Satay Chicken and Vegetables

This is not your avaerage chicken satay. For a start, there is no peanut butter. No nuts at all for that matter. The satay flavouring comes from a combination of soy sauce, brown sugar, ground cumin, ground coriander and caraway seeds. The vegetables: carrot, onion and bok choy substituted for capsicum. The sauce is thickened with a bit of cornflour dissolved in water. If cooking for more than one person, stir fry the chicken in batches to prevent it from stewing. Serve with steamed rice.

Foccaia

This recipe comes from a year 11 food textbook "Food Solutions" book 1. The foccacia recipe requires dried yeast, bread flour, warm water, salt and oil. The bread is left to prove in a warm place, then toppings are added. The surface is brushed with oil and sprinkled with frsh torn basil, grated parmesan and lemon pepper, with black olives inserted every 3-4cm.

After baking, split and fill with yellow cheese, sliced tomato and more fresh basil. Bon Appetite!

Spanikopita

Still from AGT this time from the budget book that came with the low fat issue. Spanikopita, a spinach filled filo pie is a traditional Greek recipe. The updated recipe called for silverbeet, which was growing plentifully in the vegie patch. I added a box of frozen spinach to flesh it out a bit. The flavourings include feta cheese, grated lemon rind and fresh dill.

Homemade Pumpkin Ravioli

This recipe comes from Australian Good Taste Magazine as a feature of their low fat issue. These ravioli are made using wonton wrappers to enclose a creamy pumpkin filling. We had some extra pumpkin mix left over, so we made a small lasagne with pumpkin filling. It was very tasty.

Baked Mediterranean Risotto

This baked risotto comes from the "Food Challanges" textbook put out by sanitarium. It differs from a traditional risotto as there is no endless stirring and ladelling involved. The ingredients which include arborio rice, boiling water, tinned tomatoes, vegetable stock powder, margarine and mushrooms are placed in an ovenproof dish, stirred, covered and placed in an oven for 40 mins. A yellow capsicum is placed alongside in the oven. By the time the rice is tender, the skin of the capsicum is blistered enough to be peeled and sliced. To serve, stir through fresh spinach leaves, roasted capsicum strips, parmesan and feta cheeses.

The risotto had a wonderful flavour from the stock powder, roasted capsicum and cheeses and was nicely moist due to the tomatoes, water and margarine.