A Rather Interesting Tomato Salad

When I'm on holiday I love to go to the supermarket and buy a random selection of tomatoes, the uglier the better! I learnt this tip from a family friend when we were on holiday in Spain as children. The ugly ones really did taste the best! When the ingredients are great you don't need to do much with them, the simpler the better really. 

Now it's a bit early in the season for really good tomatoes, but I had been given some Red Wine Vinegar with Cassis and had some tomatoes that were pretty tasty so I left them out in the sun to warm up (I always think they're better that way) and decided to make a tomato salad. I'd heard that blackcurrants went well with mint and tomatoes. I couldn't get any of the actual fruits but the vinegar certainly made me want to try that combo! Very refreshing and summery. Perfect for a sunny bank holiday weekend. 

Recipe

1/2 tbsp olive or rapeseed oil 

1/2 tbsp Red Wine Vinegar au Cassis Dijon

A spring of mint

100g tomatoes (preferable a mixture of varieties) 

Seasoning

1. Start with the dressing. Mix together the oil, vinegar and mint. If the leaves are small enough you can leave them whole. Mix well. 

2. Slice the tomatoes into chunks and add to the dressing

3. Season to taste and toss the tomatoes in the dressing. 

Enjoy! 

 

One Week in Sarah's Kitchen: Friday

Last day in the office of the week. I always forget how long these exercises are! As I travel most weeks for work it was lovely to sleep in my own bed every night for a week but 12-14 hours in the office each day in a high stress situation has taken it's toll. I'm very glad it's the weekend!

Food and Drinks:

Breakfast: first thing I had lemon, ginger and hot water. Followed a little later by Protein Pancakes. However unlike the recipe I had them plain with a little cinnamon sprinkled on top.




Morning snack: a healthy Eton Mess. Made my mixing 0% Total Greek Yoghurt with raspberries, blueberries, chopped dates, grated apple and vanilla. I normally top with a few flaked almonds or mixed seeds but I forgot. Yum!

Lunch: tomato and lentil soup


Afternoon snack: roasted nuts and a pear

Dinner: As I was home at a reasonable time I wanted to cook something but as I was feeling pretty tired it needed to be quick I went with this recipe. It is basically a tomato sauce with eggs cracked on top and allowed to cook. I added onion and plenty of spinach to the tomato sauce to increase the vegetables and served it with a green salad.




For pudding I followed this with a healthy version of chocolate mousse and I don't mean those awful low fat and low calorie pots you buy which I full of sweeteners and very little nutritional value.

Water: 1.5 litres
Other drinks: 2 mugs of decaf tea with skimmed milk
Organised for tomorrow: my gym kit

Exercise and Walking

Walking: 15 mins
Exercise: Rest day - I had wanted to do a weights session but after a long week I was too tired.

Relaxation and Sleep

Relaxation: turned off my phone all evening for Quiet Night Friday. I try and do this every Friday to have a break from everything. I then listened to some music whilst cooking and chose a nice classical album. I then had a bath soaking in Epsom salts. I then read a chapter of my book in bed. Both still listening to music.
Meditation: 10 mins
Bed time: 9pm
Estimated hours of sleep: 8.5 hours

Before bed I always eat a few walnuts and take a magnesium supplement. I also sleep with a black out blind and sleep mask and use a pulse aromatherapy oil made of relaxing oils.

One Week in Sarah's Kitchen: Wednesday

Again it was an early start in the office. I had breakfast before I left home and took my gym kit with me as I had planned to do a spin class after work. As it turned out, I didn't leave the office until almost 10pm so that unfortunately didn't happen.

Food and Drinks:

Breakfast: first thing I had lemon, ginger and hot water. Followed a little later by two poached eggs one one slice of rye with half an avacado

Morning snack: a green smoothie with a teaspoon of spiruluna powder added and sweetened with dates rather than agave syrup

Lunch: tomato and lentil soup followed by an orange cut up with a little lemon jucie squeezed on it



Afternoon snack: four protein ball 'truffles' made from dried fruit, nuts, cocoa powder and cinnamon.

As it was a late night in the office I also had a cocoa made with oat milk and a few nuts to keep me going

Dinner: As I finished in the ofice even later that Tuesday night I didn't even make it to the freezer for my dinner. Instead I had some left over Moroccan spiced houmous with some celery, carrot and cucumber sticks and some mange tout. Followed by mackerel in tomato sauce on wilted spinach topped with a little cheese.

