Lunchbox quinoa salad

I'm forever trying to come up with nice lunches which will travel to work and not end up a soggy mess. Quinoa is one of my favourite grains which I've neglected of late while having a lovely time eating vast amounts of rice with leftover casseroles - what is it about winter that makes you feel the need for a hot lunch even in an often overheated (or freezing cold in our case) office!

However, the weather is improving so my mind turns to salad. I've never been one for rice in salads whereas I do think quinoa is a great base. It's a grain that takes on flavour really well but has a bit more bite and body (as well as a great deal more protein) than couscous or rice. It really does deserve it's reputation as a superfood and is even better when combined with other delicious vegetables.

The salad below could be a mix of just about anything but I thought I should include a recipe as a place to start. Use any vegetables you have in your fridge and any combination of cheeses, meats or seeds as your extra bit of protein and flavour. The ingredients given below are per lunchbox, you will see a lot of halves as I was making up two lunches but vary the ingredients as much or as little as you need.

Lunchbox quinoa salad

Ingredients:

3 heaped tbsp cooked quinoa (packet instructions vary but soak then cook in salted water or stock for 12-15 minutes)
Feta, around 40g, broken into rough cubes
Cherry tomatoes - a handful
1/2 roasted red pepper (jarred again although as with previous posts you can make your own)
1/2 little gem lettuce
1/2 avocado
1/4 cucumber - seeds scraped out with a teaspoon
1.5 spring onions
Dressing made from zatar spice mix, dried chilli flakes, salt, pepper, lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil - mix to taste but I use approx 1 tsp of zatar and chilli, pinch of salt and grind of pepper, juice of 1/2 lemon and a splash of oil

Method:

Chop up all your veggies into bite size pieces.
Spoon your cooked (and cooled) quinoa into lunchboxes.
Add the chopped vegetables and cheese.
Dress the salad and taste to check seasoning.
Seal the box up ready to enjoy for work the next day!

NB: You may wish to take the dressing in a jam jar or similar to avoid the lettuce going soft although I quite like giving the dressing a chance to soak in and mingle with the other flavours - also I hate taking too many containers to work!

Spicy red pepper houmous

I love houmous (or hummus if you prefer) and it's one of my favourite snacks. I tend to make my own because I prefer to know exactly what is going into my food wherever possible. I'm also not massively keen tahini so my recipes are almost all a flavoured houmous without tahini. I often take small pots to work with me along with vegetable crudités and rye crackers - it also makes a great snack at home as in the picture below. The recipe I've given here makes a big batch because I always like to have leftovers for snacks, extras for dinner etc.

Spicy red pepper houmous

Ingredients:

2 x tins of drained chickpeas
4 roasted and skinned red peppers (as before I use jarred but I have included the method to make your own in the recipe for 'Steak, chickpea and avocado salad')
4-5 large cloves of garlic
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
1 tsp hot smoked paprika
Juice of one lemon (I like my houmous fairly lemony so sometimes use a bit more)
Salt and pepper
Olive oil - a good glug

Method:

Put the chickpeas, peppers, garlic, chilli, paprika, lemon juice, a good pinch of salt and grind of pepper into a food processor.
Whizz everything together and taste - it's at this point I will adjust the salt, pepper and lemon, you may want to add more chilli or paprika too.
Depending on the constancy you can then add a good plug of olive oil, the amount you will need will depend on how thick or loose you want your houmous to be.
Serve up in whatever pretty bowl you have available, if you want to be a bit fancy then drizzle a bit of oil and sprinkle a little paprika over the houmous. As you can see below I didn't follow this step - I'm afraid it would be lost on my housemate!

Huevos Rancheros with Guacamole

As it's the bank holiday weekend I thought it was the perfect time to share my favourite brunch recipe - huevos rancheros! Not only it is entirely clean and lean it's also delicious and very filling. My version of this dish is very much a 'chuck in whatever vegetables you have in the fridge' type recipe. I believe a traditional version would have just the onion, garlic, pepper and tomato but I think a bit of courgette or aubergine goes very nicely as well. This one serves two but with the amount of veg that went in you could stretch to three if you wanted, just add two more eggs.

