[Review + Recipe] LovePickle and Low Fat Chicken Korma

NB. A jar of this product was given to me free for me to review. All opinions are my own!

Hey everybody! Today I’m brining you a double post – half review half recipe. I’m sure you’ve all noticed that I’ve been quite quiet on the blogging front recently, and not without good reason. Throughout February I was taking some very important law exams. Results don’t come out for ages yet, but I don’t think I had any disasters. I’ve also been on holiday! Just two days after I finished the last of my six exams, Mr KG and I hopped on a plane to Prague and I’ve just got back from a lovely long weekend filled with food, drink, sightseeing and Jazz. I hope to do a post on my trip soon as I discovered lots about the city that I would like to share (and not just restaurant recommendations). I’ll also be trying to recreate a dish I had while I was out there.

Over the last month or so I’ve also been inundated with requests from brands and PR firms. There have been so many I couldn’t possibly (and wouldn’t want to) say yes to them all. LovePickle however was a brand I was more than happy to give a try...

I was instantly intruiged by LovePickle because they looked like a fresh and funky company selling one of my favourite things – Indian pickles. They kindly offered me a (free) jar to review: all I had to do was decide the heat! (Mild, medium, hot and extra hot). I went for hot, and was pretty confident I could stand the heat.

One of the things that instantly drew me to the pickle, was that I wasn’t bombarded with an array of fancy flavours. Now they say variety is the spice of life, but it’s never a good thing to be a jack of all trades and master of none. The LovePickle pickle is handmade from ripe tomatoes, fresh chillies, garlic, ginger, mustard oil and seeds plus a selection of carefully selected quality herbs and spices. They have perfected their recipe only ever tweaking the heat of the finished product so that they know the taste is the best it can be every time.

LovePickle stress how it can be used in a whole variety of ways – either served with poppadoms and naan bread, as an accompaniment to main courses or as an alternative to chutneys, relishes and ketchups. So far I’ve served it up alongside a variety of home-made currys, and it goes particularly well with the korma which I am sharing with you below.

So what did I really think of the pickle? You can most definitely tell that it is a tomato based pickle, and I must admit I usually opt for lime or other fruit based pickles with my meals. However, unlike some, this pickle is not too sweet. You get a rich, deep tomato flavour as a base which the spices and chilli heat is built on top of. It is a very well rounded pickle and I think this is what makes it so versatile! I would happily serve this as a dip for crisps at a party, or alongside poppadoms and curries at dinner time.

Priced at £2.95 a jar it is a little more pricey that the likes of Patak’s or Sharwoods, but the quality is far far far superior. I couldn’t fault the sample I was given. (Except that it didn’t automatically refill itself! With a hungry family I think the jar only last 4 meals.)

If you want to try the pickle for yourself you can find the whole range on the LovePickle website. or follow their facebook or twitter pages (@Lovepickle_uk).

Now, on to the korma I’ve been serving alongside this pickle!

The Indian takeaway is one of the nation’s most loved dishes. But with many recipes including ghee or copious amounts of oil, the kind of curry that gets delivered to your door is also filled with extra fat and calories you just don’t need.

I’ve been cooking my own curries for years now, but never have I even tried to recreate a “take-away” style curry before, until now. Low-fat creamy sauces have become a bit of a ‘thing’ of mine recently and I’ve been trying to find ways to recreate indulgent dishes with less of the fat. This korma is another attempt at doing just that!

It is delicately spiced, with all the traditional spices you would expect to find in a take-away korma, however, by replacing cream with crème fraiche, and by using a food processer to get a thick and creamy base for my sauce I am able to bring a taste of India into your kitchen.

The tumeric and saffron give the sauce a brilliant yellowy colour in true take-away style so you don't feel you're missing out on any part of the experience.

This recipe also creates a good helping of the creamy sauce, so is great for mopping up with a sweet peshwari naan, wholesome chappathi or vegetable stuffed paratha!

Sound too good to be true? Give this recipe a go and let me know how you get on.

Creamy Chicken and Tomato Potato Bake

 

Its January in the year 2013, dubbed to be the ‘unlucky’ year that could never live up to 2012. We’ve all eaten and drunk too much over the festive period, and as we look ahead to what 2013 has to offer we all decide we want to be a little bit skinnier along the way.

Now I don’t want to be all doom and gloom. But I’m sure I’m not the only one living in a house of people who currently seem to have a million and one things to moan about, their waistlines being one. I should’ve known the joy and frivolity of Christmas wouldn’t last forever, but I didn’t expect it to end so soon!