Water: 2 litres
Other drinks: 4 mugs of decaf tea with skimmed milk
Organised for tomorrow: only snacks, it was too late for anything else

Exercise and Walking

Walking: 20 mins
Exercise: Rest day - enforced by a very long day in the office

Relaxation and Sleep

Relaxation: none
Meditation: none
Bed time: 10.40pm
Estimated hours of sleep: 6.5 hours

Before bed I always eat a few walnuts and take a magnesium supplement. I also sleep with a black out blind and sleep mask and use a pulse aromatherapy oil made of relaxing oils.

Tomato and lentil soup

As you can see from the soup recipes on my blog I eat soup quite often. ,out weeks I'll make a couple of different soups at the beginning of the week to last me for lunches or light dinners.

This week I made a tomato and lentil soup.

I always start by sautéing the vegetables in a little oil before adding the liquid and lentils. You could jump this step to reduce the fat but I think it improves the flavour and is good fat so worth it for me.

I also add a little Parmesan which again could be omitted but as its a hard strong cheese you don't need much.





Tasty!

Here is the recipe

Check out How to Make Tomato and Lentil Soup #Healthyeating by Sarah's Kitchen Diary on Snapguide.

The last of the summer produce and Christmas gifts

In my previous post 2013 A Year of Progression . I promised to catch up on a long over due post.

This year (as I may have mentioned once or 300 times) I attempted to grow some salad, herbs and vegetables. I was ridiculously proud when (most) of them grew into things I could actually eat and cook with. Simple things really are great.
I had quite a few tomato plants and with the mild weather they soldiered on into October. When they stopped ripening I was left with green tomatoes.




This brought back memories of my nan's green tomato chutney. She had the greenest fingers and could bring a twig back from the dead so her tomato plants each year were impressive. Unfortunately this was one of her recipes I haven't been able to find, so I relied upon Lisa Faulkner who has a recipe in her book Recipes from my Mother to my Daughter which seemed quite similar. She only said to cook it for a few minutes but I decided to boil it down for much longer in the traditional manner of making chutney as I don't like the taste of raw onion and I was worried about whether it would be preserved enough to last.
Combined in a box with some oat cakes from a James Martin recipe and some fabulous cheese I bought at my mums local deli it made a perfect present for my friend who always loved my nan's green tomato chutney.
After it was cooked I also blended some to a fine purée and found it made an excellent alternative to tomato ketchup.




Recipe
Finely chop 750g green tomatoes, 500g cooking apple and 750g onions.
Boil them in a large pan with 600ml malt vinegar and 750g soft brown sugar for about an hour. In a small bowl mix 25g fresh ginger, 1/2 tsp turmeric, 1 tbsp of salt, 3tbsp corn flour and freshly ground black pepper. Add to the mixture and continue to boil until it is thick and glossy and has the texture of chutney. Pour into sterilised jars and seal.

Lamb Tava

I love any dishes that you can throw all of the ingredients in a pan, leave them for a few hours and they become more than the sum of their parts. Tessa Kiros' Lamb Tava is one of these dishes. It is all about great flavours and ingredients.

It is a Cypriot dish from her book Falling Cloudberry's and became a firm favourite after it's first outing.




Recipe to follow

Healthier Cooked Breakfast

Being British, a decent cooked breakfast is a welcome treat on a Sunday, but we all know they aren't always the best for you. So I made this lower fat and sugar version, which was a great substitute.

I poached the egg and grilled the tomatoes and bacon to avoid adding any additional fat and removed as much of the fat from the bacon as I could. I did fry the slice of black pudding but in minimal oil and then added the mushrooms. Rather than use ketchup, which is full of sugar I made some from scratch. I started by cooking chopped cherry tomatoes with a little beef stock cube, some freshly ground pepper, a squeeze of tomato puree and a splash of balsamic vinegar, yummy!

Chicken, tomato and flageolet beans

As I've mentioned before I try to replace simple carbs with beans or complex carbs for dinner. This is a fab meal when you need a filling but healthy dinner.

It's also all made in one pot and doesn't take that long to make. Butter beans also work well.

