Recipe: Sweet Chicken and Red Pepper Curry

First time I made this I literally licked the bowl clean- it is Soooo nice. I really like creamy mild curries- i don't think i will ever get to the heavily chilli-tolerant feats of my dad and my boyfriend. I do wonder sometimes whether the whole 'liking spicy foods' thing is some sort of judge of masculinity? That maybe if men don't order the spiciest thing on the menu, it's considered by other men as being wimpy or 'girly'. Ah well, maybe one day my tastes will change and i will get the same thrill that they get from those vindaloos and fahls- this sort of chilli induced euphoria. Until then I will eat and thoroughly enjoy my kormas and passandas, and experiment with other lovely mild curries.

Sweet chicken and red pepper curry (serves 2)

Ingredients
2 tbsp olive oil
1 red onion, chopped
2 cloves Garlic, crushed
2 breasts of chicken cubed
1 red pepper, roughly chopped
2 bay leaves
½ tin chopped tomatoes
1 tin coconut milk
2 tbsp Pataks Mild curry paste
1 squeeze fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp sugar

1. Sautee onion and garlic in olive oil for 5 minutes. Add chicken, red pepper and curry paste and cook for a further 5 minutes.
2. Add all other ingredients and cook on a medium heat for 30 minutes, until nice thick and creamy. Season to taste and serve.

Recipe: Butternut Squash and Paneer Pakoras

God, what a week! I'm so nackered, seriously. Got a hell of a lot of literature coursework to get through (still over 2000 words to write), got to cut down and 'tart up' my English Language coursework, and I still have a 2000 word screenplay to write for Film Studies. And all of this has to happen in the next couple of months. The literature one is the scariest though, I don't think I have ever written a 3000 word essay, that seems such a daunting amount. Still, has to be done. These appetisers/ canapes are absolutely divine! It takes a while to grate the squash and paneer for the mixture and roll all the balls up, but it's completely worth it. The dip I have presented them with, that you can see in the photo, is just some natural yoghurt mixed with some dukka, honey, a squeeze of lemon and a bit of black pepper.

Butternut squash and Paneer Pakoras (makes 24/25)

300g (peeled) grated butternut squash or pumpkin
300g finely grated paneer
50g very finely chopped red onion
½ tsp crushed ginger
1 green chilli, very finely diced
25g coriander, finely chopped
¼ tsp white pepper
40g white fresh breadcrumbs
½ tsp allspice
¼ tsp nutmeg
1 tsp salt
2 cardamom pods ground in a mortar and pestle
Little bit of cracked black pepper

1. Mix all the ingredients together well. Form the mixture in your palms into circles. You should weigh them and they should be between 25-30g. This helps them all cook in the same amount of time.
2. Heat a large saucepan full of vegetable/sunflower oil to a medium high heat. In batches, cook the pakoras for 2 minutes, until they turn a dark brown. Serve with a yoghurt dip of some sort.

Recipe: Leek and Bacon Risotto

Once again combining the perfectly paired flavours of leek and bacon, this time in risotto form. This is a sneaky supper for myself. It is perhaps rather a big portion for one but I am a greedy girl, and when it's so cold outside for me life is all about comfort eating! If i was serving this for a dinner party, i would also top the risotto with a bit of crumbled really crispy bacon- so you get a mix of textures.

Leek and Bacon Risotto (serves 1, or 2 as a dinner party starter)

1 tbsp olive oil
1 rasher smoky bacon, diced finely
1 leek, sliced finely
100ml white wine
80g Arborio rice
350ml chicken or vegetable stock
10g parmesan, finely grated
1 tbsp finely chopped chives
Salt and pepper to taste
Drizzle of extra virgin olive oil

1. Cook the bacon on a high heat for about three minutes, until beginning to brown. Add the leeks, stir quickly to mix, and add the white wine, for 2 minutes, until most of the wine has evaporated.
2. Add the rice, stir in, and cook for one minute. Begin to gradually add the stock, for 15 minutes, or until the rice is “al-dente”.
3. Stir in the parmesan and season to taste. Garnish with the chopped chives and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.

