Weekend Carnivore

Ever have those times in your life when you just want life to go back to normal? All the travelling I have been doing has been great (especially the nephew part of it!) but it does always shake up life a little bit. It hasn’t been the main hurdle between us and a normal life at the moment though. No, that would be the fact that our bedroom currently only has one fully standing wall!

Just a few days into the New Year, we moved some furniture in our bedroom and noticed some mold on the wall. Not just any mold but a nice black fuzzy variety that had worked its way up the back of our two wardrobes, our bedside tables and a few other items.

I have been having repository problems at night for over the last year which often would turn into morning nosebleeds. Problems which have proved baffling to various doctors who despite x-rays could find nothing wrong with my body. Gee, I wonder if I have been sleeping with my head next to this mold for so long and didn’t know it!

I would guess so. For the last month we have been having to cram all our things into our spare bedroom while the landlords drag their feet to repair the leaking roof, which apparently is the source of the problem. They have also taken three of the walls in our bedroom all the way back to the concrete brick to allow the walls to dry out before eventually (who knows when!) rebuilding them. In the time we have been sleeping in there (all our clothing in suitcases since we don’t actually have wardrobes now) I haven’t had a single night of breathing problems or any nose bleeds. I take that as proof.

In all this upturn, I haven’t done all that much proper cooking and my diet is suffering. Yesterday, I decided even if the walls are (literally) crumbling around me, I can still at least take control of what I eat.

So, back on the wagon, I go once again and started with this lunch dish. Sometimes I just need a sandwich to throw together to satisfy my grumbling tummy at lunch. It is also exactly this meal of the day where I am at most danger of reaching for meat. Aware of this problem, I have set myself the challenge of coming up with vegetarian sandwiches.

This week, I made a pickled carrot recipe as part of my monthly vegetarian recipe swap on Recipezaar. It was an intriguing concept and turned out to be rather nice. The recipe was posted on the site by Magpie Diner, who has many vegetarian and vegan recipes in her collection, and can be seen at – Carrots In Vinegar.

In the recipe, Magpie Diner suggested that they would go nicely with black olives. My brain started to work in the strange ways that it does and I wondered how the two items would work together in an egg salad sandwich.

For my British friends, in the States, egg salad is what you call egg and mayo. For my American friends, in the UK, something called egg salad would involve egg and actual salad such as lettuce. It is just one of those differences that took me a while to get used to when ordering food in the UK.

It turns out the combination worked rather well. The sharpness of the pickled carrots added a depth of flavour to the egg salad recipe. At the same time, the mellow nature of the black olives kept them from taking the sharpness over the top of acceptability.

Why not try out the pickled carrot recipe and then see what you think of them in this egg salad recipe. Otherwise, you could do this recipe without the pickled carrots and still have a nice olive an egg salad sandwich.

Vegged Out Egg Salad

Vegged Out Egg Salad recipe

Ingredients:

2 hard boiled eggs, roughly chopped
30 grams celery, finely diced
10 grams pickled carrots, finely diced
25 grams black olives, sliced thinly
50 grams extra light mayonnaise
1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

1. Mix everything together in a bowl.
2. Put between bread or stuff into pitas with some lettuce or other salad items.
3. Eat and enjoy

Makes: 2 sandwiches

The new year has arrived and yet again many of us are hanging our heads in dietary shame. Things have been bad enough in our home that I am not even allowing myself to step on the scale for the next month. If I see the number without having a whole month to do damage control I may end up beyond depressed. If I didn’t gain ten pounds I will consider it a result. Yup, that bad!

All of which means it is time to get serious again and shift this weight. I am so sick of stagnating with my weight loss. Which is more or less what I have done for the past year. I know I can get to the finish line. It just requires me to focus and and not be sidetracked.

So, to usher back in my diet blinkers I am starting the healthy eating over with a new version of – what you must know by now – is pretty much my favourite dish. What you have to love about hummus is that once you have a basic hummus recipe down you can play with it in any number of ways. Even changing up just a few ingredients can make, what tastes like, a totally different hummus recipe.

In addition to jump starting the diet efforts, I am also aiming to use up things lurking in the back of my fridge before I allow myself to buy any ‘new and interesting’ items. I am always wanting to try new things but then I end up with half a jar of something that I don’t know how to use in enough ways to finish off.

