Succulent Roast Duck Breast

For a long time I have been thinking about trying a duck roast, but I didn't want to tackle the whole bird. I went to our local butcher in Lindfield and asked him for a nice fresh duck breast piece. Our nice butcher cleaned and scored it for me. There I was carrying the freshest meat in a brown bag, dogs following me as I got home with this little treasure I had :-). I left it to rest in the fridge for a while. I wanted to surprise my husband for dinner so I thought, I will keep everything ready and cook the duck just before he ate, so that its nice, hot and moist. I was still contemplating how I was going to plate up, so I decided finally to make them into wraps. I think the duck turned out quite well, I couldn't get a moment to take a picture of the wraps they were gone in no time :)
If you are suitably excited and hungry, here is what you need. Frankly I just went to pantry and went mad with spices and sauces I had, this is a bit of an Asian and Middle Eastern fusion.

Serves - 2 hungry people
Prep time - 10 mins
Cook time 26 mins.

Ingredients:
2 fresh duck breasts with skin on and scored criss-cross
Soft corn tortilla.

Ingredients for the dry rub:
1/2 teaspoon sweet smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon Szechuan pepper / black pepper
1/2 teaspoon roasted fennel seeds
a big pinch of rock salt
a pinch of dried mint
Crush everything down in a pestal and mortar into a fine powder.

Ingredients for the sauce / glaze:
juice of 3 tangerines
1 tablespoon on pomegranate molasses
1/2 tablespoon golden syrup
1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
a good squeeze of lingam chili sauce - This sweet with a kick, adjust the taste as per your heat tolerance.

Condiments:
Thinly sliced cucumber
Thinly sliced yellow pepper
Thinly sliced spring onion
Thinly  sliced lettuce heart

Roasting the duck breast:

1. Make sure that the duck breast is scored criss-cross through the skin, be careful not to cut through the meat.
2. Rub the dry rub on the duck liberally on both sides.
3. Heat up a non stick pan on a very low heat and put the duck skin side down without any oil.
4. Gradually increase the heat to medium heat and cook the duck skin side down for about 6-7 minutes or until the duck turned golden brown.
5. Turn the duck over and cook the other side for a minute and keep turning until you sear all sides.
6. Transfer the duck, skin side up, in a preheated pan for 18 mins on 200 degrees Celsius fan. I put a stand in the pan so that all the fat drains off in the pan. Don't worry this will not dry out the meat.
7. Take the duck out pour the glaze over and then roast again for 4 mins. save some of the glaze to drizzle over wrap later.
8. This will cook the duck to well done. Cook it for lesser time if you like it rare or medium rare.
9. Let the duck rest for 2-3 mins before you slice it.
10. Slice it into reasonably thick slices.

Put it all together:

1. Warm up the tortilla in the oven on the rack.
2. Stuff the tortilla with sliced duck, cucumber, spring onion, yellow pepper and lettuce ribbons.
3. Drizzle over the left over glaze.
4. Roll the wrap and voilà.. its ready to be savoured :)

You could do several things with this, I chose to make wraps. This will taste equally nice in a stir fry or just by itself on a bed of nice salad. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Bon Apetit!!

Love Curry?? Know how to use the Ingredients??

Love Curry?? Love to cook a curry?? I do too and guess what for a long time I did not know how to make my ingredients work while making a curry. I always felt my curries never tasted the same as my mum's or my sister's. I always wondered what was I doing wrong or was I not using the spices right. To my surprise, I was using everything exactly they did but just not using them the right way. Yes that makes a lot of difference in the flavour you get in the curries. I learnt a lot this time I went back home, so I thought I will share what I learnt, and probably you will have an amazing curry too :)) Here are some standard things that go in a curry and how they are used:

