Bang Bang Chicken

Hello fellow eaters! So these days, I tend to favor the quick and healthy meals. I do love to get lost in the kitchen when the time allows, but with a very social newborn, and a very active toddler, I don't get much time to think about food anymore...

oh well. one day they'll both go down for a nap at the same time.... one day....

Todays meal doesn't hide the vegetables at all. I tend to not have a problem with getting my little one to eat broccoli at the moment, so I don't have to hide it. But the beauty of this dish is that if there is any veggie your young one will eat, I'm sure it'll go with this. If in doubt though, just steam and puree some silverbeet or spinach and mix it in. It's a flexible dish.

And for a bit of background. Apparently bang bang chicken is street food in China. Vendors sell it by banging 2 sticks together. Thus "bang bang".  Could make for "here, get out of the kitchen while I'm cooking and tell the neighborhood we are having bang bang chicken by banging these sticks together" activity for the kiddies?

ingredients

2 T oil
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1-2 green onions, chopped
3 cm ginger (2 T), minced
500 g (1 lb) chicken, chopped (we use boneless skinless thighs, or for a lighter option chicken breast),
2 T soy sauce
2 T peanut butter (i put in 4 because I love peanut butter)
1 T vinegar
1/4 cup water
1 broccoli, chopped
1 green capsicum/pepper, chopped

Serve with rice.

directions

Heat the oil in a frying pan and put the garlic, onions, ginger, and chicken. Cook until the chicken is no longer raw.

Mix the soy sauce, peanut butter, vinegar, and water together in a small bowl. When the chicken is cooked, add this and the veggies. Continue cooking until the sauce is thickened and the veggies are crisp-tender (read: they have retain their color but aren't raw).

Serve over rice, and I like to put a dollop of unsweetened yogurt on top.

Daal with Coconut Rice

Well, it certainly has been a while! I took a break before having Pickle from blogging because everything was just getting so hard towards the end there! But she has arrived, and she is healthy and gaining weight like a real trooper. It was a hard entrance, but she really is a wonderful little, 8 week old gemstone!

Anywho. Today I made a meal for my dear friend who has also just had a baby girl, and she was so impressed by it that she requested the recipe.  Thankfully, I have a blog for just such occasions!  I actually based my recipe on one from my Christmas gift, Jamie Oliver's 15 Minute Meals - but mine took longer than 15 minutes to make! I once read Nigella Lawson say that lentils when cooked look like little gems, and they really do when you use the whole brown lentil. I've always used red ones since they cook so quickly, but these are so tasty, and really have a much better texture.

So without further ado... Daal with Coconut Rice

Coconut Rice

1 tin of light coconut cream
the same tin full of water
and again of basmati rice
pinch of salt
(What's important is having 2 parts liquid to 1 part rice, if you don't want quite so much rice - it really does make a lot of rice - use 1 cup of each instead... It'll give you about 3 and a bit cups of fluffed rice.)

Put all the ingredients in a rice cooker and cook away. If you don't have a rice cooker (ours recently broke), put all the ingredients in a pot, and turn up the heat to medium-high. Once it starts to boil, turn it right down and put a lid on it. It'll take about 10 minutes to cook. Once all the liquid is absorbed, take it off the heat.

Daal with veggies

2 courgettes (small zucchini)

1 onion

3 cloves of garlic

1 red capsicum (red bell pepper)

an inch (2-3 cm) of ginger

1-2 chili peppers (omit of you are serving to sensitive littlies or add to your own serving)

2 Tbl olive oil

1 tsp smoked paprika

2 bay leaves

1 tsp mustard seeds

1 tsp carraway seeds

300 g of lentils (I used brown, Jamie uses red - whatever you might have around really, but brown does take a long time to cook)

1 oxo chicken stock cube

1 tin of light coconut milk

750 ml water 

4-5 large silverbeet leaves OR a large handful of baby spinach

salt and pepper to taste

Blitz the courgettes, onion, garlic, capsicum, ginger and chili together in a food processor until finely chopped.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and lightly cook the paprika, bay leaves, carraway and mustard seeds in the oil. Add the veggies and heat for for a minute.
Add the lentils, oxo cube, coconut milk, and water. Stir to mix it all together and cover.
Cook until the lentils are soft stirring frequently, it took a good 30+ minutes for mine to cook (I didn't really pay attention since I didn't think I'd be blogging it) , apparently Jamie can get it all done in under 15 minutes.
Remove the stalks off the silverbeet leaves and blitz in the food processor on pulse a few times until it's all about the same size. Add to the lentils once the heat has been turned off. If you are using baby spinach, don't bother blitzing, just chuck it in. Mix to combine.
Remove the bay leaves and season to taste.