Preserved lemons are something I was playing with not too long back. When I opened the fridge to try and brainstorm for a new hummus recipe, sure enough, that partially used jar of preserved lemons was sitting right there between the fish sauce and the the mango wasabi mustard. After a bit of contemplation, I took up the challenge.

Guess what? It turns out preserved lemons can work really well in a hummus recipe. Since both have Middle Eastern origins that shouldn’t be too shocking, I suppose. Plus, most hummus recipes include lemon juice. So, the basic flavours are already accounted for in the classic recipe.

Most things I have read about how to use preserved lemons in recipes, only includes using the skin. I couldn’t find anything about using the preserved lemon pulp but it felt so wrong to just throw them out. I threw them into the mix rather than throwing them away and it turns out that it actually really worked. I think that is because they carry the salt content. So, if you just either skip or limit the salt in the rest of your hummus recipe it works well and you haven’t wasted any of the lemon.

I have a feeling this won’t be the last hummus recipe I develop over the next year as I try to continue down the scales. If they all work this well, I will be a happy – hopefully smaller – woman.

Preserved lemon hummus

preserved lemon hummus recipe

Ingredients:
1 (400g) can chickpeas, drained but the liquid reserved
1/4 cup tahini
3 cloves garlic
2 preserved lemons, including the pulp, roughly chopped
3 tablespoons reserved chickpea juice
freshly ground pepper, to taste
sea salt, to taste, if required
fresh parsley and lemon zest, to garnish

Directions:

1. Put the chickpeas, tahini, garlic and preserved lemons into a blender or food processor.
2. Blitz in short bursts, pushing the mixture down when needed until everything is combined.
3. Add the chickpea juice and mix for a few more seconds. If you want it less thick you can always add more of the juice.
4. Taste a bit and decide if you need to add any salt. If you do add the salt and pepper. If not, just the pepper and mix for a couple seconds.
5. Roughly chop parsley and zest a lemon.
6. Serve topped with the parsley and lemon

Serves: 2 to 4

I feel a tad bit of a fraud. A few weeks ago, I was reading a message board for UK food bloggers when I saw a post asking if anybody would be interested in reviewing a brand of yoghurt. I love trying out new things, so I said yes. A few weeks later, there is a knock at the door and 14 – yes 14 – containers of yoghurt were being delivered.

No problem there other than figuring out how I was going to use all that yoguhurt before it expired. Where I feel a bit of a fraud is that the yoghurt I was suppose to try out and review was Total Greek Yoghurt. Far from being the first time that I have tried this brand of Greek yoghurt, I have in fact been eating and enjoying Total Greek Yoghurt as part of my diet for a few years now.

In fact, if you read back through Weekend Carnivore, you will find a number of posts where I evangelize about Greek yoghurt in general. There are a variety of reasons for my tubthumping. Firstly, even the full fat version of Greek yoghurt, and especially the Total brand, is still pretty low fat. So, once you get down to the fat free – what Total calls 0% – you are at very low calories and no fat.

More importantly for me though, is that I am lactose intolerant and for some reason, when I eat Greek yoghurt I don’t react. Without sounding like a commercial – and I promise you I would never do a false review of any product – this is only the case with the Total brand of Greek yoghurt. I have tried supermarket brands of ‘Greek style yoghurt’ and I more often than not react. I won’t claim to know why and please don’t assume that it won’t be the case for you if you are lactose intolerant but it is true for me.

Apart from the healthy nature of Greek yoghurt, I enjoy using it as an ingredient because it is so versatile. I often eat it at breakfast, as you would predict, topped with fruit or even with a bit of whatever sugar free jam I have on hand swirled into the mix. However, where it really comes into its own for me is as a replacement for sour cream, creme fraiche or, even in some cases, cream.

When cooking something like a creamy sauce or curry, I will happily stir in a bit of the Greek yoghurt and get the same result. For this I would favour the full fat version since it doesn’t separate at all during heat.

As a general rule, I find that the less fat you have in the Greek yoghurt the more sour the taste and the less creamy. This is the same with Total and it simply means that where I would want to replace cream I use the full fat variety (I have used it to make homemade ice cream, for example) and when I want to replace sour cram or creme fraiche I go down to the 2% or o% varieties.

