Skinny Shrimp Curry and Coconut Rice Recipe

So I got one of my favourite compliments of all time recently, the "Oh, I read your blog, I really like it" or other variation. Fellow bloggers out there will understand when I say that finding out that 'actual people' read your blog is one of the best feelings in the world, I feel like my little corner in the big big interweb is actually useful to someone and that gets me all smiley :) :) :)

The person made a comment about really liking the health/foodie posts and since I haven't done one in a little while I decided to do a recipe post, welcome to "Skinny Shrimp Curry" as done by The Londoner. (In case you haven't noticed, I'm slightly obsessed with her blog! She does post the most amazing "skinny" recipes alongside a couple of really yummy looking "not-so-skinny" ones. This particular recipe has calories only 300 calories in a big bowl! Sorry I can't come up with anything more concrete!

So let's get started with the ingredients, I've slightly modified her recipe to suit what I had in my cupboard at the time:

• Olive Oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• Piece of ginger the size of your thumb, grated
• 2-3 tbsps Hot Masala (depending on how hot you like your food)
• 2 tbsps of brown sugar
• 1 tin of plum tomatoes (blitzed quickly in the blender)
• 1 tbsp low fat greek yoghurt
• Salt & pepper to taste
• Aromat seasoning to taste (or you can use about 2 Maggi/Knorr cubes too)
• 250 g of prawns (mine were the kind that are already cooked)

• Chop the onions, grate the ginger and chop the garlic

• Heat the olive oil in a pan and then add in all the chopped ingredients, fry them in the oil until the garlic and ginger become fragrant and the onions soften and become translucent (3-5 minutes). Be careful not to let the garlic burn! Burnt garlic tastes foul!

• Add the plum tomatoes and stir it in, adding the aromat(maggi/knorr), salt, black pepper, hot masala and black pepper. You don't have to add them in all together, i find it easier to do them one at a time, tasting in between to make sure nothing becomes too overpowering.
• You will need to cook the tomatoes for a while so they lose some of their water and have a less distinctive "tomato-y" flavour. Cover your pot and leave it on medium heat for approximately 15 minutes or till you have a thick sauce. Don't forget to check back frequently.

• Because they are already cooked the prawns can be added near the end to heat them up. Then add the tbsp of greek yoghurt. I must admit I was pretty nervous about this step but it turned out to be THE best thing about the recipe! It also gives it a nice orange colour which I really liked!

The Londoner suggested eating this yummy curry on its own or with some na'an bread but being the African I am, some rice seemed necessary to eat the "stew" with! So I opted for some coconut rice which is so simple to make it barely needs a recipe!

You wash your rice to remove some of the starch, put it in a pot, open a can of coconut milk and pour it into the pot, add a sprinkling of salt and cover. Once the coconut milk has dried up you can add some more water if the rice still isn't cooked but I prefer to 'steam' the rice to softness so it doesn't lose the coconut taste. To do this I turn the heat to the lowest to prevent burning add a tiny bit of water, cover the pot firmly and leave it for a few minutes and voila! 

Serve it up and enjoy your yummy skinny shrimp curry and coconut rice whilst it's still hot! 

Voila!

Reni x

Slightly Burger Crazy? Maybe.

So after I put up the picture of one of my cheat meals some time back in Insanity Month 2, I really started craving burgers but I wasn't allowed to eat any fast food as part of a week long exercise and clean eating challenge my friends and I put together, I shouldn't be eating fast food anyways but all those additives in the McDonalds are giving me severe withdrawal symptoms! So I decided to do something a little cheeky and make a burger, I tried as hard as possible to make it healthy without removing all the fun-ness (clearly not a word) from it! So here's how I did it, it's such a simple straight forward recipe! It looks a little long but really doesn't take that much effort! You will need:

• Lean beef mince meat (600 g makes about 6-8 burgers)
• 1 medium brown onion (chopped finely)
• Seasoning to taste(salt, ground black pepper, maggi etc.)
• 1 egg
• Burger buns (I got Kingsmill 50-50, healthy you see!)
• Veggies for the burger (I had lettuce and cucumbers, even more healthy!!)

