Chicken curry

Hi guys

 

I've not been writing lately, I apologise for that, the last few weeks have been very rough.  I would LOVE to share with you what is going on, but I'm afraid I might jeopardise a big project!

 

I've also been very bad lately and I've gained 3.8 kg, I can't tell you how angry I am at myself for doing this, it's like I can't stop myself!  But today I'm back on track again :)

 

BUT, tomorrow my sister-in-law and my cousin and myself are going to the SA Cheese festival, I'm super excited about that, I never miss a year!  So obviously tomorrow is a TOTAL write off, but I've made my peace with this day a long time ago already.

 

It's a strange thing about cheating on a diet, isn't it?  I always feel like just giving up completely after just a minor transgression.  It's always all or nothing with me, that's a really bad attitude to have on a diet.  I think the ideal way to go about it is to accept what you've done and carry on with eating well for the rest of the day, ad not like me - just blow the lid off and have a pig-out day (okay, well, more like a pig out 2 weeks).

 

Anyway, moving right along:) As always, I have a delicious recipe for you to try out and tell me what you think.  This one is a chicken curry by one of my favourite South African chefs, Cas Abrahams.

Funny story - I actually ate this particular curry for the first time at the above mentioned SA Cheese Festival in 2008 and fell so deeply in love that I found her email address on the Internet and asked for the recipe - and she obliged!

I've had to dukanise it a little, but as usual, most curries are so easily Dukanised, you just have to be a little creative!

 

 

Creamy Chicken Curry

• 5 filleted chicken breasts, cut into strips
• 5 ml curry spice mix
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch
• salt to taste
• 15ml oil
• 2 onions, sliced
• 10ml cumin seeds
• 10ml fennel seeds

• 1 bay leaf

• 1 can whole tomatoes

• 10ml curry spice mix

• 5ml tumeric

• 10ml garlic and ginger paste

• salt to taste

• 1 cup of fat free yogurt

• ½ bunch fresh coriander, chopped

Mix together masala, cornstarch and salt. Coat the chicken with this mixture, shaking off any excess cornstarch mixture.

Heat the oil in a saucepan and lightly fry the chicken breasts on both sides.

Remove the chicken and set aside.

Add the onions, cumin, fennel and bay leaf and sauté until the onion is soft and transparent.

Add the tomatoes and the juice as well as the tumeric, masala and garlic and ginger paste.

Cook until a thick sauce is formed. Return the chicken to the saucepan and simmer until the chicken is cooked, about 5 minutes.

Pour over the yogurt and garnish with coriander leaves.

This is surely my favourite curry in the whole wide world, and it would most definitely make it onto my death row meal list!  I hope you'll love it as much as I do.

 

Have a wonderful weekend and God bless

Janie B

 

 

Thai red curry

Hi guys

I have not been writing so frequently as of late, but my job has been taking the life out of me lately.  I'm sure it's just a phase though, I'll get over it :)

Monday's bliss from my weekend weight loss was rapidly obliterated on Tuesday morning, as I expected, I weighed 2 kg more!  Fortunately I'm back to my Monday weight now and things are going full speed ahead as always.

Tomorrow I have to go jeans shopping, I'm looking for a fairly cheap pair that I hopefully won't be fitting into for too long.  You see, I'm sort of in between ex-fatpants at the moment, currently I have only one pair that fit me properly and it's zipper broke today, it's also a cheap pair, so I'm not even going to bother to have it fixed.

Do you also have fantasies about what you're going to buy when you're thin?  I want to get a pair of 7 for All Mankind jeans, I just think they are the most gorgeous thing a woman can wear and I can't wait to get a pair!

The weather is really taking a turn here currently and it really feels like Winter is descending it's icy paws on us...I LOVE it!  Winter means warm soups, stews and curries - and there is no better diet in the world to be on than the Dukan diet to take full advantage of winter food!