One way that I use the lower fat varieties is to cut into mayo to make lower fat coleslaw, potato salad or dip recipes. You don’t notice a taste difference but you sure do notice the calorie and fat grams difference.

To mark my mission to finish 14 tubs of Total Greek Yoghurt before their New Year expiry dates, I thought I would create a new recipe that combined two of my favourite uses for the ingredient. Spinach dip is an American party classic and every good American home cook has a potato salad recipe in their recipe arsenal too. So, I thought why not combine the two?

This was the result and I have to say I rather enjoyed it and I hope you do too!

Low fat spinach dip potato salad

Low fat spinach dip potato salad

Ingredients:

450 grams baby new potatoes, skins left on
110 grams frozen spinach
70 grams fat free mayonnaise
85 grams 2% Total Greek Yoghurt
2 tablespoons dried onion flakes
1/2 teaspoon vegetable bullion powder
1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon dried chives
salt and freshly ground pepper, to season

Directions:

1. Cook the baby new potatoes and let them cool slightly. I do this by steaming them for 30 minutes in my electric steamer but you could boil them too.
2. While the potatoes cook and cool, defrost the frozen spinach and squeeze out all the excess liquid.
3. In a large bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients and stir really well to fully combine. Use a good amount of seasoning since there is a lot of moisture going into this recipe. However, judge how much salt you need based on how salty your bullion powder is because it can be rather salty.
4.Stir the spinach into the bowl just to combine with the mayo and yoghurt mixture.
5. Cut the baby potatoes in half width wise and fold into the spinach mixture.
6. Cover and cool in the fridge for at least an hour to allow the flavours to develop.
7. Take out of the fridge, give a good stir and serve.

Makes: 4 hearty servings

Have I mentioned before how much I love mushrooms? Well, I really love mushrooms! Whenever somebody tries to go a ‘getting to know you’ thing where they ask what your last meal would be, I always answer “I don’t know but there would be mushrooms”.

Truthfully, I haven’t met a variety of mushroom that I haven’t enjoyed. However, I may have to hide my face in foodie circles when I say that I think the good old fashion variety of mushrooms such as button mushrooms, flat mushrooms and chestnut mushrooms are the favourite. Sure, I will happily enjoy wild mushrooms or portobello mushrooms but I really think the ‘boring’ variety of mushrooms are the best for my tastebuds. Once more, they are far easier on the budget.

I think from this point forward, I am going to make a point of showing the vast array of wonderfully tasty thing that can be done with the traditional mushroom varieties. To begin this championing of classic mushrooms, I thought I would start with showing there is more that can be done with large mushrooms other than doing them in the pan as part of a fry up.

Stuffed mushroom recipes always sound daunting as a concept. I worry that they are going to be too fiddly to be worth the effort. However, that really doesn’t have to be the case at all. These chive and ricotta stuffed mushrooms are pretty darn simple to throw together and they cook fast enough to fill a sudden mushroom craving.

Really, any herbs you have around could go into this mixture. Even a slight change up of the herbs can actually make it a whole new dish. So, experimenting to find your favorite combination is very much encouraged. You will also notice, that I used dried herbs in the recipe. Fresh herbs are fantastic but I feel that the foodie world can get a bit too snobbish about using dried herbs. Most home cooks rely on dried herbs and I think anything that gets people cooking should be encouraged. Plus, the taste good when used properly. So, why not use them?

This chive and ricotta stuffed mushroom recipe works great as a light lunch. They would be at home at an evening meal too either as a starter or alongside a hearty salad for a vegetarian main course. I have made the recipe for two mushrooms. Even though I have said that is two servings, my mushroom related greed would most likely result in me eating both. Don’t worry if you need to make for larger numbers because the stuffed mushroom recipe is very easily scaled up.

