Tag: healthy food

Leek and chicken pie

This leek and chicken pie recipe is born from what was in my kitchen one evening after a friend mentioned doing a leek and chicken pie. Interesting I thought!  And shortly afterwards I had to try something on that line.  I am very happy with this leek and chicken pie recipe. Bechamel, ricotta and parmesan link the flavour, additional vegetable fill in the volume and add texture.  The only difficulty is around the cooking and the unmoulding.  I will give a few tips below, up to you to chose what to adopt.

You can adapt some of the ingredients according to taste or what you have in the fridge. For example, I have swapped the broccoli for mushrooms more recently.

tourte poulet poireau

Ingredients:
  • 1 quantity of shortcrust pastry (200 g plain flour, 100 g soft butter,  about 1/2 cup of water). Follow the link HERE for the method. (PS- if you are not too used to pastry making, make a little more so not to stress out. Leftovers can always be used for other dishes). You should have enough to make the lid of the pie as well. You can choose to use puff pastry for the lid.
  • 1 large leek
  • 3 garlic gloves
  • 1/2 red onion
  • 1 double breast of chicken (or use chicken thigh fillets)
  • 1 small bechamel (based on 1/4 L of milk) (recipe on this page)
  • 1 cup of ricotta
  • 1 cup of broccoli heads
  • 1/2 cup of parmesan
  • 1 egg (alternative 2 eggwhites if you need to use some)
  • salt & pepper
Method:
  1. To make the pie, use a 22 cm diameter springform cake tin. This will allow you to make the pie high and also help with removing the pie from the tin. Grease the tin and line the bottom, then the sides with baking paper.
    Tip: the removal of the pie needs to be planned here. The pie tin will be lined with baking paper. The difficulty is to transfer it once cooked without keeping the baking paper which is at the bottom. If you have an extra-large thin metal spatula, this may work. You can also use the bottom of the removable tart tin to that effect.  The other way is to use two lengths of baking paper (40 cm or so), folded to make two long 5 cm wide strips which we will place diagonally (not at a right angle, more like 45 degrees) at the bottom of the pie dish just below the pastry. We can use them once cooked and cooled a little to lift the pie gently, then pull them out of the way. This sounds tricky however it works. 
  2. Use 2/3 of the pastry and roll the pastry until there is enough to extend to the bottom and sides of the pie. Place it at the bottom of the tin. Place a tea towel roughly inside and put in the fridge (this will firm up the dough)
  3. Cut the chicken in pieces about 1 cm long. Crush the garlic, and cut the onion finely. Cook in a frying pan in a little olive oil. Season with salt and pepper but not as much as to reach your taste (the cheese is salty as well). let the juices evaporate and set aside.
  4. Cut the leek in 2 cm sections, clean as required. In another frypan, place a little olive oil and reduce the leek in slow heat. Towards the end add the broccoli heads to cook them just to a crunch.
  5. In a large bowl, mix in a few movements only the chicken, leek, parmesan, bechamel, ricotta and egg. Check the seasoning and adjust. Pour in the pie. Roll the remaining pastry and make a lid. Brush with an egg yolk or a little milk to allow a nice colouring during baking.
  6. Bake on pizza setting (the heat needs to come from the bottom to cook the pastry) at 170°C for 45-60 minutes.

tourte poulet poireau tourte poulet poireau

Butter-free chocolate cake

This is pretty much as guilt free as chocolate cake go: no butter and pretty low sugar. What I like with this butter-free chocolate cake is that it is also much easier to digest than a traditional chocolate cake.  Why? How?  Simply by replacing the butter by very (like very) thinly grated zucchini (a.k.a. courgette).  And if you are on a gluten-free diet, you could also replace the little flour in there by GF flour.

Before you start:

  1. You need a good quality cooking chocolate (in Australia, the 70% cocoa Nestle Plaistowe is suitable)
  2. The zucchini: 200 g of zucchini and no more (a bit less is fine). I have now done the cake a few times, trialing a few variations.  The last one used 180 g of zucchini and was fine! However, if you add more (which I also did), the cake loses some of its moisture from a denser texture.  Two hundred grammes zucchini is one average size piece of vegetable.  You need to peel it and remove the ends.  Then weight it. Grate it over a bowl and make sure to keep all the juice.  I was asked the question: can you use the blender. I tried, it works, just a bit much more washing-up than the grater for little saving, your choice.
  3. The flour: the flour weight is only 50 g.  If you go for a gluten-free option, you can either use cornflour but then you need to reduce it to 35 g as corn flour absorbs more moisture than wheat flour, or use one of the GL flour mix.

guilt free chocolate cake

Ingredients:
  • 4 eggs
  • 200 g dark cooking chocolate
  • 80 g caster sugar
  • 200 g thinly grated zucchini (see note above)
  • 50 g plain flour (see note above)
  • 100 mL milk (of your choice)
Method:
  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
  2. Butter and flour well a 20 cm round cake tin.
  3. Break the chocolate in pieces and melt with half of the milk.  You can either use the microwave on one minutes settings full power, repeat if not fully melted either with 30 second or another minutes (it depends on the power of your microwave). Once the chocolate is melted, stir until smooth and silky, add the remaining milk.
  4. In a clean bowl, separate the egg yolks from the whites.  Beat the yolks with the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the zucchini (juice included).  Add the chocolate to the mix.
  5. Finally, mix in the flour.
  6. Beat the egg white to snow and carefully fold into the chocolate mix.
  7. Pour into the prepared tin.  Place in the oven, reduce the heat to 160°C after 10 minutes.  The cake should cook in 20-30 mn depending on ovens.  Remove when the centre is no longer wobbly when gently pressed with a couple fingers. Allow to cool down in the tin for five minutes before transferring to the serving dish:  turn over a metal rack and then over the serving dish.