This evening I decided to make a large pot of Thai red curry,  I must say, the green curry (a few posts ago) is still my favourite, but my husband FREAKED out about this one, he says it's the best curry he has ever eaten!  That is quite a big complement for a fat free Dukanised curry!  I googled it and found this one on the Daily Mail UK, it's Jamie Oliver's base recipe, but I Dukanised it.

Thai Red Curry

• 2 stalks of lemon grass
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1-2 red chillies
• 4 kafir lime leaves
• big hand full of fresh coriander leaves
• 2 roasted, skinned red peppers ( I used the tinned variety, in brine, NOT OIL)
• 1 teaspoon of tomato puree
• 1 tablespoon of fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons of soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon of sesame oil
• 2 cm of peeled fresh ginger
• 2 packets of Mange Tout

Combine everything in a food processor and blend until you have a fine paste.  Cut about 700g of skinless chicken breast into bite size pieces and marinade in the curry paste for a few hours.  Tip it into a heated wok and simmer till the chicken is cooked, add the Mange Tout and cover for about 3 minutes until the Mange Tout are just cooked and still crispy.

Once again, like with the green curry, we aren't allowed to have coconut milk, so fat free yogurt and coconut extract is used.  Once your curry is cooked, remove from the heat and let it sit for 5 minutes before stirring in 500ml of plain fat free yogurt and a few drops of coconut essence.

This curry blew my husband's mind, but I still favour the green one.   But I must say, I love this diet more and more every day - the possibilities are endless!

Lots of love and God bless

Janie B

Best mushroom sauce EVER

Hi guys

I haven't blogged in a while, partly due to work and partly due to Easter festivities - we had a nice long weekend and went to visit my mom, she lives about 400km from us, so we don't visit her that often.

Fortunately she's very health conscious and was more than accommodating in terms of food and drink!  However, we did falter severely this weekend, in fact, I wasn't even going to blog today since I was sure that I would have gained so much weight over the weekend, that I was too embarrassed to come on here...

But determined to face my demons and deal with the consequences of my indiscretions, I got on the scale the moment I set foot in my house - I had lost 1kg over the weekend.

I can't describe to you the high that I'm on right now, the last thing I want to do is condone my behaviour this past weekend, but I have thought about it and came up with some theories as to why this was possible.

Now, there were 2 major transgressions - firstly, on Friday night we went to a buffet restaurant, we've been there before and we knew the food was always of impeccable quality - I decided to take an off evening and ate SO much, I felt like I was about to burst at the seams by the time we left, and it was so good!!

The next morning naturally I felt guilty as hell, but when I reflected on it, I realised that we were actually remarkably good about it, without even realising it.  My husband and I talked about what we had eaten and it turns out we just went for all the meaty stuff anyway - none of the carb stuff, naturally it was rather high fat meaty stuff, but none the less, almost no carbs - I was kind of impressed with how the Dukan diet had already started to influence both our food choices, even this early on in our diet.

The second transgression came the next day at lunch time when some good friends that we haven't seen for ages invited us to lunch.  We all chose a restaurant that we knew had terrible service and even worse food, but is such a spectacular venue right on the beach, that we didn't care.  The menu options were very limited and prompted by everybody saying "aw screw it - you guys can diet again tomorrow" we both ordered a pizza.  It was definitely THE most vile pizza I had ever eaten in my entire life,  there was so much grease lying on top of it, I had to blot it with a serviette!  I decided to stick with diet soda, my hubby and our friends, however had several bottles of our favourite Sauvignon Blanc :)

I think my saving grace this weekend was the fact that we stuck to our guns the rest of the time, I'm sure you're all very familiar with the attitude of just going crazy with food for an entire day/weekend after a single transgression, I sure as hell am very proud of myself!

So, after all the grease and carbs of Saturday, my mom plucked the most gorgeous slab of beef fillet from her fridge for us to barbecue, I marinated it in some balsamic vinegar before hitting the grill and my husband, who is simply a genius with a grill and some coal (seriously, he'd probably scare Bobby Flay...),  grilled it to a perfectly rare finish.

