Gazpacho - a refreshingly cold, raw tomato based soup from Spain

A delicious, healthy and refreshing chilled soup from Spain.

Made predominantly from raw tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, onion and garlic blended together with sherry vinegar and extra virgin olive oil, this soup can be anything from a starter, to a main or a tapa - and on a hot summer's day it's wonderful to be able to just reach into the fridge and pour yourself some out!

 

 

Makes approximately 1.3 litres (or see Notes for double), hence it makes six servings of 220ml.
820 calories for the full batch including extra virgin olive oil (or if you're fasting, you can leave it out, and it will then be 286 calories for the entire quantity).

Hence 136 calories for a 220ml/g serving including the extra virgin olive oil (or 48 calories for a 210ml/g serving excluding extra virgin olive oil) - obviously adding chopped up salad toppings will add a few more calories, and adding a drizzle of EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) will add around 120 calories per tbsp.

Black Bean and Butternut Squash Chilli

This is a really delicious meat-free alternative to a chilli con carne, absolutely packed with flavour and texture, and really versatile too!

With a fortnightly (wonky) veg box having become a regular occurence in our lives, I'm finding myself coming up with lots of new things to cook to use up the vegetables that we're sent (which are pretty much a surprise on the day we receive them), which is a great way to stop yourself from falling into a culinary rut!

I'd really got into roasting sweet potatoes with cumin seeds for a bit of crunch, and had sweet potato and butternut squash to use up, and thought it would be nice to stick them in the oven to roast while prepping the rest of dinner, and thought they would be really nice to add into a bean chilli, along with some peppers (which I quite like to add into my ordinary chilli con carne from time to time, to give it a bit of a twist).

So this was the end result, cooked with my usual blend of spices for a chilli, and one that's definitely going onto the meat free regulars - it's so tasty and filling!

Served with my spicy cornbread, rice, grated cheese, sour cream and coriander

You can decide whether to use squash or sweet potato or a mixture, depending on what you've got in, and also use your favourite beans - you'll get a tasty result at the end whatever you use!

Served in tortillas with sour cream, fresh tomato, avocado, lightly pickled onions
and some sour cream mixed with lime juice, topped with coriander and chillies

Serves 10-12 portions (recipe easily halved) from 155-187 calories a portion using butternut squash (depending on whether a tenth or a twelfth) to 190-229 calories a portion using sweet potato. Why not have a wedge of homemade spicy cornbread on the side - it's quite easy to make, and also very filling! My recipe is here, from 116 calories for a wedge.

Stuffed Baby Peppers with Spinach and Ricotta

These little gems are a surprisingly healthy treat that are very more-ish and great for sharing (or NOT sharing if you want them all to yourself!).

I must firstly thank a friend, the lovely Audra, for the inspiration for this recipe. She shared a lovely recipe for roasted  piquillo peppers stuffed with goats cheese and spinach, which I changed around a bit (because that's what I do quite often) to suit my own purposes.

I think they're pretty easy to make - certainly not as fiddly as you might think! And they're definitely worth the effort for such a tasty morsel that's full of healthy yumminess - I ate half a quantity for my dinner last night!

The filling makes enough for two batches (as I prefer to use up certain things when I open them where possible, such as ricotta, so that the remains don't waste away in the fridge!), and will keep in the fridge for a couple of days so you can make a second batch fresh when you've eaten the first one! (Or just double up on peppers and make two trays - they are nicest eaten freshly cooked though).

Also delicious served with a selection of mouthwatering antipasti!

This quantity of peppers serves two, if eating as a light lunch type of thing (nice with some dressed Italian leaves on the side) or as a large side dish. It's also great as party food, and compatible with calorie-counted diets, 5:2, LCHF (all green list food, and you can use extra parmesan and a good drizzle of EVOO to top it off if you like) as well as being Syn free for the Slimming World diet (if you use up your healthy extra A choice for the ricotta cheese and up to 9g finely grated parmesan cheese per portion (this is a lot more than you think, especially if you use a microplane grater!).

207 calories per serving (with weights as below, calories in square brackets).

If making one quantity (with 300g baby peppers and a half quantity of ricotta/spinach mix), then it is 414 calories for the quantity, hence if using 12 baby peppers it is approximately 17 calories per stuffed pepper half.

Marinated Mushrooms with Garlic, Lemon and Herbs, and other Summer Grilled / Marinated Vegetables

Delicious appetiser / antipasti, side dishes, or even starters. Makes for great vegetarian mezze / tapas dishes to share.

I really love mushrooms, and remember making Mushrooms a la Grecque many, many years ago. I thought I'd add my own spin to it, by charring the mushrooms a little first, as a nod to the char-grilled marinated artichokes we enjoy, and a few of my favourite flavours.