Ingredients

Serves two

2 chicken breasts
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 tins of tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato purée
1 tin flageolet beans
A handful of green olives
A beef stock cube
Seasoning
A large bunch of basil, torn
A glug of balsamic vinegar
Parmesan, grated

In a heavy based frying pan start by browning the chicken on each side in a little oil. Add the onions and once softened add the garlic. After a few minutes add the remaining ingredients apart from the balsamic and basil. Add a wine glass full of water. If the pan has a lid put it on. Turn the heat down and cook for about 20 mins. Check the chick is done. Stir in the balsamic vinegar and most of the basil. Finish with the remaining basil and grated Parmesan. Serve with a green salad.

Here is the finished dish.





I am going to submit this recipe as part of the New June Herbs on Saturday blog challenge.



I love herbs and a you can see from previous posts I cook with then a lot. Since I've moved I have a small garden and am now the proud owner of a little herb garden. It's not much and I've focused on pretty standard herbs, but it's mine and I've been caring for it and watching it flourish and I'm proud of it (I have tried growing some Thai basil but as I type the little seedlings are curling up and giving up).

Slow cooked shoulder of lamb

If I do say so myself this recipe is a stunner. It's one of those dishes which is far greater than a sum of its parts. It takes a very long time
to cook but the preparation is quick and easy and as I was hosting a little dinner party for friends directly after working a long day this was just the dish.

It's an adaptation of a James Martin recipe I found years ago on the BBC website. Over the years it's changed a little bit from the original.

You will need:
A shoulder of lamb
4 cloves of garlic
Half a tin of anchovies
4 sprigs of rosemary
A handful of thyme
2 bay leaves
300ml red wine (replace this with water to make it 'cleaner')
300ml water
2 tins tomatoes
2 tins butter beans (leave these out to make it Paleo)
3 tbsp tomato purée
One beef stock cube
Seasoning

Serves 4-6

I start by taking a shoulder of lamb and making deep incisions all over the joint. In each incision I put a piece of anchovy, a few of rosemary leaves and a slice of garlic. For a whole shoulder I'd use about 8 anchovy fillets, two large garlic cloves and a couple of sprigs of rosemary.

I then heat up some oil in a large my oven proof pan which also had a lid and sear the meat on both sides. Once browned remove from the heat and in the juices gently fry 2 chopped onions and 2 cloves of sliced garlic. Add a bunch of thyme, a couple of sprigs of rosemary and a couple of bay leaves (preferably fresh. I get mine from my friends garden).

Once the onion is translucent and golden, place the shoulder of lamb back in the pan and add about 300ml red wine, two tins of chopped tomatoes, two tins of butter beans, about 3 tablespoons of tomato purée, a beef stock cube (I use Kallo as it doesn't contain MSG) a small amount of salt (as the anchovies and stock are both salty), plenty of black pepper and about 300ml water.

Give it a good stir, put the lid on and place in an oven pre-heated to 140C. Cook for 8-12 hours checking occasionally to stir the mixture and add more water if it starts I get more dry. When you remove from the oven spoon off any excess fat. By this point it is so soft and unctuous that I serve it in the pan it was cooked in and simply use a couple of forks to pull apart the meat.

The original recipe serves it with mash but as it has the beans in the sauce I just serve with mixed green veg. In this case I blanched some green beans, sugar snap peas and asparagus and then drained them and dressed them with lemon juice, rapeseed oil and chopped mint.

The beautiful lamb...




I am going to submit this recipe as part of the New June Herbs on Saturday blog challenge.





I love herbs and a you can see from previous posts I cook with then a lot. Since I've moved I have a small garden and am now the proud owner of a little herb garden. It's not much and I've focused on pretty standard herbs, but it's mine and I've been caring for it and watching it flourish and I'm proud of it (I have tried growing some Thai basil but as I type the little seedlings are curling up and giving up).

Clean living

As I've mentioned before as much as I love cake I do try and balance it with clean eating. Last week, more as an experiment than anything else, I tried to have a wheat free, diary free, sugar free week (Mon to Fri).

Here is one of the days food...

I started the day with an egg white 'omelette'. The only reason it was egg white was because I had so many left over from making pasteis de nata. It wasn't a true omelette as I much prefer egg poached to fried so I tried poaching the egg white. I had it with tomatoes and mushrooms which I fried in a little rapeseed oil, added a bit of thyme, a splash of red wine vinegar and some seasoning.



For a morning snack I had some roasted mixed nuts and seeds.