I left it to rest for 20 minutes, wrapped in tin foil before slicing it and serving it with my amazing (first time invention, made up as going along) mushroom sauce!

Mushroom Sauce

•  1 punnet of mushrooms of your choice - sliced
• 1 cup of fat free milk
• 1 tablespoon of corn flour
• salt and pepper
• 1 cube of beef stock dissolved in a little water
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1/2 tub of smooth fat free cottage cheese

Brown the mushrooms in a non stick pan, taking care not to crowd them, otherwise they won't brown.  Mix the milk and corn flour in a cup and add to the mushrooms over low heat while stirring constantly.  Add the stock fluid and cook through.

You can make it up to this point and leave for later, reheat in the microwave if you like.  Just before serving, stir in the cottage cheese and serve with what ever meat takes your fancy!

I hope you enjoy this one!


Have a great evening and God bless
Janie B

Barbecue chicken

Hi Guys

I've started to lose weight again - man, it feels so good!!

A lot of you have inspired me to also make a list of mini goals on my blog, like a check list I can tick as time goes on.  You will see it to the right of my posts.  Yes, I know it looks like I'm having a nationality identity crisis, but if I use the different units of measurement, it makes it more interesting than just goals of 5kg increments, and between pounds, kilogrammes and stones, there are about 4 increments in a 10kg space!  It certainly impressed me :)

I've decided not to dwell on what I've achieved, but rather on what is yet to come, you'll see I'm super close to my first goal!

I think it is very important to find as many ways as possible to motivate yourself, even if it seems a bit silly, I know I certainly need a lot of motivation some days! 

Currently I'm working a weekend of nights, and on Friday evening before work, I found a uniform in my closet that I haven't worn in over 3 years 'cuz I was too fat... I tried it on, since I couldn't remember how much I last weighed when I fit into it, and to my surprise, it fit!  Still a little tight around the butt area, but totally wearable - I went to work on SUCH a high!

You know how certain smells get you all salivating and ready so succumb to the deliciousness that gave life to that aroma?  On Wednesday evening I got home and someone in our apartment building was having a barbecue - the entire parking area smelled of barbecue chicken and lamb chops.  I nearly couldn't swallow my saliva fast enough - and to boot, had a very busy day and by 6pm still hadn't eaten ANYTHING - very vulnerable!  Fortunately, my awesome husband stepped in and saved me from a sure cheat and got us some gorgeous grilled fish from a local fish and chips shop.

But still, all I could think about was that meat, lying there, grilling, dripping juices on those red hot coals, filling the air with their intoxicating aroma...(I was really into this - can you tell?)

So the next day I prepared to have our own BBQ - Dukan style!  I took lamb chops from freezer and defrosted those (don't worry, they were nice and lean) and went and bought some skinless fatless chicken thighs and drumsticks.

Enter Mom's portugese-esque BBQ chicken marinade - I've had to severely Dukanise it, but I'm glad to report it survived the surgery and still tastes AMAZING.

This time I thought I'd keep the name of the recipe in Afrikaans, my home language, just for fun!

Ma se Braaihoendersous

• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 3 tablespoons of paprika (I used 1 smoked and 2 regular)
• 3 teaspoons of mustard powder
• 3 tablespoons of chili sauce
• 2 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce
• 1 onion
• 2 teaspoons of salt
• 3 cloves of garlic
• some freshly ground black pepper

Chuck it all into the bowl of your food processor and blend till smooth.  Put your chicken in a zip lock bag and cover with the marinade, squeeze out most of the air before sealing it and marinade the chicken overnight in the fridge.

This hits the coals the next day and just a small word of warning - you may need an old broom stick to keep your neighbours at bay :)

I hope you LOVE this!

Happy barbecuing and God Bless!

Janie B