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.

Lamb Tagine

Very enjoyable and filling (if a bit watery because I didn't have time to thicken the sauce).
For 5:
1 Rolled lamb shoulder
4 small onions
200g dried apricots
2 tins chopped tomatoes
Turmeric
Ground Ginger
Cumin
Coriander
2 Lamb Stock cubes (Knorr)
1 Slow-cooker or large pot

1. Chop the onions.
2. Add everything to the slow-cooker or pot and cook for 8-10 hours.

Volumise: Add more onions. Add celery.
Add carbs: Add more tomatoes or apricots.
Add fat: Mix in some almond flour at the start, should make the end product thicker too.
Add protein: Use more lamb. Mix some unflavoured whey (I haven't tried this, this may be a disaster).
Add a bad day: Let the container you have this in open into your bag and fill your laptop and lab-book with tagine.