Recipe: Tabouleh

If you have't tried this dish before you are really missing out, trust me. Tabouleh (Prounced Tah-Boo-Lay) is a Lebanese herb and bulghur wheat salad. It is so delicious, fresh and healthy- and goes fantastic as a side dish for Arabic/Middle Eastern Lamb dishes. And for the veggies it's very nice topped with a few hot slices of griddled haloumi. I have seen many people fail to make this dish properly, because they don't realise that the main emphasis of flavour should definitely come from the herbs. It shouldnt be a couple of lonely sprigs of parsley amongst a heap of bulghar.

Tabouleh (serves 3 as a side dish)

100g bulghar wheat
500ml water
20g fresh mint leaves (no stems), chopped finely
40g fresh parsley leaves (no stems) chopped roughly
250g ripe plum tomatoes, seeded and diced
½ red onion, diced finely
Juice of ½ a lemon
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
½ tsp salt
Black pepper to taste

1. Boil the bulghar wheat in the water for about 10 minutes, or until the grains are soft and all the liquid has been absorbed. Drain under cool water and set aside.
2. Meanwhile, put all the other ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Add the reserved cooled bulghar wheat, stir until well mixed, season to taste and serve!

Recipe: Quick Banoffee Puddings

My dad told me the most hilarious thing whilst I was making these. He said "up until the age of 40 I always though Banoffee Pudding was named after the guy that created it- 'Mr Banoffee'". He is actually such a numpty bless 'im. He also pointed out that I shouldnt really be making these, as me, mum and dad are on diets, so we shouldnt really be eating anything that involves toffee or cream- let alone both! But I had a really ripe banana and had a jar of dulche de leche in the cupboard which had been there for ages, so I thought what the hell. Dulche De Leche is this gorgeaus Spanish toffee sauce. I get it from my local farm shop, but if you can't find any of it yourself, i'm pretty sure Carnation do something very similar. You would find it in the baking section of the supermarket.

Bannoffee Cups (makes 4)

125g (half a packet) Fox’s butter crinkles biscuits
1 450g jar dulche de leche
1 very ripe banana, mashed up
40ml double cream
Whipped cream
Dark chocolate, finely grated

1. Crush the biscuits until fine crumbs (either in a processor or just bash it up with a rolling pin). Spoon the crumbs equally into 4 glasses of your choice (I use wine glasses).
2. Mix together the dulche de leche, ripe banana and double cream into a fairly smooth consistency. Spoon equally into the 4 wine glasses. Put in the fridge until ready to serve.
3. Before serving, pipe some whipped cream into the glasses, and sprinkle with some finely grated dark chocolate. Serve!

Feature: Linda Mccartney Foods 5

After a couple of weeks of none of my recipes being selected- they have now picked my Roast Celeriac, Chilli and Courgette Tart. This is the seventh recipe they have chosen so far. To be honest I reckon if they do choose me as a finalist, I reckon it will be with my Caramelised Shallot Tart recipe. The Linda Mccartney team seemed to be most interested in that one. Also I am fairly proud of that picture. It is fairly delicious looking right? But you never know, it could be one of the other ones. I do kinda think though if they choose the tart recipe, it might not ending up winning, because its not a recipe suitable for vegans. I know it is a "vegetarian" recipe competition, but they have said stuff on their facebook page like "Calling all vegans, the next Linda McCartney product could be vegan if you enter our competition with a yummy vegan recipe!".

Anyway, this week this recipe is up the win "The UK's tastiest meat free dish!" , and i'd love it if you would follow the link and vote for it! You just have to press the "rate this dish" button at the top right of the screen. Thanks for all your help guys, Mel wants to win!!!

http://www.lindamccartneyfoods.co.uk/tastiestmeatfree/recipe.php?id=215

It's exactly three years since...

