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:

My Tassimo Machine

I know this isn't my usual recipe/food review but I though I might branch out into food related things such as my lovely coffee machine. I used to work in a cafe as a barista and have struggled to get a decent coffee at home. I've had a Gaggia machine but it was a bit of hassle cleaning and scaling and time consuming to make a single cup as I am the only one who drinks coffee.

I've had a Tassimo machine for almost a year now and have to say I'm very satisfied.

 

Ordering

I ordered my machine from Amazon purely because they couldn't be beaten on price and I like to look at the reviews before purchasing. So ordering was as easy as anyone with an Amazon account will find and arrived the next day, as I have an Amazon Prime account.

Put in Milk disc

 

 What's in the Box

As you would expect the machine comes with cleaning instructions and everything you need to get going.... except samples!
I understand these might go out of date but it would be nice to have something to try when you get your machine home, so be warned, make sure to buy some T-Discs before getting the machine or you will be disappointed.



The Machine Itself

Put in Coffee disk

The machine, once set up, is able to dispense a fresh cup of coffee with one press of a button. If you like something a bit fancier you use 2 discs, one after the other. A single disk drink will take a minute to dispense and a double will be about 2 minutes. You can also top up your drink once its finished dispensing by holding the button down.

I made a lovely Costa cappuccino (pictured). I've heard some complaints that the milk is a condensed milk, so yes it is a bit sweeter, I would usually add sugar to my coffee but don't have to with the Tassimo milk discs. Also "no" it doesn't taste as good as going into Costa, at 54p, without leaving your house, nobody would go to Costa any more if it did!

Finished Cappuccino

I've found it much quicker than boiling the kettle and also only uses enough electricity to heat exactly the right amount of water.

Value For Money

I bought the T40 which is £119 on the Tassimo site, Amazon prices vary, It has a large removable water tank and is a little more noisy than advertised but not loud enough to wake anyone in the mornings.

The easiest way to look at cost is by single or double drinks. One disk varies from 24p for a basic coffee or tea to 28p for a Costa Americano, a double (so milk disc and coffee/chocolate disc) will cost from 47p for a Carte Noire Cappuccino to 62p for a Costa Latte, the latte uses a large milk disk.

A huge saving on coffee shop coffee but a bit more expensive than the premium (micro-ground) instants.

If my machine broke would I buy another one? Yes, definitely

Tesco Light Choices Ready Meals

Forgive me for I have sinned!

As well as failing to post for a month I have come to confess that this week I have been eating ready meals instead of home cooking. In a bid to beat the post-Christmas bulge we have been eating Tesco Light Choices Ready meals which do claim to be healthy.

Looking back at my meals for the last week I can see that the calorie content is indeed low and I have been making sure to eat breakfast but as expected the salt and fat content can still be quite high considering the portion size.

 Chicken and Bacon Pasta bake

Tonight's meal is a pasta bake, looks smells and tastes yummy so full marks there.

Is it really a healthy meal? I like to look at daily allowances here rather than grams and in theory I believe that a meals which uses 23% of your daily calorie allowance should ideally be similar for fats and salts etc. this meals actually only accounts for 15% of your allowance of fat but as most of it seems to be saturates (34% of allowance) may not be as good as you think at first glance. It also contains 2.2g of Salt which is 37% of your daily allowance.

Chicken Tikka Masala and Rice
Last week I also had a Chicken Tikka and Rice and I have to say I was very impressed with the nutritional values. At 459 Calories with 11% of your daily allowance of  Fat (only 13% GDA for saturates) and 1.4g of Salt this has to be one of the healthier meals available.

Very impressive for a curry and it also tasted like a nice curry and wasn't swimming in oil!

Chicken Breasts with Tomato and Basil sauce

The healthiest meal we had all week has to be the chicken breasts in tomato and basil sauce. At 150 calories per breast and less than 5% of your GDA for fat & saturates this lived up to its light choices branding.

The pack itself isn't a full meal like the others but is definitely the main event. I served these with half a baked potato and salad.




Still to try is the Chicken and Broccoli Pie, 33% GDA of salt but otherwise good, and the Braised Beef with Mash, again the salt GDA was above the the calorie GDA but good on the fats. So far All of the meals have been tasty and I understand that removing salt can result in a quite flavourless meal.


So "Yes" you will lose weight eating light choices meals when paired with healthy breakfasts and a good lunch, just be aware of salt and saturated fats!

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:

Decadent Wild Mushrooms and Truffle Macaroni

This was a very luxurious twist on a normal macaroni cheese and also suitable for vegetarians (depending on cheese). I usually make a spring version of macaroni with bacon, leeks and peas.

The HelloFresh! recipe card layout has changed slightly since I last had a box, I'm not sure if it is better or about the same!

