Ginger, lemon and honey tea

I have flu and I feel really, really sorry for myself. This couldn’t have happened at a worst time. I’ve missed gym for two days

Well when life hands you lemons you experiment with home-made flu remedies.

I’ve made myself a steaming cup of Ginger, lemon and honey tea. Although there is no tea in it, it is drank like a tea.

The ginger heat you up from inside, the lemon is a good source of Vitamin C and the honey acts a natural cough suppressant.

Read more about the health benefits here.

 Serves 4

4 cups of water

4 tbs of lemon juice

2 tbs grated fresh ginger

Honey to taste

Simmer the water, ginger lemon and grated fresh ginger in a pot for 15 minutes. Pour into cup and add honey to taste. You could add less or more ginger if you prefer.

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Soy, Honey and Sesame Chicken Wings

There is a first time for everything….even green Asparagus.

Yes I know! How is it possible that I’ve never eaten green Asparagus yet I love white Asparagus spears so much.

When we just got married (many, many moons ago) I tried to cook green Asparagus and it tasted horrible, I thought it was just the Asparagus that tasted bad, off course way back than I wasn’t able to cook an egg properly either.

Don’t be fooled,  the actual star of this meal is the Sticky Soy, Honey and Sesame Chicken Wings served with a potato Rosti.

Soy, Honey and Sesame Chicken Wings 

+- 8 -10 Chicken wings

50 g Sesame seeds

For the marinade mix together

150 ml Vital Soy Sauce

75 ml Honey

1 tbs Chicken spice

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Marinade the chicken for at least 1 hour.

Pre heat oven to 180 degrees and place chicken in a baking tray. Sprinkle the sesame seeds on to the chicken. Baste frequently with the remainder of the marinade that is left over. Bake until golden brown and cooked through.

In the meantime cook your asparagus as follows: 

Heat a large griddle pan and dry-griddle the asparagus spears on both sides. When they are ready drizzle the juice of 1/2 lemon and a dash of Olive oil over them. Season with ground pepper and salt.

For the potato Rosti

6 Potatoes peeled

6 tbs flour

1 egg yolk

salt and pepper to taste

Chopped spring onion to taste

Grate the potatoes and rinse under cold water, strain the potatoes and transfer to a large mixing bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients to the potato mixing it thoroughly. Transfer the potatoes onto a clean tea towel.  Bring the corners together and squeeze the liquid out. Use your hands to form little potato patties for frying.

Heat your pan with a little olive oil and fry the rosti’s on a low to medium heat for +- 7 minutes on each side turning carefully.

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Egg muffins for Breakfast?

Day 1 of our 6 week challenge.

I had a fantastic cardio workout this morning, amazing what the body is capable of.                                                                               Two weeks ago I couldn’t manage 30 minutes of Cardio today I did 50 minutes!

I recently realized that my body doesn’t like Carbohydrates at all and that I actually tend to lose weight  faster when consuming more veggies and protein. Let me just say that I’m a carb junkie and the though of cutting it out completely is just too much for me to tolerate right now.

Instead I’m aiming at replacing my carbs in the morning and my late afternoon snack with a just a protein. This egg muffins is perfect for breakfast or a high protein snack. It can keep for up to a week in the fridge.  I eat at least 4 for breakfast and later in the morning I will have a low-fat yogurt and a fruit to keep me satisfied up to lunch time.

Recipe – 12 Muffins 

6 eggs

Spring onions

2.5 ml Robertson’s Veggie spices

 A dash of  freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup of low-fat Cheddar cheese

Grease a muffin pan or coat with a non-stick spray. (silicone muffin pans also work great, I seriously need to buy one!)

Beat the eggs together, grate the cheese and add with the remainder of the ingredients to the eggs.

Full muffin pan with mixture and bake for +- 15-20 minutes.

The rise beautifully just to fall flat when you take them out of the oven… :)

Tips

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For variation add one of the following ingredients;

Chopped Green, yellow and red peppers, chillies, bacon, mushrooms, onions, chopped spinach,

chopped tomato and onion.

