Come Dine with Vickii - Greek Salad

Wow! I'm writing a blog post. About salad. Who woulda thunk it? Definitely not my mum who if she is reading this, will be reading it open-mouthed and wide eyed with disbelief. And she'll definitely call me after to say "Wow Vickii, you wrote about salad. I'm very impressed". Actually this is a great test for whether she regularly reads my blog or not - mama, if you read this, call me and tell me how proud you are of me for eating green food!

I do eat force down salads. Just not regularly. And usually for no other reason other than I know they're good for me. That, my friends, should be proof positive of just how good Greek salad is. In Greece, almost every meal is accompanied by a Greek salad; tomatoes full of the taste of summer, beautiful red onion, creamy Greek feta cheese all drizzled with Greek extra virgin olive oil. Y-U-M-M-Y. And bread. Did I forget to mention that Greek salad (and all Greek meals generally) are always accompanied by fresh french stick-style bread cut into chunky slices? The best part of any such meal is the end when all the salad is gone and all that is left is the tomatoey, feta-ey, salty olive oil flavoured juices at the bottom of the salad bowl just begging to be mopped up with a crusty piece of bread ... please give me a minute, I've just been transported to my Yaya's balcony in Xilocastro with the bread and salad juices...

... Okay, I'm back. 

I made this to accompany the Pastitsio for my 'Come Dine with Me' but unfortunately, I gave the bread a miss as I thought my meal was pretty carb-heavy already. I decided to use the recipe in 'My Greek Family Table' as even though I know all the ingredients and usually wing it, I wanted to do it the right way - and I have to say, this was my best effort at a Greek Salad.

ps: You'll find this on most Greek menus as 'Horiatiki salata' which translates into 'Villager's salad'

pps: I'm half Greek, hence the fall back on a Greek menu and references to Greece - I'm not just some strange Greek-o-phile (yeah, yeah, I know it's not a word)

Serves 4

Ingredients

4 large ripe tomatoes

1 cucumber

1 large red onion

18 Kalamata olives

200g Greek feta, sliced through to make two thin slices

sea salt

dried oregano, to taste

extra virgin olive oil, for drizzling

1 - Wash and dry the tomatoes and cucumber. Cut the tomatoes into quarters. Cut the cucumbers into thin rounds

2 - Peel the onion and slice into thin rounds

3 - Combine the tomato, cucumber, onions and olives in a large bowl, sprinkle sea salt and oregano to taste and mix through

4 - Balance the pieces of feta on top, sprinkle a bit more oregano over the feta and drizzle generously with extra virgin olive oil

Happy (and Healthy) New Year - Apple and Sunflower Seed Muffins

I'm not usually one for following the crowd. But this new year, I'm jumping on probably the biggest bandwagon there is. You know, that one that comes round once a year (maybe twice if you count pre-summer), right at the beginning of the year, straight on the heels of Christmas excesses. Yup, that's right, I am going on a diet! I have Christmas and two weeks in Lagos straight after, gorging on all the foods I love, to blame. 


My diet of choice is Weight Watchers, which I'm constantly touting as the best diet around. There's no self deprivation, or cutting out entire food groups. Instead, with a daily point value, it just teaches you how to make healthier food choices so you can get the most for your points. Don't worry, though, this does not mean I'm going to stop baking all the other fattening stuff! Thanks to the new WW ProPoints system, I have an extra allowance each week, which I'll spend some having a slice or portion of the stuff I bake! However, I'll also be experimenting with healthier recipes so bear with me my anti-diet readers, there will be plenty for you too!


First up are these muffins. I can't lie, these do taste like diet muffins but they're tasty, filling make a good and healthy substitute for a muffin breakfast or in place of your afternoon cake. I believe that there are low-fat muffin recipes out there that are tastier than this, but these were a good start. 


5 WW ProPoints per muffin
Makes 8


Ingredients


3 eggs
100ml skimmed milk
7 tsp artificial granulated sweetener
150g apples, grated
100g carrots, grated
2 tbsp sunflower oil
30g sultanas
10g sunflower seeds
300g plain flower
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of salt


For the icing
1 - 2 tbsp lemon juice
40g icing sugar


1 - Preheat oven to Gas Mark 4/180°C/fan oven 160°C. 
2 - Line two muffin tins with 8 muffin cake cases
3 - Whisk together the eggs, milk, sweetener, apples, carrots, sunflower oil, sultanas and sunflower seeds

4 - In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, mixed spice, ground cinnamon and pinch of salt

5 - Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just combined

6 - Spoon into the muffin cases and bake for 30 - 35 minutes. Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack

7 - Mix the icing sugar with the lemon juice and drizzle over the muffins.

These are best eaten on the day they're made or the can be frozen. Defrost and warm through in a microwave (medium power) before eating.