And if you're feeling not-so-healthy add some bacon and cheese to that shopping list!

So what you do is, you put the mince, onion, egg and seasoning in a bowl and mix it all together with your hands, mashing it all up like you're playing with play-do (but you're not so be a little careful!) when it's all combined, divide them up into 6-8 patties and make them round and a little flat with your hands

Put them on a tray lined with foil (you can also use greaseproof paper), cover with cling film and put in the fridge for 20-30 minutes. This step allows the beef to 'rest' and avoids crumbly patties too making an overall more tender beef.

'Resting' Patties

Pre-heat the oven to about 200-225 degrees C and then pop your patties in. Leave them in there till the juices run clear and the meat is thoroughly cooked.

In the last 10 minutes of cooking the patties, put some bacon in the oven and allow it to grill till it's nice and a little crunchy.

Cut your burger bun open and pop in the oven for a  minute to heat it up, if you're being a bit cheeky layer the patties with cheese while they are in the oven and allow the cheese to melt all over the patty.

Bring out the buns and the cheesy patties. Lay your veggies on the bottom bun, followed by the patty and then the bacon and lastly the top half of the bun. Don't forget the ketchup!

Serve with a side of fries/salad, on it's own or even deconstructed (no buns) and enjoy!

Yummy!

Definitely went in on the food! Plate is very nearly licked clean!

And if you feel bad when you're done be like me and have some fruit! LOL.

Hope you enjoyed the recipe, let me know if you try it or have any other ideas on how to make the burger even more delicious by dropping a comment in the box below.

See ya!

Reni x

Plantain Party! (For Cool Kids Only!)

After the sad news I got on Wednesday I was thinking of ways to lift my mood when all of a sudden, the idea of a plantain party popped into my head! I thought I'd also lift the mood here a little too so the tribute post isn't the first thing everyone sees when they visit! The party was fabulous, oh my goodness, does anyone else share my infinite love for plantain? I honestly believe it is the best food on the entire planet! Second to none. For those of you who might not know plantain is pretty much a type of banana, but it's usually bigger and less sweet and needs to be cooked. And this is what I spent my Thursday evening doing, cooking plantain in as many different ways as I could think.

I had them lightly salted and fried:

Peel and chop the plantain into little circles, sprinkle some salt and shake them all together, then fry in vegetable oil on medium-high heat turning once till they are a lovely golden brown. 

Some rather unfortunate burnt ones, but they still taste yum!

Seasoned and grilled:

Peel and chop the plantain, get your spice mix (mine was cayenne pepper and Aromat multi purpose seasoning) Place on a foiled covered oven tray and grill at about 200 till they are golden brown. I didn't put oil on the foil because I didn't feel like it but you certainly can. Also, allow them to cool down before trying to take them off the foil!

I have a feeling if these were cut a little thinner  and cooked a little longer they'd make really good plantain chips!

And Sugared!!:

By far the worst but most delicious of all the recipes! I think this recipe is quite common in Latin/South America and they usually use really ripe almost completely black plantain but I didn't have any so I just used regular ripe ones. Peel and chop the plantain, fry in 2 tablespoons of butter, when golden on one side, flip them and add a mixture of 2 tbsps brown sugar and 1 tbsp ground cinnamon, continue cooking till the sugar just caramelizes. This is DIVINE! But just looking at the recipe again is making me feel sick with sugar overload, it was great for satisfying the sugar craving I've been experiencing of late though! Loved it! Oh this is also one of the reasons for that detox I spoke about earlier!

All that brown goodness is cinnamon and caramelised sugar! I burnt myself with this one, was waaaay too eager to try it! I even almost forgot to take a picture so this plate has been about half eaten!