1. Onions - A very basic ingredient in a curry. If you use a red onion finely chopped, its much milder compared to a white onion. Grating onion in curries gives curry a very smooth finish. Onion is generally used finely chopped always to have a nice consisted gravy. They cook evenly and give a good body to any curry.
2. Garlic - There are 3 ways garlic can be used. Depending on how strong you like your garlic, you can make this work for you. Just thinly slice garlic for a mild flavour. Finely chop garlic to have a little stronger flavour. If you really want a notch up grate the garlic finely and then mix it while cooking in hot oil, that will immediately perfume the oil with garlic.
3. Ginger - I always made this mistake. I always peeled my ginger before I used it in curries. Never do that the Ginger skin has all the flavour in and by peeling it you are taking most of the flavour out. If you think the ginger is gritty just make sure you brush and clean it nicely so that the curry doesn't get gritty. If you must just use a spoon and scrape off a thin layer of the skin, so that you don't end out cutting most of the ginger out. Again while using it, if you just want a mild flavour, coarsely chop the ginger and add it with onion and garlic. If you want a nice and strong flavour, grate the ginger finely along with its skin and then add it to the oil along with garlic to the hot oil before adding the onion. This will give an instant ginger flavour to your curry.
4. Curry leaves - Add fresh curry leave to hot oil, they splutter a lot, but provide an amazing fragrance to the dish. Some prefer just adding them while cooking to have a mild flavour too. Dried curry leaves do not have the same effect on curries or rice dishes, try and use fresh leaves where possible.
5. Spices - Always add the spices to oil heated up on a low flame. This makes the spices much more fragrant.Make sure the oil is not too hot, otherwise things like turmeric or chilli powder will burn and give a very acrid taste. Always retain some garam masala that you are using to add it at the end again. This enhances the flavour of the gravy and takes it to another level.
6. Whole spices - If you are using whole spices in the curries or rices, add the spices to medium hot oil, make sure you see it going brown or spices like pepper corns, cloves and cardamom swell up when put in hot oil, thats when you know the spices have integrated with the oil.
7. Cooking the base of the curry - If you are cooking a curry with tomato and onion base, take your time and cook the base for 15-20 min at least or until you see oil oozing out of the tomato and onion mix. 
8. Tomatoes - If you don't want the base too runny and tangy, remove the seeds from the tomatoes and then add the tomatoes to the base.
9. Tamarind - You can just add tamarind to the curry, but if you soak the tamarind in some warm water for 15-20 mins and then squeeze all the flesh out and throw away the hard bits, the mix left back integrates in the curries very well. mix the flesh of the tamarind in the warm water nicely for it to incorporate in the curry well.
10. Jaggery / Raw cane sugar - Jaggery and Tamarind go together very well. By default in most of the curries if you are using tamarind, jaggery goes hand in hand. Jaggery is like a fudge of raw unprocessed sugar, its as harmful as our regular processed sugar and adds a very nice taste and flavour to the dish.
11. Lemons - Squeeze lemons right at the end of any curry.
12. Yogurt - Cook yogurt at a very low heat otherwise it will split and make the curry grainy. It will still taste nice but the texture may not be what you want.
13. Panchaporan - This is a heavenly mix of spice seeds that lift up anything. just toss in some potatoes with a teaspoon of these seeds and they will taste just out of this world. This mix consists of equal measures of mustard seeds, onion/nigella seeds, fenugreek seeds, cumin seeds, fennel seeds. Some people like less of fenugreek seeds, as they have a mild bitter taste. if you are not a fan a bitter taste you may want to tone this down a little.
14. Oils - When cooking a curry try and use flavourless oils like, Sunflower oil, Groundnut oil or rapeseed oil. Unless you really want to flavour your meat or veg, then coconut oil is really nice and olive oil provides a distinct taste. Make sure Olive oil is not very hot while cooking, as it is not very healthy to eat hot olive oil.

This is no way a full list, but just some basics, if you have any other hints and tips do share and make our curry lovers happy :)

Carrot, beetroot and Feta cheese salad.

Sunshine in your plate :-) yet another salad, but this more of a root salad. Again very healthy, very tasty and packed with nutrition. I love beets of all kinds and beet paired with cheese is a combination made in heaven. If you don't like eating just a salad, top this up on a pastry and it will liven it up :) Here is what you need to make this salad:

1.  4 small boiled beets. I get these ready made, but if you want you can get the fresh beets and boil them.
2. 1 medium size carrot, cut in chunky sticks.
3. Handful of almond stuffed olives.
4. Feta cheese crumbled over.
5. 1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar.
6. 1 teaspoon of Olive Oil.
7. 1 teaspoon lemon juice
8. Salt & Pepper
9. Rocket leaves

Put it together:

Just toss everything together in a nice big salad bowl. Drizzle over olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Sprinkle some salt and pepper. Crumble the feta cheese over the beets and carrot. Its a very hearty winter salad. Root veg is in abundance in winter, you can tot this with any other root veg you like. Things like, turnips, celeriac, will taste nice. 

Enjoy Healthy Eating !! 

Protein packed Quinoa salad with greens

Continuing on the clean eating theme, this is a salad that will really lift you. Since this has so many greens and healthy stuff it makes you feel really healthy. This is a kind of a cleanser and provide you proteins and iron in a natural form. It's also quite filling, so it makes a substantial meal without having to add any carbs to your meal. Again, use what ever you like in the salad, I will give you the list of what I used, but this is a free from salad. What ever you want you can put in it. Just try and stay away from things like potatoes and full fate cream and cheese. Not that it won't taste nice, but it will defeat the purpose to eating a healthy salad. So here is what you need if you want to make it the way I made it.