...I started blogging about rubbish.

Three blimmin' years! 

That sounds like a bit of a confession, especially since this blog was intended to last for eight weeks,  but I'll save you the pain of too much personal reminiscing.  If you really want a bit of that, check out this post from last year and this special celebratory number from 2009. 


Instead of looking back, I want to take this opportunity to cast our minds to the future and how the subject of waste is going to remain a hot and relevant topic.

For instance it won't be long until April, when the cost of throwing rubbish into landfill will suddenly rise to £56 per tonne, and if you think that's steep, by 2014 we'll be looking at a cost of £80 tonne.  When you consider that landfill tax was just £24 per tonne when I started this blog, it's easy to see the financial incentives for councils to stop burying our rubbish and encourage householders to divert it to recycling instead.

In fact, our local paper published today news that if Suffolk councils did nothing about the amount of waste going to landfill, the county's tax bill would rise from £8,253,739 in 2010 to £13,756,232 in 2014.  Woah - that would be some burden on us taxpayers!   So, it's a good job our council is pretty progressive with its recycling streams (Suffolk is 5th in the league table, recycling 50.6% of our municipal waste). There are plans in place locally, within councils and at grassroots level to meet even higher targets by 2015.

What really concerns me though, is that across the UK, the public sector is hitting a time of real uncertainty, with severe budget cuts, council reorganisations and redundancies. Frontline services are being hit as well as a range of services across the board, so it will be no surprise if some recycling facilities are reassessed in accordance with efficiencies.  However, I remain hopeful that core services will remain unaffected.

But it's a reminder that the emphasis must also focus on the concept of pre-cycling and REDUCING the amount of unnecessary materials that end up in our bins in the first place.  As consumers, we have the power to make a personal switch from a disposable culture to reusable products, which can bring personal economic benefits as well as environmental gains.   It's also a good reason to bolster the "recycled market", by heightening our support for products that contain recycled materials and encourage companies and brands to switch to recycled components if they don't do so already.

A lot of progress has been made within the waste sector in the last few years and I still think there are many more exciting developments to come.  When I first started The Rubbish Diet, the standard statistic regarding food waste issued by the campaign site LoveFoodHateWaste was that the average household threw away one-third of its food.  In recent times I've seen communications that claim that this has now reduced to a quarter. At the same time, food waste collections have been introduced in many parts of the country, using anaerobic digestion to divert such material from landfill. In time, these facilities will become even more widespread.

Elsewhere, the mixed plastics recycling market has received a further boost from WRAP to develop processing facilities in the UK and there are even real opportunities to manage previously hard-to-recycle items such as toothpaste tubes and other laminated packaging.   With regard to municipal waste, this really takes us one step closer to the goals of a zero waste society  and if you're as excited about this as me, then you should really check out Enval, the technology business behind the process.  Using pyrolysis, the company can demonstrate a proven commercial application for recovering 100% aluminium from packaging such as food pouches and other products.  The solution is also carbon neutral, using energy and fuel derived from the recycling process.

I may not blog about waste as much as I used to, but one thing's for certain,  raising awareness of waste reduction is still high on my agenda and is still a huge part of my many commitments.  And I can only thank all those who still take time out to read this blog, my random Twitter\Facebook updates as well as those who come to my talks.  I'd especially like to thank the members of the Ipswich Oddfellows group who invited me to talk at their meeting this week, offering me the opportunity to reminisce over those first few months of 2008 and how I tackled St Edmundsbury's Zero Waste Week.  It was an appropriate way to celebrate this year's anniversary.

So as we look forward to another year ahead, this might be an appropriate time to remind you that if you're looking for a challenge to do something about your rubbish, then please consider taking up The Rubbish Diet Challenge, which can help you tackle your rubbish in just 8 weeks.  You'll find the links to the FREE online guide at the top of this blog, as well as a few anecdotes to keep you entertained.  And if you need extra motivation, why not get friends and family to sponsor your challenge and do it for charity.