For lunch I had a fab veggie salad. I started by 'roasting' some peppers. I did this by charring them directly onto the gas. Remove the metal pan stand, turn the gas on and rest the pepper against the flame. Keep a careful eye on it and turn it every so often until it the skin is blistered and black in places. Put them into a bowl and cover tightly with cling film. This will help the skin come off. Leave them for about 10mins and then peel them. This is easiest under running water. Chop into chunks.




I also had chunks of cucumber, sliced of tomato with basil, sautéed onions and mushrooms and mixed lettuce with some sprouting seeds. You can sprout seeds yourself but I bought these from @wfm_kensington






My afternoon snack was coconut yoghurt also from @wfm_kensington which is dairy free and would make a fantastic ice cream.

For dinner I had chicken which I marinated in oil, mint, chilli, ginger, lime zest and line juice. I pan fried it and then whilst it was resting I quickly fried off some rice noodles that I had pre-soaked in water. This is a trick I learnt in Thailand which means there is no news to boil them. In a separate pan I fried some broccoli and finished it with soy sauce and a little sesame oil.





For dessert I made a chia pudding. Chia seeds originate from Mexico and are great as they can soak up ~10 times their weight in liquid. This means they are fab for thickening and can be used in smoothies as well.

I put about 2 dessertspoons of chia seeds in a blender with 1 dessertspoons of cacoa nibs. I added a teaspoon of vanilla extract, a handful of raw porridge oats, a handful of mixed roaste nuts and about a cup of almond milk. I blended it until it was quite smooth and poured it into a bowl and chilled it until it thickened slightly. Now I wouldn't serve it at a dinner party but considering it is a pudding with no sugar in it was really quite tasty!

Moroccan style lamb and butter bean stew

Last weekend I had some lovely slow roasted, boned and rolled, lamb shoulder. There was some left over so I decided tyo give it a new lease of life.

This would also be tasty with left over roast chicken but if you don't have any left overs you can always gently brown some stewing lamb before adding everything else and cook it for longer until the meat starts to give way.

It's very easy to make, pretty much a case of throwing everything in. I'm trying to eat cleanly at the moment so I just had it with some broccoli but you could also serve it with some couscous or even as a meal in its own right.



Recipe

Serves 2, but can easily be doubled or halved

Approx 100g leftover roast lamb
1 large onion
1 large carrot
1 crushed garlic clove
1/2 tsp each of cinnamon, crushed cumin seeds and coriander seeds
A bay leaf
1/2 tin of tomatoes
1/2 tbsp tomato purée
Small tin of butter beans (leave these out if you want to make it Paleo)
A large handful of kale
1/2 beef stock cube
100ml water

1 Sauté the roughly chopped onion and carrot. After a couple of minutes add the crushed garlic cloves and the spices.
2. Add the remaining ingredients and cook for about 30 mins adding more water if it becomes too dry.
3. Serve on its own or with broccoli and couscous.

L'Atelier des Chefs

I recently went to a cooking course at L'Atelier des Chefs on Wigmore Street, London I didn't really know what to expect but it was fantastic value and we all had a great night. The group were all varying levels of experience but we all still went away learning something.

We made two courses. The first was sea bream with provencal vegetables and for desert saffron and pistachio cake served with orange and cinnamon cream.

I decided to try the main course for dinner at home. I didn't have any sea bream but substituted sea bass and then made the veg.

Basically you an aubergine, courgette, pepper and finely chop an onion and two cloves of garlic. Start by frying the onion first and then add the garlic and the vegetables add a couple of swigs of thyme and rosemary and season. Once the veg is soft add a small amount of chopped tinned tomatoes or passata and cook for about 10 mins.

Pin bone the fish and fry skin side down until crisp and just cooked. In the lesson we were told to start with oil in a cold pan, then add the fish before putting it onto the heat. The chef said this prevented the kitchen smelling of the fish as much as it cooked and it did seem to help. We didn't turn the fish over as the filets are thin enough to cook through without doing. It also allows the skin to get very crispy.

Serve the fish skin side up on a ladle of the veg and drizzle with balsamic glaze - yummy!

Here is a picture of the veg...



The chef also said variations were good such as putting cumin seeds in and serving with Moroccan chicken and that it was also good with lamb.

Here is a link to the L'Atelier des Chefs website where you can book courses and find lots more recipes http://www.atelierdeschefs.co.uk/

Recipe adapted from L'Atelier des Chefs.