Healthy Spaghetti Carbonara with Spiralized Vegetables

Spaghetti carbonara is an easy go-to dish if I want to make something midweek that's fast and doesn't involve a lot of meat, as I don't think it's good to have a big portion of red meat every day. Since I'm doing Sugar Free September I was trying to think of ideas. Simple (as opposed to complex) carbs are off the menu at the moment, as when your body breaks down pasta or potatoes it converts the starch to glucose. So doing Sugar Free September means no potatoes or pasta, though I have recently discovered gluten-free pasta which your body doesn't convert to glucose in the same way.

My fall-back when I haven't been eating pasta is spiralized vegetables, and I realised I'd never actually made a simple spaghetti carbonara using spiralized vegetables.

 

I decided to use spiralized butternut squash and courgette though you can experiment with any different veg that you like. Chop some bacon and fry in a large pan then add the spiralized veg with a little water and cook for a few minutes until the veg has softened and the water has largely evaporated.

Add either single cream, plain yogurt or even crème fraiche combined with a beaten egg and stir into the pan.

Sprinkle with parmesan cheese to serve.

Carrot Rice 'Risotto' with Chorizo

Did you know that you can do more with your spiralizer than just make vegetable spaghetti? You can also make rice - or a vegetable rice anyway!

After spiralizing vegetables into spaghetti-like strands you can give it a quick whizz in the food processor and turn it into little grains like rice. I don't think you could put the raw veg straight into a blender - that is, you couldn't as easily turn a raw carrot into carrot rice without spiralizing it first, and a cooked carrot would just turn it to mush. You could of course grate it rather than spiralize like I did with this cauliflower rice.

I've got the Inspiralized recipe book by Ali Maffucci and also get a lot of recipes from her blog, www.inspiralized.com. I found a recipe for a spicy seafood and chorizo paella using carrot 'rice' and diced bacon (I used chorizo);  It tasted absolutely delicious - I was really impressed, and since it's now Sugar Free September (for some people at least) I thought I'd share my adaptation of this recipe if anyone is looking for meal ideas.

To serve two, you need:
1 tbsp. oil or a few sprays of Fry Light
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/4 tsp dried chilli flakes
half an onion, diced
1 chorizo sausage, sliced
200g tin chopped tomatoes
2 carrots, peeled and spiralized then processed in  blender to turn them into rice
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tbsp. lemon juice
2 cod fillets, chopped into chunky pieces
12 large prawns
1 tbsp. chopped fresh parsley

Fry the chorizo, garlic and onion in the oil

Spiralizing the carrot, then pulse in a blender until it turns into 'rice'

Add to the pan with the tinned tomatoes, chilli, paprika, and turmeric, the cod and the prawns

Then add the lemon juice and sprinkle with the parsley. The finished dish:

Spiralized Courgette and Carrot with Tuna and Lemon

This is a simple dinner I threw together after work one evening. Using a spiralizer really transforms vegetables - I don't even like courgette normally and certainly wouldn't eat a plateful of it but this meal tasted delicious and was really healthy.

I began by spiralizing a courgette and a carrot, and frying them in a pan with a little water until the vegetables had softened. I opened a tin of tuna - which I ended up sharing with the cat - and stirred it in along with some lemon juice, oil and dill. Toss the whole thing together in the pan to warm through and serve.

Christmas in July: Lakeland's new range for 2016

It’s Christmas in July! Did you know that the big retailers launch their festive product ranges just after the mid-point of the year, months in advance of Christmas? I’m not entirely sure why they showcase their wares so far in advance – it’s probably a combination of manufacturing lead times, getting a sense of what will sell, and factoring in the advance deadlines of glossy monthly magazines, and not wanting to be left behind by the competition – once one retailer decided to go in July, the rest probably had to as well.

 

So it was a blazingly hot day in July when I was invited to three Christmas launch events on the same day. I had a day off work to recover post-honeymoon (blogging is not my day job, I actually work in the City) but the jet lag wasn’t too bad, so I decided to take advantage of the time off to visit all three events and gather some content for my blog and meet a few people as well.

