BBQ with the Girls

I meant to post this yesterday afternoon, sorry folks! But here it is, just in time for your Sat night BBQ!

Who said BBQs are a man's job?

http://www.crazywebsite.com/Pg-Free-Clipart-Graphics/pg-Celebrate_Labor_Day_Weekend/Funny_Barbecue_Clip_Art_Free_BBQ-2.html

 

Everyone assumes that the BBQ is a man's job - hilarious as it is (usually) the woman that does all the shopping for the food, marinating the meat, salad prep, taking out all of the food, plates, salad dressings etc. and the man just plonks the already flavoured meat onto the BBQ and nearly ruins it by either undercooking or burning it!! But on Thurs night I did a BBQ for the girls, and there wasn't a man in sight... as a result it may have been a little salad heavy and lacking in burgers and sausages! So if you fancy a refreshing change from the BBQ norm, then here are a couple of recipe ideas...

BBQ Bible

I used this book for recipe inspiration - BBQ Bible, published by Parragon years ago and probably not available any more. But if you can get your hands on it, it's a fabulous book! Colourful, full of different ways to cook meats and fish, with some very easy sauces and dressings; it's a good one to flick through and know that you will already have most of the ingredients in stock! The only sections that are uninspiring are the salad and veg dishes - but either you're a 'meat-only-BBQer' and this will not bother you, or a 'salads-make-the-BBQ' kind of chef, in which case you will probably have your own recipes! And the deserts section - but if you have room for desert after a BBQ then you're doing it wrong!

So I'll start with the meat recipes that I took from the book - Mustard and Honey Drumsticks and Middle Eastern Koftas.

Mustard and Honey Drumsticks

I used a combination of the marinated drumstick recipe in the book and a separate recipe for the honey mustard marinade, which I thought sounded like it had more flavour! So these measurements are copied from the book, but totally inaccurate as I just splashed in a bit of this and that!!



Ingredients
8 chicken drumsticks
125ml clear honey
4 tbsp Dijon Mustard
4 tbsp wholegrain mustard
4 tbsp white wine vinegar
4 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil

Recipe
Combine all the ingredients except the oil into a large Tupperware.

Gradually add the oil, mixing it as you go until it is all absorbed.

Put the drumsticks into the marinade and coat them in it, then leave to absorb the flavours in the fridge for as long as you can (ideally make in the morning and leave all day before you BBQ).

When you BBQ, make sure that you cook the chicken all the way through but keep turning it so that one side doesn't burn (it will blacken because of the marinade, but you shouldn't get that charcoal taste!!)

Middle Eastern Koftas

Ingredients
750g minced beef (or lamb)
1 small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tbsp fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped
1 tsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp whole black peppercorns
generous pinch of ground cinnamon
pinch of salt

Recipe
Blend the meat, onion, garlic, parsley, spices and seasoning to a smooth paste in the food processor. Or, if like me you can't find the food processor, then use ready ground coriander, cumin and black pepper, and just mix in your hands!

Gently roll the mixture between your hands and wrap around a flat skewer into a sausage shape.

The book then also instructs to marinate the kebabs in a Minted Yoghurt Marinade, which would have kept them nice and moist but I forgot to do... we had minted yoghurt as a side dish instead! (Recipe for that below)
 
So I would recommend to do that, then cook on the BBQ for about 10-15mins (depending on the thickness of your kebabs) and turn regularly. Worked well served with some ripped up naan bread, heated on the top BBQ rack for a few minutes!


The chicken will take a lot longer than the koftas, but I actually cooked them at the same time so we could eat the kebabs with some salads and have the chicken with corn on the cob afterwards!




Right, now that the meaty stuff is marinating and ready to go on the BBQ this evening, you can prep the salads!! It was so warm and lovely yesterday that I took everything outside with me and sat prepping in the garden! I used the Minted Yoghurt Marinade recipe from BBQ Bible as the dressing for my potato salad, and then also did a green salad and tomato salad.

Potato Salad

Ingredients
handful of new potatoes, chopped into bite size pieces
2 cloves garlic, crushed
pinch of salt
4 tbsp fresh mint, finely chopped (or more if you love the flavour like me!!)
225ml natural yoghurt
1 tsp ground cumin, coriander or cinnamon, optional
handful of spring onions, chopped
1/2 cucumber, chopped
1/2 small white cabbage, shredded

Recipe
Boil the potatoes until soft. Drain and leave to cool.

Mix the garlic, salt, mint, yoghurt, and ground coriander (this is what I used but its your choice!) in a bowl.

Add the potatoes, spring onions, cucumber and cabbage and mix until everything is coated in the dressing. I also made a little extra to have as a dressing on the side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other Salads

I made a couple of other salads to keep the BBQ light and fresh, as well as some corn on the cob cooked on the BBQ, so here are the ingredients I used!


Green Salad Ingredients
handful of iceberg lettuce (chopped), lambs lettuce and rocket
1 avocado, chopped
1/3 cucumber, chopped
100g feta cheese, crumbled






Tomato Salad Ingredients
3 tomatoes, sliced (probably need more, but there was only a couple of the girls that like them!)
few leaves of fresh basil, chopped finely
dash of olive oil
black pepper
(and some red pepper, for good measure!)

So there you have it!!! A huge BBQ with lots of fresh flavours, and one that you could take your time over and keep coming back to pick at! Try out one or two, or all of the recipes, and I hope they work just as well for you!

