Spiced Pork Skewers with Carmelised Onion Rice

Another lovely recipe from HelloFresh! last night.

After taking a bit of a break from proper cooking over Christmas I decided to give the healthy January boxes a go.

300g Pork Fillet, 200g Basmati Rice, 1 Red Pepper, 1 Clove of Garlic, 80g of Onion, A pinch of Smoked Paprika, 1tsp Curry Powder, 1 Lime, 300g Broccoli

First put the skewers in some water to soak, this stops them burning when the skewers go in the oven.

Chop up all your vegetables remembering that the garlic and onion need to be finely diced to go in the rice and the red pepper should be large chunks to go on the skewers. Chop a little off the top of one of your broccoli florets so that you have a teaspoon on tiny buds to garnish.

Chop your pork into bite sized chunks, again remember that they are going to be threaded onto skewers.

Heat a pan with a tablespoon of oil then add the garlic and onion, stir and allow to cook for 5 minutes.

Next add a generous pinch of paprika, a pinch of salt and a few grinds of black pepper. Add the rice and stir for a minute than add 300mls of cold water.

Once the pan starts to boil turn the heat down and pop on the lid. Turn your grill on to high and put a pan of water on to boil for your broccoli.

Meanwhile mix up a marinade of one tablespoon of olive oil, the curry powder, zest of half the lime and juice of half the lime. mix well and add a couple of pinches of slat and pepper then coat your pork and peppers. If you have time you could make the marinade the night before and leave the meat and pepper sot soak up the flavour in the fridge.

Thread your meat and peppers alternately on the skewers and pop onto a baking tray and put on to the top shelf under the grill. Cook for 10-12 minutes making sure to turn every 3 minutes. Be careful as the skewers will heat up very quickly!

Lastly put the broccoli into the pan of boiling water and cook for 4 minutes and drain. check your rice and turn off the heat if all the water has been absorbed.


Serve the skewers on top of the rice with your broccoli bud garnish sprinkled on top and the florets on the side.

Result: 

Lovely tender Pork with plenty of flavour and the rice was good enough to be eaten on its own!

All that at under 500 calories.

Recipe Score:

Undercover Ratatouille with Lemon Roasted Sea Bream

This is by far one of the easiest from scratch recipes I have ever made but also very tasty and fresh. Quite an achievement since I have always ended up with the Courgette and Aubergine (Egg plant for any Yanks) in my veg box going to waste as I've not been keen on them before.

 2 Fillets of Fish (Bream), 1 Lemon, 1 Aubergine, 200g Courgettes, 2 Peppers (we used 1 red and 1 Yellow), 1 Tin chopped Tomatoes, 2 Cloves Garlic, 1 Tsp Sugar, 1 Tsp Provencal Herbs (mixed herbs would also work)

As we have learnt by now, first I heated the oven to 250 degrees C then chopped up all the veggies. The peppers were de-seeded and sliced, the courgette was chopped into cubes and the for aubergine I removed the top and bottom, sliced into quarters and removed half of the spongy middle before chopping into cubes. If you really like your peppers you could slice it into bitter strips than I did.

These were all popped onto a baking tray and tossed in a little oil with a pinch of salt and pepper before being put on the top shelf of the oven for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile I finely chopped the garlic and fried it in a large pan with a little olive oil for a minute before adding the tin of chopped tomatoes. I then added the herbs, sugar and a pinch of salt and let it bubble until I had a thick sauce.

I placed a tray with a tablespoon of oil into the oven to heat up then rubbed some oil on my fish again seasoning with a little salt and pepper then placing on the heated tray. Finally squeeze the juice from 1/4 of a lemon on top and place in the middle of the oven for 5 minutes.

The veggies should be about ready by now, gently roasted and a bit crispy around the edges. Remove from the oven and add to the tomato sauce, taste and season as needed.

Serve the fish on top of the ratatouille and zest a little bit of lemon on top.

Result:

Both the fish and the ratatouille would work really well with other dishes or together. I couldn't believe how nice and simple this was and still so tasty. The fish was perfectly cooked and very moist and the vegetables all tasted very nice amazingly as both myself and the other half didnt think we really liked courgette or aubergine.

Recipe Score: