Bowl eating has definitely become somewhat of a trend in the recent couple of years.  You can call them power bowls or  health bowls, Buddah bowls, etc. but there is something quite inspiring about eating out of a bowl.  

Bowls are not just for soup or cereal anymore!  It's like bowls have now become the hot new plates!

I created a healthy Spring Veggie Bowl for my lunch yesterday and I have to say I quite, quite enjoyed it.  

I am not sure it would have brought me quite the same enjoyment had it been served on a plate, but eating this from a bowl was incredibly tasty and left me feeling very much like I was doing something good for myself.

Filled with spring vegetables  . . .  English peas, asparagus, purple sprouting broccoli and chard . . .  each vegetable quickly cooked until crispy tender with very little use of any fat.  

I used an olive oil cooking spray and a non stick pan . . . if you are afraid that the veggies will burn or stick before they are crispy tender, you can add a splash of water, which works very well, with just a touch of seasoning.

I used whole wheat pasta . . . which is a low GI carb.  

Our bodies need healthy carbs.  That is where we get our energy from.

There is a light dressing on the pasta . . .  for a bit of extra flavour, and I topped it with some coarsely grated Parmesan cheese and chopped toasted walnuts.  

Walnuts are a superfood, and so is chard and broccoli.  Altogether this  makes for a very colourful, quite delicious and healthy bowl full of food!

 

Divide the spaghetti between two pasta bowls.  Arrange the cooked veggies on top of each.  Top each with half of the coarsely grated cheese and chopped toasted walnuts.  Serve immediately.



Here's to good health and Bon Appetit!

We may have a red meat once a week, or probably even less than that . . . and we always have fish at least once as well . . . but chicken, well, it's a real mainstay in our kitchen.




More often than not, I will serve Chicken Breasts.  Chicken was not something we had very often when I was growing up.  

Occasionally my mother would do a Roast Chicken as a treat . . . and every once in a Blue Moon she would cook Maryland Fried Chicken, which we loved.  It was Chicken Breasts, dipped in egg and cracker crumbs and then fried.  

When that was on the menu, we knew were in for a real treat!  Chicken used to be a lot more expensive in the olden days.



Nowadays it's fairly affordable, depending on which type you buy.  If you are not bothered as to it's source or the ethics of responsible rearing, well then you could probably eat chicken every night of the week, coz that kind of chicken is cheap as chips.  

I am a bit more bothered about these things.  My husband worked on a Battery Chicken Egg Farm in Germany when he as younger for a short time and it was more than he could stomach . . . 

I have a real heart for animal cruelty and so I don't have a stomach for eating any kind of meat that's not raised according to high standards of animal welfare . . . so we eat chicken about two or three times a week, and it's always free range.



I know if I had a large family to feed it might be different, but for now it's just us two here,  and I can afford to pay a bit more.  I know not everyone has that option. 

I love chicken breasts because they are like a blank canvas just waiting to be written upon.   

They take to so many different flavours and styles of cooking . . . and as long as you don't overcook them, they make a pretty good basis for a delicious supper.



Today I cooked them a la Cordon Bleu.  I know . . . which interestingly enough is not to be confused with the French Cooking School of the same name.  

Cordon Bleu actually originated in Switzerland . . . and was done using veal cutlets, stuffed with cheese and ham.  

Chicken Cordon Bleu is, I believe . . . an American invention.    Cordon Bleu merely means Blue Ribbon . . . and this is my blue ribbon chicken!



I broke all the rules of course.  But I think I have made it better.  I rolled the ham around the cheese, a good Swiss Emmenthal in this case, and then I cut a pocket into the chicken breast and stuffed it inside.  

No risk of the cheese oozing out because it's inside the ham.  I also happen to believe that if you can cut through the fibres of a chicken breast like that . . . you are going to have one very tender chicken breast.  

I could be wrong, don't quote me on that . . . I only know for sure that it seems to work.



That was the only rule I broke though.  I then floured, egged and crumbed it as per normal, or pané (pan-aaaa) as it was called in Culinary School.  

I added butter to the crumbs ahead of time so that I wouldn't have to fry them, and then I baked them for a few minutes at a high temperature, and then finished them off at a lower temperature.



The end result . . . perfectly cooked Chicken Cordon Bleu . . . crisply crumbed on the outside, moist and tender on the insides and chock full of oozing cheese and ham.



In short.  Fabulous.  But don't take my word for it.  

Try them out yourself and see if I'm not telling the truth.  ☺



  *Simple Chicken Cordon Bleu*
Serves 4 to 6
Printable Recipe

A traditionally complicated dish, simplified.  Delicious and quite easy really!

25 buttery round crackers
4 slices of sourdough bread
6 TBS butter, melted
8 thin slices of deli ham
8 ounces of emmenthaler cheese, grated (about 2 cups, Swiss)
4 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts (I like to use free range chicken)
fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 large free range eggs
2 TBS Dijon mustard
100g of plain flour (about 1 cup)

Preheat the oven 225*C/425*F/ gas mark 7.  Have ready a large baking tray with a lip.  Stir together about 1 tsp of salt and 1/2 tsp of black pepper in a small bowl.

Put the crackers into a food processor and blitz until they are coarsely ground.  Dump into a bowl.  Do the same with the bread, dumping it into the same bowl.  Pour the melted butter over all and toss together.  Spread the crumb mixture out over the baking tray.  Bake them in the hot oven, stirring them from time to time, until golden brown.  This can take anywhere between 3 to 5 minutes.  Remove from the oven and place in a shallow bowl.  Set the tray aside.

Wash your chicken breasts, pat dry and then cut a deep pocket in the thickest part of the breast, with a sharp knife, making an opening of about 3 inches, sliding the knife carefully inside to create the cavity without cutting through the meat to the back or the bottom.  Lay your slices of ham out on a board.  Top each slice with 1/8th of the grated cheese (about 1/4 cup), then roll the ham tightly around it to cover the cheese completely.  Stuff two of these ham rolls in each cavity of the chicken.

Beat the eggs, together with the mustard,  in a shallow bowl.  Place the flour in another shallow bowl.  You should have three shallow bowls laid out.  Place them in this order:  Flour, Eggs and then finally bread crumbs.  Season each chicken breast all over with some of the salt and pepper mix.  Roll each in the flour, then dip into the egg to coat, finally rolling each in the toasted crumbs, pressing the crumbs on to help them adhere.  Place them onto a clean baking sheet, when done, leaving a bit of space between each.  (At this point you could refrigerate them until you are ready to bake them  if you wished.)

Place them into the heated oven and bake for 10 minutes at the higher temperature.  Reduce the oven heat to 200*C/400*F/ gas mark 6, and bake for a further 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown and the chicken juices run clear when it is pierced with a fork.  Transfer to a platter and tent with foil.  Allow to rest for five minutes before serving. 

It's a good thing this recipe only makes two scones because if it made any more than that I would be in deep, deep trouble!  These are fabulous!  

I found the recipe over on a page called Dessert for Two and it looked like it would be something we might enjoy and so I went for it!






On looking a bit closer at the recipe I could see that it was a riff on a delicious scone recipe from Wolfgang Puck,  albeit of a much smaller quantity and with a Maple Glaze added.   

There really IS nothing new under the sun, only new ways of doing things!

I didn't do anything different, I just made them and baked them and then we devoured them.  

I have done the hard work of converting the measurements to UK measurements and that is how I made them, using UK measurements, so that I could be sure that they worked, and they did.  So that was my addition to the recipe.

 





You really have to bake these.   They are quite simply amazingly fabulous.  You can thank me later.  ;-)

While the scones are baking, whisk together the icing sugar, maple syrup and leftover cream to make a thick glaze.  You may need to add a drop or two of warm water.  Spoon this mixture evenly over the scones as soon as they come out of the oven.  Serve warm.






Mmmm . . .  gorgeous served warm, and pretty damn good served cold.  These babies are huge so my husband and I shared one the first day and then had the second one the day after cold.  Scrumdiddlyumptious!

Bon Appetit!

I pretty much love it in every way shape or form, except over cooked.  (I don't think anyone likes it that way and I can't say that I blame them!)  Unfortunately at this stage in life, Broccoli doesn't always love me.  

Broccoli and cheese are a beautiful flavor combination that works beautifully in soup.  There are ton of recipes out there for Broccoli Cheese soup, but most are filled with tons of fat and calories.  

What if I told you that you could easily create a light broccoli soup, which contains cheese and it despite it being light it could still be delicious?

 

I really, really love Broccoli Cheese Soup . . . but it can be really high in fat and calories.   With all of that cream and cheese  . . .  sigh  . . . kind of takes away from all of the positives of eating broccoli. 

I am about to change that.  Big time. With a heart healthy broccoli cheese soup.



I took our favourite broccoli cheese soup recipe, which has  bazillion calories in it, and I made a few changes in it.  I came up with a soup recipe which I think is just as creamy and delicious as the original.

 There is no cream in it whatsoever, only 1 TBS of butter (instead of the original 2 ounces plus 1 TBS) and  this delicious lighter version uses but a fraction of the cheese.



I applied a tip I learned in my Cooking for Diabetes Class. 

I used a large potato instead of cream to both thicken the soup and to help give it that creamy texture.   It works amazingly well.



I used a small amount of milk and only a fraction of the cheese. I opted  to use a low fat sharp cheddar (lots of flavor) and finely grated Parmesan.  

Parmesan cheese has so much flavor that a little bit goes a very long way. Using a low fat cheese which contains tons of flavor is a trick to getting more cheese flavor into things without all the fat calories.

 

I also made some really tasty whole wheat crackers to go along with it.  I used some Warburtons whole wheat wrap breads, that I spritzed with some water and sprinkled with some herbs and seasoning.

I cut into squares using a pizza cutter (easy to do coz the wraps are square) and then baked them in the oven until they were crisp!  I had my soup with some of these and my husband had his with a whole wheat roll. ( I have never quite gotten over my love of having crackers with soup.)  

All in all this was very delicious, and made  nice light supper.  Plus it gave me another way of getting broccoli with is so good for you into my husband, who declared it to be very tasty and went back for seconds.




Melt the butter in a large saucepan.  Add the onion, carrot and broccoli stalks.  Sweat over low heat for about 10 minutes, without browning and stirring frequently.  Add the chicken broth and chopped potato.  Bring to the boil.  Reduce to a slow simmer, cover and cook for 15 minutes.  Uncover and add the broccoli florets.  Bring back to the boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for an additional five minutes.  Stir in the milk and nutmeg.  Blitz smooth using an immersion blender to your desired consistency.  I like it a bit chunky, but Todd prefers it smooth.  I try to get it somewhere in beween.   Stir in both cheeses to melt.  Gently reheat without boiling.  Adjust seasoning with some salt and black pepper.  Serve hot.



Broccoli is one of those super foods that is very good for you.  A member of the cruciferous vegetable family,  it is loaded with vitamins and anti-oxidents and has been shown in recent studies to actually slow down the destruction of cartilage associated with Osteo-arthritis!  

I have osteo-arthritis, which is a very painful and somewhat debilitating disease and so I need to be eating my broccoli, and lots of it.  This delicious soup can make that process very painless. ;-)

Bon Appetit!! 

 

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