 3:
6 Pork Loin Steaks
1 Large Sweet Potato
250 g mushrooms
2 Beef Stock Cubes (Knorr)
Tomato Puree
Chilli Powder
Cumin
Cinnamon
Rosemary
Thyme
20g butter
300 ml Water
1 Saucepan

1. Melt the butter in the saucepan.
2. Chop the pork into roughly 1 cm wide strips across the loin steak. Fry the pork strips in the butter until lightly browned.
3. Peel and chop the sweet potato into large chunks. Mix them into the pan, coating them in any fat remaining in the pan.

4. Add 300 ml boiling water, tomato puree, stock cubes, chilli powder, cumin and cinnamon to the pan. Mix and heat until the tomato, spices and stock are dissolved into the water.

5. Cover the pan with a lid, bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes.
6. Remove the pan lid. Crush/mash the sweet potato pieces (I used a spoon) into the water, so it is a thick paste.
7. Chop medium mushrooms into quarters, any others to roughly the same size pieces. Add the mushrooms, rosemary and thyme to the pan and mix in.

8. Continue to simmer for 10-15, mixing frequently to prevent anything sticking to your pan bottom.

Volumise: Add some onions to the mix at roughly the same time as the mushroom.
Add carbs: Use more sweet potatoes.
Add fat: Add some coconut oil or more butter. Use fattier pork.
Add protein: Use more pork. Add more mushrooms.

I hope the extra pictures come in handy and give you a better impression of how I cook and what to do, I'm hoping to incorporate more pictures into the blog from now on. Also, here are some bonus pictures of it served up and the table where I prepare everything.

Finally, some link love for Modern Paleo Blog, who published me in their blog carnival this week. Lots more recipes and interesting discussion there.
Any questions, leave a comment.

Stuffed Peppers

I made these ages ago. They worked quite well.
I just had another go at them, they were delicious and very easy to eat.
I imagine that, with some dressing (like replacing the lids) they could be used as a (relatively) fancy starter.
On the other hand, you can eat them like a (rather messy) apple once they've cooled down a bit:
For 3:
800g Beef mince
6 Peppers
Chilli Powder
Roasting Tray

1. Cut the centre out of the peppers.
2. Mix the beef mince with as much chilli powder as you want.
3. Stuff the peppers with the mince.
4. Roast the peppers at 200 degrees C for 30 minutes.

Volumise: Add shredded spinach to the beef mince.
Add fat: Use fattier mince.

Meatza

Sounds crazy; tastes amazing.
For 4:
800g beef mince
1 Carton Tomato Passatta
1 Onion
1 Pepper (Red)
4 Mushrooms
Oregano
1 Saucepan
1 Baking Tray

1. Press the beef mince into an even layer in the baking tray.
2. Mix the passatta and some oregano in the saucepan, boiling down to make a thick sauce.
3. While this is boiling, put the baking tray in the oven at 200 degrees C for 20 minutes.
4. Chop the onions, pepper and mushrooms into thin slices.
5. Once the mince is cooked, pour the tomato sauce onto the base, and place the onion, pepper and mushroom on top.
6. Return this to the oven until the vegetables are slightly crisped.

Volumise: Add some spinach with the veg in step 5.
Add carbs: Use more peppers.
Add fat: Place a layer of cheese on top of the vegetables.
Add protein: Use more beef mince. Use some usual pizza toppings such as pepperoni.

Chicken Curry

It took about an hour to make. First curry I've tried without coconut milk.
For 2:
2 Chicken Breasts
4 Small Onions
3 Small Green Chillis
Coconut Flesh
3 Garlic Cloves
Ground Ginger
Ground Cinnamon
Chilli Powder
Turmeric
Coconut Oil
Saucepan

1. Chop and fry the onions and chillis in coconut oil until soft.
2. Food processor or grind coconut flesh (about 3 cm x 3 cm) garlic cloves, cinnamon and ginger into a "paste". Or chop it all into small pieces. Add this to the onion and chilli, stir in and stir fry to three minutes.
3. Chop chicken into bite-size pieces and add to pan. Mix in chilli powder and turmeric. Lower heat and leave to cook with lid on for five minutes.
4. Add 125 ml of water and bring to boil. Reduce heat and cook until chicken is soft (about 30-45 min).

Volumise: Add some spinach about 3 minutes before meal is ready.
Add carbs: Mix in some glucose. Add more onions.
Add fat: Use more coconut or more coconut oil. Add some butter.
Add protein: Add a side of bacon. Mix whey into the sauce. Add more chicken.

