Crunchy curry coleslaw

Are you all looking for interesting salads to include at mealtime over the Christmas period?

I was inspired to make this little gem by the 4 Blades Podcast episode 27 Simple Summer Salads If you aren't listening to these guys cook their hearts out while you stroll around the river of an evening then you really should give it a go. They are in hot competition with my favourite Doctor Who podcasts and that is a sad addiction I should not even mention on a cooking blog

So anyway I read Bec's ideas here as well as the show notes and the original recipe mentioned which is here

And then I made it up as I went along (which is usually what happens here at Cafe Disarray)

Take: a handful of parsley (stalks and all), some coriander (I used 4 leaves of sawtooth coriander from the garden) and 40 g green onions (I only used the tops)

Chop 4 seconds at speed 10 and scrape down the sides

Add what Bec calls the "choppy bits"

I like to put carrot and apple in the bottom because big chunks of cabbage don't bother me so much. So I put in a medium carrot in chunks and a small red apple.

 Top with 1/4 small cabbage - up to about 3/4 full. Cabbage is in chunks too like this:

Chop at speed 4 for 6-8 seconds - watch carefully and stop chopping if necessary so it is only chopped not blended

Add the other ingredients: 

80g sultanas

80g frozen peas

60g almonds (I used whole because that is what we had but slivered would be nice)

4 tablespoons mayonnaise

3 teaspoons curry powder (I used Keens)

Stir on reverse speed 4 for 4 - 6 seconds

That's it. Done. Have a glass of wine while the man does the barbecuing.

Steak and salad

Actually we had steak and four salads. And we ate outside because it was heavenly - this is what it was like:

How lovely is Townsville this time of year?

So anyway FOUR salads - I was on such a roll this afternoon!

Salad 1: French Cabbage Salad

This is fantastic for people who are a bit over coleslaw. 

You need:

1/4 white cabbage

1 red apple (I used a pink lady)

1/2 cucumber

1-2 sticks celery

a big handful of garlic chives or spring onion tops

Slice the cabbage thinly (you can use a mandolin for this if you like) 

Peel the cucumber but leave a tiny bit between each strip of peel you remove because it is just prettier that way. Slice thinly (again with the mandolin) and halve the slices

Slice the celery thinly too

Cut the apple in four, core it and then cut each piece into 8-10 depending on the size of the slices

chop the garlic chives

Throw it all into a bowl - a bigger bowl than you intend to serve in nd toss together. Hands are the best tools for tossing.

Then mix the dressing in the high tech dressing machine (a vegemite jar)

3 tablespoons cider vinegar

1 tablespoon olive oil (I used the lemon infused oil)

pinch seasalt

pinch raw sugar

Shake well and pour over salad - this one is fine to be dressed in advance

French Cabbage Salad

Salad 2: Fennel salad with mint

one head baby cos, washed and dried

one baby fennel

1/2 cup mint

Let me just say that any salad that treats mint as a vegetable rather than a garnish will be worth a try

Chop the cos roughly into pieces that are bite size

tear the mint from the stalks and add

Slice the fennel as thinly as possible

Mix dressing in aforementioned hi tech gadget

1/3 cup lemon juice 

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon baby capers

seasalt

fresh ground pepper

Pour over salad just before serving

Fennel salad with mint

Salad 3: Baby spinach with citrus

1/2 bag baby spinach leaves. If you have time to pick the stalks off this makes it a whole lot more appetising

1/4 red onion sliced very thinly

1/2 can mandarin segments

1 lebanese cucumbers cut into batons

Mix spinach, cucumber and onion together in a large bowl. Tip into serving container and top with drained mandarin segments.

Serve with a lemon and balsamic dressing - I used the one from here 

Check out the vintage Tupperware - this is a relic from my wedding shower in 1982

Baby spinach with citrus

Salad 4: Balsamic asparagus and tomato 

2 bunches asparagus

1 punnet grape tomatoes

2 dsp parmesan (15 ml spoon size)

Grind the parmesan in the Thermomix if you have one or grate it finely

Halve the tomatoes

Snap the woody ends off the asparagus and cut into 3-4 pieces. Cook in boiling water for 3-4 minutes then plunge into iced water and drain.

combine vegetables in a bowl and mix your dressing

100ml orange juice

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

a pinch of seasalt

Pour dressing over and sprinkle with parmesan. This one can be dressed in advance too.