Chive and ricotta stuffed mushrooms

chive and ricotta stuffed mushroom recipe

Ingredients:

2 large flat mushrooms
1 teaspoon olive oil
65 grams ricotta cheese
1 clove garlic, finely minced
1 tablespoon dried chives
1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon dried onion flakes
1 teaspoon parmesan cheese, divided

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees (gas mark 6, 200c).
2. Take the stems out of the mushrooms. Reserve these because they can be chopped up and used in things like omelettes.
3. Brush the outsides of the mushroom with the olive oil and then placed on a lined baking tray.
4. In a bowl, mix together the ricotta, garlic, chives, parsley, onion and half a teaspoon of the parmesan.
5. Season the mixture with salt and pepper to taste.
6. Divide the mixture between the two mushroom caps, filing each with as mush as you can.
7. Sprinkle the tops with the remaining parmesan.
8. Put into the oven and bake for about 20 minutes or until the cheese has started to go golden.
9. Serve.

Makes: 2 mushrooms

The days on the run up to my wedding in July 2008 were fairly chaotic. There wasn’t all that much to worry about in regards to actual wedding but there was just so much rushing around on top of having to work right up until the last moment. I was starting to feel a bit dizzy with it all. So, when a friend from Recipezaar was visiting London and invited me to lunch I decided I deserved the momentary break from the whirlwind.

We ended up at an upscale Indian restaurant called Zaika. Though, calling something upscale in the Kensington area might be a tad redundant. I am not usually much of a posh restaurant goer – I am more of a homecooking type of gal – but it was for their lunch menu and it wasn’t too snobby so I felt just fine. I am pretty sure it is the only Michelin star restaurant I have eaten at so it was great to not feel intimidated.  We both had a taster menu which turned out the be really yummy. I especially liked that everything was very well spiced without being all that hot. Just right for my taste buds.

By far the stand out dish for me, was a spiced mushroom soup we had as a starter. It really was amazingly good. I am generally nuts about mushrooms anyway but this was just extra great. We played the ‘guess what is in it’ game and I made notes because I knew I had to try to reproduce it when I got home.

Of course, I was never going to come close to their level of cooking but what I came up with in my own kitchen wasn’t all that far away and I have been making it ever since. What made me especially pleased was that I managed to put my own stamp on the recipe and made it really low fat and even though it tastes really creamy, there is no dairy in it at all. In fact, this is a vegan soup recipe but you wouldn’t ever taste it and think it stood out as being vegan. Over the past few years, I have learned that I can make a nice creamy soup simply by using potatoes with their skins on in the cooking. When the whole thing gets blitzed up it all goes very smooth without needing the extra fat to do it. That can’t be a bad thing.

Now, this low fat mushroom soup recipe comes out whenever I am short on spare calories but need something with volume to fill my hungry belly.

Creamy spiced mushroom soup

low fat mushroom soup recipe

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
7 1/2 ounces onions, chopped
4 teaspoons garam masala
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
13 1/2 ounces potatoes, chopped with skins still on
4 ounces carrots, chopped
7 ounces mushrooms, roughly chopped
2 pints vegetable stock
3/4 cup fresh coriander, chopped

Directions:

1. Heat the olive oil in big pan and then add the onion and cook softly for about 5 minutes to allow the onions to soften.
2. Add the garam masala and ground coriander and stir into the onions.
3. Add the potato and carrots and just allow to heat through for 1 minute.
4. Add the mushrooms and the vegetable stock and bring to the boil.
5. Reduce the heat, cover and cook for 30 minutes.
6. Add the fresh coriander and either transfer to a blender and blitz under smooth or use a hand held stick blender to whizz it up right there in the pan.
7. Return to the heat and add any salt if you think it is needed and just heat through again to serve.

Serves: 4

If you are anything like me, you can often find yourself with a fridge littered with jars and tubs with just a little bit left in them. There isn’t enough to actually use it in a meal but too much to think about throwing it away. Especially, when we all know we have to be careful about food wastage.

My default in these situations has become to figure out how I can combine some of these little bits and bobs and put them on toast. After all, just about anything can go okay on toast – just about.

This time I really lucked out and found a pairing that turned out to be a culinary marriage made in heaven – ricotta and pesto. I had just a couple tablespoons left of both and just spread them both on toast. It was *so* good that I was seriously tempted to run out and get more ricotta and pesto right there and then just to have an excuse to make it again.

