healthy recipe - Travels for Taste

The chill in the air is just right for warming one-pot meals. Make them healthy, quick, and easy to put together and you have a winner on your hands. Last year at the Cake and Bake show which I attended with a dear friend and fellow blogger, I ended up spending a bomb (£££!!!!) on four different sized pots – non – stick being one of their biggest virtues. One of them is a huge wok which I intend to use to make a stir fry over the weekend. The coating is said to last for years and each vessel comes with a glass lid. I can apparently also shove them directly into the oven but haven’t tried that yet. The big and rather saucepan is what I use as my crockpot for making one-pot meals in. In fact, there is something very comforting watching a warming curry or gorgeously tasty and nutritious one-pot meals!

heaven in a saucepan - healthy , happy meals begin here!

Ok so coming back to my one pot recipe. I had a bag of baby spinach leaves in my fridge and was craving a wholesome soupy stew with lots of vegetables. So managed to gather a few things that I think would taste great together and then added in Knorr onion gravy pots and Knorr mixed chilli pot for flavour and the result was so very satisfying. But the best part was adding in Ras El Hanout a delicious and fiery moroccan and North African fragrant spice mix. The delicate dried rose petals look so pretty , that’s why I decided to name my dish Moroccan Chicken one pot.I also devoured it for lunch today – umm.

Make this in a large quantity and it will freeze well. Batch cooking is highly recommended as it saves you time and ensures that you do not eat things that you will end up regretting when you are hard pressed for time and simply cannot cook.The freezer is a wonderful boon, use it!

I purchased a beautiful Red Leicester and Pumpkin seed batard to go with my meal – it is soul-satisfying to mop up the thick gravy with the bread while sitting on the couch watching my fav crime show on the telly, feeling all warm and happy.

The best part of this recipe is I haven’t added in potatoes or extra sugar to taste and yet the flavours are so well balanced. (Though both gravy pots do contain sugar) I love stocking up on these tiny Knorr flavour pots they are life-savers!

A recipe with enough spinach to make Popeye jump with joy! Spinach has several health benefits and is known to be a great source of folic acid and several essential vitamins and great levels of iron too. Best part is a big bag of spinach can be consumed in no time as the leaves are high in water content and it reduces in size when cooked.

Easy Moroccan Chicken one pot

Print Recipe

Prep Time 10

Cook Time 25

Servings: 4 servings

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Fusion

Ingredients Method

Ingredients

2 tsp Olive oil
1 Large Red Onion
2 cloves Garlic
270 Grams Mixed – Broccoli, Carrot and Cauliflower
500 Grams Chicken thighs
75 Grams Trimmed green beans
4 or 5 Chestnut Mushrooms
1.5 Knorr onion gravy flavour pot
1 Knorr mixed chillies flavour pot
4 tbsp spinach leaves
3/4th Cup Red lentils – without skin and halved
1/2 tsp Ras El Hanout
1/2 tsp Roasted Cumin Powder
Salt as per taste
Water

Method

Remove the skin from thechicken thighs after washing thoroughly under running water
Chop the chicken thighs to make strips of the flesh leaving just enough on the bone
Wash and cut the broccoli, carrots,cauliflower, green beans and chestnut mushrooms bitsinto bite sized pieces
Slice an onion lengthwise into fine strips
Remove the skin from the garlic cloves and chop into tiny bits
In a large saucepan or stockpot heat olive oil on a medium flame, when the oil becomes to heat up add the finely chopped garlic and saute’ until they turn a golden brown then add in the sliced onion
Stirring occasionally allowthe onion to sweat and just when it begins to brown add in the chopped vegetables and saute for half a minute
Then add in the chicken thighs and saute for another minute
Then wash and add the red lentils , add enough water to create a thick gravy – enough to allow the lentils to cook and not soak up all the water. Then add in the Knorr flavour pots and mix well
Then add the washed spinach leaves, cumin powder and cover and cook on a medium flame for 15 minutes
By now the lentils will have cooked and the chicken will almost be done too
Then taste the soupy water and if it is too spicy add just a very tinypinch the Ras El Hanout , I added 1/2 a tsp as the tastereminded me of garam masala. Ras El Hanout is a moroccan mixture of fragrant spices with rose petals and gives the stock pot a gorgeous full bodiedflavour
Cook for a further 10-15 minutes on a gentle low flame
Serve in large bowls with a big portion of the pumpkin batard bread

Big, beautiful pot of healthy goodness - absolutely irresistible!