Good-For-You Granola

Firstly, let's get this out of the way ... Is granola good for you?? Answer: It can be great for you!  Containing slow release carbohydrates (oats) and protein (nut and seeds), the one thing to watch out for is that like most cereals, some brands contain a lot of sugar. Granola is not low fat by any means, but the fats it does have are good fats like nuts. It is a very healthful food that keeps you full for ages. However, if you are on a low-fat diet, please look away now and return to your bowl of Special K.


I've loved granola since I was introduced to it in Canada several years ago, and I still eat it like I ate it then; with yoghurt. My current favourite lunch is a bowl of blueberries, topped with Onken wholegrain strawberry yoghurt and a layer of granola on the top ... yum! Before the last couple of years, there weren't many brands of granola available to buy in supermarkets in the UK though that looks to be changing. Dorset Cereals have had Honey Granola for a while and have now introduced three new new granola flavours; Marmalade, Chocolate and Chocolate Granola and Macadamia nuts. I recently tried the Chocolate and Macadamia nuts flavour and I wasn't too impressed. Their honey granola is good though; almost as good as mine ;p I also liked a granola by 'Lizi's Good Carb Company'.
However, after deciding to look up a recipe and try making it about a year ago, I only buy granola when I can't be bothered to make my own which is a silly excuse since it is very easy to make! I've only tried this BBC Good Food recipe and it's so good, I literally have to stop myself just snacking on it. Especially when it has just come out of the oven as it smells heavenly!


The great thing about this recipe - or any granola recipe, I imagine - is that you can pick and choose what goes into it according to your preferences. I, for example, don't put dried berries or any fruit for that matter in my granola (Hey, hey, hey! Don't judge me. Like I said, my granola usually tops a huge bowl of blueberries that is two portions of my 5-a-day thank you very much :D) But I've discovered that pecans taste INCREDIBLE in it so I usually just replace the flaked almonds and dried berries with pecans. And I always throw in a few handfuls of flax seed or linseed (even though they're more or less the same thing) for good measure and it doesn't alter the taste one bit! While I love it with vanilla extract like the BBC recipe, I recently made a batch replacing the vanilla with nutmeg and cinammon and that was fab too. And I intend to plagiarise from Dorset cereals and try making it with marmalade some day :D It's pretty much win win win!


As somewhat of a seasoned making-my-own-granola-from-this-recipe pro, here are a couple of tips to guide you newbies on your way:

Honey/Maple syrup/sunflower oil/vanilla 

 1) You'll need to at least double the cooking time in   the recipe. Stir every 15 minutes and aim for it to be crunchy but not browned.
 2) I recommend making twice the recipe as you'll get through it very quickly ...it's that tasty! Cook in two batches if you do this.
 3) If adding dried fruit, leave it till the last 15 minutes and add it with the coconut or else it goes quite hard and gummy.

Happy granola making and eating!

Banana Wholemeal Muffins

I have an embarrassing confession - I can't bake muffins and cookies. And I know you're all thinking what all good muffin bakers say to me; 'Muffins are the easiest thing to make, you just put all the ingredients together and don't over stir!'. Yeah, yeah, I've heard it all before and I personally think that is all just a ginormous conspiracy to make me realise how inadequate a baker I am! Okay, so in actual fact I've only attempted muffins once before now so perhaps I judged myself to hastily. But I can make three-layer cakes dammit! I can't believe I was stumped by a silly orange muffin! (In case you're wondering what was wrong with it, it tasted good but was hard as a rock cake!). And I've only made cookies once too,  a very long time ago, and I can't even remember how bad they were but I'm going to go with very bad if I blocked it out of my memory - forgetting food is not something I do often!

On a related aside, when I worked at Penguin, there was this thing called a pulp shelf - basically, all Penguin books that weren't sold in book stores are returned to the publisher and it was cheaper to get rid of (pulp) them than it was to take them back to the warehouse and sort them out so our pulp shelves were stocked every day and we were allowed to take 2 books a day. That was probably the best perk of the job for a bookaholic like me! However, all the books usually went within 10 minutes of the shelves being stocked so luck played a part too. My friend Ben saw and took this book 'Muffin Bible' before I did but after some shameless begging, he let me have it on the condition that I bake them all muffins from the book - bet he regretted that when I brought in my chocolate orange rock cakes muffins! It's an amazing book with lots of different recipes that all look great! Now that I've made my first successful batch of muffins, I might give some of the others a go.

Say hello to my 'You're not a failure' muffins! I liked to think they are pretty healthy as they don't have much sugar (and what they do contain is brown) and they use wholemeal flour so I had them for breakfast for a week! They're not too sweet and were soft and fluffy, just like other people's muffins are! Yay me! And perhaps all those bakers are right, they were very easy to make ;p

Ingredients

2 ripe banana
1 egg
75g butter, melted
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup hot milk
1 1/2 cups wholemeal flour
2tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sultanas

1 - Mash bananas and add egg, butter and baking soda dissolved in milk
2 - Add remaining ingredients and mix until just combined
3 - Three-quarters fill well-greased muffin pans and bake at 200ºC for 15-20 minutes.