Ricotta and pesto toast recipe

ricotta and pesto toast recipe

Ingredients:

2 slices bread
2 tablespoons ricotta cheese
2 teaspoons pesto, fresh is best

Directions:

1. Toast the bread.
2. Spread each slice with one tablespoon of ricotta cheese.
3. Smear a teaspoon of pesto over the ricotta on each slice and enjoy!

Serves: 1 to 2

Who doesn’t love pizza? I sure know that I do but ordering takeaway pizza is just a no no on my diet. When I have a lot of time on my hands, I am not adverse to trying making a homemade pizza dough recipe. Truth is though, I rarely think that far ahead. Even if I did, a homemade pizza dough recipe is still going to have more calories than I am likely to have spare.

Sun dried tomato and olive tortilla pizza recipe

Lately, I have been indulging my pizza craving moments by throwing together quick and very easy tortilla pizza recipes. It really is as simple as using a tortilla in place of the normal pizza dough and piling it high with the cheese and toppings of your choice. They are so easy and simple to make that I have taken to having them instead of a sandwich for lunch. I suppose, really they are an open faced sandwich or a an inside out quesadilla anyway.

You really can put just about anything on them and make a whole new tortilla pizza recipe each and every time. They are great for anybody following a vegetarian diet because the pizza topping options really are as varied as the types of vegetables you can find.

My recent favourite topping combination for my tortilla pizza recipe is sun dried tomatoes and a mixture of green and black olives. If I use reduced fat mozzarella I can pile those olives high and not worry too much about the fat. It is all good fat anyway, right?

Sun dried tomato and olive tortilla pizza

Tortilla pizza recipe

Ingredients:
1 flour tortilla
1 tablespoon pasta sauce
1/3 cup reduced fat shredded mozzarella cheese
1/3 cup sun dried tomatoes in oil, drained and roughly chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons green olives, sliced
1 1/2 tablespoons black olives, sliced

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400F/Gas Mark 6
2. Put the tortilla on a baking sheet and spread with the pasta sauce.
3. Scatter the cheese evenly over the tortilla.
4. Put the sun dried tomatoes and olives all over the top of the cheese.
5. Bake in the oven for about 5 minutes until the cheese melts. Watch it very closely during this cooking time as it can very quickly go from golden and melted to very burnt.
6. Put onto a plate and eat sliced into pizza style slices.

Serves: 1

Hello, my name is Sarah Jayne and I am a hummus addict! Seriously, I can’t get enough of the stuff. If I had the choice between really good hummus and chocolate, I wouldn’t have to think twice about snatching the hummus out of the hands of the person asking such an odd question. However, until recently, I have usually been guilty of buying hummus from the store rather than trying my hand at making my own hummus recipe.

Just like with the pesto the other week, I just always thought it would be too complicated for me to learn how to make hummus. Once again, I was wrong. I stumbled onto an easy hummus recipe that I really love because the base recipe doesn’t even use olive oil. Which means that I don’t feel at all bad about using tahini on my diet. It is such an easy hummus recipe that ever since my discovery of it, I have been playing around adding all sorts of things to it to come up with new hummus recipes.

Lately, I have also been “suffering” from a bit if an olive addiction. The little green and black gems have been finding their way into just about every meal I put together. So, when it was time to put together my latest hummus recipe I couldn’t resist the temptation to throw in some olives and see what happened. I also had a bunch of fresh coriander – cilantro for our American friends – that needed to be used. So, I threw that in too.

Boy did this turn out to be a seriously yummy hummus recipe! So, good that I simply topped it with a couple more olives (told you I am addictive) and ate it with warm pitas and made that my entire lunch!

Coriander and green olive hummus recipe

coriander and green olive hummus recipe

Ingredients:
1 (400g) can chickpeas, drained but the liquid reserved
1/4 cup tahini
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 cloves garlic
1/3 cup fresh coriander
1/3 cup green olives, pitted
freshly ground pepper, to taste
sea salt, to taste

Directions:

1. Put the chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, garlic, coriander and olives into a blender or food processor. I use my mini chopper to make it extra easy.
2. Blitz in short bursts, pushing the mixture down when needed until everything is combined.
3. Add a little bit of the reserved bean liquid and blitz again. Add more if you need more to get to the hummus texture you desire.
4. Serve in a bowl topped with olives.

