Chicken in Smoky Barbecue Sauce

This recipe is a real taste of summer. I based the sauce on the Slimming World BBQ sauce but to give the sauce a smokier flavour I substituted the mild chilli powder with smoked paprika. It brought back memories of a sauce I used to have with hamburgers called Hickory sauce.

Serves 4

4 skinless chicken breasts
Low calorie cooking spray
1 onion peeled and roughly chopped
1 tsp smoked paprika
225g passata
3 tbsp sweetener
4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp Worcester sauce
Half tsp French mustard
Sea salt and ground black pepper

Begin by making your sauce.

Spray a pan with low calorie cooking spray and sauté your roughly chopped onion and paprika over a high heat for around 5 minutes until the onion is soft.

Stir in the remaining sauce ingredients and bring to boil and simmer until thickened. This will take about 10 minutes.

While your sauce thickens you can grill your chicken on a George Foreman Grill.

Spoon your sauce on to your grilled chicken.

I served the chicken with salad and coleslaw.

Vietnamese Chicken

Based on a Hairy Bikers recipe, I have adapted it to make it even healthier and still as tasty.

When it was marinating I was so excited to cook and taste this dish because it had the most amazing aroma that was so great. The longer it marinates the better.

When cooked you get a beautifully balanced taste of punchy spiciness from the chilli and fruity sweetness from the lemongrass. The classic ting and yang of Asian cuisine.

I served it with chunky stir fry vegetables. But this dish would work equally as well with Thai Fragrant Jasmine rice.

Serves 4

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
2 spring onions sliced diagonally

Marinade:
4 garlic cloves
2 shallots
2 tsp easy lemon grass paste or 1 lemon grass stalk
2 tsp easy red chilli paste or 2 birds eye chillis
1 tbsp Thai fish sauce (Nam pla)
1 tsp dark soy sauce
2 tbsp Canderel or sweetener
1 tsp sunflower oil

Finely chop all the marinade ingredients and blend together.

Put the chicken breasts on a board. Make 4 slashes on each of the breasts.

Coat the breasts thickly with the marinade. Cover and chill for at least 30 minutes but the longer you leave them the better. Then grill for 6 to 8 minutes on each side. Or around 8 to 10 minutes on a George Foreman grill.

Garnish with diagonally sliced spring onion.

Mullerlight fat free Greek style yoghurt luscious lemon 120g pot

There are times when you just want something that tastes really naughty. The Mullerlight fat free Greek Yoghurts are a real godsend when one of those moments hit. But be warned they can become an addiction!

The luscious lemon yoghurt really does live up to its name. It has a fresh natural lemon scent which entices you to just dive right in. There is a tang that is refreshing but a really naughty sweetness that will satisfy your craving for something naughtily sweet.

There are other lovely flavours in this range but this is definitely my favourite.

Fat Free Coleslaw

Half a white cabbage
1 carrot
1 onion
2 spring onions
2 celery sticks
250 g fat free fromage frais
Sea salt
Black pepper

Slice white cabbage

Grate carrot

Slice onion

Slice spring onion thinly

Slice celery thinly

Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and season with salt and pepper then mix thoroughly.

Add the fromage frais and mix until all vegetables are coated.

Put into an air tight container and chill in the fridge.

Nicer than commercially made coleslaw.

Faddy diets

I am probably going to be hung, drawn and quartered by half the diet industry and the other half will love what I am going to say. The rise in obesity in the UK has seen a rise in faddy fashion diet crazes that to be honest are only designed to make money for their inventors. Many of these diets have no basis in nutritional science. I don’t doubt they can cause a weight loss but only in the short term. Reality is. Once the person has grown tired of or can no longer afford the product they soon find the weight is regained and in many cases they gain more weight than they started with.

If you want to enjoy a sustained and permanent weight loss then you need to find a balanced, healthy and sustainable eating plan and stick to it! Then increase your exercise. There is no substitute for eating healthily.

Welcome to the Healthy Gourmet Cook

There is a myth that healthy food is boring or bland but I hope this blog will dispel the myth. I believe eating healthily should be tasty, fun and exciting. So be prepared to be surprised and your taste buds tantalised.