Super Easy & Low Calorie Thai Yellow Curry

Posted by Caroline Elliott

I’ve wanted to share one of our go-to recipes for a while and I am finally getting round to it! This is our super easy low calorie Thai Yellow Curry recipe. It really is dead easy to make and as I always seem to be trying to lose a few pounds I love how low calorie it is while also being really yum. We get 9 portions out of this too so it’s also low cost and budget friendly.

I love Thai food. I first learned how to make a Thai yellow curry while in Thailand about 9 years ago, including making the paste from scratch. I’m afraid time is of the essence these days though and we use a paste. Our favourite brand changed the recipe of their paste, and it now tastes like feet, but we have found an almost as good alternative which is still pretty delicious. It is the Thai Taste Gang Garee Yellow Curry Paste (affiliate link). We buy it on Amazon but you can get it from other places too. It means the curry isn’t as yellow in colour as it was with our previous paste but the taste is the most important!

The other key ingredient, which makes it so low calorie, is the coconut milk we use. Instead of using the typical canned coconut milk we use a uht coconut milk. I bought it by mistake once and found actually it worked so well for this curry. It makes it much lighter and now I MUCH prefer it to regular coconut milk. The one we use is Koko Dairy Free UHT Coconut Milk Alternative (affiliate link) and we just get it from the supermarket, it’s with the uht milks and dairy substitutes but I have found it on amazon too.

So, getting to the recipe for our Thai Yellow Curry

Ingredients

500g Chicken, chopped
1 Onion, peeled and diced
2 Cloves garlic, peeled & crushed
800g Potato, peeled & chopped
2 jars Thai yellow curry paste
300g Carrots, peeled and sliced
1 ltr Low cal coconut milk (uht)
½ tsp Fish sauce (or to taste)
1 tsp Sugar (or to taste)

Method

1. Stir curry paste, chicken, onion and garlic together in large pan or casserole dish (we use a big Le Crueset pan). Heat, stirring continuously until chicken is lightly browned
2. Add coconut milk, carrots, potatoes, fish sauce and sugar. Stir.
3. Cover and bring to the boil then reduce heat and simmer gently for approx. 40 mins, or until potatoes and carrots are softened. Once you are sure the chicken is thoroughly cooked it is worth tasting, if it is a bit too salty, add a little sugar, if it is too sweet, add a little fish sauce. My measurements for these are approximate and can be amended according to taste.
4. Serve with 150g cooked rice.

That is literally it, see what I mean by super easy?

As I mentioned, we get about 9 adult portions from this recipe and teamed with 150g of cooked basmati rice each portion it is about 500 calories in total. We freeze the extra portions so we have an even easier meal that just needs defrosting and heating up on 2 more days (the kids share what I call an adult portion so we get 3 family meals out of the 9 portions). There’s often some sauce left too so we stir in some extra rice to that and hubs has small portions of thai curry flavoured rice for his lunches at work, which he teams with some chicken or ham or something.

I love this meal, it feels so healthy but has a lovely kick to it too. My kids love it which is even better, though they do need a cup of milk as it is quite spicy. We also get so much out of it in terms of dinner and lunches. Just love it!

Plum & Blackberry Crumble & a Plum-Picking Adventure!

Posted by Caroline Elliott

We have a lovely little ‘pick your own’ farm a really short distance from where we live. I vaguely remember going as a child to pick strawberries and had planned on taking Monkey to pick strawberries, but alas we missed the season this year. My neighbour went though and also went recently and said they had the most delicious plums! Plums aren’t a fruit regularly eaten in our house but my neighbour really wanted Monkey and I to join her and her kiddies on a pick your own expedition, and I thought Monkey would enjoy it so off we went.

Monkey absolutely loved it at the farm, so many open spaces to run about bless him and he just kept running around shouting “Berry, berry, berry!” lol. He was quite helpful with picking the plums, although he also tried picking some very underripe ones, and some less than lovely looking ones off the floor! He did try though!

I didn’t realise they also had blackberry bushes and we love a blackberry crumble in our house so we picked some of those too. I was worried he would hurt himself on the thorns but he managed really well and actually tried to eat some of the blackberries and plums, though he isn’t very good with fresh fruit and pretty much spat it all out.

We then had a play on their fabulous play park before we headed home. It was a lovely place and we will definitely go fruit picking there again!

I wasn’t sure what to do with the fruit to start with as neither hubby or Monkey are big fans of fresh fruit, and I don’t really have the energy to make anything complicated. So it didn’t take long for me to decide to make a Plum & Blackberry crumble. I love making crumbles mainly because they are so easy to make, are absolutely yummy and get some fruit inside us (albeit with a lot of sugar involved!)

Here is our recipe for a lovely crumble. My fruit measurements are very vague and can be interchangeable with a lot of fruits. I originally used this recipe to make a rhubarb crumble, though with rhubarb you also need 50ml of water, which I left out in this case as the plums were so juicy in themselves!

Plum & Blackberry Crumble Ingredients

500g Fruit – in this case Plums & Blackberries – chopped/sliced thinly
100g Caster Sugar
100g Wholemeal Flour (can use plain)
100g Rolled Oats (Porridge oats)
100g Butter (we use unsalted)
125g Demerara Sugar

Plum & Blackberry Crumble Method

Preheat the oven to 180°

Place the chopped into fruit in an ovenproof dish and sprinkle with the Caster Sugar (and water if necessary i.e with rhubarb)

Put the Flour, Oats and Demerara Sugar in a separate bowl. Add the butter and mix in with your fingers until it resembles breadcrumbs. It is ok if there are a few lumpy bits.