Tip: if you have a child helping you tell them to mix in the flour and cocoa starting from the centre, always touching the bottom of the bowl , let them enlarge the circle as the centre gets darker. This technique will avoid lumps. 

Tip: wondering what happens if you don’t reduce the oven? The cake will cook quicker and can lose a little moisture but not that much, it will still be quite moist. 

And if you are wondering about the taste brought by the zucchini, I will tell that if people don’t know about it, they are unlikely to guess. Once you know, you will possibly note a taste a little more “earthy”, but, to be honest, nothing preventing the cake disappearing in minutes and for zucchini-advert kids to take a second or third helping!

guilt free chocolate cake

soup of the day!

And the soup of the day is: the turnip soup!

Yes, from chocolate mousses (last week) to soups, what a change!  We can’t eat chocolate all the time as we all know.

What do you think of this little menu: a soup, a small pasta dish and a chocolate mousse. Sounds like a balanced menu to me!  Anyway, winter here marks an increase in the amount of soups I prepare.  Soups are mega healthy and easy, so no excuse, get the big pot out!

The turnip soup

turnip soup

I bought turnips. What? Yes, turnips!  For the French followers who may hesitate on the translation, I am speaking of “navets”).  I have ever been a fan.  What is the story here?  Not being a fan, I never buy turnip, except extremely rarely while preparing a large dish of couscous (the whole dish from northern Africa, not just the semolina part).  The rarity is that I don’t do couscous very often, good merguez are hard to find and when I do a couscous, I don’t necessarily add turnips.  Makes me feel like making a couscous soon.  🙂   I had always had that repulsion to turnip and wanted to give it a second chance.  So I decided on a soup.  I looked into the fridge, perfect I had some carrots and some fennel.

ingredients soupe au navet

The above (half of the fennel shown) serve 3 people.

  1. Peel you vegetables
  2. Place them in a large saucepan or cooking pot
  3. Add a little rock salt (the quantity will depend on the volume of soup), for the quantity pictured above 1/2 teaspoon is enough.
  4. Cover with water and cook until the vegetables are soft.
  5. For the turnip soup, if you don’t want the bitterness of the turnip you need to drain the cooking water or part of it unfortunately.  If you like the bitterness, keep as such. Blend the soup.  Add to it a couple cheese triangles (you can substitute for cream or cheddar cheese).
  6. Eat warm and fresh with toasted buttered bread.

The 3 ADVICES FOR SOUPS

ADVICE 1: if you don’t want to eat the same soup for the whole week, make small batches!

It is very easy getting carried away by adding a lot of vegetables or adding a few items of each sort, but here I should advise against it:

  1. You may have a wonderful soup but if you wanted to have a dominating taste, this will not be the case.
  2. Trust me, after two meals your taste buds will ask for other flavours.

ADVICE 2: Add a little rock salt while cooking to avoid packing on salt when you eat it.

Include some salt to your cooking pot.  The photo below is from a different mixed vegetables soup (kale, carrots, potatoes, celeriac branches). Why?

  1. You will have less rush for excess salt when you eat it.
  2. Some vegetables, such as carrots, cook better with a pinch of salt (apparently salting the water raises its boiling point, making it boil hotter, so that your carrots cook faster).

soupe saler

ADVICE 3: Tips on ingredients

In the choice of vegetables, you can go for a unique vegetables or a mix. When doing a single vegetable soup:

  • you want a vegetable which has a little bit of character.
  • You may also often choose to boost the flavours with a roasting process (it brings out the sugars in the vegetable by caramelising them) or some garlic or added cheese.

The mix vegetable soup is either a choice or a practicality:

  • The mix vegetable soup uses all those veges left in the fridge which need eating!
  • When combining vegetables, I would always ensure to have a less watery vegetable, this gives body to the soup, typically I would use a couple potatoes.
  • That soup is pretty easy to prepare.

Now, to the question do you need a litre of stock to make a soup, the answer is NO (exception of the onion soup).  This is particularly true for the mix vegetable soup, you are basically creating  a stock! For the single vegetable soups like cauliflower and pumpkin, if you want to use a good stock, by all means use it. Just watch out for added salts and flavours.

Soups’ Ideas!!! Yes, please!

The soups below are blended except if advised otherwise. Single vegetables soups that we make at home are:

  • the zucchini soup: boiled zucchini in very little water, pinch of salt, processed with a soft cheese such as “Vache Qui Rit” (cheese triangle) or works well with cheddar too.
  • The cauliflower soup: cauliflower steamed or partly roasted, partly steamed if time allows, with head of roasted garlic (keep only the cloves), thickened cream.
  • Pumpkin soup: with a little cumin or nutmeg. Served with chilli. Sometimes cooked with carrots. Also try the Thai pumpkin soup, love that one!
  • The onion soup (not blended), the preparation requires a good broth if possible, a bit more work to prepare than the other soups but really worth it.
  • The chestnut soup. See the recipe HERE.

Mix veges:

  • the leek soup, “soupe au poireau” made of one leek (white AND green bits), 3 large potatoes, 2 carrots.
  • The minestrone.  This is great when you have plenty vegetables. Cut them in small sizes. Plan to add small size pasta at the end. This soup is not blended.

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