Just eight weeks.  That's all it takes to make a huge difference.

Yes, just EIGHT WEEKS, to slim down your bin.

But be careful.  Once you delve into your rubbish, you could very well be hooked.... and you might just end up be talking about it for years!

Don't say I didn't warn you.

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For other updates, check out my recently revamped website at www.karencannard.co.uk, which includes a range of links to current blogs, columns and much more.

Recipe: Spiced Beef Meatballs, with Herby Nutty Couscous

I suppose using pre-made meatballs is slightly cheating but this is a nice quick way of making a meatball dish without having to get your hands all dirty mixing fresh meatballs. Delicious beef meatballs cooked in a spicy tomato sauce, served with coriander and toasted pine nut cous cous. Mmmmm. The dukka spice mix recipe can be found on my Mushroom and Chickpea Tagine recipe. it is essentially a ground blend of toasted cumin, coriander and sesame seeds.

Spiced Beef Meatballs, served with lime and coriander couscous (serves 2)

Meatballs and Sauce

3 tbsp olive oil
12 Sainsbury’s beef meatballs (they are small and come in packs of 20)
1 red onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tsp dukka
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 green chilli, diced
1.5 tsp sugar
100ml beef stock
Salt and pepper to taste

Lime, coriander and toasted pine nut couscous

120g cous cous
150ml boiled water
Knob of butter
Juice of ½ lime, or 1 tbsp lime juice
Handful fresh coriander, roughly chopped
30g pine nuts, toasted
½ tsp dukka
Salt and pepper to taste

1. In a deep frying pan, heat the oil on a high heat and brown the meatballs evenly (this should take about 5 minutes). Remove the meatballs and set aside. Lower the temperature a little and sauté the red onion and garlic, covered, for 5 minutes, until softened.
2. Stir in the dukka and stir for 1 minute. Add the tomatoes, chilli and sugar, stir in and cook covered for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Cool down this mixture slightly and blend in a food processor. Return the blended mixture to the pan, along with the beef stock and the reserved meatballs. Cook the mixture on a high heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Meanwhile, pour the couscous into a mixing bowl. Pour over the boiling water, add a knob of butter, and cover. It should take about 5 minutes to absorb all the liquid. Add the lime juice, coriander, pine nuts and dukka, and “fluff up” the couscous with a fork.
5. Season the meatballs and couscous to taste and serve!

Published: My First Published Recipe!

How terribly exciting! Got a recipe published in many regional newspapers today! O.k, O.k, so i'm a long way away from having my own book- but hey guys c'mon it's a start!

As I have mentioned before, I have had a few (well, seven actually!) recipes shortlised for Linda Mccartney's recipe competition- "The Search for the U.K's Tastiest Meat Free Dish". The recipe for my Caramelised Shallot Tart, with my lurvelly picture (as well as a couple of other recipes and details of the competition) was published today in various regional publications, mostly in "The Black Country", Birmingham, West Midlands and Yorkshire areas- Including in "The Express & Star"- which Wikipedia tells me is the "the biggest selling regional daily paper in the UK."- Not bad eh?

I really really hope i become one of the finalists. If i do, i'll end up on the telly!!! In a little mini-documentary thing on ITV. Plus win a cooker. Mel want's it EVEN MORE now!!!!

http://www.expressandstar.com/lifestyle/food/2011/01/19/mccartneys-veggie-legacy/

Recipe: Chicken Mughlai

I'm not really sure what a "Mughlai" officially should be in "curry terminology", but i call this dish Chicken Mughlai because it tastes almost identical to a dish of the same name that I had in an Indian Restaurant in Venice. Essentially it is just a very quick and basic chicken curry that will please most dinner guests- not too creamy, not very spicy, and doesn't contain any vegetables that some people may object to.