 

 

Why I can't diet and the book that made me try

James Duigan Clean & Lean Flat Tummy Fast

The Book 

 

I recently bought this book because I'd heard about it at work - James Duigan has been Elle Marpherson's personal trainer and I definitely wouldn't mind looking like her! Published by Kyle Books and priced at only £12.99, this book is all about eating right and exercising right for a flat tummy. There are some healthy everyday recipes that I plan to try soon, and lots of fitness plans. He talks a lot about which foods to eat a lot of, and which ones to try and avoid, and this general health information is why I wanted it. Interestingly, stress, caffeine and spicy food can all be a cause of tummy bloating... maybe I should just cut down on those three things!!

Turkey and Cucumber Snack

In the book there is a 14day diet that looks quite manageable - low carbs but a range of different meats, fish and veg. There is also a 6day diet, which I have attempted this week, consisting mostly of lean white meat, white fish, and a (small) variety of green veg. It also suggests you take fibre, multivitamin and fish oil supplements each day, as your body isn't getting quite everything it needs. Only drinking water, and apart from the occasional squeeze of fresh lemon or lime, no added flavours, sauces, dressings or any sort of cooking oil.

Why would I want to?

 

Next week I am going interrailing around Eastern Europe, visiting a load of different cities and interesting places I've never been before... for a month!!! I'm so excited and will hopefully be able to share a load of the different food I have on here, so keep reading!

So the reason I wanted to do a 6day diet was to shed some of the Christmas weight that I've still not got round to shedding (yes, I know we're in June!) and tone up a bit for short shorts and bikini wearing on the Croatian beach!! I thought... 6days of boring food, how tough can it be?

 

 

Tough

Egg White Omelette with Spinach

Tough motivating with nothing flavoured food, tough trying to do more exercise than I've done for a while with a much lower calorie intake, tough turkey that I left in the oven because I wasn't interested in cooking it, tough to refrain from temptation when your sister decides to bake for the first time in years, just tough full stop.

Cobbler and Purple Sprouting Brocoli

Now that's not to say that James Duigan doesn't know what he's talking about. The lean white meat or fish with green veg that he recommends has definitely made me feel less bloated and I feel like I've lost a bit of the chubs around my belly. I do think it is a good meal plan and exercise regime, and probably one of the most healthy and nutritous 6day diets I've seen.

But it's so boring!!! I found that I wasn't craving chocolate or a pizza, instead just desperately craving some flavour!

Baked Chicken and Asparagus

I stuck to it properly for the first two days, then the third day I ate the right food but added a little black pepper and/or lemon to some of the fish and chicken. Then today (day 5) I've decided I'm going to cook dinner. Nothing particularly bad for me, or with too many carbs, but just something to get my mouth tingling!

Haddock with lime and ginger

So yes, I've failed the diet. But I figured if I just eat healthy between now and going on Wed then I won't put anything back on and it won't have been a total waste of time! Good book, good results (probably) but terrible on my part!!! Sorry James, I don't think a quick 6day fix is right for me!

Anjum Anand's Light Cumin-Flavoured Chicken Curry

Anjum Anand 'I Love Curry'

This colourful curry book, published by Quadrille, has gorgeous full page photographs for every recipe. I'm quite a visual person so I like to see what my dish is (hopefully!) going to look like, and I often pick to cook recipes with a photo over those without.

The dishes all sound delicious, and I think I picked one of the least exciting ones (not out of choice, but down to the stock left in my Sainsbury's local at 7pm on a Tues!) - I certainly plan to cook my way through most of these.

With sections on 'To Start: Bites', 'The Curries' and 'Accompaniments', this book offers an easy meal plan as I always love to make a starter if I'm cooking for someone or for an occasion. And the curries and accompaniments are then broken down into several different chapters, so you can pick to suit ingredients you may have already got in the fridge.

I often whip up a curry with one of the Pataks curry pastes and either some chopped tomatoes or coconut milk... and this produces a consistently tasty curry. But this is a lovely, well laid out book, that I can see myself using every time I want to spend a bit more time over making a curry and fancy some more interesting flavours. (I should just say that I'm really not a fan of the cover - I think the colour combination makes the book look cheap and in-authentic, which it's not - but under the dust-jacket is a plain mint green that looks much much nicer!!)

Light Cumin-Flavoured Chicken Curry

... in my case it was a turkey curry, but that's because I was making it on a budget! I think it would have been much more flavoursome with the chicken on the bone, as recommended in the recipe, but hey, it was pretty good anyway!

I also chose to add green pepper, because I wanted to bulk it out a little and so that we had a bit of variety as I was simply doing this with naan bread as a late dinner for me and a friend.


It's a long recipe so I won't write it out, but basically marinade the chicken/turkey in a mixture of plain yoghurt, garlic, ginger, ground cumin and ground coriander... and leave (for much longer than the 10mins I did!)

 Fry off the onion and cumin seeds, then add garam masala, chillies (and pepper).

 Add the marinaded meat.

 Add water and simmer. Add fresh coriander (which Sainsbury's had unfortunately run out of!) and serve.

Anjum Anand words it much better than that, and there are a lot of details that I have missed out, but this is the general idea!  And the result was good - maybe not 'the best Indian curry I'll ever cook' - but light, simple and tasty. A definite one for the future.