 

The event I was most excited about attending was Lakeland. I’m a big fan of Lakeland, even though I think some of their products are a bit unnecessary - I don’t need a tool to cut an avocado, I use a knife – which is not to say their tool isn’t easier, but there comes a limit to how many kitchen gadgets one person can have! But one person’s avocado peeler is another person’s spiralizer – and I have to admit I do own quite a few Lakeland products.

 

Speaking of spiralizers, Lakeland had a whole display devoted to them. At the moment (until 20 July) they are doing 35% off selected spiralizers.

 

 

There are now several types, including a new electronic one from Morphy Richards which makes very fast work of spiralizing. It will cost £50, I'm told, and comes with different blades though I think you might have to trim larger veg to fit. It doesn't take up much more space than the manual spiralizer and is good for people who have difficulty turning the handle of the original one (which I have myself) - so I can see the benefit.

 

 

They also have a new range of microwave containers; I tend to just stick things into the microwave in a dish so am looking forward to trying the one that I was given as a parting gift. I watched a cookery demonstration of the microwave containers where they cooked some of the spiralized veg and some chicken which smelled amazing. I also had a chat with BBC Good Food columnist Gerard Baker, who has written a recipe book with Lakeland on jams, curds and preserves, about how it's actually quite easy to make jams and curds. I've never tried and tend to resort to shop-bought lemon curd but Gerard urged me to have a go at making my own and I might just have to do that!

 

I was also pleased to see the Smarter iKettle and coffee machine on display.

 

 

Here I should declare something of a vested interest: my husband's cousin's husband invented the iKettle and wifi coffee machine and runs the company behind them, Smarter - a really innovative company it's worth keeping an eye on. The idea of the iKettle, if you haven't come across it before, is that you can boil the kettle using your phone - you can set it to wake you up already boiled, or to switch on when you are coming in through your front door. You can choose a different temperature to boil the water to, depending on if you are making tea, green tea, coffee etc . The coffee machine takes this one step further, enabling you to grind coffee controlled by your smartphone, and adjust the strength to suit your own tastes. As we hear more and more about the 'connected home' with everything controlled by wifi - from your heating to seeing who is at your front door - I think Smarter have hit upon a genius idea. And I'm not just saying that because I know them! The iKettle is £99.99 and the Smarter Grind & Brew Coffee Machine is £179.99.

 

And now for something completely different... why not have a sprout party this Christmas? Love them or hate them, you can have everything from paper plates to Christmas crackers with Lakeland's fun sprout design. Prices for items here start at £2.69. They also have a lovely range of more traditional Christmas decorations if that's more your thing!

 

Here's a slogan I could live by.... found on a cake tin that's part of a pretty range of crockery and kitchenware. This tin is a very reasonable £9.99.

Speaking of cake... the Lakeland press show had an entire room devoted to baking and cake decorating products and I was in heaven. This huge display of cups and saucers caught my eye; take  closer look at the jug pouring milk into a bowl of cereal on the top:

 

It's actually cake! Made using Lakeland's anti-gravity cake kit, which I got for Christmas and used to make this floating Mini Egg cake at Easter.

 

Lakeland has two other products in this range; the first is already on sale and the second is part of their new range that I got to see at this event. You can use their 'tiers and spheres' anti-gravity cake set to make this:

 

Very impressive, huh? I'd love to try but think I would need to buy the kit and I'm not convinced my cake would look this good! The other kit that is being launched is a Minion cake kit (£14.99), but you could actually use it to make anything where you want a character or animal to be standing on two legs, with the main body raised off the base, so I think it will be quite a versatile kit.

 

 

Another item that caught my eye was these Shot Tops (£4.99). I remember one of the contestants on the Great British Bake Off - I think it was Luis - making cupcakes where each one came with a tiny pipette of alcohol (brandy I think) to be injected into or drizzled over the cake by the person who is eating it. So you get the strongest hit of flavour as the ingredient is only added at the point of consumption, and it makes the cupcakes really fun. Lakeland has brought out its own range of mini plastic pipettes, shaped like little bottles or cocktail glasses, which you can fill with a flavouring and push into the top of your cupcakes.