Shopping list:

1. 1/4th cup Quinoa
2. Broccoli about 200 gms
3. Handful of rocket salad
4. Handful of finely chopped Spring cabbage, regular green cabbage also works well
5. Half a red onion
6. 1 large clove of garlic of 2 small. 
7. Chilli infused rapeseed oil. Regular rapeseed oil is good too , you can put some chilli flakes while cooking or some red chilli. 
8. Some ginger finely chopped. 
9. 4-5 cherry tomatoes
10. You can add kale too just finely chop some kale. I have not used it in this salad, but it will taste quite nice. 
11. Salt and pepper to taste. 

Prep:

1. Cook the quinoa, before you start preparing all the salads. While you cut and cook the quinoa will cook on the side. Multitasking helps 😃
2. Steam the broccoli or cook it in microwave with some water and covered for 5 mins, I like it to be crunchy, you can cook it the way you like it
3. Finely chop the cabbage. 
4. Thinly slice the onion into long strips. 
5. Thinly slice the garlic and ginger
6. Cut cherry tomatoes in half. 
7. Lemon just a squeeze. 

Let's put all of it together:

1. In a nice roomy pan add some oil, what ever you are using. 
2. Throw in the garlic, ginger and onion. Cook them until they are translucent not brown. 
3. Add the broccoli and cabbage, quinoa, add the salt and pepper and let everything cook for 2-3 mins 
4. Turn off the heat and add the rocket and tomatoes and let them warm through. 
5. Squeeze some lemon to freshen up everything. 
6. That's it you have a nice steaming hot and healthy salad. 

Trust me this will get you in the mood of eating salads more often. Experiment with colours, textures, tastes.  Add a bit of fruit, seeds and nuts to make your salads interesting. Sky is the limit when you are putting salads together. Hope you enjoy this one 😃

Veg stir Fry Noodles

How many times do we all go on a diet and get sick of it and fall back exactly to where we were. It happens more than often isn't it. But have you ever thought, if you think of diet as something of a change to your mundane food and lifestyle, it might brighten you up a little and actually look at diet as something to enjoy. I recently went on a very hard diet, I struggled a lot initially, but rather enjoyed it towards the end, the reason being, I found myself exploring, herbs, sauces, pastes that I had never used. Vegetables I had never eaten as first choice. Soon, I was cooking differently, rather creatively and enjoying my food too. Diet doesn't have to be boring, there are so many possibilities that you will soon find yourself making a life style change. This veg stir fry is packed with proteins and vitamins. It tastes good and does you a lot of good. Here is what you need:

1. 1 pack of stir fry vegetables of your choice. I assembled them myself, and this is what I used, because this was something that I made from left over vegetables. A small head of cabbage, red peppers, courgettes, tofu (I had a tin of braised tofu in soy sauce, you can use just the regular firm one). Other vegetables, you can use, which I used another time are Brocolli, Carrots, baby corn, mushrooms, sugar snap peas. But essentially use any vegetables you like for this stir fry or add some boiled eggs or fish or chicken to make it more interesting. I served the same thing with honey roast ham torn up for my husband, works a treat.
2. 1 inch thinly sliced ginger
3. 3 big cloves of garlic
4. 1 red onion
5. 3 spring onions
6. tea spoon of chilli flakes (optional)
7. handful of coriander leaves.
8. 1 tablespoon, low salt soy sauce
9. 1 tea spoon white wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar, if you want some sweetness.
10. A dash of Worcester sauce and a dash of fish sauce.
11. half a lemon
12. Salt to taste.
13. Chilli Infused Chilli Rapeseed Oil for dressing and regular Rapeseed oil for cooking.
14. Egg noodles or rice noddles, add any noodles of your choice. 