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Tomato and Olive Braai bread

Ok, this will be the last indulgence for the week….

You simply have to” braai” before you go on a diet, and what is a “braai” without the bread?

For the next six weeks I will be dieting like a mad woman, exercising like crazy and cooking much much, much, healthier meals.

Why am I doing this? Well we have a little in-house competition. The person to shed the most kilo’s and centimeters around the waist in the next six weeks win a R 1000.00 to spend as they please….Yeahhhh!  Naturally my husband and son believe that they will be each other’s biggest competition, off course I know better.

Serve 6

1 x loaf of bread (white or brown)

Garlic butter for spreading

3 x tomatoes

Spring onions

100 g pitted Kalamata olives

Salt and Black pepper

4 tbs Chutney

250 g mozzarella cheese

 

Cut your loaf of bread length ways. You will get about 6 slices out of a loaf, we will only be using four. Spread the slices with the garlic butter.

Cut the tomatoes in slices and add to two halves. top with some chopped spring onion, salt and pepper and finish off with the olives.

Top with the mozzarella cheese. Spread the chutney on both sides of the other halves and assemble the sandwich. Place in between your BBQ hand grid and “braai” over hot coals, until bread is toasted and cheese melted.

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Quick Savoury tart

This is the quickest savoury tart that you will ever make! Great for lunch and even greater when you have unexpected quest.

It’s great for the children’s lunch boxes and sophisticated enough when cut it into bite size diamond shapes top with a dollop of mustard and served on your best plates.

175 g Spinach chopped

1 small onion diced

1 punnet button mushrooms

3 rashers of bacon (cut into strips)

1 tin of white asparagus drained

250 ml Cheddar cheese grated

Egg Custard

150 ml Milk

2 eggs

30 ml flour

3 ml salt

2 ml pepper

5 ml mustard

Olive oil for frying

Preheat oven to 180 degrees and grease a small pie dish.Fry the onions in the olive oil and fry until translucent. Add the mushrooms and bacon to the onions and fry for another minute or two. Ad the spinach to the pan and fry for 3 minutes until the spinach has wilted. Place ingredients for filling into the pie dish. lay the asparagus over the spinach filling.

Add all the ingredients for the custard together in a separate bowl or a measuring jug and whisk.

Pour the mixture over the spinach filling and top with the grated cheese. Bake for +- 30-35 minutes until set and golden brown.

Enjoy hot or cold.

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Guilt-Free Chocolate Brownies

I had this crazy urge to bake something sweet this weekend, as I was about to prepare the pancake batter the sun came out.

I don’t know about you but I cannot bake or eat a pancake if the sun is shining, it is just totally wrong! Pancake is for cold and rainy days to be enjoyed under a blanket on the coach with a steaming mug of hot Coffee. So on that note I made Chocolate brownies instead.

This is probably the healthiest Chocolate brownies you will ever eat! This Brownie equals one slice of bread, so if you are watching your diet swap out a  1 x carb for this sweet treat.

Equals 24

1 can Butter beans (strained)

75 ml low-fat milk

2 apples peeled, grated

200 ml Cake flour

10 ml Baking powder

2,5 ml salt

100 ml cocoa powder

3 eggs

250 ml sugar

5 ml Vanilla essence / extract

+- 20 Pecan nuts

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees

Grease a medium oven dish with oil or cooking spray.

Whizz the drained butter beans with the milk in a food processor to a smooth paste.

In the meanwhile peel and grate 2 x apples. Cook in just enough water to cover the apples for +-15 minutes until soft. Strain over a sieve.

Add the apples to the bean mixture and pulse for another minute.

In a separate bowl sift the Cake flour, baking powder, salt and Cocoa.

In a separate bowl whisk the egg with an electric beater. Add the sugar bit by bit by the eggs, continue to whisk.

In a separate bowl mix half of the bean mixture half of the dry ingredients and half of the egg mixture together folding in carefully. Repeat with the remainder of the mixtures.