Chicken Mughlai (serves 2)

2 chicken breasts
2 tsp Rogan josh curry paste
3 tbsp vegetable oil
1 small red onion, diced finely
1 tsp crushed ginger
1 large garlic clove, crushed
1 tsp garam masala
½ tsp paprika
½ tsp mild chilli powder
½ tsp ground fenugreek
½ tsp ground coriander
½ tsp turmeric
Pinch cinnamon
150ml chicken stock
150ml semi-skimmed milk
Handful coriander roughly chopped (plus extra for garnish)
1 rounded tbsp tomato paste
1 tsp sugar
4 tbsp natural yoghurt
Salt and black pepper to taste

1. Heat the oven to 200C. Place the chicken breasts on a greaseproof paper lined baking tray, and rub each one with a tsp of the curry paste. Season with salt and pepper and cook in the oven for 30 minutes. Remove, chop into large chunks and set aside.
2. Heat olive oil in a saucepan on a medium heat, and add the onion, garlic and ginger. Cook covered, stirring occasionally for 5 minutes.
3. Add the reserved chicken and all the spices and cook for a further 2 minutes. Add the chicken stock, milk, coriander, sugar and tomato paste and stir in well. Cook covered, stirring occasionally for 15 minutes.
4. Remove the lid and cook for a further 5-10 minutes, on a high heat, stirring often, until the sauce is thickened. Garnish with the natural yoghurt and coriander and serve!

Pledging to save energy ASAP to help Baglady

Today finally sees the start of the secret launch of Baglady's ASAP Pledge Round 2.  The official launch is 11.01.11, but Baglady being an impatient old gal decided to make the most of the tradition for New Year's Resolutions and the opportunity to get us Internet peeps thinking about sustainability.  You might remember my last blog post about it here.


Now I know that you're used to me thinking big and tackling some huge challenges, such as organising rubbish free tasks or setting up local collection schemes for Recycle Week, but for this year's ASAP (As Sustainable As Possible) pledge, I've decided to tackle something really small but just as important, much closer to home

You see, despite making a big effort to reduce waste, use public transport, buy local and keep the heating off until November, I've still not sorted out the simple fact that I am always forgetful about turning off the light in the downstairs loo.  Asimple thing, but the kids do it too...so much so that my husband is always on our backs about Mr Invisible spending far too much time on the toilet!

So, I've decided that my pledge this year (with the help of the children) will be to give up leaving the light on in the loo AND elsewhere in the house.  And while I'm on the subject I've also decided to take up the idea of turning off my laptop whenever it's not in use...instead of my "leaving it on just in case I need it later" routine.

Other bloggers are also on board with their ASAP pledges and have either already blogged about them or will be doing so very soon, so for inspiration keep your eyes peeled for updates from MyZeroWaste,  Cambridge EcoThrifter, From Rat Race to Positive Parent, Violet Posy, Just Jotting Along, A Modern Mother, Jo Beaufoix and Rosie Scribble.

Pledging is simple.  You just need to pop along to Baglady's website, make your pledge and pass it on via Facebook, Twitter or through your blog, encouragiing your friends to do the same.  All pledges registered on Baglady's site by midnight on 17th June will also be entered into a random draw where one lucky person will win a £100 voucher courtesy of Baglady Productions to spend at sustainable retailer Wiggly Wigglers.

So, go on...please join us in adopting Baglady for 2011 and  if you do I'd love to know if you've made a pledge. In the meantime, I'm off to make mine now....

Useful links:

Adult Pledge: http://www.bagladyproductions.org/asap-world/pledge/
Kids Pledge: http://www.bagladyproductions.org/asap-world/kids-pledge-asap/

Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/bagladyproductions

P.S.....if you're spreading news of your pledge on your blog, there's even a blog badge you can use...

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Blogger disclaimer:  Karen has been working with Baglady Productions to help launch Pledge ASAP Round 2.  However, this is a personal post as an independent participating blogger.