This looks like a lot of ingredients, but if you look in your fridge, you will find most of them around. The sauces you can alter as per us taste. Ass some Sweet chilli sauce or any other sauce you like to make it interesting.
 There is hardly any cooking involved in this, but here is how I went about:

1. In a non stick pack take a teaspoon of rapeseed oil and fry off the tofu until its nice and brown.
2. Remove the tofu, add some more oil, and fry off garlic, ginger and Onion and chilli flakes, until its translucent. The trick is to have a nice bite in every veg you add to this stir fry.
3. Add all the vegetables and stir fry for 5 mins. Try and cut all the vegetables to same size, so that they cook evenly. If you are using broccoli, either stem it in a double boiler or microwave it in some water for 5 mins, so that it retains its crunch, before adding it to the stir fry.
4. Cook everything for 5-7 mins, I like my veg quite crunch in a stir fry, if you like they well done, cook them longer.
5. Add all the sauces and add the egg noodles. Cook further for 2 mins.
6. Squeeze lemon and garnish with Coriander.
7. Just before serving drizzle over some Chilli oil to give it that extra kick and enjoy while its still hot :)

I made this twice, once with my husband's aunt who is an amazing cook and once by myself. We just altered the vegetables that went in. This dish is something you can make your own. Add as many vegetables you like, meat or fish, it will not let you down, plus its very healthy as its not greasy. Try it and let me know what you cooked yours with :)

P.S. - The image on top has egg noodles and the image at the bottom has rice noodles and both have different vegetables :)

Prawns with White wine reduction sauce and Crème Fraîche

When you come home after a long hard day, sometimes all you want to do is get in your comfy clothes on the sofa in front of the tele and not worry about anything. BUT what about that all important dinner!! You are hungry but cant be bothered to cook?? Don't worry its a very normal feeling that most of us have and just wish you had someone who could just serve you your dinner in hand :) This is when all of us need to get a little creative and make your ingredients work for you. We want some thing nice, something hot and something quick. This was exactly the state of mind I was in, when I made these prawns. I have been trying to eat healthy and am keen on getting my husband to eat healthy too, so we tried to give this a go for him. Trust me this doesn't more than 10 mins if you have all the things you need. Most of the ingredients here are you daily ingredients, all you may want to buy is crème fraîche, if you have just regular cream that will work too, but sour cream or crème fraîche just make it a little lighter. So if you want to give this a go, here is what you need:

Shopping List:

1.  250 gms cooked and peeled king prawns. If you like to use fresh, by all means do so. I just needed a quick dinner so, I used our frozen cooked prawns.
2. 1 finely diced shallot or regular red onion is good too.
3. 1 big clove of garlic
4. 1 teaspoon grainy mustard
5. 1 teaspoon Djon mustard, english mustard is fine too, but use it as per you heat tolerance levels. English mustard can be quite hot and sharp.
6. 1/3rd cup white wine. Use your best wine, I have a very simple rule, if you cant drink it, you can't cook with it!
7. Fine chopped parsley 1 table spoon. Try and use fresh parsley if you can, but if you have dry parsley that will taste nice too.
8. Salt and pepper to taste.
9. 1 tablespoon fat free Crème Fraîche or Sour Cream
10. 1 inch cube of chilled butter.
11. 1/2 teaspoon sunflower oil, use any flavourless oil.
12. Half a lemon

Lets Cook or should I say lets put it together :-)

1. In a non stick pan heat up oil and add shallots and garlic. Don't let them turn brown, you just want to sweat them and cook until they are translucent.
2. Add the Wine and cook it down to half. This is very important and doesn't take more than 2 mins. Just keep stirring and let the wine cook down and reduce. 
3. Cut up the butter in small pieces and add one at a time melting it into the sauce, this will help butter melt nicely in the sauce and not split.
4. Add the Crème Fraîche and then stir in the mustard. Let everything bubble away for ahlf a minute.
5. Add salt and pepper as per taste, squeeze the lemon in and add the Prawns . Warm the prawns through for 5 mins.
6. Just before you turn off the heat add the parsley to freshen everything up.
7. That's it, under 10 mins you have a beautiful meal, you can have it by itself or like me if you like brown rice or wild rice, serve it on the bed of nice brown rice. I made my rice by simply boiling some long grain brown rice with 2 green cardamom pods cracked and added to the boiling rice pot to give it some nice subtle cardamom flavour. Or just have it with a nice chunk of warm bread. 

I do hope you enjoy cooking and eating this as much as we did :)

Bon Appétit !!

