Category Archives: rice

Rice recipes

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

January 9, 2015

Posted under

breast, classics, fakeaways, indian, low syn, poultry, recipe card, rice

simple chicken curry and rice

Just a wee post tonight for tonight’s dinner, a chicken curry with rice. I’m posting a big article about the cost of Slimming World tomorrow, so I’m working on that tonight. Plus, Paul has Judge Rinder on, and he’s distracting me…

10914838_817324781674460_4645332591634865224_o

to make chicken curry and rice, you’ll need:

ingredients: two chicken breasts (decent size!), tin of chopped tomatoes, one large chopped onion, three tablespoons of curry powder, 100ml of light coconut milk, 250g of broccoli, bog standard white rice, chicken stock cube.

and to make chicken curry and rice, you should:

recipe: the curry is the easiest ever – sweat the onion for a few minutes, add the diced chicken, curry powder, chopped tomatoes, coconut milk and cook for ten minutes. Then chuck in the broccoli and simmer for another fifteen minutes on a medium heat with the lid off. Fifteen minutes before that is done, measure out a cup of rice, follow it up with two cups of chicken stock, throw it in a pan, cover and cook on a medium heat for 15 minutes. Don’t peek at it. The cups rule is spot on – use any old mug as long as you keep the ratio the same.

extra-easy: yep! The syns come from the coconut milk – I used Blue Dragon Light, and it works out (with this serving four) as 1.25 syns each – or 1.5syns for the sake of argument. It’s not a flavour explosion, but if you want a quick, hot meal – and a cheap one at that, you can knock this out quickly.

top tip: rather than piling your rice all over the plate like one of those obscene people at a chinese buffet, get a small bowl, oil it ever so lightly with a drop of olive oil, fill it with cooked rice, press down hard to pack it together, and then tip out onto the plate. It looks pretty and it controls your portion size too. Don’t worry, you can always go back, jeez…

J

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

October 24, 2014

Posted under

bacon, breast, cured meats, italian, low syn, one-pot, pork, poultry, recipe card, rice

chicken and chorizo risotto

Evening folks!

Paul and I are having a romantic night in, he’s cooking a lovely Indian tea and I’m scratching his feet with a matchbox. For now, please accept this recipe card as a treat, but be warned, chorizo and cheese does add a few syns to the dish. YOU CAN MAKE IT SYN FREE! But, you have 105 to use every week, spend it on something good. I’ll fill out the recipe in full tomorrow and add a snack idea for you all. Goodnight! (now done, see below!)

UPDATE

Paul and I have slept for a good, reasonable twelve hours and had a Slimming World fry-up breakfast (see here for a previous post about that), so I’m back and fighting fit. I promised you a full recipe breakdown for the risotto – and an easy way to make it syn free.

ingredients: one chicken breast (diced), chorizo (optional, I use 6 syns for 60g if I chose a particularly non-fatty chorizo, and then split that between two servings), shallots, arborio rice, garlic, tomatoes, mushrooms, peashoots, philapdelphia lightest (I’ve always synned 75g of the lightest as a healthy extra A, but even then, I hardly ever use that much and it’s split between two), peppers sliced.

recipe: get everything prepared – slice the onion, peppers, mushrooms and tomatoes to roughly the same size and thickness. Dry fry gently in a good non-stick casserole pot (this is important, because you try to make this risotto in a ‘sticky’ pan it’ll burn) until everything is nice and soft. Add the chicken and chorizo and continue cooking on a medium heat until the chicken is cooked through. Once you’ve done this, add the 250g of arborio rice and coat the rice in the liquid. Stir just once, chuck in your 1l of stock and big handful of garden peas. ONE stir. Then pop the lid on the pan, keep it on a medium heat (we use 6, but we’ve got a fancy induction hob so just stick to medium) and leave for exactly 20 minutes. You can peek at it just to make sure the liquid hasn’t disappeared, but maybe just once or twice – every time you let the steam out, god kills a kitten. After 20 minutes, check the rice -it’s always spot on for me but individual hobs may vary, so let it simmer a little bit longer if there is still a lot of liquid and/or the rice is a bit crunchy. Spoon in a dollop of the soft cheese and serve it on a bed of pea-shoots. I use pea-shoots because it adds another layer of flavour, but rocket will do. Don’t be common and use lettuce though. Twist of pepper and a couple of shavings of Parmesan and you’re done.

extra-easy: yes – though I syn the recipe exactly how I do it at 4 syns, just to take on board the chorizo and cheese. You can make it syn free though – replace the chorizo with chopped bacon (with no fat), and use the cheese as your healthy extra. But I like the taste the chorizo imparts to the rice and chicken and chorizo go together so well! Plenty of superfree – fresh peas, pea shoots, peppers, mushrooms, shallots…

top tips: Paul, because he’s a pleb who was brought up on sweet and sour chicken from his local Rainbow mixed with fag ash and a general feeling of malaise, adds a big old dollop of wholegrain mustard and mixes it in, which completely overpowers any other flavour. He says that he can still enjoy it through the sound of me tutting and sucking air in through my teeth.