Lemon Chicken

My mum made some lemon cake while I'm at home, which needed the zest of a few lemons. The lack of zest left the skin to dry out.
For 3:
3 Chicken Breasts
6 Spring Onions
1 Lemon
Ground ginger
Sugar
Butter
Frying Pan
2 Sauce Pans
Slotted spoon
Paper towels

1. Chop and fry spring onions in butter, keep in bowl until later, keep the pan.
2. Peel lemon and boil skin in enough to water to poach the chicken.
3. While boiling lemon skin, chop lemon flesh into small pieces. Mix with a little water in the second sauce pan along with a tablespoon of ground ginger, a tablespoon of sugar and a tablespoon of butter and heat.
4. Chop chicken into thin strips.
5. Remove lemon skin from water and discard.
6. Poach chicken strips in water for 1 minute, remove chicken from water with slotted spoon and place on paper towels to dry.
7. Fry dried poached chicken in frying pan with more butter until brown.
8. Mix chicken and spring onions with lemon sauce in sauce pan and heat until lemon sauce thickens.
(9. Use chicken-poaching water to boil vegetables).

Volumise: Serve with extra vegetables - such as brocolli, cauliflower, carrots.
Add carbs: Add extra sugar or lemon juice to the lemon sauce. Fry some peppers.
Add fat: Mix some coconut oil into the lemon sauce (this will also add thickness to the sauce if eaten cold).
Add protein: Mix an egg into the lemon sauce.

Salmon with roast peppers and avocado

More on the salmon theme. I bought a few bags a while back, and now I need to empty out my freezer before the end of term, so here goes.
For 3:
6 Salmon Fillets
1 Avocado
3 Red Peppers
Olive Oil
Roasting Dish
Plastic tub

1. Heat oven to 200C.
2. Quarter avocado and slice peppers into large pieces (roughly four slices per bell pepper).
3. Place salmon fillets in roasting dish, cover in olive oil.
4. Place avocado and peppers on top of salmon, and add more oil.
5. Roast for roughly 30 minutes.
6. Take dish out of oven, put peppers in plastic tub then put the lid on. Serve avocados. Drain off oil from dish. Return dish to oven.
7. Shake peppers in tub, open tub and shred off skin - which should be blackened - with a fork. Serve peppers.
8. Serve salmon.

Volumise: Serve with some steamed broccolli or cauliflower.
Add carbs: Use more peppers (two or three peppers per person is not excessive), coat salmon in a honey glaze.
Add fat: Use more avocado, pour some of the oil from the dish over the finished meal.
Add protein: Again, wrap the salmon in bacon.

Salmon in tangy sauce

It's been a little while since an update. Made a batch of this today; tastes great.
The recipe is more for the sauce than anything else.
For 3:
6 Salmon Fillets
Mustard Seeds or Ground Mustard
Fish Stock Cube (Knorr)
Vinegar
Olive Oil
Tomato Puree
Cumin
Ground Ginger
Paprika
Pestle and Mortar or Small mixing bowl
Roasting Dish
Kitchen Foil

Served with sweet potato mash and stir-fried brocolli.

1. Heat oven to ~200C.
2. Grind mustard seeds and stock cube into consistant mixture, or mix in mixing bowl with fork.
3. Mix in 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 tbsp vinegar to form a mixture with the consistancy of puree.
4. Mix in 1 tbsp tomato puree, cumin, ground ginger and paprika.
5. With each fillet, sit the fillet on enough kitchen foil to wrap it, pour the sauce over the fillet, coating all of one surface, then wrap the fillet in kitchen foil.
6. Cook the salmon for 25-30 minutes.
Optional, Untested - 7. Remove the salmon from the oven and take off the kitchen foil. Scrape off most of the sauce, place the salmon skin-side up under a grill or skin-side down on a pan to crisp the skin.

Volumise: Add more brocolli. Mash some cauliflower into the sweet potato mash.
Add carbs: More sweet potato. Add a little honey, sucrose (table sugar) or glucose to the sweet potato mash.
Add fat: Mix some peanut butter into the mash. Add more olive oil and less vinegar to the sauce. Pestle and mortar only - mix coconut oil and/or almond flour into the sauce to thicken it and add some fat. Add oil to the brocolli until it has absorbed all it can.
Add protein: Wrap salmon fillets in bacon before adding sauce.