They even gave me a kit to try at home complete with recipe book, which I really can't wait to try out!

 

These look pretty awesome too - a cake tin where you can make an edible cup for a drink or dessert!

 

As usual Lakeland has a great range of smaller Christmas gifts: 

I've previously bought the mug cake mug on the top left in this photo below for a friend (did you know you can make cakes in a mug in the microwave?). They've now expanded the range to include a peanut butter cupcake mug (which I really want!) and a takeaway cup style ceramic container which has a recipe for noodles on the side, which I love the idea of as well.

A couple of other products which I was given in a goody bag from the event include this magic tube, which goes inside any spray bottle and lets you use it from every angle, making sure you get out every last drop, which is a great money saving idea:

And finally these prosecco gummies and gin and tonic flavour frosting (part of a range that includes other flavours) - yum!

 Thanks to Lakeland for inviting me to their Christmas press show; I've chosen for myself the products I wanted to write about and all opinions are my own.

Spiralized Vegetables with Broccoli Pesto

The lengths I go to for dieting… I wasn’t looking forward to my dinner recently as I’d decided to make pesto out of broccoli and serve it over spiralized veg, while my fiancé was tucking in to a pizza. Though as he correctly pointed out, it was a frozen pizza and he could have ordered Domino’s but didn’t as he knew it would make it harder for me - and I was the one who cooked him the pizza!

 

But when I actually started to eat my dinner I was surprised at how good it actually tasted, and I really enjoyed it. Which is not to say I wouldn’t rather have had a pizza but I have a wedding dress to get in to!

 

The recipe comes from I Quit Sugar by Sarah Wilson which has become a book I turn to a lot at the moment!

  

To serve one, you need:

Spiralized veg: I used half a tub of spiralized carrot from Tesco (it’s hard to put a carrot through a spiralizer unless it’s a really thick one), and I spiralized half a butternut squash to go with it.

For the pesto:

1 cup broccoli florets, steamed until tender

1 spring onion, peeled

1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed

2 tbsp olive oil

Juice of ½ lemon

15g grated parmesan or 30g cashews, soaked in water for 1-4 hours and drained – but I didn’t have time to do this and used them without soaking and it worked pretty much fine I think. I also cheated and used both the parmesan and the cashews which made the pesto more substantial and gave it a lovely flavour.

Salt and pepper to taste

Basically I put all the ingredients in a food processor

 

Pulse until you have a thick green paste

Serve over spiralized veg, which I find best gently steamed or stir fried so it isn't raw but it doesn't take much cooking:

I'm sending this to Meat Free Mondays, hosted by Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes. Also this recipe would be vegan if you left out the parmesan.

 

Chicken en Papilotte with Orange Veg

Chicken breasts are a great stand-by for dinners during the week; both my fiancé and I like them, they are quick to cook, pretty healthy and you can do a lot of different things with them. I found this recipe for spiced baked chicken parcels – chicken en papilotte – on Serious Eats, and decided to make my own variation on it.

 

I already had za’atar, a Middle Eastern spice, I’d bought when we had the letter Z for Alphabakes, but I don’t like to eat peppers or tomatoes so instead decided to use a little bit of pepper and a portion of spiralized butternut squash. A squash is really easy to spiralize if you have a robust enough machine (mine is the Lurch one from Lakeland that you can buy on Amazon here:

 

 

I tossed the chicken breast, which I had butterflied out, with the spices, oil and herbs and then placed it on a square of foil with the peppers, onion, spring onion and butternut squash on top. I wrapped up the parcel and baked it in the oven; it only took 20 minutes as I had sliced the chicken relatively thin. When you unwrap the parcel you have a very tasty meal, which can be served with extra veg or perhaps with new or mashed potatoes for a more substantial dinner.

 

Spiralized Salmon and Broccoli Balls with Carrot Pineapple Rice

This recipe comes from Ali Maffucci's book Inspiralized, and takes a bit of preparation but the cooking time itself is minimal - and more importantly, it tastes amazing. If you've only spiralized courgette or butternut squash and used it instead of pasta so far, you are really missing out - there are so many ways you can use your spiralizer, but you could also make this recipe even if you don't have one.