Spinach and Tofu Curry

Since I moved to Lindfield in our new home, fitness was on my mind. I was so unfit when I moved here, that I struggled walking half a mile let alone running. Then by a stroke of luck, I was introduced to a local trainer who has changed my life since working with her. I am not only getting my fitness back, am much more confident, happy and eating healthy, what my trainer calls clean eating. Trust me it does make you feel well and happy when you are eating clean. No processed food, no fats /good fats, no unwanted sugars, no carbs or should I say low carbs.. I was supposed to be on a diet for a couple of weeks, but it has become more of life style change for me. I watch what I eat. I am more creative in the way I cook and make sure I get nutrition out of everything that goes in my body. As a result I have been cooking my way through a lot of healthy recipes. There is a myth that eating healthy is expensive and eating healthy is boring. Both are wrong, when you look for right things, use your local green grocers, butchers and grocery stores, you will be amazed you not only save but also eat much better than a pot of pasta you buy off the shelf. In the ode of healthy eating, I cooked this tofu and spinach curry, which not only tasted nice but is packed with iron and protein, something you can make for kids too, just take the chillies out.
      I try and make everything a little interesting using spices. Spices doesn't mean blow your head off hot. Spices provide a nice subtle flavour to your cooking. Coming from India, I love my spices a lot, dare I say, I don't think I can eat without spices in 4 out of 5 meals. It makes everything taste so much better. Nothing has to be plain and bland.

        So if I have inspired you enough, lets get cooking :)

Here is what you need if you want to give it shot:

1. A good bunch of spinach leaves or a bag of washed and ready to use Spinach. I used the latter.
2. Firm 400 gms tofu.
3. 1 big clove of garlic
4. 1/2 inch ginger
5. 1 small onion
6. 5-6 cherry tomatoes or 1 regular size tomato, I just had some cherry tomatoes at home, so that what I used, you can use a table spoon of chopped tin tomatoes or 1 normal size tomato.
7. 2 chillies, I did not use very spicy chillies, I used them more for flavour than heat.
8. Sunflower oil for cooking, use any flavourless oil you like.
9. Yoghurt 1 tbl spoon and some for garnishing at the end. 
10. Spices
       1. 3 to 4 cloves
       2. 8-9 whole pepper corns
       3. 2 green cardamom pods
       4. 2 small bay leaves (Indian Bay leaves), if you can't find these skip them
       5. 1 tsp cumin seeds
       6. 1 tsp fennel seeds
       7. 1 tsp coriander powder
       8. 1/2 tsp turmeric powder
       9. a pinch of chilli powder
      10. 1 dried red chilli
      11. Salt to taste

These look like a lot of ingredients, but most of the kitchens have these in their spice boxes. It looks like lot of chillies too, but all of these are low on heat and give various levels of depth in flavour and taste. You can skip these completely of just have one of these if you are worried.

Prep for cooking:

1. Spinach Puree - Boil the spinach until it wilts, drain and blitz into a smooth puree. Save the water, this has a lot of iron. if you have used unwashed Spinach and washed before cooking, best to get rid of water as this may contain a bit of soil as washing doesn't always get all the soil out. Last thing you need is a gritty curry.
2. Chop the onion, tomato, ginger and chillies in chunky pieces and blitz to form a nice puree.
3. Finely grate the garlic and add it to the onion puree in point 2. This gives a subtle flavour of garlic than a very strong one, when you blend it.
4. Cut the tofu in chunky cubes and shallow fry them. I literally used 1 teaspoon of oil in a non stick pan and let the tofu crisp on all sides. This takes a little time and patience as you need to ensure you crisp up all the sides.

Just put it all together :)

1. Take a nice roomy heavy bottom pan or a non stick pan that can let you cook without burning.
2. Add a tea spoon of oil and add all the whole spices - cloves, peppercorns, bay leaves, cardamom, cumin seeds, fennel seeds. dried red chilli.
3. Add the onion and tomato puree and cook until it turns golden brown and starts oozing out oil. Turn the heat down and add the yoghurt and let it cook for a min, keep stirring to avoid the yoghurt from splitting. Add powdered spices - turmeric, chilli powder, coriander powder, salt
4. Add the Spinach puree and cook for another minute.
5. Add the tofu and mix everything nicely. Be gentle so that the tofu does not break.
6. Add the saved water from boiled spinach just about 3 tablespoons, this curry is not very runny. Or just add a splash of water. Cook on low heat for 8-10 mins, keep adding water if you think the curry is drying out.
7. Turn off the heat and let the curry cool. Beat some yoghurt and add it over on the top as garnish, you can use some low fat sour cream if you like, that will taste nice too. While cooking if you want to make this a little rich, add some unsalted butter to the oil, but I don't thin you will need it at all.

You can enjoy this curry with some wholemeal bread, roti or some rice. I had this with wholemeal long grain brown rice. But you can eat it with what ever takes your fancy. Other alternative it put this in a wrap with some freshly sliced salads and sour cream in a wholemeal or corn tortilla.

An alternative to this curry if you don't like Spinach,use frozen green peas. Just add them after you cook the tomato and onion puree, even that will taste nice.

I thoroughly enjoyed this, hope you enjoy it too :) Do let me know if you cooked it and liked it or you altered it to make is nicer and simpler :)