Gorgeous Bowl of goodness with immunity boosting spinach and delicious veggies

Hearty home-made fish dinner on a tight budget? Yes, it is possible!

Recently, I read about living below a line challenge. The challenge is to feed your family by spending not more than £1 a day for 5 days. Why? To help put conservation around poverty into perspective. How the world views hunger, extreme poverty and issues related to poverty is an important conversation to have. For example, reading a hard-hitting fact like this one helped me understand how bad the issue of global hunger really is – ‘Hunger kills more than aids, malaria and tuberculosis combined’.

Please do visit The Hunger Project website to read about the challenge in detail. You can also donate, help fundraiser and do your bit to help end world hunger. World Hunger Day is on the 28th of May.

This recipe is basically to support some blogger friends who along with their families which includes their young children took up this tough challenge. But honestly, if someone told me I could make a fish main in £1 I would laugh aloud and make them a cup of tea to help them feel normal again. But trust me on this one you really can make a very delicious side dish and serve it with a spicy rice main for 2 adults for 2 main meals. Yes, it is possible to be thrifty and yet feed your family for less without compromising on taste.

When my friend S told me the easy-peasy recipe I just had to buy myself a pack from my new fav supermarket. This is probably the easiest recipe for a side dish ever.

Total prep time: Under 10 minutes Serves:2 adults as a side for 2 main meals

Ingredients:

Sprat Fish pack – contains about 20-25 fishes and costs around 90p to 95p
Turmeric powder 1 tsp
Red Chilli Powder -1.5tsp
2 small hot green chillies sliced in a slant
Salt to taste
a pinch of Asafoetida
Oil – 2 tsp
4 tsp Colmans Mustard
1 tsp hot BBQ Mustard – don’t worry if you don’t have this just add half a teaspoon of paprika to 1 tsp of any mustard that you have lying around and mix half tsp of BBQ sauce into this for a smoky flavour.

Recipe:

Wash the fish well under tap water and handle gently as it’s a small delicate creature and needs some fawning over but hey not much fuss I tell ya! But its all worth it because even my hubby apprehension that this fish has loads of tiny bones were all gone as he clicked his fingers after the meal 🙂
Heat a saucepan and add 1sp oil, add asafoetida and the turmeric powder and salt and then the washed Sprat fish
Gently sautee them for about 1 minute or until you see the skin start to come off, don’t overdo it as they need to cook with the mustard in the next step.

Remove the fish into a clean bowl and in the same sauce on a very low flame add another tsp oil, both the mustards pastes, chopped green chillies, red chilli powder and then the fish.
As it is a delicate fish it will cook quickly and as it does the big bone that runs lengthwise inside this tiny fish will be easy to remove and so you can get the head off to, I am not squeamish but my husband is and he refuses to eat the eyes but they are supposed to be packed with iron and fish itself is high on Omega 3 fatty acids, the good stuff your body needs. Mothers who breastfeed and consume fish are said to help give the baby better eyesight which is due to the high content Omega 3 fatty acids. Not only that as this recipe contains turmeric it has a heap of health benefits especially the fact that it helps people struggling to cope with psoriasis. If anyone has seen that episode of The Food Hospital on Channel 4 where a young mother and her son struggled with psoriasis, one of the big changes that they did to their diet was adding turmeric to even stuff like scrambled eggs.
A word here about the Le Range Mesurier BBQ Mustard, it’s one of the few things I purchased at the Cake & Bake Show 2013 apart from the sweet stuff. I also got a jar of zesty lime mayo from the same brand, they had a super offer of 4 jars at a great price!
I slant the green chillies slanted just because it looks posh 🙂
Ok, so I managed to remove most of the big middle bone with the heads and the fish cooks very easily in under 3 minutes.
Add a small helping of very finely chopped coriander for garnish.
Serve hot with steaming hot rice or khichadi, click here for a posh khichadi recipe from one of my older posts.
Do leave comments below and let me know what you thought of this recipe!

I am entering this dish into a wonderful linky challenge called £1 or less recipe challenge started by Michelle Rice who blogs at Utterly Scrummy , with so much fresh and yummy fish made into a delicious dish and served with plain steamed rice its a thrifty budget dream dish full of flavour and ready without too much of labouring in the kitchen. Do link up and help spread the good cheer around in times of gloom when many families are struggling to make ends meet and feeding families with healthy food on a shoestring budget is a very real challenge for many.