I don't want to repeat the entire recipe as I'm sure Ali would appreciate it if you bought the book but I'm going to describe what I did. The recipe consist of three elements - salmon and broccoli balls, which I thought would be like fishcakes minus the potato but actually were quite different; homemade teriyaki sauce; and carrot 'rice' cooked with spring onion and pineapple.

I started by making the salmon balls. Preheat the oven, and pulse some broccoli in a food processor. Add a piece of salmon, some garlic and ginger and onion or shallot and pulse again. Turn the food processor off, and scoop the mixture into balls. Place on a foil-lined baking sheet and bake in the oven for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile make the teriyaki sauce by mixing soy sauce, mirin, honey, garlic and ginger.

After the salmon balls have baked for 15 minutes, drizzle over a couple of spoonfuls of the teriyaki sauce and bake for another 10 minutes.

Meanwhile spiralize some carrots -you need to choose quite thick ones otherwise it's tricky. I used three carrots; once they are spiralized, wash out the bowl of the food processor and pulse the carrots until you have a rice-like consistency.

In a small pan, heat a little coconut oil and fry some chopped spring onion, garlic and ginger. Add the carrot rice, some chopped pineapple and a little teriyaki sauce and stir fry for a few minutes. Serve the salmon and broccoli balls on top of the carrot. This was a delicious meal and I felt very healthy!

I'm entering this in Spiralizer Saturday, the blog challenge I run for all things spiralized. If you have any good recipes, link them up here!

I'm also sending this to Extra Veg, hosted by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours.

Spiralized Butternut Squash with Prawns and Mascarpone

I realised I hadn’t used my spiralizer for a few weeks and was inspired to get it out again by this recipe from Ros at A Twirly Whirly Blog.

 

It was absolutely delicious and something that I would definitely make again. You do need to oven cook the spiralized veg for about ten minutes so it was good that I had the oven on anyway to make dinner for my fiancé (I’m never going to get him to eat spiralized veg!).

 

I altered the recipe a little as I don’t like mushrooms and didn’t have any spinach (as I don’t like it much either). I was going to add in some broccoli but realised I had run out, so there was nothing green in my dish in the end. It probably would have benefited from some extra green veg but it’s still a vegetable-based meal and was very filling.

 

I spiralized half a butternut squash – as it’s a chunky veg it is quite filling. I laid out the pieces on a roasting tin lined with foil and drizzled with a little oil, and baked it in the oven for ten minutes.

 

Meanwhile I fried half a chopped onion with some chopped bacon – I didn’t have any pancetta either but did have bacon and prawns in the freezer, so this was a good meal to make without having to buy any extra ingredients. I stirred in some mascarpone cheese so it would melt, added the prawns (already cooked) and the butternut squash and stirred it all through. You can sprinkle the dish with grated parmesan as Ros did, but I think it’s perfectly nice without – and if you are counting calories, a little bit of mascarpone in the sauce is probably enough.

I'm sharing this via my Spiralizer Saturday challenge - please link up any spiralizer recipes!

 

Spiralizer Saturday Round-up and March challenge

Welcome to Spiralizer Saturday - once again I'm inviting you all to link up your spiralizer recipes (which could also be made using a julienne cutter or similar) - recipes of all types as there is no theme.

I don't have a recipe to share with you today as I haven't used my spiralizer for a couple of weeks, so I will go straight into the round-up from last month.

I made this rather unusual sweet potato 'pizza' which uses spiralized sweet potato as a base, topped with tomato puree and mozzarella - it made a delicious lunch!

Ros, who you might know from the More Than Occasional Baker, has a new blog at A Twirly Whirly Blog which is all about spiralizer recipes. She made a chicken and mushroom black bean stir-fry using spiralized carrot and courgette.

I used a similar approach in this spiralized Pad Thai, making one with chicken and a vegetarian one with tofu. Both had spiralized butternut squash, mooli and carrot.

 

And here's another one from Ros at Twirly Whirly Blog: spiralized butternut squash with pancetta, prawn and spinach in a creamy mascarpone sauce which sounds amazing! In fact I think I might have to cook this myself!