             

Scroll down for a couple of other recipes / suggestions for side dishes to go alongside the mushrooms (as pictured). 

These dishes will collectively serve 4-6 people as sides for lunch, and keep well in the fridge for a few days (see notes).

Calories per serving for those counting: Mushrooms - 70, Asparagus - 50, Peppers and Tomatoes - 61. Total calories for all three dishes as sides - 181.

If you're not counting calories, feel free to slug in extra oil and serve with Parmesan shavings, torn mozzarella, goats' cheese, feta cheese, pine nuts, and / or whatever else you fancy scattered on top or along side!

Pressure Cooker Beef in Black Bean Sauce (includes Instant Pot method)

This is one of my absolute favourite Chinese dishes, and now I've converted it from a wholly stir-fried dish in the wok (using expensive cuts of steak) to a dish where the beef is cooked in the sauce in the pressure cooker. This means that I can use cuts of beef suitable for braising at less than a third of the price of prime steak, and still have delicious, tender slices of beef - what's not to love?

A really tasty, popular dish – versatile too, as you can substitute pork if you don't want to use beef, and play around with the stir-fry vegetables to suit your own tastes!

Want the original recipe to make this without using a pressure cooker? It's here.

Serves five to six, 286 calories per portion (for a sixth portion depending on cut of beef used, based on 136 calories per 100g). 

Spicy Szechuan Chicken

Try something outside of your Chinese cooking comfort-zone, that’s very easy to cook, and surprisingly subtle in terms of flavour, with a little bit of a kick to it!

The official name of this dish is Hot and Numbing Chicken (Ma La Zi Ji), but don't let that scare you off - it's really not *that* hot and it isn't going to anaesthetise your mouth, I promise!

Nowhere near as spicy as you might think, this dish gets its name from the numbing, tongue tingling qualities of the Szechuan / Sichuan pepper (not used to excess in this dish, so don’t worry, it’s quite subtle!) and the heat from the chillies (which you can also moderate, by leaving out the seeds, for quite a mild dish). It’s actually a Hunanese dish, which is why the amounts of pepper in it are quite conservative, because the Hunanese are not overly fond of the strange tingling flavour of their neighbours’ peppercorns!

Serves two, 235 calories per portion. Easily doubled, or halved.

Pollo al Chilindron - (Spanish) Chicken with Peppers and Tomatoes

Simple and tasty at its best, Spanish-style...

I've blogged this recipe, which I've had in my 5:2 group for a while, because it is how I learnt the real name of a 'Half Man, Half Goat'... make of that what you will!!! This is a classic Spanish dish, originating from Aragón. You can choose whether you use all red bell peppers (which are sweeter, and some say is the most traditional), or a mixture of red and green, or even all green for a slightly more peppery flavour. Choose chicken thighs for moist and succulent tasty meat, or chicken breast for a leaner, slightly quicker option.

Chilindron - the pepper and tomato sauce - is simple and yet soooo good - great hot or cold, and delicious with meat, chicken or fish - and if you're a vegetarian, you could just make the sauce and crack some eggs into it to poach shakshouka style for a delicious brunch, and mop up with crusty bread.

Serves four as a main meal, 275 calories per serving (if using chicken breast and Serrano ham. Add an extra 23 calories per portion if using skinless, boneless chicken thighs, and an extra 32 calories per portion if using rindless streaky bacon instead of Serrano ham). For a vegetarian version, with four medium eggs cracked in, it would be 178 calories per person.

Sweet Chilli Sauce - includes Thermomix method

Who doesn't love dipping into a sweet chilli sauce?

And with only 5 ingredients, you can make your own quickly and easily in around ten minutes!

Delicious with Thai food, such as fishcakes, crabcakes or plump and juicy prawns, this quick recipe can be put together while whatever you are dipping in it is cooking!

Serves four, easily doubled. You could even make up a large batch if you wanted to, and store it in sterilised bottles as it would last a long time due to the ingredients. 60 calories per serving [calories in square brackets].

Caramelised Red Onion, Pepper and Goats Cheese Crustless Quiche / Frittata

This was made to take on a picnic, along with some other 'fancy' goodies...

It's delicious chilled, served with a large, mixed salad, on a warm day when you don't want hot food.

Obviously you could serve it warm too, if you prefer, with buttery new potatoes, or roasted squash and maybe some griddled asparagus or long courgette slices.

This will serve six as a main meal, or more if you want to have it as part of a buffet type spread (or picnic!) and it's incredibly easy to make. What's more, you can change the fillings and toppings to suit your tastes, or what you've got in at the time.

If you're counting calories, this is from 216 to 248 calories for a sixth serving (as in 1/6 of it, not your sixth helping!), or from 162 to 186 calories for an eighth if you'd prefer a slightly smaller portion for less calories (depending on the cheese used - see ingredients).
 [Calories in square brackets].