Enjoy it!

J

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

October 4, 2014

Posted under

pork, pork chops, recipe card, rice, syn free

syn-free superfree piri piri pork chops with black rice

I appreciate it might look like Paul and I exist on tomatoes, corn and courgettes, but it’s sheer happenstance that we’ve had this type of meal a few nights on the trot. I’m growing courgettes in my back garden, which sounds like I’ve got piles, but no, real  courgettes, so we’ve got to use them up. Just a quick post tonight, because we’ve spent the entire day playing Forza Horizon 2 on the Xbox One (to the point where Paul’s finger has swollen up – he keeps pointing it at me like Alan Sugar does in The Apprentice).

OK, the recipe!

your ladbroke grove looks turn me on

ingredients: four good quality pork chops – the meat is the star of the show, so don’t be a cheapskate – but here’s a tip. Pork is nearly always the one meat that gets reduced the most, so if you scrabble around in the bargain bins at the supermarket, you might find a perfect cut. We buy all of our meat from the butchers in Dobbies of Ponteland, and he’s fantastic. You’ll need a piri piri mix, lovies, onion, passata, chopped tomatoes, sweetcorn and sliced peppers. We chose black rice for this recipe but you could serve it with any old tosh. You can buy black rice from Sainsburys – it tastes a lot more nutty and chewy than normal rice, and doesn’t look great, but give it a go

recipe: dietise your pork – get all the fat cut off, and put it in the bin. Don’t give it to your cat, it’ll make them poorly. Seal it on a high heat, chuck it in a roasting tray. Slice up all your veg, olives and peppers, layer that on the top. Mix up the tomatoes, stock cubes, spices, water and passata in a jug, layer it over the top. Stick it in the oven for 30 mins. After 10 mins, get your rice away, and 5 mins before the pork is done, drain and let your rice steam a little. I tip it into a sieve and sit that over the drained water so it steams lightly. 2 cups of water/1 cup of rice ratio. Jamie Oliver taught me that via his book.

extra-easy: yes – very much so. As long as you’ve trimmed off the fat, nearly everything in this recipe (bar the rice) is a super-free food, so it’ll be great as a boost. It’s also a piece of piss to make, just chucking everything in a roasting tray and setting it away.

As a final note before we go back to gaming, I apologise for the photography. I’m a decent writer, Paul is a great cook, but no matter what we do, our food looks like shite when we take a photo! Trust me, it normally tastes so much better than it looks…

J

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

September 21, 2014

Posted under

classics, low syn, lunch, recipe card, rice, savoury snacks, taster ideas, vegetarian

slimming world curry loaf

well – here’s the first recipe, a recipe for a curry loaf which rocks in at 2 syns for the lot, but serves 4. Or two fat sods, like us. Hope you like the recipe card idea, seems a bit better than reading another boring recipe. So..

to make slimming world curry loaf:

Guaranteed to make you fart AND lose weight

extra-easy: no syns to be found (sweet potato wedges are done in the actifry with a bit of frylight), and meet your superfree target by bulking out the curry loaf with two giant leeks instead of onion and adding tomatoes and peppers if you like them, all of which are superfree foods!

warning: make sure the chickpea dahl you select is syn-free – usually ASDA’s own brand and this natty number from Morrisons fit the bill, but a quick google search will tell you. Also, you can switch the rice out for some of those Batchelors rices, but again, check the syns – the Ainsley Harriott rice above is 1 and a 1/2 syns. The extra half syn comes from the tiny bit of olive oil I used to grease my loaf tin. And that’s not a euphemism.

top tips: you can turn the heating down in your home after this meal, as you’ll be farting like a brewery horse and the smell of said flatus will be so ripe it’ll put you off snacking, or indeed breathing, for several hours. A big loaf like this means you can take some for lunch the day after, and combined with a healthy green salad means an ultra-low syn option!

J