When I was making the sweet plantain, the bf remarked that it smelt like some food he eats back at home called kelewele (pronounced kay-lay-way-lay), so of course I googled the recipe for that to add it on to my list! This particular version didn't turn out too good, it just tasted like plantain seasoned with ginger! It didn't really look any different either so I didn't bother with a picture. So now I'm searching for the perfect kelewele recipe to add to my list of things to do with plantain! You can also boil them, boiled plantain and Efo Riro (spinach stew, not sure how else to describe it!) is the food of kings! And you can roast them to make Boli too, I've tried doing this before but it just didn't have the same taste as the ones you buy from the women on the streets of Lagos!

Several plantains later (between the two of us!) I was full and ready to sleep! Unfortunately it was time for pole dancing!! Lifting my body weight yesterday was something of a chore but I managed it and even felt strong enough to let go of the pole while sitting on it! The instructor was impressed! :) If I had to pick only one food to eat for the rest of my life, best believe it would be plantain! Speaking of, I think I have some plantain chips waiting to be munched on in my kitchen! *happy dance*

Bye for now,

Reni x

In Need of Pure Processed Unadulterated Refined Sugar!!

As I type this I'm desperately waiting for my phone to restore itself from my last backup because I just deleted the funniest message history in the world! Yes, it's that serious, thankfully my last backup wasn't too far away and so I have all the pictures I've been meaning to put up and stuff! Time remaining is 24 minutes, who knew these things took so long?!?! Goodness. So this post might be a little random because I don't really have a "theme" in mind, but I handed in my final deadline of this half of the semester so I'm feeling a lot more free now! My mind needs to snap out of holiday mode and into dissertation proposal mode! But for now at least, I'm chillin'!

Was going to do a couple random OOTN snaps till I realised I didn't take any pictures of myself this whole weekend, no random vain moments, I must say I'm surprised! Haha. It was my friends birthday and a couple of us got her a cake from Patisserie Valerie! This was both the best and worst thing ever, best because ours was the biggest cake and worst because I discovered that they do macarons!! I've been craving these since I had them in London a couple of weeks ago with my baby brother. These sugar filled goodies are just divine! But for obvious reasons *i want my abs!* I can't have them and this make me really sad. I'm really fighting every sector of my mind, begging it to stop being stubborn and just let the macarons go. Forget that I was going to order some online and get them delivered to my apartment. x_x. Sometimes I think all I need is some PURE processed unadulterated refined sugar! Haha, didn't think you could have so many oxymorons in one line did you? Neither did I really... Not listening to my sweet tooth is making me go crazy! I'm off to have some birthday cake, just one slice....

Birthday girl! Our cake is the biggest one on the bottom left, jealous though! Look how many cakes she got :O lol 

This whole clean eating thing is soo difficult but I'm determine to not give up, the other day I made banana pancakes, i found the recipe on Instagram and it was basically just pancakes made up of only 3 ingredients, 1 ripe banana and 2 whole eggs all blended/whisked together and then shallow fried in coconut oil on very low heat. The bf was appalled when he saw me using the coconut oil I usually use on my hair in food, he freaked the heck out, it was kind of funny actually. Lol. Yeahh, I didn't really like them, they were like banana flavoured eggs and I really don't like eggs, *ew, yucky yucky!*but if you like eggs and bananas then I think you'd really like the combination! I even had to have regular pancakes to combat the taste, mmmmmmmmm, yummy pancakes with flour are so much nicer!

Banana Pancakes, they look just like regular ones don't they? Deceivers!

Couple of bonus pictures since I didn't have any outfits to show off!

Bowling at All Star Lanes on Sunday!

My hair is red now! Well it has been for a while, update soon.

Fit February: Smoothie Challenge Update

Wow, there’s so much on my mind to blog about but I have no idea where to start! The next few days might be “post heavy” but hopefully it would make up for my slightly sporadic posts. Anyways I thought I’d come and brag about how well my smoothie challenge is going. So far I’ve only missed 2 days and that was out of pure laziness to go and restock on fruit and stuff. Also I tried the green smoothies, they are actually soo delicious! It’s kinda weird how great they taste! Although I can’t say that I’m fully over the colour… It still looks and feels weird to me!