Huevos Rancheros

Ingredients:

1 onion (white in this case but red would work equally well)

Garlic - I love garlic so used about 3 large cloves but do this to taste

1 red chilli

1 red pepper

1/2 an aubergine

Black olives - about a handful will do

Tinned tomatoes 400g

Tomato puree - a good squirt or approximately a tbsp

Coconut oil

Hot smoked paprika

Oregano

4 large free range eggs

Large ripe avocado

Lime juice (or lemon will do at a push)

Salt and pepper

Method:

Chop all your vegetables beforehand so you can just add as you need to. While you are doing this heat your coconut oil in a frying pan deep enough for all your ingredients and the eggs. I cut the onion and chilli finely but the onion, peppers and aubergine can be cut into dice. With the olives you can either leave them whole or chop them up - if I'm honest I normally end up tearing them into halves or thirds as I add them to the pan but some might prefer to chop in advance.

Fry off your onions, garlic and chilli until soft then add in your peppers and aubergine and fry everything for a further 5-10 minutes.

When everything is softened add in your olives, tinned tomatoes, tomato puree, paprika and oregano. I'd probably also season the dish now as it's tricky to season after you've got the eggs in there. I normally rinse the tomato tin out and add the water in so if you do this then let it reduce a bit.

This is the point to create little dents to crack your eggs into. If you're worried about breaking the yolk then use a small bowl and transfer them from there.

Let things bubble away, as the sides of the eggs start to look more set and the liquid is reducing then cover the pan - if you don't have a lid that fits your frying pan I always use a baking tray balanced over the top.

While the eggs are cooking mash up the avocado with lime and salt. If you want to make proper guacamole you will also need to add crushed garlic but I think for this it's nice to just have the avocado.

Once the eggs are done ladle everything out onto a plate or bowl - I always think a soup bowl is easier as it seems the best of both worlds (to the extent than in our flat they get called the 'bowl-plates'). Top with guacamole and get munching.

A cheeky drink clean & lean style

It's Wednesday and occasionally that means a cheeky mid-week drink. Since going clean and lean I've had to think about this a lot more about which beverages are appropriate. Strictly clean and lean means no booze at all, however realistically I don't think that will work for me. Working in recruitment means the odd drink slips in to work events and my friends spend a lot of the time in the pub. The absolute no-no's are beer and cider which I can deal fairly well with as I'm not a huge fan in the first place - although a cold cider in the Summer may be tricky to resist. Other than that everything at least fits in the 'Better' category!

Below I've broken down my three favourite tipples in order of the cleanest and leanest of the bunch.

In at number one we have vodka and lime juice blended with frozen blueberries and raspberries. If it's not sweet enough add a bit of honey or maple syrup but I like it as it is. This 'recipe' is as simple as throwing everything into a blender and waiting until you have a lovely boozy smoothie. If you want a more authentic cocktail you would need to sieve this but as we're going clean and lean I feel the fibre in the seeds makes it much healthier!

In second place we have the trusty G&T, in this case jazzed up by a few drops of orange bitters. For the one below I've used a 1:2 gin to tonic ratio, I've then added a slice of lime and a few drops of Bob's Bitters' Orange & Mandarine - yum!

Finally, in third place is the humble - or not so humble depending on your price range - flute of fizz. In the photo below you are looking at Prosecco and Mimosas surrounded by our brunch at Hotbox in Spitalfields. I should point out it was my cheat meal and it was absolutely amazing!!! I've also included a couple of cheeky photos of what we ate. I know it's not clean and lean - as I said cheat meal material - so if you are in full clean and lean mode I'd probably stop here as even the Prosecco is surrounded by food! :)

Don't say I didn't warn you...

This is Prosecco, a couple of Mimosas, a side of avocado, a side of immense macaroni cheese and a half view of Polly's beef tacos - there's a better taco picture below.

This one is the brunch burger and is what I ate with the side of avocado. I will admit it was so massive and I did eat a fair amount of macaroni cheese so I left some bun but it was absolutely delicious. The copious amounts of bottomless drinks may have helped but I think the photo speaks for itself.

This is a better picture of Polly's tacos. At this point I should point out Polly is my housemate so she - or at least her food - may be featured a lot! The tacos were really good, especially the crispy onions over the top.

I hope I've helped with clean and lean drinks and not spoiled your happy diets with the brunch photos but I do think it's important to keep the cheat meals in there too. Nobody needs to stick to one food group the whole time!