Serve with the coconut rice, plain yoghurt and roughly chopped coriander/cilantro. Jamie serves it also with a tomato salad.  Our tomatoes aren't ripe yet, so I didn't make it, but feel free to play with the idea!

I was also thinking it would be super tasty with eggplant added to the mix. Add a small one to the veggies you blitz in the processor. If you try it, let me know!

This made enough for 4 hungry adults and 2 toddlers, plus we had some leftover. I'll be eating it in the morning on top of toast!

Pumpkin Risotto

I generally tend to make this risotto after having roast chicken.  Generally I don't like to deal with cold chicken carcases, they gross me out. But, for the sake of being spend-thrift I do it for this meal. It also puts a little protein in a meal that otherwise would just be veg and carbs.  See? Always thinking I am.

I also add a little elaborating food color to the final product for Goose so I can just call it Orange Rice (I use just a bit of red).  It's a lot more appealing to a little one to have a color identified (one that looks more than slightly artificial) than to call it by it's vegetable name.

This makes a very generous amount. I always get at least lunch for The Dude and Green Thumbs in addition to dinner for 2 adults and 2 children.

Beef, Beer and Blue Cheese Pie

I am a little addicted to making food that I see in blogs. I'll often just Google an ingredient and scroll through the lists of blogs that have a recipe that contain that ingredient. Then I spend countless hours just flicking around the site, seeing what else I can find that looks interesting.  Yes, riveting. I know.  I do however come across some different meals, and with a little bit of creativity I can generally make em happen.

That's what dinner was today.

As I was making the pie, I thought for sure it would not be something that ended up on this blog. Blue cheese is not the sort of thing you offer to someone unless they have an ounce of gastronomic adventure in them. However, when I served the final product I realized that you could hardly tell there were vegetables in it, yet over half the pie is made of veggies. And the blue cheese wasn't overwhelming.

Score!

Unfortunately there isn't any leftover to see if Goose likes it, so I can't vouch for the discerning child appeal - but The Dude enjoyed it and ate all of his (as long as it was served like a choo-choo train).

I'd say if you are an adult who doesn't like vegetables, this is a great dish for you. Sophisticated(ish) and full of interesting flavors.  If you are making food for a picky child, have something on back up just in case the flavors are too strong.

Spinach Lasagne with Mushroom Ragu

Can you tell I like to make vegetarian food? Yeah, I do. I've made a fair few different kinds of lasagne, from traditional mince/cheese sauce to roast vegetables lasagne.  This so far has to be my favorite. Granted, when you look at the amount of cheese that goes into it, you can see why. I'm a sucker for cheese, any kind. This uses three different cheeses. mmmmmmm

This recipe made 2 baking dishes of lasagne, and each dish lasted for 1 dinner plus lunch for all of us. I'm positive that for most people each dish would serve 6-8 people. For us, it serves 2.5 for 2 meals - so 5 servings? yeah, I know. I blame the baby growing inside me. I'm glad I made 2 dishes of it though, because it did take a while to assemble. It is totally worth it though. Soooo good.

Goose noticed the mushrooms and silverbeet in this dish, and although she couldn't taste it she certainly decided that those green leafy things were not her cup of tea. Next time I'm going to chuck all the mushrooms and liquid in the food processor together before putting it in the ragu sauce (my directions will have these changes). I will also puree the silverbeet after I cook it to make it less noticeable.

Lesson learned - never underestimate to discerning eye of an almost 4 year old who doesn't like vegetables!

Dirty Rice with Pork

I like to experiment with food and recipes, and I realize that with most picky eaters they like their tried and true foods. That is the beauty of this recipe - most kids like rice, and if they haven't got an aversion to mince, they should hopefully be fairly willing to try this New Orleans homage. The Dude ate all his food, and when he had leftovers the following day he eagerly finished those too, and if you chop 'em small enough no one notices they are eating any veggies!

This is also a great dish to make ahead and refrigerate for a couple days. I didn't get a chance to take a photo since the camera went on a walkabout, but it ends up looking more like a rice risotto (the boxed stuff, for you Kiwi folks - not the classic creamy risotto).

Vegetarian couscous

Today we came home from an afternoon out with not much in the fridge. I've been meaning to make it to the supermarket for days now, and simply find myself to never really be in a position to take the time to do it.

Ah. First world problems.

On a side note, I find herbs and spices to be my best friend these days. They give flavor to the flavorless and color to the bland.

So this dish is more or less made up of things that were sitting around our house.  It is quite a light dish, and would probably be better suited for lunch, possibly served cold. Not the prettiest of meals, but The Dude hoed it down, so I'd say it was a success (granted, he isn't much of a picky eater when he's hungry, Goose is my measuring stick for picky). I found it delicious, if possibly a bit dry. Nothing a bit of hummus or natural yogurt couldn't sort out...