Category Archives: poultry

Chicken, turkey and duck

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October 9, 2014

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breast, cured meats, low syn, pork, poultry, recipe card

stuffed chicken breast

OK, if the first thing that comes to mind when you hear cabbage is the tasteless, rubbery mush that you used to get served at school by someone with nicotine teeth and varicose veins like an AA road-map, then you really need to give this a go. Creating crunchy cabbage discs is as easy as slicing a cabbage into 1″ slices, basting it with a vinegar and thyme solution, and roasting in the oven. Roasting does wonders for everything – potatoes, peppers, drunken lays in a Premier Inn bedroom, all sorts. It creates a crunchy, sweet tasting vegetable that is miles apart from what you’re used to! Recipe card…

to make stuffed chicken breast, you’ll need:

cabbage

I did have a close-up picture of the chicken oozing cheese, but it looked like something you’d get shown on Embarrassing Bodies when that doctor with the nose goes poking around in someone’s blurter.

ingredients: two decent chicken breasts, no skimping. better to buy two great quality chicken breasts from a butcher than two slabs of pink water from ASDA, parma ham (1/2 syn a slice, I use three per breast), sundried tomatoes in oil (3 syns for 28g but I only use one tomato chopped very finely), low low mature cheese spread, sweet potatoes, cabbage, frylight, balsamic vinegar (bog standard stuff), salt and pepper.

recipe: couldn’t be easier! Oven on to 180 degrees. Cut open chicken, stuff with tomato and cheese (57g for HEA). Wrap it in the ham and put ‘seal’ side down on a tray. Whack it in the oven. Same time, cut your cabbage into discs, baste them with the vinegar, thyme and salt and pepper mix. Put everything in together, after 10 or so minutes, stick another coating onto the cabbage. After 25 mins or so, take everything out and serve with sweet potato chips.

extra-easy: yes – very much so, but this is a synned recipe – the syns come from the tomato and the ham – you could skip the tomatoes, but they do add a richness to the stuffing. You could put slivers of fresh garlic in there instead though, and you’d be cooking on gas. You’d have a tough time replacing the parma ham, though I suppose you could use wafer thin ham, but again, haway, Spend those syns!

top tips: cabbage is a superfree food, so a couple of those tasty discs will really help you along. But you could make a nice coleslaw to go with the chicken, or a decent salad.

warning (crass): for gods sake, make sure you cook your chicken until there isn’t a hint of pink. I made myself very ill taking a chance with undercooked chicken and I was shitting like a lawn sprinkler for a good three days. Lost a tonne of weight but I can’t see Margaret Miles-Bramwell putting quote that on the front cover of the next magazine.

As an aside, how annoying are students these days? I know that makes me sound like an old fart but I had to get some cash from a cashpoint last night and I was stuck behind eight or so braying rah-rah students. I’m quite a calm person, but I’d have happily seen them put in a woodchipper and made into syn-free sausages.

Finally, anyone know at what point a beard is classed as ‘unkempt’? I haven’t shaved for two weeks and I’m beginning to look like one of those people who live in a library and have dried egg on their jumper and hair growing out their ears. I want to keep growing it though…

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September 26, 2014

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breast, fakeaways, indian, poultry, recipe card, syn free

syn free chicken korma

A minor catastrophe this morning. Having been asked to go into work early, I find that my wonderful work colleague has kindly left me a pain au chocolat and croissant on my desk, still warm and freshly baked as compensation for the early start. Now, if I had wanted to be a rude arse, I would have declined and stuck to my banana (er, as in the fruit, not a euphemism for wanking) but because you ‘fit Slimming World into your life’ I took the pain au chocolat and enjoyed every last buttery morsel. My colleagues are used to me spraying crumbs everywhere when I talk so that was no great problem. 12 syns! But worth it. I did give my croissant away, and spent the next twenty minutes crying curled up in a foetal positions in the gents. Generosity doesn’t come easy to me! Anyway, today’s recipe.

BTW, I think Paul got sick of me shouting SAAAAAGALOOOOO like Olivia Newton-John’s Xanadu about four minutes into cooking. He should be grateful I didn’t come wheeling into the kitchen dressed in Bacofoil and wearing skates.

I apologise for the standard of photos in this recipe card. It’s quite hard to make a curry look appetising when you’re using fromage frais rather than oil! It does, unfortunately, look like someone has been sick into my Le Creuset pot. Let me tell you now, if that happened they’d find themselves detesticled quicker than you can say boiled eggs. Both the saag aloo and the korma are completely syn-free on extra easy and I’ve included the spice mixes after the recipe as they’re quite comprehensive. My favourite spice? Ginger. Wrecked the fucking group when she left, mind – Holler was NOTHING.

Halftone

to make syn free chicken korma

The full recipe can be found in Slimming World’s fakeaways recipe book, which is genuinely really good. Both the korma and saag aloo are a case of preparing the meat or potatoes, adding spices, adding stock, boiling down and for the korma, a couple of dollops of fromage frais (let the sauce cool before adding or it’ll curdle and look like a pavement pizza).

Saag aloo spices: 2tsp cumin seeds, 2tsp black mustard seeds, 1tsp cumin, 1tsp ground coriander, 1/2tsp turemic, 1/2tsp garam masala, 1/2tsp chilli powder

Korma: 1 cinnamon stick, 1tsp cardamom seeds (crushed), 1/4tsp ground cloves, 2tsp cumin seeds, 1tbsp ground coriander, 1tbsp ground cumin, 2tsp mild curry powder.

It’s worth getting yourself a good range of spices if you haven’t already. They’re a great way to add flavour without adding syns to a meal, and a small amount goes a long, long way.

warning: take heed of the warning about the fromage frais, because it looks bloody rotten if it curdles. You can still eat it but there’s no guarantee your body won’t think it’s already tried it and chucked it. Nothing else to say here, you can’t go too wrong with a curry as long as you’re not pouring bloody Gold Top into it.

extra-easy: completely syn-free. chuck it full of peppers, onion, tomatoes and chilli to boost your superfree.

double warning: Paul accidentally used red-hot chilli peppers instead of the milder version, so that’ll be me on the toilet firing a chocolate laser out of my nipsy tomorrow. Cheers love!

Enjoy!

J

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September 21, 2014

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breast, low syn, lunch, recipe card, salad

a simple salad

goodness me, that was a fancy title. I do apologise. This is what is for supper tonight.

After all that curry loaf and beans, Paul was worried that any more spice and excitement would result in us dutchovening ourselves to death tonight, so he made a simple salad for supper. By the way, we don’t normally call it supper, we’re not that posh, but I enjoyed the alliteration. The salad contains:

  • beetroot shavings;
  • pea shoots;
  • rocket;
  • cucumber;
  • tomatoes;
  • a grilled chicken breast;
  • reduced fat feta cheese (actually the ASDA knock off ‘Greek cheese’ haha)
  • an egg;
  • pickled onions;
  • sweetcorn; and
  • red onions.
Doesn’t it look inviting? Nice simple presentation and a good mix of flavours. Completely syn free as we are using the feta cheese as our healthy extra choice, of which we are allowed 45g of reduced fat feta.
top tip: add even more superfree foods in the form of shredded cabbage, gherkins, sliced peppers or mushrooms. Fill your plate!
warning: keep an eye on dressings. They can add a lot of syns, especially if they are creamy as opposed to vinegar dressings. It’s simple to remember, when tossing your salad, get to the vinegar strokes and stop right there. We used Hellman’s balsamic dressing at 0.5 syns per level tablespoon.
J