Meatballs with Vegetable Stir Fry

Forth and final installment (for now) in my Chinese cooking series. One of my major weaknesses is lack of diversity when it comes to veg so this meal also contains a very simple vegetable stir fry that I'll work on in the future.
For 4:
900g beef mince
4 Spring Onions
4 Garlic Cloves
2 Tablespoons Ground Ginger
2 Tablespoons Apple Juice
2 Tablespoons Oil
2 Eggs
2 Pak Choi (Chinese Cabbage)
6 Medium Mushrooms
1/2 Broccoli Head
Wok
Frying Pan
Mixing bowl (or use the wok)

1. Chop the spring onions. Chop or mince the garlic. Mix the spring onions, garlic, ginger, apple juice, oil and eggs with a fork until the eggs are beaten together.
2. Thoroughly mix the mince into the mix above. Ball the mince up until balls a little bigger than a golfball. Store on a plate until ready.
3. Pull broccoli florets off of the head. Chop these finely for easy stir-frying.
4. Chop the mushrooms to the same fineness as the broccoli.
5. a. Fry the meatballs in the frying pan in a little oil (they should exude quite a lot of fat as they cook). Fry on "top", then "bottom", then "sides" (obviously they should be spherical, but sides will form as they fry). They should fry through within roughly ten minutes (check the middle of the biggest one before you take them off the pan).
b. The pan probably won't contain all the meatballs in one go, so fry in batches and keep them hot under the grill. Once the last batch have been in the pan for about three minutes, start stir-frying the mushrooms and broccoli.
6. When the meatballs have roughly two minutes left to cook, tear and add the pak choi to the wok. Continue stir-frying for two minutes.

Volumise: Add more pak choi, broccoli or mushrooms. Add some "normal" cabbage to the wok.
Add carbs: Add some sugar to the meatball mix. Add a little tomato puree to the meatball mix. Serve with a sweet potato (or sweet potato mash).
Add fat: Add more oil to the meatball mix. Add some or all of the fat from the frying pan to the stir-fry.
Add protein: Add some bacon to the stir-fry. Add one or two more eggs to the meatball mix.
Make a tasty breakfast: I was cooking bacon alongside this for consumption the next morning. I added the beef fat to the bacon in its container, where it set, adding a ton of calories to my breakfast the next day.

Chicken in "Oriental" Marinade (Overnight)

Another in the procession of "Chinese" meals.
For 3:
3 Chicken Breasts
4 Small Onions
3 Peppers
2 Spring Onions
6 Tablespoons Coconut (or Olive) Oil
4 Tablespoons Apple Juice
2 Garlic Cloves
Ginger
Wok
Food container (for marinating)
Mug
Bowl


The night or morning before:
1. Put the coconut oil in a mug, then put the mug in a bowl that is shallower than the mug, then fill the bowl with boiling water to melt the coconut oil. No need to do this with olive oil.
2. Chop the spring onions. Chop the chicken into bite-size chunks.
3. Mix the spring onions, coconut oil, apple juice, garlic cloves and ginger in the mug.
4. Put the chicken in the container and pour the marinade over the chicken. Put the container in the fridge overnight.
The night of eating:
5. Chop the onions and peppers.
6. Heat the wok, throw in the onions and peppers and the chicken in the marinade and stir fry the lot.

Volumise: "I'm not gonna be very inventive here - spinach, pak choi, cabbage, bean sprouts; like last time." - Me, previous recipe.
Add carbs: Mix sugar into the sauce, add more apple juice or apple sauce to the marinade, or perhaps some apple to the stir-fry at the end.
Add fat: Add more coconut oil to the marinade.
Add protein: Mix an egg into the sauce, serve on/with an omelette, mix some peanut butter into the marinade to make a satay-style marinade.

Bonus Fun Fact: The difference between fats and oils is simply whether they are solid or liquid at room temperature. The coconut OIL sat in my room is a solid. Where coconuts are grown, coconut oil is an oil, but in England it's a fat due to the cold temperature here (similar to what happens when olive oil goes cloudy in shops in Winter because it is stored at outdoors temperature). A friend of mine who recently got back from Spain tells me that she had a problem figuring out the difference between the Spanish words for fat, grease and oil, as the examples they gave were in different states in England and Spain.

Beef in Chilli Sauce

Getting a bit of a "Chinese" theme for a little while. This is going to sound pretentious as hell, but the one person I know who's been to China says Chinese restaurants are propagating a lie; I don't care, they still make great food.
For 3:
300 g "Sirloin steak" (it was in the 3 for £10 in Tesco, so we're not talking quality here, any sort of frying steak).
4 Small Onions
2 (Red) Peppers
2 Spring Onions
1 Tablespoon Ground Ginger (or fresh, whichever)
1 Chilli (or 1 Tablespoon Hot Chilli Powder)
50 ml Vinegar
1 Tablespoon Almond Flour (AKA Ground Almonds)
3-4 Tablespoons Apple Juice
Wok

1. Peel and chop the onions. Chop the spring onions, chilli and peppers. Chop the chicken into bite-size pieces.
2. Mix the ground ginger, chilli, vinegar, almond flour and apple juice. Again, I mixed it with a fork in a mug, because I'm very well equipped.
3. Throw the veg into the pan, followed by the beef, then the sauce (obviously, the chilli is chopped, so make sure you throw the sauce into the pan so the chilli gets into the pan).
4. Stir-fry the lot.

