Turkey and Chorizo Chilli

Recipe ...

441g Turkey breast (cubed)

120g Chorizo (diced)

1 onion

1 tbsp olive oil

1 clove of garlic (or minced garlic)

1 tsp paprika

1 tbsp hot chipotle bbq sauce

1/4 tsp lazy chillis

2 cups stock

200g drained chick peas 

1 cup chopped mixed peppers

285g sweetcorn

heat your oil in a wok/large saucepan

brown off your turkey in a wok then after a few minutes add the chorizo

then lower the heat, add the onions and fry off slowly

add the peppers 

add the garlic and herbs, the sauce, then the stock

add the chickpeas

simmer for about 20 mins

then add the sweetcorn for about 5 minutes to heat through

serve with rice and maybe some sour cream and lime wedges

 I've got a big load of this stocked away in the freezer for a cold winter evening when i can't be bothered to cook anything ... can't wait!

chocolate cheesecake muffins

the hubster was mightily impressed with these ...

i made these a few weeks ago as my birthday cakes to take to the office ...

I have been saving the blog til i had time to sit down and write the recipe out.

so if you want to do some easy chocolately swirly impressiveness ... this is the recipe for you.


you will need :

Cheesecake mix:
175g cream cheese (make sure its full fat)
60g sugar
1 egg (lightly beaten)
1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Muffin mix:
150g flour
175g sugar
35g cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup veg oil
4 tbsp melted butter
2 eggs (lightly beaten)
1 tsp vanilla essence
110ml milk (this is fairly approximate, just put it in little by little and check how runny your mix looks)
75g semisweet chocolate

heat the oven to 190 degrees// gas mark 5
get your muffin tray ready, with cases, or grease it (I always use cases)

For the cheesecake mix combine the cream cheese, sugar, egg, and essence in a bowl, leave to one side.

Then for the muffins, mix the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.

In a second bowl mix together the oil, melted butter, eggs, vanilla, melted chocolate and about half the milk.

Now add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Add the remainder of the milk, little by little, until you have a thick cake mix.

You are going to layer the mixtures into the cases so you do no want it too runny, but it needs tobe pourable.

Layer your mixtures into the muffin holes, starting with the chocoate mix. Pour a blob into each hole,  this does not have to be perfect, each muffin will be different, then follow with the cheesecake mix and repeat until the holes are about 3/4 of the way full.

You can either leave them as they are in sort of ring formation, or swirl through them with a knife to create a marbled effect. 

Wack them in the oven for about 25 mins ... mine took slightly longer, but it was the first thing i cooked in my new oven, so i was still working out the temperatures and timings.

Leave for a few mins in the tray before turning to a wire tray for cooling.

Seriously gooey, easy muffins to impress ... !!

Kitchen Marathon ...

I just finished a kitchen marathon ... don't you just love those ... get a few bargains from the supermarket and cook cook cook during the summer to have some great freezer meals for winter.

I made the following ...

Chicken and Chorizo Tray bake

Cottage pie with parsnip and carrot mash

Beef Casserole

(no photos though again ... I must find my camera cable !! )

BBQ !! ... well of a sort

Last night we had friends round ... again !!! I love time with friends especially when food is involved. Basically we decided we would have a BBQ and empty the freezer of all the BBQ food we'd bought in great hope of a gorgeous hot english summer ... english summer is what we've got  but it's definitely not hot - it just keeps on raining and it's not very warm! 

so we decided after getting stuck in traffic really bad on the way home and the weather not being all that good that we would have an indoor BBQ instead. Excellent choice i must say ... I thought i'd post you a few pics of what we ate. (Not the most healthy of dinners ... in fact completely dreadful!) 

cheesy topped burger buns

hot wings and ribs 

Adi's Potato Salad

Adi my gorgeous friend made a really 'funky' potato salad as she called it! It turned out to be absolutely delicious ... it was potatoes with green beans avocado and peas, with mayo, dijon, and mint as a surprising little hidden flavour! It was delicious and i ate far too much! If i can steal the recipe and post it on here i will do! you have to try it. 

