Jun 24, 2013 | Anna's Best Recipes, Sides, starters, soups & snacks
This is inspired by a classic French side dish of lettuce, shallots, and peas. It’s healthier because you don’t overcook all the vegetables, nor do you need to smother it in a lot of butter to make it taste good. This is a great side dish to serve with roasted meats or grilled fish.
3 medium-large leeks, white and green parts, cleaned and sliced into 1/2 cm disks
About 250g or 2 mugs frozen petit pois (baby peas)
2 tbsp water or water leftover from steaming vegetables
1 large clove garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper
1. Into a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan or frying pan with a lid, place the leeks, the garlic, the olive oil, and the water.
2. Cover with a lid and cook on medium heat until the leeks are slightly wilted. While this is happening, rinse off your peas with hot water to get the icicles off and allow them to thaw. I usually do this by putting them in a sieve and pouring a kettleful of boiling water over them.
3. When the leeks are softened but still bright green add the peas, stir well, cover, and simmer for about 2 minutes until the peas are hot.
Jun 24, 2013 | Anna's Best Recipes, Main courses
This is my simple take on a gorgeous dish I once ate in Italy. You know how it is, sitting in a beautiful piazza on a hot summer’s night, everything is amazing. It still tastes pretty good on a drizzly Irish evening though and looks impressive even though it’s REALLY easy. If you can’t bear to eat whole fish, just use fillets, cooked skin side up, instead. You will need to cook the other ingredients first for 5-10 minutes so they soften before adding the fish fillets. Fillets would take about 10 minutes to cook through wheareas the whole fish take longer. See the bottom of this recipe for why it’s great for you.
Serves 2
120ml or 1/2 cup dry white wine
3 dsp extra virgin olive oil
2 large cloves garlic, peeled and roughly sliced
2 small or 1 medium seabass (or bream if you prefer), gutted and cleaned
12-14 cherry tomatoes
3-4 large sprigs of fresh basil
Freshly ground black pepper
A heavy-bottomed pot/frying pan with lid
To serve:
4 generous handfuls or cups of broccoli florets/green beans
1. Lay the fish in the pot (cut off the head first if you need to to get the fish flat in the pot, or if you don’t like seeing the head on your dinner plate).
2. Cut each cherry tomato quarter to half the way through – this allows the juice to flavour the whole dish as it cooks – and add to the pan with the wine, olive oil, garlic, basil, and a few twists of black pepper.
3. Put the lid on, place on medium heat, and simmer for about 20-25 minutes (depending on the size of the fish) until the fish is tender and a skewer easily pierces it right through. Pull the pan off the heat and leave it covered while you steam your greens.
4. Serve the fish with the greens with the winey herby juices spooned over.
If you’re not wanting to lose weight you could also add a few babies boiled potatoes.
Why this is good for you:
White fish is a great source of high quality protein which is needed for repair and maintenance of your whole body, including your skin, hair and digestive system. Olive oil, herbs and tomatoes are rich in antioxidants which also aid repair and slow ageing. Green veg are rich in magnesium which is crucial for relaxation of your nervous system. Allowing your brain to wind down means your body can do the housekeeping. That is: healing, digestion, repair, regeneration. Chronic stress derails all.
Jun 21, 2013 | Anna's Best Recipes, Sides, starters, soups & snacks
Everyone loves these. Eat as a starter with wholemeal gluten-free bread or (if you eat a little gluten) fresh 100% rye sourdough bread to soak up the sweet juices. Last week we served them as a side with marinaded roast chicken pieces on a bed of cooked millet (with basil pesto and sliced spring onions stirred in). Yum!
I’m not usually an anchovy lover but here they really do make it much more delicious!
For 4:
4 red peppers
4 medium tomatoes
8 small anchovy fillets
2 cloves garlic
8 dsp (dessertspoons) extra virgin olive oil
Black pepper
Fresh basil leaves
- Preheat oven to 180C
- Cut peppers in half lengthways, remove seeds, keep green stalks intact, and lay in a lightly oiled roasting tin or ovenproof dish.
- Peel garlic, slice thinly and divide between the pepper halves.
- To each pepper, half add an anchovy that you snipped into rough pieces.
- Quarter tomatoes, remove the woody centre, and place 2 pieces in each pepper hal
- Spoon 1 dsp oil into each pepper half and season with freshly milled black pepper.
- Place on a high shelf in the oven for 50 mins to 1 hour – they should be wrinkled and semi-collapsed and filled with lots of lovely sweet garlicky pepper juices.
- Garnish with a few scattered basil leaves.