Add the nuts and the vanilla  to the mixture and mix through.

Bake  for 40-45 minutes until done.

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“Braai tart” – Polenta, Mushroom and Bacon tart

Like every other Saturday my husband have the urge to “braai”. This ritual starts in Spring and continues well into the winter. Yip that’s my hubby! , facing the icy cold winters of the Highveld armed with his beanie, winter jacket and a scarf and his bottle of mixed spices turning ordinary lamb chops into succulent little dreams.

Unfortunately the side dishes is not his forte’, instead he likes to order me around. His favorite would be “pap tert” (a maize meal tart).

I decided it is about time that we jazz up the old maize tart a bit, you know, making it a bit more sophisticated, so instead of using ordinary maize meal in boring layers I used Polenta instead.

To all the vegetarians out there, feel free to remove the bacon from this recipe, I would’ve but my husband is a carnivore and he tends to get a bit grumpy if there is no extra meat in a savory tart!

 

Serves 8

Polenta crust

Polenta ( about 1 cup cooked in 4 cups of water, should be a spreadable consistancy)

2 tbs garlic butter

salt to taste

Filling

125 g white button mushrooms (1/2 punnet)

125 g Portobello mushrooms (+- 4 large)

1 Onion – sliced

Olive oil for frying

a pinch of dry thyme

100 g bacon bits

2 tbs tomato puree

1/2 tsp of sugar

100 ml milk

1 egg

2 heaped tbs of flour

2 ml salt

1/2 cup mozzarella cheese

1/2 cup Gouda Cheese

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Rub your pie dish with butter. Cook polenta, stir in the garlic butter and set aside keeping the lid on your pot to keep the polenta warm.

Fry the onions and mushrooms with the thyme in olive oil. Add the bacon bits and fry for another minute. Add the tomato puree and the sugar, fry for another minute.

In a measuring cup add the flour and salt to the milk and mix, add the egg mixing it again.

Use a the back of a metal tablespoon or a spatula to spread an even layer of polenta to the bottom of your pie dish covering the sides as well.

Add the mushroom filling on top of the polenta and pour the milk mixture over it.

Top with the cheese and bake for +- 15 -20 minutes.

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Rosemary and Beef Kofta’s with spicy rice

Phew! I’ts been  more than a week since my last post.

I’m exhausted, emotionally unstable (blame it on the full moon), I don’t have an appetite (sorry can’t cook if I’m not hungry) and besides that I just can’t seem to get ahead of my workload….

Anyway, I’ve discovered a bottle of Robertson’s spice for rice in the back of my grocery cupboard and thought I should make some spicy rice to go with the Rosemary Kofta’s.

If you don’t have spice for rice you could simply add 3 ml turmeric and 2,5 ml chilli powder to your rice while cooking.

For the Rosemary koftas

 600 g Beef mince

6 sprigs of Rosemary

Salt and pepper to taste

5 ml of chopped rosemary

5 ml paprika

1/2 cup of Brown bread crumbs ( whiz up one slice of bread in a food processor)

Oil for frying

Remove the leaves from the Rosemary sprigs leaving a tiny bit behind at the end of each sprig.

Use 5 ml of the rosemary leaves that was removed and chop finely.

Mix all the ingredients together for the koftas. Shape the meat by hand into a sausage and stick the Rosemary “skewers” in the middle of your kofta.

Fry in a hot pan until done.

For the Spicy rice

2 cups of cooked rice (Cook with rice spices)

1 onion

1 carrot (thin julienne slices)

1/2 cup of fresh or frozen peas

handful of flat leave parsley (roughly chopped)

1 tbsp garlic butter

Olive oil for frying

Slice your onions and caramelize in the olive oil. Add the Julienne carrots and saute’ for a few minutes, add the peas and saute for another 3 – 4 minutes. Add the garlic butter to the veggies and season with salt and ground pepper. Add your cooked rice to the veggies and mix through. Garnish with chopped flat leave parsley.

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