We also had these sausage kebabs, i marinated the sausage in a smoky chipotle barbeque sauce! Heaven!  my phone is playing up though and will not upload the photo of the kebabs! and my good friends (not me - for once i was fairly controlled) washed it all down with a big slice of gooey toffee cheesecake! 

I hope you enjoyed your dinner last night as much as we all did !! :) 

Ratatouille a la Holly

anyone else a huge fan of this ridiculously healthy tasty side ?? No?? ... oh well - i'm going to blog about it anyway!
I made it last night to go with gammon and it caused uproar in our house.
Gammon can only be eaten with egg and chips in my husbands eyes (or curly fries as he had last night) and i suggested having ratatouille as a healthy option, he could not get his brain around that one.
We had a friend over as we so often do and he adored it - so score !!
The combo worked exceptionally well ...

Blogging on this recipe is literally a guessing game. I throw a bit of this in and a bit of that it but hey ... give it a try.

Literally use what ever quantity you fancy as this freezes really really well and is like about 1 W.W pro point a serving so you can have quite a lot. As you can see from my plate last night.

so this is what i do ...

I dice 3 small red onions and start cooking them down with a knob of butter or two(literally the butter is the only thing you have to count in the recipe so you don't have to worry too much). Meanwhile dice up some carrot (I used two large), into really small chunks so that they are nice and soft, throw them in the pan and keep stirring every few minutes.At this point i add my herbs, two dried bay leaves, garlic (i used dried and threw about a teaspoon in, then crumble a veggie stock cube in, stir through. I DO NOT put salt in. I was eating it with gammon and stock cubes are full of salt and it thought it was perfectly seasoned, but if you want to add salt i would wait until the end and taste it first. I then cut up my courgette, i only had a half of one left so i used that, but i would probably go for one big one if i had had it in. Throw that in, then the peppers, i used one red and one green, i tend to chop into fairly large chunks as it is a nicer texture. Then i whack the lid on, you do have to stir it often though else it sticks. I probably gave it about 10-15 mins with the lid on. Then i take the lid off and add a 400g tin of chopped tomatoes, then i let it simmer down. I left it on the hob for about 25 mins stiring regualrly. Et voila ... Ratatouille a la Holly !!

Don't forget to take the bay leaves out before you serve! this serves about 3 or 4 people. If your being strict weight watchers, way out your butter knob and divide the points between the servings to be massively accurate. It shouldn't be more than two points though. If so you've put way more than you needed in the first place.

But pretty much ratatouille goes with any meat and potato dish ! Enjoy an enormous tasty heap of 1 whole weight watchers point. Mmmm mmm!

Sorry for the lack of photos - we have moved house and i cannot find my cable to get photos off my camera so i had to take this on on my phone.

light lemon cheesecakes

well ... it has been a while ...

since i was last on here we have bought a house, taken it back to bare brick and built it up again to a gorgeous little pad for me and Tim.

Got some friends over tomorrow and i've made some light little desserts for dinner as i'm still trying to do the dreaded diet. Fairly difficult when you love food as much as i do! :( lol

anyway heres a little treat for you !!

I made four little ones out of this recipe:

ingredients:

4 tbs fat free greek yoghurt
6 tbs lemon curd
1 tsp lemon juice
125ml double cream

5 digestive/oaty biscuits (I use a mixture)
50g butter

Whiz biscuits in a processor until they are finely crushed.
Melt the butter over a low heat in a saucepan.
Mix the butter and biscuit crumbs together and press into four cheesecake moulds.
Mix the yoghurt, lemon curd, and lemon juice together in a large bowl.
Whip cream in a separate bowl until you get "floppy" peaks.
Fold the cream, a tablespoon at a time into the mix.
I did mine in little glasses and just layered the cheesecake mix on top of the biscuit.
I used a spatula to push the topping flat, i couldn't fit a pallet knife inside the glasses. 
Chill in the fridge for at least 30 mins.
I did mine the night before and ... they are sat there right now - tempting me!