Steak, chickpea and avocado salad

I've always found it tricky to find good things to take into work for lunch, so tempting to just resort to buying something but my favourite sushi place leaves me nearly £10 worse off a day (not totally clean and lean I know but I let that one slide)! I find the best option is to use leftovers, better yet to transform leftovers into a brand new lunch. The below was after we had steak and salad for dinner. Having been veggie for years I still don't manage a full steak so I used my leftovers to make a very tasty lunch!

Steak, chickpea and avocado salad

Ingredients:

Steak cooked rare

Chickpeas (tinned are fine)

Avocado

Cherry tomatoes

Grilled pepper (I use the ones out of a jar but if you are strict then you can do a DIY version)

Little gem lettuce

Jalapeños (again I use jarred)

Toasted pine nuts

Zatar spice mix

Dijon mustard - 1 tsp

Balsamic vinegar

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt and Pepper

Method:

Take your leftover steak (or cooked and cooled if you are doing this from scratch), place it between two sheets of clingfilm and bash it thin with a rolling pin - always a satisfying task!

Once you've thinned your steak out cut into small strips and set aside.

Drain your chickpeas, put them in the salad bowl with a little of the oil and the zatar power, stir through.

Slice up your remaining salad ingredients (avocado, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, jalapeños) - I like to shred the lettuce then artfully (aka randomly) chop everything else!

Add your salad ingredients to the bowl with the chickpeas and stir through so everything gets a bit of seasoning on.

Put your mustard, a good glug of balsamic and about twice the amount of oil into a jam jar (or any receptacle you might prefer) - if you need some kind of measurement I'd say 50ml balsamic and 100ml olive oil as a guesstimate (you will have a lot of spare dressing) - add your salt and pepper, put the lid on and give it a good shake.

Dress your salad, toss through again, add the beef strips and toasted pine nuts and serve (or if you're doing it for lunch at work follow the method above but keep your dressing and pine nuts separate until you're ready to eat so your salad ingredients don't go soft).

NB: If you want to do your peppers from scratch you will need to blacken them under a very hot grill or on a gas flame cooker, once the skin has turned black transfer to a bowl (carefully!) and cover with clingfilm. Let them cool then it will be easy to peal off the blackened outside, you can remove the stalk and any easily accessed seeds and you'll have your lovely roasted peppers ready to use!

Clean and Lean Snacks

Back at the beginning of January I started the clean and lean diet. I've become slightly obsessed with Instagram and since I seem to be taking lots of photos of my food I thought it was high time I record some of the recipes. I'm aiming to actually stick with the blog this time so here's hoping!

To ease me back in I thought I would just share some of my favourite snacks I've been making - many of these are other people's recipes so you will be able to find on their websites :)

First up is a childhood favourite that requires no explanation whatsoever, simply put I love apple slices and cheddar cheese! A crisp eating apple and good mature cheddar are my favourite but try experimenting with different options.

Next up is something I've made from Deliciously Ella, she has lovely Raspberry and Banana breakfast bars, I think I got the recipe from the Telegraph. Next time I think I might make them a tiny bit sweeter and bake for a bit longer but they were really yummy. I wanted something a bit more substantial so topped with goat's milk yoghurt, berries and some local honey in a bid to combat my hay fever this year!

Finally another one from somebody else, this time the lovely Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I've been pouring over his Light and Easy cookbook as it has some great clean and lean options in there - the beetroot chocolate cake is particularly good! A couple of weekends ago I made the rye and fruit loaf which was lovely - I might tinker with a couple of things for the next one but made a lovely snack topped with nut butter and honey.

That's it for now but I will attempt to keep this better updated and add in some actual recipes to follow shortly!

Cheers!

I decided recently I wanted to to try out a breakfast martini recipe I found in the Larousse cocktail book.  While this was successful I am not the hugest fan of marmalade (although the speed the cocktail disappeared may prove otherwise) so I started thinking about playing with a jam version.  We happened to have an incredible blackcurrent jam in our fridge made by my friends mother so I decided this would be a good base.

The cocktail below contains:

2 heaped tsp blackcurrent jam (use to taste)

3 parts gin

1 part triple sec

1 part lime juice ( I am disgustingly lazy and use lime juice from a bottle but fresh tastes better)

Lots of ice

Put all ingredients in a cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously until frost forms on the outside. Strain into a chilled martini glass.

If you prefer strain and sieve into the glass to prevent any jam fragments settling in the bottom of the glass.

Apologies for the terrible picture - must get a new camera!