Sprinkle crumble mixture over the fruit as evenly as possible, and don’t pat down too much.

Bake for 35- 40 mins or until the topping is golden brown and the fruit is bubbling around the edges.

Plum & Blackberry Crumble

Serve with custard, or a good dollop of ice cream!

Yummy Turkey Bolognese Recipe

Posted by Caroline Elliott

This is one of our favourite family meals, as it is delicious and so simple. It started at life as one of Annabel Karmel’s recipes (as regular readers will know, I love her) which we have adapted to make enough for the whole family, and we use Turkey whereas she uses chicken in her version. It’s great to get a bit of hidden veggie goodness into picky eaters too

Ingredients
1 tbsp Olive Oil
1 Onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 Carrots, peeled and grated
1 large Garlic Clove, peeled and crushed
500g Turkey Mince (we use thigh mince)
1/2 tsp dried thyme
600ml Passata (sieved tomatoes)
300ml Pure Apple Juice
2 tbsp Tomato Puree
Lots of Worcester Sauce (I think about 3 tbsps but I don’t really measure it!)
1 tbsp Italian mixed herbs
2 tsps sugar

To Serve
Pasta. We use wholewheat as it goes nicely but normal pasta is lovely too. We tend to use weight watchers portion sizes so have about 50g of dried pasta per person, it’s not a lot though so make as much as you would normally use for your family. There is plenty of mince in the recipe, we tend to get 4 adult portions plus two kiddy portions from the bolognese, and they’re quite generous.

Method
1 – Heat the oil in a fairly large saucepan and gently fry the onion and carrot over a low-medium heat, stirring often, for 3 minutes or until soft.

2 – Add the garlic and fry for another 30 seconds

3 – Add the turkey and fry, stirring frequently until cooked.

Boil and reduce the sauce

4 – Add the thyme, passata and apple juice, bring to the boil.

5 – Stir in the tomato puree, worcestershire sauce, sugar and italian mixed herbs.

6. Bring to the boil, reduce slightly but then leave to boil and reduce for 15 minutes (stirring occasionally).

7. Meanwhile cook the pasta according to packet instructions.

8. Taste test the sauce, adding more worcestershire sauce if needed.

Serve/ You can either mix the sauce and pasta together, or serve separate, whatever your preference.

Including the prep time I find it takes 40-45 mins to make but a big chunk of that time is just on the hob.

So simple and tasty, and being Turkey it is a really healthy, low calorie meal too, packed full of flavour. Why not give it a go?

Spicy Sweet Potato and Butternut Squash Soup

Posted by Caroline Elliott

I made this for the first time last week and was amazed how well it turned out – I have never made soup before so if I can do it anyone can! Monkey has been a fussy eater for months now but after a few tries he loves soup! Wahoo! So I need to learn to make some, great way of getting some more veg into him!

Hubby is 1/4 Malaysian (I know, he doesn’t look it) so we like quite a lot of spice in our house. I added a bit more spice than was in the original recipe I found and Hubby, Monkey and I all love it, which is great.

If you are unsure about how spicy you would like it, I recommend adding half the spices mentioned below, then have a quick taste after it’s blended and add the remaining if you feel you need to. It’s easier to add the spice than take it away!

I found it took about 40 -45 minutes including prep time.

The ingredients below is enough to make about 6 servings, though it is worth mentioning that I was making a double batch when I was taking the photos so they are to give you an idea but there is a lot more of everything than you will need to make the amount described!

Ingredients
25g Butter
1 Onion – Finely chopped
1 clove of Garlic, crushed
1 Butternut Squash, cubed to 2-3cm
1 Sweet Potato, cubed 2-3cm
1 tsp Paprika
2 tsp Mild Chilli Powder
2 tsp Ground Coriander
2 tsp Ground Cumin
Salt & Pepper
100ml Double Cream (I used Elmlea Double Light)
1 Litre Vegetable stock. (The first time I did it I used a couple of knorr stock pots and it tasted amazing, but I forgot to buy them the second time and only had a low salt vegetable stock – it tasted ok but nowhere near as much flavour being low salt.)

Method

In a large saucepan melt the butter on a low heat

Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally. Add the crushed garlic to the pan.

Once the onion is soft, add all of the spices and a shake of salt and pepper and fry for a few minutes.

Add the Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato and stir to coat in the spice mix.

Pour in the stock and make sure everything is covered. Give it a good stir, making sure you get to the bottom of the pan.

Bring to the boil and simmer until the vegetables are soft.

Blend to the desired texture (I use a hand blender in the pan because I either use a big Le Crueset pan or our saucepans which are hard anodised – I wouldn’t recommend doing this if your pans are non-stick, you could pour into a food processor instead).

Stir in the cream and serve.

Easy Peasy and so yummy – is delicious with some crusty bread.

Enjoy!

Becoming a Stay at Home Mum

Can I really do this?

tasty recipes

Super Easy & Low Calorie Thai Yellow Curry

Plum & Blackberry Crumble & a Plum-Picking Adventure!

Plum & Blackberry Crumble Ingredients

Plum & Blackberry Crumble Method

Yummy Turkey Bolognese Recipe

Spicy Sweet Potato and Butternut Squash Soup