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The warm weather is well and truly upon us here in SA and that means light, fresh meals for dinner. Warm chicken salad is a year round favourite, but after last year's success of a Warm Lamb Salad I decided to make a variation on this to serve for a friend.
One of my favourite Greek foods (hard to pick one I know) is haloumi. I love the sqeakiness on your teeth and I think it is at it's best with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice over the top. I decided to incorporate it into this salad, and I am very please with the results. Feel free to add you own favourite salad ingredients such as olives, avocado slices or cucumber.
Warm haloumi, lamb and green bean salad.
1 x 250g haloumi, cut into about 8 slices
300g lamb, sliced
150g green beans, trimmed
3 x tomato, cut into quarters, lengthways
juice of 1 lemon
2 tbsp olive oil
1 handful basil mint
Heat and oil a grill pan and place haloumi slices, lamb, beans and tomato onto grill. Heat lamb until cooking through, and keep an eye on your other ingredients to ensure they are going golden brown nicely.
Combine lemon juice, oil and basil mint in a bowl.
Once ingredients are cooked, construct your salad, beginning with a slice of haloumi on the bottom of each persons plate. Add other ingredients and finish with a drizzle of dressing over all.
Back when alcohol was new and exciting, and cooking was only something I did when I could take over the kitchen from mum or dad, one of my good friends passed on this recipe for a delicious mousse. Cointreau was the liqueur of our choice (and still is when I'm in the right mood) and with chocolate it is an unbeatable combination.
Thanks to Karin for this recipe.
Chocolate Cointreau Mousse
250g dark chocolate
2 tbs strong black coffee
20g butter
1 tspn Cointreau (or other orange liqueur)
3 large eggs, separated
cream to decorate
1. Melt chocolate with coffee using a double boiler until smooth and creamy. Remove from heat.
2. Stir in cointreau and butter and cool slightly before stirring in egg yolks.
3. Whisk egg whites until stiff and fold into chocolate mixture.
Pour into a glass bowl, or individual glasses and chill until set, approximately 5 hours.
After such success with Jo Seagar's Chardonnay Cake, I flicked through her book looking for more inspiration. To be perfectly honest, everything looked good, but this one stood out as something to try. A friend came over for dinner and that was that!
I changed the recipe a little to suit my tastes and what I had in the fridge - and I would encourage you to do the same.
Ginger, sweet chilli and coconut cream chicken
inspired by Jo Seagar's Cook School Recipes
2 tbspb olive oil
3 large skinless chicken breasts, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 green capsicum, deseeded and chopped
grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
1 x 400g coconut cream
100ml sweet chilli sauce
2 spring onions, chopped
1/2 cup chopped parsley
Heat the oil in a large non-stock frying pan and fry the chicken for 6-7 minutes. Add the ginger, garlic, onion and capsicum and fry together for 2 minutes. Once the onion has softened, add the lemon rind and juice , coconut cream and sweet chilli sauce. Turn the heat down to a simmer and cook for 3-4 minutes. Add the spring onions and parsley, stir through and garnish with a little extra parsley. Serve with rice and steamed broccollini
Birthdays come but once a year, and although there are those who wish they didn't have to add another number each time they came round, I don't think it matters how old you are, you still need to celebrate
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This will be my second attempt at making preserved lemons, after my first attempt a couple of years ago went mouldy. This is not an uncommon occurrence apparently, as a batch which my mum made for me just a little while ago did the same thing
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The perfect accompaniment for any meal, or a meal in itself, roast vegetable couscous can be made with whatever you have lying around in the fridge
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Cook books and culinary magazines have come a long way. No longer are they printed on yellowing, soft paper with barely a picture in sight. These days if you don't actually see something that makes your mouth start to water, its unlikely you're going to make the purchase and take the recipes home to your kitchen.
Cook books work on inspiring others to produce food, which in many cases, will not look as glamorous or delicious once made by the home cook, but will still taste fantastic. Movies about food are another form of inspiration altogether
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It all started with the idea to have a few people round for a barbecue. Then we realised we were low on gas, so instead we decided to crank up the webber. But then, we became distracted and when we went back to the webber we discovered that only one side of the heat beats had lit properly. So we lit them again, but by this stage we were pretty hungry. We waited an hour or so, but still without adequate heat in the webber we gave up and cooked out sausages on the stove
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You know how every now and again the recipe gods align themselves and you just feel you have to try something? This happened to me a little while ago when I was driving home from work and I heard on the radio Simon Bryant talking about a lentil sheperds pie he had made for The Cook and the Chef. It sounded good, but for some reason I didn't get to see the actual episode. The next night we were in town having dinner with some friends. One of the guys was living with a vegetarian at the time and he was enthusing about her fantastic lentil sheperds pie - "better than a lamb one" he said
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Comment by Helen Randell
on Haloumi and green bean salad
Rough Cooking