Healthy Diet Recipes

Serves: 4
Preparation time: 15 minutes + soaking
Cooking time: 35 minutes
Calories per serving: 860
Not suitable for freezing

Ingredients:

Sultanas (optional), 50 g (2 oz)
Anchovy fillets, 50 g (2 oz)
Haddock, cod or salmon fillet (skinned) 450 g (1 lb)
Garlic cloves, 2
Breadcrumbs, fresh
Pine Nuts, 50 g (2 oz)
Fennel Seeds, 5 ml (1 tsp)
Olive Oil, 100 ml (4 fl oz)
Parsley, flat-leaf chopped 600 ml (4 tsp)
White wine, 100 ml (4 fl oz)
Bay leaf, 1
Peppercorns, 1
Salt and Pepper
Spaghetti, 350 g (12 oz)
Garnish: lemon wedges and flat-leaf parsley

Instructions:

1. Anchovies should be drained and the oil kept. The fish should be cut into bite sizes. Take 45 ml of warm water and soak the sultanas for 10 minutes.
2. Prepare crushed garlic. Combine anchovies, garlic, fennel, pine nuts, olive oil and breadcrumbs.
3. Cook till crisp and brown turning occassionally. 200 deg C (400 F) for about 20 minutes. Add parsley and drained sultanas.
4. Combine bay leaf, peppercorns, fish, salt, white wine and water (300 ml, 10 fl oz). Cook in a shallow vessel below the breadcrumb mixture for about 15 minutes, till cooked. Separate the fish from the liquid.
5. Reduce the strained liquid in a pan to about 60 ml (4 tsp). AT the same time cook the spaghetti in salted water (boiling) till tender (10-12 minutes). Sieve the spaghetti and mix with the reduced liquid at high heat for a couple of minutes.
6.To present; Add the fish to the spaghetti. Add the breadcrumbs and garnish with lemon and parsley.

Today, while searching for few recipes, I found a nice site recipe sharing community..

Mydish.co.uk is a new cookery community where members share and store their favourite recipes. The founder of the website, Carol Savage, created the site to save the scraps of paper which her mother-in-law’s best recipes were kept on. Now more than 2000 people are doing the same thing. Membership is free, and what makes Mydish.co.uk different to all the other recipe sites you have come across is that not only can you create a personalised cookbook to share the recipe, but you also get the opportunity to share in the stories behind their creation.

Categories on Mydish are separated into types of meal such as ‘Sports’ or ‘Pregnancy-eating for two’, and types of food like ‘appertizers’ and ‘snacks’ so you can quickly find the recipe for what you want to eat, when you want to eat it. You can also see who the top rated chefs on the website are, and the most popular recipes, so you don’t even have to worry about which recipes you should prepare. With the recent global financial problems, the ‘Credit Crunch Bites’ section is particularly useful as it provides the user with Recipes that are both cheap to produce and pleasant to eat.

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Grilling is a fast and healthy way to cook food, and you can prepare a wide variety of exciting and tasty dishes this way. One of the best ways to grill is outdoors on a barbeque grill in the summer, and there are two main types of grill you can use, a charcoal grill or a gas grill.

Charcoal grills give an authentic, smoky flavour to meat and fish, but they are more challenging to prepare and cook with. The coals need to be lit well before the cooking time to ensure that the flames do not burn the outside of the food without cooking the inside, and the ash and grease left over can take a bit of clearing up. Charcoal grills are less expensive though, and you can set them up almost anywhere, especially if you have one of those small disposable grill packs.

Gas grills are much more expensive and require a bottled gas supply, and they are generally heavier and less portable than charcoal grills. However they can be turned on with the switch of a knob, and the heat is instant and constant, so there is no waiting around for the flames to die down. Some gas grills also provide a smoker box, so that you can add wood chips to simulate that authentic smoky flavour that a charcoal grill gives. There is no mess of ashes and grease to clear up with a gas grill, and so they are very convenient to use in an everyday situation.

Grilling food is very healthy, as it allows the fat to drip away so it is a good idea to incorporate grilling into your diet. If the weather is bad you can also grill indoors on an electric grill. Modern cookers usually have a grill feature, called ‘top contact’ grills where bars in the top of the oven are heated and cook food on trays below. You could also buy a separate ‘closed grill’, which cooks thinner pieces of food, (burgers, fillets, sandwiches and sliced vegetables), between two pressed heating plates. These closed cookers are very easy to use and have digital thermostats and timers so that you can cook food precisely, and they are usually based on a sloping design that allows grease to drip away.

Banana bread has a lovely moist cake-like texture, and is a delicious way to use up ripe bananas. It is not as sweet as some other cakes, and it can be served hot with cream and slices of fresh banana, or at room temperature with a drizzle of icing for afternoon tea. A good banana bread recipe should be easy to follow, and the bread should stay fresh and moist for at least 4 days.

Banana bread recipes were first officially recorded in a set of recipes by the Pillsbury Company in 1933, but it wasn’t until the 1960s, after a revival in simple home baking, that banana bread become so popular in the western culture.

Here is an easy banana bread recipe that you can try at home:
You will need:

125g butter
175g soft brown sugar
2 eggs
280g plain flour
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
Pinch of salt
125ml milk
3 medium ripe bananas, mashed
1tsp vanilla extract
Small handful of chopped walnuts

Method:

· Heat the oven to 180C/Gas mark 4 and lightly grease a 25cm x 11cm (10in x 4½in) loaf tin.

· In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar until it is smooth and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat in well. Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt together, and slowly add half of this to the mixture and beat well. Now add the milk and remaining flour and mix until smooth.

· In a separate bowl mash the ripe bananas with a fork and then gently fold them into the mixture along with the vanilla extract. Tip the mixture into the greased loaf tin, and top with the chopped walnuts.

· Cover the top with foil and bake in the oven for an hour, or until the loaf is cooked through and browned on top. Cool in the tin a little before turning out.

· Serve immediately in thick slices, with a drizzle of cream and some slices of fresh banana.