Balsamic Asparagus and Tomato

Find a man to barbecue the steak for you 

There are 12 ProPoints in the four salads combined - 5 each in the salads with oil in the dressing and 2 in the parmesan. We served three and had lots of leftovers so I think you could eat your fill and track 2 PP plus your steak. And of course this knocks over the vegetable part of the Healthy Checks!

Just YUM!

Barbecue breakfast and curried sausages

We cleaned out the UFOs in the fridge
Leftover Chinese food (one of the boys works at a Chinese take away) and pizza
We had some leftover sausages

Just try Googling "Weight watchers curried sausages" and prepare to read fifty bajillion whiny blog posts about "I ate all that and now it's worth SO many points" So I Googled "Thermomix curried sausages instead and hit this post

It has HEAPS of vegies which will help with my Healthy checks today after the official Cafe Disarray Fathers Day breakfast which started like this

and included these 

as well as this

This is not what I ate

I don't have step by step pictures because blogging was not really on my mind. I only had 330g of chipolatas not 500g of sausages so I didn't do all the steaming nonsense at the beginning at all - just cut up the leftover snags. I used coconut oil in it because I seem to have a jar of the stuff in my cupboard, not really sure why I must have needed it for something. It was pretty good for frying the pancakes in this morning. Our dish ended up looking like this and was a total of 37 ProPoints or 6 points per person plus points for the rice we served with it. And it was DELICIOUS!

Freeform apple tart

This recipe started when Taff wanted to buy a chunky Kit Kat at the stupid market. Just let me check the points on my trusty WW app says I. Eleven! Eleven points on a Nestle product. That means we would compromise our budget, ethical stance and WW goal. "I am sure we can do better than that" says moi (secretly aware of Taff's fetish for all things involving cooked apple)

So we armed ourselves with a packet of short crust pastry and came home to create

First rule of weight reduction dishes involving pastry:
 You don't actually need pastry on the top and the bottom!


This halves the buttery goodness while still satisfying the pastry craving.

So I put that pastry sheet in the bottom of a pyrex pie dish and peeled and sliced four granny smith apples. I like apples that hold their shape once they are cooked and red apples generally go to mush, so I used Granny Smith apples.

Then I wanted some sweetness and spice so I sprinkled on 30 mls of real maple syrup (not the pretend stuff) and 4 teaspoons of dark brown sugar mixed with 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves and 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon.

At this point I considered trimming the pastry to make a neat tart, nut as I had already added up all the ingredients on the Weight Watchers recipe builder and found that this would only be 6 ProPoints a serve I figured we could enjoy ALL the pastry not lose some of it to trimming.
So at this point it became a free form tart - just fold or push the pastry in until it looks like this:

I put it in the oven at 160 deg for about an hour. It didn't over brown but the apples weren't cooked as much as I would have liked - I am glad they were slices not chunks. So I blitzed it in the microwave for 2 minutes which did the trick.
Here is the finished product

Next time I think I will blitz the apples for 2 minutes before filling the case, and toss in the filling rather than sprinkling it on top. But apart from that - add a dollop of good quality Greek yoghurt and dig in!

Chicken saltimbocca

Sage picked only 2 minutes before I took this shot

Well I watched masterchef last night and I loved the look of the veal saltimbocca even if it didn't totally pop for the judges. Saltimbocca is supposed to "pop" in the mouth.







Today I discovered a wee stash of sage in our garden and a recipe for chicken saltimbocca in the Weight Watchers Cook it Quick book (which you can buy here) and Taff needed to be out by 7pm so I tweaked the recipe a little to suit the needs of the diners at the Cafe Disarray tonight.

Chicken saltimbocca page 29

Weight Watchers combined the chicken with potatoes and rocket salad. We ditched that idea and started a completely different salad and no potatoes because we had big fat soft delicious wholegrain rolls in the bread box.

Our salad was beautiful garden fresh lettuce leaves, red onion, cucumber, celery, a pink lady apple and a sprinkle of chopped pistachios.







We made a french dressing (again in our high tech peanut butter jar) To reduce the oil we changed the classic 3:1 ratio to 3:2 olive oil and good quality white vinegar with a teaspoon of dijon mustard and a pinch of raw sugar.


Prepare the chicken according to the Weight Watchers recipe. I volunteered a nearby kidlet to bash the chicken with a rolling pin. I really like the idea of splitting the chicken breasts horizontally - it is so easy to dry out chicken breasts and cutting them that way is really clever and reduces the cooking time which means they are not dried out.

And serve! (this shot was taken before the dressing was added)

Only 11 Weight Watchers Pro Points per serve (add your own bread)