Good-for-you Creamy Curry

You know those gorgeous indian curries from up north - the ones you're not supposed to eat because they are full of all the bad stuff - cream, butter, ghee, ground nuts and coconut cream - dishes like Butter Chicken and that super creamy Korma. By God, they're good. But ohhh, so BAD!

This is a healthy take. It's still incredibly decadent, creamy and rich, but has a fraction of the naughtiness you'd expect. The secret is all in making a puree from vegetables that are naturally creamy, sweet and nutty in flavour.

Ingredients

• 4 medium-sized chicken breasts (about 750g), each cut into about 6 pieces
• 500g pumpkin, medium dice
• 2 small onions, diced
• 2-3 garlic cloves, crushed
• 10 curry leaves
• 1 tsp brown mustard seeds
• 1/4 tsp cumin seeds (bruised)
• 1-2 tsp good curry powder (depending on strength)
• 1/4 tsp tumeric
• 1/2 tsp chilli powder (optional)
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 small tub low fat yoghurt (approx 170g)
• olive oil
• 1 cup frozen green peas (optional)
• salt and pepper to taste

Chicken and camel milk tagine

 I have a new tagine. It's a fancy one - Staub. It cost way too much, but it's the first tagine I've had that does the full job - it works on the stovetop, and in the oven. Until now, I've used a 45 year old enamel pot that came to me through my mother in law, and I will still use that lovely pot, but the added bonus with a tagine like this is that it looks damn good on a table.

I'm still inspired by my trip to Jordan, and after cooking mansaf the other day, I thought of my tagine, and chicken. Chicken is so tender and juicy when poached in milk. Jamie Oliver has a great recipe that I had made when my family still included regular dairy in the diet. But now I use camel milk due to its better casein profile. It also has a richer flavour, a light tang and an incredible creaminess despite its low fat content. Camel milk is readily available here in Dubai - for those who can't find it, substitute with buttermilk rather than regular milk, otherwise it will be a little bland, as I use fillets in this recipe rather than a whole chicken.

Crunchy chicken and creamed corn crumble

Yep, it's a mouthful. And, it's not very pretty. 

BUT

This is the first proudly gluten-free dairy-free dinner I have presented my children with that has been scoffed like junk food. Possibly they are starved after 4 weeks of seaweed rice crackers and almond milk no-sugar banana smoothies and other things they simply don't want to eat? No, I don't think it's just that. This is actually yummy.

Ingredients:*

• leek, finely chopped
• garlic, crushed
• celery, finely chopped
• carrot, finely chopped 
• pinch salt
• thyme 
• last night's leftover roast chicken (removed from bone and diced roughly)
• dash of water
• tinned corn
• almond cream (or a non-dairy milk if you can't get this)
• corn (maize) flour (or another gluten-free flour for thickening)
• rice (cooked)
• breadcrumbs (gluten free of course)
• margarine (again, dairy free)

Kids Chicken Urumaki

So pretty. I love japanese food, but my kids don't. I used to look longingly at children in malls munching on sushi cones while mine dragged me towards the chicken nuggets. All that lovely flavour, nutrients like iodine omega 3 and zinc that their diets are so deficient in. Eventually I just stopped looking and longing and accepted my fate - I am a mother of fast food junkies.

Not any more.

This is the first step in getting my kids to eat sushi. They love it. Not only that, they love making it - ahh, my dreams of being mother to a great chef are not shattered after all. Thanks for the inspiration Movenpick (post here about kids menus)

Ingredients:

• 200g boneless chicken thighs, trimmed of fat then pan-fried and sliced into 1cm ribbons
• 1 avocado, sliced
• 100g lean lardons (bacon cubes), panfried
• 1 cucumber, sliced lengthwise
• 3 cups cooked sumeshi rice (preparation guide here)
• nori sheets
• mango pulp (puree or push through a seive) and blanched edamame beans for garnish

This time it's not thyme

Roast Chicken. It used to be one of the best known comfort foods. Delicious, easy to cook, dripping with juicy salty goodness. Then the supermarket rotisserie came along and spoiled it all for everybody. They sold cooked chooks for less than a fresh one, and so all the sensible people went and purchased them instead. 

Or were they sensible? A supermarket rotisserie has great skin, but that's where the comparison to a home-cooked chicken stops. They're dry, spindly little battery-hens, often overcooked, flavoured either too simply or with truckloads of horrible stuff like MSG.

Wouldn't you rather have the juicy free-range one in this picture?

Chicken and Herb Salad

The problem with living life as a hedonista is that you tend to get fat - all of that overindulgence eventually catches up with you. I have a friend who refuses to let that get him down - he laughs and pops another cholesterol pill with his saucisson, and says that life would be meaningless without good food. I however, also take pleasure from wearing beautiful clothes, and at the moment, all I fit into is tents from Carrefour.

So. Diet. But what diet for a hedonista? The Atken's Diet of course. Well, maybe an abridged one - I simply avoid all starches (rather than all carbohydrates including sugars) every second day, and amazingly, it works. When things get really bad, I have to go weeks on end without starch, but that has a particularly cranky side effect. 

Slap-Dash Biryani in the rice cooker

I have always loved Biryani. I suppose it comes from all my childhood memories of cinnamon, and of course where it was used - apple pie, with sugar on pancakes, mixed into Mum's banana custard - all wonderfully sweet and heart-warming dishes. So now the use of it is always associated with comforting, warm moments - and I am doing my best to add it to my own children's sensory memories.

True Biryani is made by pan-frying a spice, onion and meat mix, then adding to par-cooked rice and finally baking the lot in an oven. All this takes about 2 1/2 hours. In these days of gadgets, I make mine in (gasp!) a rice cooker. I cook the meat seperately, because I like to keep it browned and crispy, and although you could serve this spiced rice with anything, from barbecued lamb kebabs to garlic tiger prawns or even on it's own, I like it with chicken.

Cooking with Sunrise

Living in the Middle East does wonderful things to ones spice cabinet. Where we might suffer from a dearth of fresh local meat and vegetables , it is made up for in spades by what can be bought not only at the spice souq, but even out of sacks at the local Carrefour (we get plenty of imports, so don't think for a moment that I'm starving over here - it's quite to the contrary). My favorite of all is saffron - the gold of spices. Back in Melbourne, it's actually costlier than gold and here only a little less, so yes, it's a guilty pleasure. However only a few strands will do the trick, making the investment worth it.

Saffron is the stamens of the crocus  flower, and carries with it the aroma of sweet nectar and floral plains of Iran. When used in cooking it lends a flavor of honey on toast, and the color of sunrise to the sauce. It is used extensively in Persian, Arabic and North African cooking, but also anywhere the spice routes delivered it across Asia, and for so long, that many cultures argue they were the original producers - although it does appear it was actually Greece.

When buying Saffron, ensure you are buying the genuine article - there are many poor substitutes, including safflower, which looks almost identical - ensure that the colour is vibrant crimson, with hints of deep yellow-orange. The strands should be slightly moist and surprisingly strong. When moistened, they will leech bright yellow - the colour of tumeric, but never substitute turmeric in a recipe - the flavours are not the same.