Volumise: I'm not gonna be very inventive here - spinach, pak choi, lettuce, bean sprouts; like last time.
Add carbs: Again, add some sugar to the sauce. Use less vinegar and more apple juice or some kind of apple sauce into the sauce.
Add fat: I added some coconut oil to the sauce, but as it's solid it wasn't easy to mix in.
Add protein: Again, add some egg to the sauce. Perhaps serve on an omelette base.
Add pretentiousness: Point out that I went to a local "foreign" (of the "Indian" variety) to get the chillis for this and the okra for the updated Texan Chicken. I also went to an independent supermarket to get the almond flour and coconut oil.

Sweet and Sour-ish Chicken

It was tasty and kept well; it was not very sweet or sour.
For 3:
3 Chicken Breasts
4 Small Onions
3 Peppers
1 Garlic Clove
2 Tablespoon Tomato Puree
4 Tablespoons Apple Juice (or Apple and Blackcurrant Squash)
2 Tablespoons Almond Flour
1 Lemon, Juice of
4 Tablespoons Vinegar
Wok

1. Peel and chop the onions. Chop the peppers. Chop the chicken into bite-size pieces.
2. Crush or finely slice the garlic.
3. Mix the garlic, tomato puree, apple juice, lemon juice, vinegar and almond flour (with a fork in a mug, if you're me).
4. Throw the onions and peppers into the pan, followed by the chicken then the sauce. Stir-fry the lot.

Volumise: Add some spinach, pak choi, lettuce and/or bean sprouts.
Add carbs: Mix some sugar into the sauce (this was in the original recipe). Add more peppers.
Add fat: Add more almond flour to the sauce. Add more oil to the stir-fry.
Add protein: Add more chicken. I have not tried this, but add some egg to the sauce. This should also help to thicken the sauce.
Bore anyone reading this blog: Add an inane story at the end of every single post.

Cheese and Tomato Turkey Wraps

I was not expecting these to work as well as they did. Very handy for more than one meal.
For 3:
3 Turkey breast steaks
3 small blocks of cheese (I used cheddar, but mozzarella may work better)
Tomato puree or 3 sun-dried tomatoes
Basil
Roasting tray

Served with butternut squash mash.

1. Squeeze some tomato puree onto each block of cheese or put sun-dried tomato on cheese.
2. Cover turkey in basil.
3. Wrap cheese in a turkey steak and spear with cocktail stick (ensuring you go through the tomato if appropriate).
4. Roast in the oven at 200 C for around 20 mins.

Volumise: Wrap these parcels in lettuce once cooked.
Add carbs: Add more tomato puree or more tomatoes.
Add fat: Add more cheese or use a fattier cheese.
Add protein: Wrap the parcels in bacon prior to cooking.
Scald yourself: Squeeze the parcels just after getting them out of the oven so the cheese squeezes onto yourself.

Grilled Green Chicken

Very enjoyable, just be careful to remove as much marinade as possible before frying; I nearly destroyed a frying pan doing this.
For 4:
4 Chicken Thighs
2 Small Onions
1 Roughly chopped Green Chilli
4 Tablespoons Greek Yoghurt
Handful of Chopped Fresh Mint
Handful of Chopped Fresh Coriander
1 Tablespoon Garam Masala
1 Lemon

1. Mix mint, coriander, chilli, yoghurt, garam masala, lemon juice and a little salt/
2. Strip meat from thighs.
3. Marinate chicken and onions in above mixture overnight.
4. Wipe marinade off chicken.
5. a. Fry chicken in pan until golden brown.
b. Cook onions in saucepan.
6. Serve with coconut bread and a dollop of yoghurt.

Volumise: Add more onions and celery (I haven't tried the celery).
Add carbs: Mix some honey into the dollop of yoghurt. Add some honey to the marinade. Serve with mashed sweet potatoes.
Add fat: Add more yoghurt. Add some olive oil to the marinade.
Add protein: Serve with a side of crispy bacon. Mix some unflavoured whey to the marinade.
Destroy a frying pan: As I suggested earlier, don't scrape the marinade off the meat properly.