Sticky Ginger Salmon with Stir Fried Vegetables

Sticky ginger coatings for fish, I'm so in love with it.  This is a simple and delicious coating for fish with adds so much flavour.  A great way to perk up a bit of salmon.

Porridge

Porridge has been one of the few breakfasts I'd go for while trying to eat 'clean', eggs being another but apart from that, so many breakfast offerings are packed with sugar, salt or processed so heavily.  What has made breakfast the meal where we just can't be bothered?  This is when you realise it takes about 5 minutes to make porridge and 6 minutes to boil an egg.  Are we really that busy?

Porridge, eggs, they both fill you up and set you up.  How could you be offered eggs or porridge and then say "no thanks, I'd rather have Froot Loops?"

Chicken Tikka

So day 2 of clean eating and I've been obsessing about what to cook.  So many things in my repertoire I'm learning contain processed ingredients.  I'm longing to have tomato and pesto soup but I buy the pesto ready made and, although the bread I have in the freezer is sourdough, it's made with white flour and I didn't make it.  This could be tricky and time consuming for what is normally a 10 minute meal.

Chicken tikka is something I regularly make from preprepared pastes and similarly it's quick and easy to prepare.  With my clean eating experiment, I couldn't do that so I tried to make one myself.  I was fairly happy with the result.

Stuffed Pumpkin

Stuffed pumpkin was my first lunchtime dish on my attempt to practice 'cleaner eating', basically eating minimally processed foods as much as possible.

I had happened to buy a tiny pumpkin in the 'reduced for quick sale' section of my local supermarket.  I bought it because it fit in my hand, it was 25p and was unbearably cute.  That said, I like pumpkin in things but had never been that fussed with them being the star.  This recipe brings together the best of everything seasonal though; sweetness from the pumpkin, earthy flavours from the lentils and mushrooms and salty cheese.

What is clean eating?

Clean eating is something I've been vaguely aware of bubbling away in the consciousness of food blogs, magazines etc for a while.  I lumped it in with 'paleo', '5:2', 'raw food' and dismissed it as a fad.  Sorry, I'm no fad dieter, it just doesn't work for me.

"Eat Death" Bruce Nauman, Ca' Pesaro, Venice

Thai Yellow Salmon Curry

Thai yellow curry, why not?  This is a fantastically quick meal to make once you've made the paste (see below.)

I love eating oily fish like Salmon, it makes me feel right from the inside somehow.

Baked fish with Pesto

Pollock is a fantastic fish.  It's always worth checking but it's generally more available than cod or haddock and the other great thing is it's a source of Omega 3 healthy oils (cod isn't.)  The other benefit is pollock is cheap.  It's often sold as "white fish" in the UK, especially if sold frozen but if you look at the detail you see what it is.

Great for a fish pie but also a great backdrop for strong flavours like this.

Moroccan Chicken Soup

Soup, it HAS to be soup.  Autumn seemed to be months away and then it came in with a roar.  The heating has gone on and (central) heating of soup is in order.

This is a gently warming soup, inspired by Moroccan flavours.  I have no doubt this is inauthentic but I like to think of this as something inspired by Moroccan flavours combined with the joy of autumnal British weather.

Creamy Mushroom Pasta

Creamy Mushrooms with lovely pasta.  This is a simple dish and something I used to make at university.  It's a great way to use up cream going out of date (or even one day over as you're cooking it) and contains one of your 5 a day.

Mexican Style Chopped Salad

This salad was designed to be something which would be easy to knock up out of store cupboard ingredients and the food left in the fridge at the end of a week.  I like a salad for work lunch but salad leaves only last so long and, as winter approaches, it gets more difficult (and out of season) to eat.  The jalapenos make it.  If you can stand the heat, have loads.  They don't half perk up a work lunchbreak!

Stilton and Spinach 'pesto'

Pesto obviously should not contain, well, any of the ingredients I've included here but I'm currently playing around with pasta and different ways to make it super quick.  I love a bit of Stilton and it occurred to me that Stilton and Walnuts are such a classic combination.  Basil though would be far too much and would overpower the blue cheese flavour so I plumped for spinach.

I liked it, see what you think.  Obviously this is Italian food via the English Midlands!

Pissaladiere

Pissaladiere is an open onion tart either made with a bread or pastry base.  I've used a puff pastry base to make it simple and super fast to cook.

This makes two small tarts.  I was going to keep one for lunch but liked it too much so ate them both for tea.  Oops.

Paneer Tikka

Paneer tikka is a vegetarian dish where you really don't miss the meat.  In fact, every vegetarian dish I make is 'accidentally' veggie.  I like meat but, where a meal is so good you don't even think about the meat, that's my kind of veggie food.  (You will never see me eating a vegetarian sausage, sorry, what is the point?  I've tried them, they taste like cardboard.)

But paneer is fantastic.  It has great texture and absorbs flavours brilliantly.  This is a mildly spiced dish, if you want more heat, add more chilli.

Is it extravagant firing up a barbecue for one?  Well yes but why the hell not?  This is eating like you love yourself after all!  Alternatively heat up the grill but there's something right about celebrating an Indian summer with Indian barbecue food.

Broccoli with Chorizo and Broad Beans

I love broccoli, I know the world doesn't agree with me and it's almost as unloved as my other favourite vegetable, brussel sprouts but for me, broccoli is a flavour packed powerhouse.  The fact it's also good for you is a bit of a bonus.

I was trying to think of a new way to serve broccoli because I had some tenderstem in my fridge which needed eating up.  This was what I came up with.  As a vegetable fan, I ate this on it's own, that's the joy when you're cooking for one, no-one judges you for a plate of vegetables but it might be nice as a less meat heavy tapa or as a side dish to serve with something complementary; fish could be good.

We could all do with eating less meat for health and environmental reasons.  A lot of my recent recipes have been vegetarian but this, although containing meat, uses it more as a 'spice' than as a major component.  If you want to reduce your meat consumption without giving it up, that's one way to approach it.

Vanilla French Toast

French toast for Sunday Breakfast, what could be better?