Nonetheless, requests are flying in for tasty food that will help people slim down over the coming months. After all, if there’s one thing we can change about this ‘unlucky’ year, it’s how much we weigh.

So, with weight loss in mind, and a fridge full of food I set about creating my low-fat creamy tomato potato bake. Now, the most common complaint about low fat food is that it is bland and doesn’t fill you up for long enough. This recipe is neither of those things!

The reason behind this dish is that it always seems to me that as soon as I tell myself I should be eating healthily I suddenly crave all the things I shouldn’t, in particular chocolate and all things creamy. I’d previously developed a low in fat yet very creamy Chicken and Mushroom Pasta Bake, and I was keen to try and come up with another creamy sauce that wouldn’t make me pile on the pounds. The indulgent creamy texture of the reduced fat crème fraiche in this sauce makes it feel like you’re treating yourself without taking on unnecessary calories. By making just a few substitutes on your ingredients list you can cut out quite a lot of fat!

The fact that this dish is baked in the oven also reduced the need to add any fat to the cooking pan. (You won’t find any olive oil here!) You can further reduce the calories, and make it suitable for vegetarians, by simply leaving out the chicken.

So next time you want a low fat dinner that will keep you full all evening, and is choc-full of flavour, pop this potato bake into the oven (and maybe do a few sit ups while you wait…)

Courgette and Feta Bake

Since Easter I have lost nearly a whole stone and have now reached a rather healthy plateau bang smack in the middle of my recommended BMI range, WOOHOO! Unfortunately for me, both high blood pressure and high cholesterol run down the female line in my family. Despite only being at the top of the healthy BMI range for her height, my Mum was recently told she needs to keep her weight down to reduce her chances of suffering a stroke like her Mum did. Understandably, now that I’ve reached this weight I want to stay here so that I don't suffer the same fate as other women in my family. As a result, I have come up with even more delicious but low-calorie recipes.

Mum and Dad are also on diets and this has become one of their firm favourites! It’s incredibly simple with just 5 ingredients (including the 1 cal spray!)

If you haven’t come across one cal sprays yet, where have you been? You can get all sorts, from olive oil and sunflower oil to even balsamic and ceaser salad dressings. By turning the oil (or dressing) into spray form you can much more easily control the amount of oil you use. If you don’t want to keep buying the sprays another alternative is to get an oil pump spray – unfortunately mine is currently in a box labelled “Emma’s House”...I don’t have any plans for moving for over a year yet but that’s another story! Anyway, I digress...

I wasn’t entirely sure what to call this recipe it to begin with – essentially it is finely sliced courgette, crumbled low-fat feta (I actually use "Be Good To Yourself Salad Cheese from Sainsburys), egg, Italian herbs and the one cal spray all baked in an oven. Spanish omelettes and frittatas traditionally contain potatoes, but the only veg inside this eggy-bake is courgette. But it’s not cooked in a pan either so it can’t be an omelette? If anyone has any insight into what this should really be called, do leave a comment!

For now I will simply call it a courgette and feta bake! I think the name of a dish should explain what it is and hopefully that does the trick.

Low-fat Apple Tea Cake

At the minute I have two culinary conundrums... Firstly, my apple tree is HEAVING! We can't catch them quick enough as they fall off the tree, secondly I have eaten far too indulgently over the last two months of being at home and am in desperate need of a few more healthy treats in my recipe file!

This recipe was my saviour! A tasty treat, but with a lot less fat than your average cake recipe!

(NB. This recipe was adapted from an original Weight Watchers recipe)
Enjoy!

Nepalese Curried Vegetable with Lentils and Home-made Chapathis

A week ago, my family had an old friend come to stay. Her name is Aurelia, and when she was a child she came to stay with my family every year as an exchange student from France, in the hope that we would teach her some English! It’s a tradition my family has had for generations, her father staying with my grandparents when he was a child too!

I think it’s fair to say that in the time she’s spent with us she has taught us just as much as we’ve taught her!

When she came to stay this time round, she decided to teach me a new type of food – Nepalese. She visited Nepal for a couple of months and lived with a number of families eating their traditional food.

Below is our interpretation of the dishes she ate on her travel – as authentic as they can possibly be.

So here is Nepalese Curried Vegetables with Lentil and Home-made Chapathis! (aka chapattis, chapatis).

Chapathis are my new favourite thing to cook!  SO quick and easy, and good fun to make! (Though do not set your tea-towel on fire as I did!!!!!)