Omg, I was so excited! I actually got people to join me on the challenge as well, it’s been really fun swapping recipes and comparing notes all this while. I’d share some recipes and photos at the end but before that, the one question I get asked the most is how I keep the fruit from going bad. Bad fruit is such a downer in smoothie land, it just kills the taste and everything else. Have you ever seen expired avocado? Gross! So anyways what I do is, I ‘prep’ my fruit. I freeze all the stuff that goes off the quickest which for me is my berries, so I chop up the strawberries and freeze them before putting them in a bag, I do the same to the blueberries and raspberries too, without the chopping. Oh yeah, you have to freeze them on a tray of some sort first so they don’t end up sticking together in clumps during the freezing process.

         

Smoothie Prep :) Strawberries, blueberries and raspberries 

After Freezing

I don't pre-prep the actual recipes I want to make because I love the flexibility of just throwing some things in the blender and watching the magic happen but the process would be the same if you wanted to but in the bags instead of having just one fruit, you'd have your mixes ready to throw in, this is also more efective in terms of time! I know it looks long but fruit freezes pretty quickly. I don’t usually freeze my bananas and other fruit, partly because I can’t be bothered most times and also because the more frozen things you use, the thicker your smoothie would be and I don’t like them too thick. Before I put up the pictures of my smoothies I think I should add a little disclaimer here: “I’m really not the most creative person out there, don’t judge my photos!” Haha. Also half the time I take these I’m about to be late for class. Lecturers that start teaching at 9 on the dot are just awful. Everyone knows about the 5-minute contingency rule! Geez! So anyways here are a couple of recipes for any interested parties. Interestingly enough, I realised I don’t really know how much of each fruit I put in the smoothies but I would try and do a rough guide. Most times I just feel it, adding more of the stuff I know I like.

Recipes:
1. Berries and Bananas:

This was the only smoothie I had tried before I started the challenge, made it for my bf and he really liked it! Added a bit of cranberry juice to his for sweetness though.

1 banana, 5-6 strawberries, handful of raspberries, water/cranberry juice.

2. "Brown" Green Smoothie:

First ever green smoothie, I decided to use my then favourite recipe of bananas and berries and just add the spinach and hope for the best! The blueberries and the spinach ended up fighting for colour and so it looked a bit more brown :s. It tasted quite nice though! Also bananas are excellent for covering up the taste of spinach. Trust me when I say you cannot taste it AT ALL. I promise!

1 banana, handful of frozen blueberries, 4-5 strawberries, handful of spinach, water

3. Tropical Smoothie:

So I saw this recipe on Instagram and decided to go crazy with it! So many different types of fruit! It tasted nice but I prefer having less fruit in my smoothies so I can actually taste them (the more fruit you add, the less of the individual tastes there are). Also I read, if you blend the greens first, it eliminates the chances of getting random leafy bits in your drink. (I used the wrong cup image here but can't find the right one! Your drink might turn out less green!).

Water, 1 banana, handful of blueberries, handful of raspberries, 4 strawberries, 1/2 a mango, some pineapple, handful of spinach.

4. Pear and Banana:

This smoothie turned out so bright I almost didn't drink it! But it's been my favourite so far and the only recipe I've actually repeated! Note: Peel the skin of the pears first! I tried one with the apples and left the skin on and it had the most disgusting texture to it, bits of unblended apple skin floating everywhere in the glass. Yuck!

1 pear, 1 banana, 2 handfuls of spinach, apple juice/water.

5. Kiwi Delight:

I don't particularly like this one. I thought kiwis would do great in smoothies but the seeds make them really annoying to drink and they're also a bit too sharp! I can't deal.

1 kiwi, 1/2 a banana, handful of blueberries, 2 tbsps greek yoghurt, 1 tbsp honey.

So there you have it! Hope some of you join me for the rest of the challenge, or at least try one of the recipes! Leave a comment below if you decide to :)

Ttfn,

Reni x