Hello my
lovelies!
I know in my last post I wrote that I would try and make Sundays my outfits of the week post, but to be honest I've been putting them on Instagram daily and I feel like it would just be too repetitive to do a whole post on it, especially since my Intagram feed is linked to this blog in the panel on the left.
So instead I'm dedicating this post to food.. what else, ha!
A lot of
you may not know this but I am super interested in cookery books and have
amassed a little collection on my kitchen windowsill.
One of my
favourite TV chefs is Jamie Oliver. I watch the majority of his cooking
programmes and his food always looks soooo good. My lovely husband bought me
two of his cookery books for Christmas two years ago, but I never got around to
making any recipes from them because it was right around that time that I
started Slimming World and just automatically assumed that none of the recipes
would be suitable for SW. Oh how wrong I was. I recently got back into watching
his 15 minute meal series and realised just how SW friendly his meals are!
The
majority of the 15 Minute Meal recipes can be really easily adapted to be SW
friendly - and more pocket friendly. Seriously, who buys corn on the cob over a
tin of sweetcorn? And who has a griddle pan just laying around the house? Also,
Jamie must have a seriously big stove top because trying to fit all these pots
and pans onto the stove at the same time was just ridiculous. Rant over. For
now.
Anyway, I
tried out the Spicy Cajun Chicken with Smashed Sweet Potatoes and Fresh Corn
Salad this week and although it took me 30 minutes, not 15 (thanks Jamie!) it
was still a beautiful meal, really high quality flavour and a few tweaks made it 100% SW friendly. It was honestly delicious. I divided the ingredients in half
because I was only cooking for two, but the below is to serve four.
So here
are Jamie’s recommended ingredients and my tweaks:
SALSA:
4 corn on the cob - substituted 2 cans of Tesco
Value Sweetcorn
1 small bunch of fresh coriander
1/2 fresh red chilli
4 spring onions
3 ripe tomatoes - substituted a handful of plum
tomatoes that were on offer in Tesco
2 limes - didn’t bother with these at all
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil - left this
out
SMASH:
800g sweet potatoes - 3 or 4 sweet potatoes
depending on size
2 tbsp sweet chilli sauce - this was syned at 3 syns between 4 people - I counted as 1 syn each to be safe
CHICKEN:
1 tbsp Cajun seasoning
1 tbsp polenta - did’t use this
olive oil - substituted for Frylight
2 rashers of smoked streaky bacon - make sure the
fat is cut off or use the rindless medallions
175g okra - substituted for asparagus and tender
stem broccoli (come in a double pack in tesco)
20g feta cheese - used as HEA (or 5 syns - split
between 4 I would count that as 1.5 syns per person to be safe)
Jamie says to get the kettle boiled and get a
griddle pan on high heat. If you have a griddle pan, great, get it going. I
don’t, so I got a non-stick frying pan on the go.
If you want to follow Jamie’s recipe, i.e using
corn on the cob then I recommend you get the book or have a wee look online,
I’m are it’s on his website. From here on out I’ll be changing the steps to fit
how I did it SW style.
START COOKING
1. Drain the corn and cook it with some Frylight in
a pan.
2. Wash the sweet potatoes, peel, then finely
slice. Put the sweet potatoes into a large pot, then just cover with boiling
salted water and the lid.
3. On a large sheet of greaseproof paper, toss the
chicken with salt and the Cajun seasoning. Fold over the paper, then bash and
flatten the chicken to approx 1.5cm thick with a rolling pin. Put the chicken
into a frying pan with some Frylight, turning after 3 or 4 minutes, until
golden and cooked through.
4. Drain the cooked sweet potatoes, return to the
pan and mash with the sweet chilli sauce, pop the lid on and leave on a very
low heat.
5. Slice the bacon and add to the frying pan (use
the same one as the chicken if you have room, if not get another pan out, or
take the chicken out of that pan). As soon as the bacon starts to crisp up, add
the tenderstem broccoli and asparagus to the pan.
6. When the corn is slightly charred, put it in a
bowl.
7. Roughly chop the top leafy half of the coriander
and add to the corn. Finely slice the chilli and trimmed spring onions, chop the tomatoes, and add to the
bowl, then mix well.
8. Serve the sweet potato smash with
the chicken and veg, crumble over the feta, and serve with the fresh salsa on
the side.
I also added some rocket salad to the plates just
to get a bit more super free food in there.
I’m thinking I might make a bit of a series of this
- maybe trying one or two of the recipes from the book per week? What do you
think? Would you be interested in that?
I really hope you give this one a try, it is super
good. I have never been keen on mashed sweet potato, but with the chill sauce
and the corn salsa and the whole combination of flavours, it was just so darn
tasty that I actually crave it a bit!
I reckon you could do this recipe with any meat
too, it doesn’t have to be chicken. This is aimed at being an ‘extra easy’ day
recipe, but you could easily leave out the chicken (substitute with a Quorn
fillet) and the bacon to make it a totally green recipe. For a red day you
would have to leave out the corn, and I’m not 100% on the sweet potato, but I’m
certain you can use some substations for it, maybe butternut squash? I’ve never
done the red days so I’m not too sure about it. If you do red days and you know
more about them please let me know.
I hope you enjoy this one and you are all staying
motivated and body confident. Remember that you are all fantastic no matter
what your size or shape. Your weight does not define you!
Big love,
Kiki x
