Cooking for a particular bunch of friends is not easy, especially when they watch what they eat and you want to please them. I know we are at the age where we have to be careful because a minute on the lip is forever on the hip, but, me, I am not so disciplined. I love picking and I enjoy my cakes, carbs and calories (my 3 Cs) so this does not help when cooking for a set of body conscious friends.
Inviting them for dinner needs me to re think my ‘after work’ menu. Not easy when pasta my quick and easy go to dish is strictly off limits. Being a week night and leaving things last minute, I was racking my brain to come up with something aside from the over made, over eaten, much ado about nothing rocket and parmesan salad. Flicking through my handful of cookery books and files of given recipes and raiding cupboards and fridge to see what I had in stock, I came up with a lettuce and noodle salad, a broccoli and pepper salad and salmon fillets. Not bad from me, the undomesticated eldest daughter of the Kontoloucas family! The salmon fillets (with a fat-free sauce) – a friend’s recipe, the broccoli salad – a neighbour’s recipe, kindly offered after me sampling it a couple of days before and the Chinese lettuce and noodle recipe from my mother. Thank goodness for my cookery scrap book prezzie from mum! Piles of recipes ‘borrowed’ from everyone around me always come to the rescue, this explains my blog post on Thursdays.
So, ditching the carbs, I went all out in the quickest, fat free way to create a meal to please my girls. Meals in minutes as they say! Yeah, that’s kind of true! In 60 minutes I was done! Husband out, kids bathed and bedded meal ready – AND all by 21:00.
Because I’m definitely using this menu again, and sharing is caring 😉 I thought I’d share my night fix with you!
Salmon Fillets in Fat-Free Sauce
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Ingredients:
- Salmon fillets (1 per person)
- Soy sauce
- Teriyaki sauce
Method:
Dry fry salmon fillets in soy sauce and teriyaki sauce – enough to cover a third of the fillets. Cook for approx. 10 min or according to how well you want it cooked.
Lettuce and Noodle Salad
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Ingredients:
- X1 Chinese Lettuce
- X2 packets of ready chicken noodles
- Sesame seeds
- Peeled, roasted almonds
- ½ glass Olive oil
- 4 tbsp. Soya Sauce
- 4 tbsp. sesame oil
- 4 tbsp. Balsamic Vinegar
- 3 tbsp. Honey
- Salt
Method:
(feeds 6)
Dry fry sesame seeds and almonds till light brown, take out of the frying pan and put to the side. Dry fry noodles and sprinkle the chicken seasoning that comes in the packet. Finely chop a packet of Chinese lettuce and put it into a bowl. Add the cooked almonds and sesame seeds then mix in the crunchy noodles. The dressing is so simple! Put the oil, soya sauce, sesame oil, balsamic vinegar, honey and salt into a shaker then pour into the salad.
Raw broccoli, Red Pepper and Apple Salad
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Ingredients:
- 300 gr of raw broccoli
- 1 Red Pepper
- 1 Granny Smith apple
- 30 gr of pine nuts
- 25 gr olive oil
- 15 gr white wine vinegar
- 1 teaspoon honey
- 1 ½ teaspoon mustard
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon of pepper
Method:
(feeds 6)
Cut the raw broccoli into 1cm pieces, finely chopped red pepper and apple. Put these ingredients into a bowl and add the pine nuts. Put the oil, vinegar, honey, mustard, salt and pepper into a shaker then pour into the salad.
