Recipe: Chicken stuffed with home-made pesto and goats cheese

Last night I decided to get a little creative. I'm always looking for delicious flavours to accompany healthy whole foods with the aim to reduce boredom and make eating healthy far more enjoyable. After a little browsing, I noticed how healthy pesto is for a paste that adds so much flavour to a meal. My diet for the day was in need of a little protein also so I thought why not add pesto to grilled chicken breast! It tasted delicious so I've decided to share the recipe below:

Pesto:

1 large bunch of basil

1 medium bunch of parsley

5 walnuts

3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

1 clove of garlic

In the process of making pesto

Mix together in a food processor. 

Then cut all of the fat off the chicken breasts and slice horizontally through the middle. 

Stuff the chicken with the pesto paste and dab bits of goats cheese inside also. Add a dollop on top for extra flavour. 

Chicken prepared and ready for the oven!

Cook in a fan-forced oven on 180 degrees for 25 minutes. 

Serve with vegetables of your choice! 

Pesto chicken and vegetables ready to serve! 

My First... Plum!

As a child I was an extremely fussy eater! I would eat apples as my sole fruit and carrots, corn and broccoli... Only because my mum made me. More recently my tastes have changed and expanded tremendously!!! However, there are still a number of things which are firsts even though it may seem crazy and normal to others. One of these is a plum!!!

Today I tried a plum for the first time and it was delicious!!! Being the food nerd that I am, I also checked up on it to see just how healthy it is. 

Turns out, plums are low in saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium! They are a great source of fibre and contain vitamins A, C and K, as well as being packed with antioxidants. All this and low in calories!! 

Plums will not see the last of me!! And hopefully you will enjoy them as much as I just did!! 

Recipe: Baked Prawns with tomato, feta and olives

Baked prawns with tomato, feta and olives ready to serve! 

The first recipe on my blog! I’m very excited to share my cooking experiences with everyone. Previously, I was a terrible cook. Well, that is not exactly the truth. The truth is that I just never cooked! After a trip to the US recently I experienced some amazing new flavours, even tested my skills at The New Orleans School of Cooking, and learnt a lot about how food impacts upon everything from the economy, to the lives of farmers, and how food, cooking, and engineering has changed over time at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. These experiences, as well as my previous interest in nutrition and diet, have started my love, passion and understanding of the value of cooking. Here is a recipe that I actually first saw pop up on my instagram account on @theultimatefitspo’s page. I changed it slightly and it turned out a success! This recipe is very healthy, incorporating a number of food groups. It has no added sugar, whole grains, vegetables and is incredibly tasty!! Serves 4.

Ingredients:

·      1 can of crushed tomatoes 

·      1 tablespoon of olive oil

·      1 lemon 

·      1 onion 

·      2 tablespoons of parsley (chopped finely)

·      3 cloves of garlic (grated)

·      Pitted kalamata olives (about a handful) 

·      1 block of feta cheese from the deli (about 150g)

·      Peeled prawns (as many as you would like)

·      Brown rice and quinoa

·      Ground pepper

·      Pinch of salt

Method:

1.     Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

2.     Finely dice the onion and grate the garlic.

3.     In a large fry pan on medium heat, add the olive oil.

4.     Add the onion and cook for 3-5 minutes until soft.

5.     Add garlic and cook until fragrant (about 30 seconds).

6.     Add the can of tomatoes and reduce the heat for 5 to 8 minutes while stirring.

7.     Chop the parsley and the feta.

8.     Stir the parsley, feta and prawns through.

9.     Add salt and pepper.

10.  Cook for about 5 to 8 minutes or until prawns seem cooked.

11.  Pour into a dish, place the olives on top and then bake in the oven for 8 minutes.

12.  I use the 90 second brown rice and quinoa pack so put this in the microwave just before the 8 minutes is up.

13.  Remove the dish from the oven, squeeze lemon juice on top.

14.  Serve on top of brown rice and quinoa!! Yummy! 

GREEN TEA

We have all heard it. Green tea is good for you. But have you ever wondered what this simple tea actually does once consumed? How does it work? And what does this mean for those of us who drink it?

Let me break green tea down into three important components: caffeine, theanine and catechins. Most of us have a reasonable idea of the implications of caffeine on the body- it is a stimulant which gives us energy and increases metabolism (perhaps a topic for another post). However, one component that plays a huge role in the health benefits of green tea, and that is less well known is catechins.

Firstly, catechins act as antioxidants in the body. When the body undergoes a number of different processes, for instance cigarette smoking or even DNA strand breaking, it produces reactive oxygen “radicals” as bio-products. These radicals cause damage to the cells, and antioxidants prevent this damage by acting as scavengers of these radicals. Catechins also modulate many risk factors that contribute to pertinent medical issues such as lowering blood levels of leptin (fat), and causing a 20% increase in red blood cell haemoglobin. Research is still underway, but so far there is significant reason to investigate the impact of green tea on decreasing the risk of heart disease, allergies, immune diseases and even a variety of cancers. It certainly seems worth the cup!

And when you thought this little cup of magic couldn’t get any better, it was scientifically proven to play a role in weight and body composition.  A randomised control trial in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition compared the effects of green tea, caffeine and a placebo which were ingested at breakfast, lunch and dinner on three separate occasions (Dulloo et al., 1999). The green tea (compared to the placebo) was found to significantly increase energy expenditure over a 24 hour period by 4%.  It was also found the significantly decrease respiratory quotient from 0.88 to 0.85. Respiratory quotient is a measure of metabolism as it represents the amount of carbon dioxide eliminated versus the amount of oxygen consumed in the body. Lower levels indicate that the body is burning fat. Overall, it was concluded that green tea plays a role in fat oxidation and body composition, and that these effects are not the result of caffeine alone, but of properties specific to green tea.

Therefore, green tea contains properties that are extremely beneficial to our health, including reducing the risk of many common diseases, as well as enhancing our metabolism and energy levels. So why not add a little green to your day?

References:

Dulloo, Duret, Rohrer, Girardier, Mensi, Fathi, Chantre, & Vandermander. (1999). Efficacy of a green tea extract rich in catechin polyphenols and caffeine in increasing 24-h energy expenditure and fat oxidation in humans. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 70, 1040-1045.

Liao, Kao, & Hilpakka. (2001). Green tea: Biochemical and biological basis for health benefits. Vitamins & Hormones, 62, 1-94.