Serves: 2 to 4 (or just 1 hummus addict like me!)

Often it is the recipes with the most simple of ingredients that really pop. I came up with this zippy fresh vegetarian salad idea nearly straight after I made a homemade pesto recipe for the first time ever in my life. Honestly, I don’t why I waited this long to learn  how to make my own pesto sauce. I guess, I am conditioned to think that sauce you buy in a little jar on the supermarket shelf is going to be too complicated to make at home.

Fresh Pesto and Tomato Salad Recipe

Boy, is that wrong when it comes to making your own pesto recipe ! For guidance, on how to make my own pesto sauce, I went to the recipe collections of one of the cooking gurus of Recipezaar – Kittencal. As well as having nearly 4,000 (!) recipes posted on Recipezaar, Kittencal also has her very own Kittencal’s Kitchen blog.

I knew she had a pesto recipe, so I went looking for it on her blog and found Kitten’s Best Pesto recipe. It was only me in the house and I wasn’t sure if I would mess up making my own pesto sauce. So, I decided to only make a half batch of the pesto. I followed her recipe to the letter with the only difference being that I toasted my pine nuts in a pan just before putting them into the recipe.

Want to know how easy it was to make my own pesto? I stuck the basil, pine nuts, garlic and olive oil into my mini chopper. Yup, I didn’t even have to get the actual food processor out. Which is great because I truly hate cleaning up my big food processor after I use it. Then I wizzed it up for a bit before opening it up and chucking in the cheese, some salt and some pepper and giving it maybe about 30 seconds of whizzing. Done! I mean, seriously that was too easy.

Of course, the proof is in the tasting. So, I dipped my spoon in and tasted my first ever homemade pesto recipe. I swear, as the pesto sauce hit my tongue it was as if my taste buds came alive and started to dance the can-can. No store bought pesto sauce ever tasted that good. The only problem was that if I was going to stop myself eating the whole batch of pesto sauce with a spoon (which I totally would have done!) then I needed a recipe for it.

I took a look in my veggie drawer and really, I couldn’t get past wanting to pare the fresh pesto sauce with the ripe vine tomatoes I had. For a while, I was leaning towards doing a tomato and pesto sandwich on granary bread. I still think that would taste really good but instead I went for this super fresh tasting pesto and tomato salad.

Try this but really, if you don’t make your own fresh pesto for it then you aren’t getting the full impact of the recipe. Try making your own fresh pesto recipe. It really is stupid easy!

Fresh pesto and tomato salad

Fresh pesto sauce and tomato salad

Ingredients:

1 medium tomato, sliced fairly thickly
1 tablespoon pesto sauce, fresh is best
1/2 teaspoon pine nuts, toasted

Directions:

1. Lay the tomato slices out on a plate with the ends just overlapping.
2. Drizzle the fresh pesto liberally over the tomato slices.
3. Scatter with your toasted pine nuts and enjoy.

Serves: 1

Who doesn’t love a good potato salad recipe? In fact, pretty much everybody swears they have *the* best potato salad recipe. Truth be told, there are so many different wants to jazz up your spuds to make it into one yummy potato salad that you can understand why so many people would think that to be the case of their particular potato salad recipe.

Even though most recipes for potato salad are naturally vegetarian recipes, the one thing I tend not to like about them is that they also tend to be packed with fat. Plus, if you are a vegan you are going to have trouble finding a vegan friendly potato salad because of all the mayo and also because a lot of creamy potato salad recipes also have egg thrown in.

While, I am not a vegan myself, I do have to watch those fat grams if I am ever going to reach my goal weight. So, when I saw this dairy free Low Fat Warm Potato Salad recipe posted on Recipezaar by Annacia I knew I needed to give it a try.

Low Fat Potato Salad Recipe

I am really glad that I did too because this potato salad recipe is packed with flavour! There is a bit of olive oil in it but not enough for it to be much of a calorie counting concern. Then the combination of Dijon mustard, rice vinegar and red wine vinegar gives the potato salad recipe a wonderfully tangy taste. It truly makes a great alternative to the normal creamy potato salad recipe and you can enjoy it even if you require vegan recipes.