I have gone through a cooking stage again! The first meal I cooked was this Spring Asparagus pancetta hash from Smitten Kitchen. This was sooo easy to throw together. I didn't use onions (I hate them!!) and I didn't peel my potatoes but those were the only changes I made to the recipe. I worked it out at about 575 calories per serving and I thought that was pretty good for something involving fried potatoes and pancetta. Taste wise it was gorgeous; I love pancetta and having the potatoes fried in their fat made everything super yummy.
Next up was a Ham & Asparagus toad in the hole from BBC Good food. Now the recipe says serves 4 and maybe as PART of a meal but the ingredients were so light that I did eat the whole thing myself for dinner. I did do some substitutions to make it a few less calories, such as using egg whites instead of eggs and using skimmed milk and I worked out the whole dish to be about 450 calories so it’s a healthy meal anyway. My review taste wise isn't that great, the batter was nice but the asparagus had gone a bit tasteless. However it was super filling (well it was originally for four haha).
I also cooked Spanish tortilla with spinach. I didn't use any leek or cumin like the recipe asked (I used some garlic instead) and again I tried to make it a tad healthy by using egg whites instead of whole eggs. 5 minutes before they suggested you pulled it off the heat I added seriously strong extra mature cheddar spread and stuck it in the oven for the last five minutes. I worked out the whole meal to be about 590 calories. It tasted really good. I had half for lunch and then ate the other half cold for dinner and its really delicious cold as well!
I used another Smitten Kitchen recipe, this time for Cauliflower and Parmesan cake. I actually changed the recipe to make a broccoli and mature cheddar cake instead. Other substitutions I made were no onion, using egg whites instead of eggs and my cheddar was also a low fat version. I divided the recipe by 3 as it states serves 4-6 and I was only cooking for myself (the boy just doesn't eat veg!) and I worked my serving out at about 450 calories. It was really nice tasting, very typical comfort food. It suggests you cook it for 45 minutes but I took it out 10 minutes early, I do quite like undercooked batter haha. It was really filling and it made the apartment smell amazing!
It wasn't just all savoury this week, I also cooked banana bread. I used a recipe from Simply recipes that used 4 bananas and it produced a very dense cake. I liked it because it was total stodgy comfort food however I gave the cake to a few people and I think they would have liked it a bit fluffier. It was also VERY banana flavoured, I know that might sound obvious but some banana cake really only has a hint, whereas this was like a banana milkshake. Again I liked it but its all preference really. I served it with cream and chocolate powder!
I used the recipe for Bacon and gruyere scones from A cozy kitchen and made 6 scones with it. I used pancetta instead of bacon and instead of gruyere used my low fat mature cheddar. Buttermilk isn't really something we get here so I had to make a substitute using lemon juice instead. My scones worked out about 213 calories each and oh my god they tasted immense. The recipe called for so little cheese yet the scones tasted sooo cheesy. I even picked the crumbs off the boy’s plate haha.
I'm still in a cooking mood so I think there will be another recipe post up before long!
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