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 with roast sweet potato, roast carrots and gravy

I've made this before, but made a small change to cooking the veg, and it made a huge difference.
For two (plus sandwiches) I used:
900g of rolled beef brisket
1 large sweet potato
3 large carrots
2 beef OXO cubes
Tin (aluminium) foil
1 large frying pan
1 large saucepan
1 roasting dish
1 jug
A kettle
A colander

1. Put your frying pan on a high heat with oil, fill and turn on the kettle, turn your oven to 150 degrees C. Put the beef on the frying pan, frying all the sides until brown all over; meanwhile, pour boiling water into jug and mix one OXO cube into the boiling water.
2. Once browned, put the beef into the roasting dish, salt and pepper it, pour the OXO stock over it, and cover the roasting dish with a "tent" of foil. Place in the pre-heated oven.
3. After an hour, turn the meat over. Still tented, return to the oven.
4. Repeat 3.
5. After the beef has been in the oven for about two and a quarter hours, peel your carrots and sweet potato (or not) and chop into large chunks (this is not optional).
6. Boil the sweet potato and carrots in salted water for 4 minutes (i.e. parboil them). Drain them with the colander (or as I did, with the lid of the pan, and a scalding). Return them to the saucepan, put the lid on, and shake them about so they get a bit battered.
7. After the beef has been in the oven for about two and a half hours (or once you're done peeling, slicing and parboiling), put the veg in with it, pour oil and salt over the veg.
8. Clean that saucepan.
9. After a total of three hours, take the roasting dish out of the oven, take out the beef and the veg, and pour the juices into the (clean) saucepan. Return the beef and veg to the roasting dish and into the oven at 170 degrees C.
10. Heat the juices over a medium heat. Put a small amount of boiling water into the jug, mix in an OXO cube, and add that to the saucepan. Put a small amount of cold water into the jug, and mix in some (corn)flour with a fork (or a whisk, if you wanna be posh).
11. After a total of three and a half to four hours in the oven for the beef, take the lot out. Slice up the beef, scrape the blackened, but not burnt, veg off the bottom of the pan and pour the gravy over it.
12. Put off washing that roasting dish until tomorrow - honestly, nothing will move that except an overnight soak (or maybe that stuff that black chef advertises on TV).

Volumise: Add some parsnips, turnips or other root veg (not potatoes) to the veg present. Replace sweet potatoes with these to reduce carbs.
Add carbs: Add some more sweet potatoes or some potatoes.
Add fat: Use almond flour in the gravy. Replace some of the water-based stock with olive oil. Pour more oil over the roasting meat and veg at every possible point. Buy a "self-basting" joint, that is one with a block of fat on top.
Add protein: While you're putting the veg into the pan, wrap the beef in bacon (pig for more fat, turkey for less).
Add a hospitalisation: Don't use oven gloves.