250g Macaroni, 100g Wild Mushrooms, 25g Butter, 250ml Milk, 25g Plain Flour, 80g Cheddar Cheese, 1/2 Tsp Mustard, 1/4 Tsp Truffle oil, 30g Breadcrumbs 150g Broccoli

First I grated the cheese and put 2 pans of water on to boil. I added the pasta to one of the boiling pans with a pinch of salt and rubbed any dirt off of the wild mushrooms, don't wash as this will affect the flavour.

I pulled my mushrooms apart into managable chunks as some were quite big or joined and then fried in a little olive oil until softened.

In a large pan I melted the butter and added the flour, once the flour had slighly cooked through I added a dash of milk, stirring well and slowly adding the milk till you have a thinner paste, stir until all the lumps are gone and add the rest of the milk. This is a roux and is a great white sauce base for many recipes. Finally add 2/3 of your cheese the mustard and truffle oil and cook on a low heat until the sauce coats a wooded spoon easily.

I then added my pasta and mushrooms to the sauce and put the broccoli in  the remaining pan of boiling water. Heating the grill to high I transferred my pasta and sauce into an oven dish, topped with breadcrumbs and the remaining cheese and grilled until brown.

Serve with the broccoli!

Result:

This wash such a lovely rich version of macaroni cheese that I will definitely be looking for where to get wild mushrooms in the future. My other half didnt even notice that there was no meat tonight!

Recipe score:

Speedy Chicken Kiev with Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Broccoli

This is another HelloFresh! recipe with new ingredients. I've never had much success with sweet potatoes so was a bit worried that I would end up with mushy sweet potato chunks at the end but this went better than I thought.
 If you've enjoyed the Hello fresh recipes you have seen so far then you can download a whole book of them at: http:///hellofreshrecipes.co.uk/recipe-book-download/

2 Chicken breasts, 400g Sweet potato, 350g Broccoli, 2 Cloves of Garlic, 20g Breadcrums, 2 tblsp cream cheese, 1 tsp italian herbs

As we have all learnt by now the first task is to put on the oven and chop up all the ingredients.

The oven needs to be heated to 190 degrees.

The broccoli should be separated into florets, sweet potatoes into wedges and the garlic finely chopped.

The sweet potato needs plenty of time to roast so toss this in some oil with a sprinkle of salt and pepper and pop onto the top shelf of the oven.

Next I mixed together the cream cheese, quarter of the garlic and a pinch of salt and pepper.

I made a slit in the fattest end of the chicken breasts and using my fingers made a large enough hole to squish my cream cheese mixture into. This was quite messy but don't worry, it its really not working well extend the slit down the side a little as long as you get most of your mixture inside the chicken.

Once the chicken was filled I mixed the remaning garlic, bread crumbs and italian herbs in a bowl and rolled my chicken in it so it was well coated. I then popped them onto a tray and put them in the oven for  25 minutes.

Keep an eye on the sweet potato so that it doesn't burn but try not to move the wedges around too much unless you have to, that when it gets broken up!

Finally I steamed the broccoli in a steamer, if you don't have one you can use a metal colander on top of a pan of water with the lid on top!


And Serve!

 

Result:

The chicken was lovely and moist, the sweet potato was crispy and the broccoli tasted nice and fresh.

This recipe was actually easier than I thought so I definately wont be buying ready made, hollow kieves in future!

 

 

Recipe score:

Kent's Kitchen Meal Kits and Posh Noodles

I decided to give Kent's Kitchen a go after seeing some of their meal kits and that Hello Fresh were using their stock pots.

Kent's kitchen have developed a range of pastes spices and oils which go into their kits to help you cook fresh tasty meals that are full of flavour.

How easy was it to order?

The website itself is fresh and modern in design but I did have a few problems with clicking links (such as the offers) and being presented with a blank page!


I also found some of the items I wanted to order were unavailable.


Other than that I looked through the "browse and shop" section and added a couple of meals kits, a risotto, some stock pots and selection pack of Posh Noodles.

By spending over £20 I was able to get free delivery rather than spending £3.99 on postage.


Checkout was as straightforward as you'd expect, enter your details, enter your payment card and you're done.

Delivery and Packaging

As I said delivery was free and my order arrived in 3 days.

My items came well packaged and the packing material was suitable for the contents.

What's in the box?

All the items I ordered obviously!


I'm really looking forward to trying meal kits and I had a posh noodle for my lunch. so far these look like great quality ingredients and my miso style garlic and prawn noodles were lovely and flavoursome.

 

Ratings

 Delivery -free over £20 by standard post

Packaging -normal secure packaging

Quality & Taste - what I've tried so far has been lovely.

Value for Money -a bit more expensive than the supermarket but also more exciting

Other comments: Some lovely ingredients to add variety to your home cooking and also great healthier snacks

     Overall Rating: