Pumpkin, Spinach & Haloumi Salad

I tried this Pumpkin, Spinach & Haloumi salad at a local cafe a few weeks ago and thought it was totally delicious. The sweetness of the pumpkin mixes well with the saltiness coming from the haloumi cheese. This is not a quick salad to put together but one that is well worth the effort.

For those you who are not familiar with Haloumi cheese - it is a cheese made from a combination of goat's and sheep's milk, it's white, salty, its texture is semi-soft and because of its high melting point, the cheese is often grilled or fried before serving with salad or vegetables.

Pumpkin, Spinach & Haloumi Salad
(serves 2)

2 handfuls of spinach leaves
1/2 butternut pumpkin, sliced
100g Haloumi cheese, sliced to 0.5cm-1cm thick
1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
juice of 1/2 lemon
salt & pepper

- Grill the butternut pumpkin slices until soft
- Grill the Haloumi cheese until golden
- To make the dressing, whisk the extra-virgin olive oil, lemon juice and salt and pepper in a small bowl until well combined
- Combine spinach, grilled pumpkin and dressing in a bowl. Divide between plates. Top with grilled Haloumi.

Honey Mustard Chicken Pasta Salad

When you come home from work wanting something tasty, healthy and takes only 30mins or less to prepare, this Warm Honey Mustard Chicken Pasta salad is for you.

As soon as you get home, just do 2 things:
(1) take the chicken out of the fridge and marinate it
(2) boil water in a pan for your pasta
When you've finished getting changed and cleaned up, the water should be boiling. Start preparing your pasta and pan frying the chicken pieces. Toss your salad leaves and pasta together with your desired dressing then placed the cooked chicken on top. Voila!


Here's my Warm Honey Mustard Chicken Pasta Salad recipe:
(serves 2)

2 small chicken breasts, cut into strips
2 tsp English mustard
2 tsp honey
1 tsp minced garlic
1.5 cups of pasta spirals
6 button mushrooms, sliced
1/2 zucchini, sliced
1 handful of rocket leaves
1 handful of parsley, chopped
99% fat free Caesar dressing
black pepper

- Place the chicken pieces in a bowl and marinade them with mustard, honey and minced garlic.
- Boil water; add in pasta and cook for 10 mins until al dente.
- Place button mushrooms and zucchini slices in a frying pan, let this cook through then set aside.
- Place the marinated chicken pieces on the pan and let it cook until brown on both sides.
- Toss rocket leaves, mushrooms, zucchini and parsley in a large bowl; add in cooked pasta. Add in your desired amount of dressing; toss well together.
- Serve salad on plates; topped with chicken.
- Add in black pepper if desired.

Turkey Cous Cous Salad

There's nothing easier to cook than couscous. There's simply nothing to it. All you need to do is to add an equal part stock/water to the same amount of couscous, then cover it with a tea towel for a few minutes. You can basically add anything to it. I've made couscous salads many times before and have mixed in tuna or sardines or bacon or chicken...with your choice of vegetables such as cherry tomatoes, pumpkin, cucumber, raisins, spinach...your choice of nuts such as chopped pistachios, pine nuts...then dress it with a mixture of yoghut, mustard and lemon juice, or red wine vinegar, or lime juice....ok, ok, you get the gist. Just whatever you want. You'll end up making a very healthy and low fat meal out of it.

Today, my couscous salad was made with turkey pieces, cherry tomatoes, plump raisins, rocket and roasted pine nuts. It was simple, filling and healthy. Adding raisins to the salad added a nice sweet taste to the salad.


Turkey Cous Cous Salad
(dinner for 1) - hubby is away.....

1/2 cup couscous
1/2 chicken stock
handful of cooked turkey, chopped
handful of cherry tomatoes, diced
handful of rocket leaves, cut into small pieces
handful of raisins
small handful of pine nuts
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
black pepper

- Roast the pine nuts in a saucepan until lightly toasted. Set aside.
- Heat up the chicken stock. Bring to boil and remove from the heat.
- Place couscous in a bowl, add in hot chicken stock. Cover with tea towel for a few minutes.
- In the meantime, soak raisins in hot water until they are plump and juicy.
- When the couscous is ready, fluff it up and toss in a bowl along with the rest of the ingredients.
- Drizzle with red wine vinegar and season with pepper. Combine well.

Smoked Salmon Avocado Salad with Poached Egg

Tonight was another salad night. In the next few days I will be making 2 other types of salads to keep up with this week's salad theme. As I'd mentioned before, I've promised myself to eat light this week after stuffing my face over the weekend.

This salad is made up of a bed of rocket leaves, topped with diced cucumber and a few handfuls of cherry tomatoes, smoked salmon pieces, sliced avocado and a sprinkle of goats cheese. I decided to poach an egg for added protein. A sweet mirin dressing was used as it goes well with the peppery taste of the rocket leaves.


Smoked Salmon Avocado Salad with Poached Egg
(serves 2)

1 avocado, sliced
2 Lebanese cucumbers, diced
8 cherry tomatoes, cut in half
100g rocket leaves
150g smoked salmon, hand shredded
goats cheese

Poached Egg
2 eggs
1 tbsp white vinegar

Dressing
3 tbsp mirin
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp caster sugar
1 tsp olive oil

- In a saucepan, boil water (around 3/4 full); add in the white vinegar and stir. Add the eggs by placing it closer to the water. Poach for 3-4 mins.
- Arrange the rocket, cucumber, tomatoes, avocado, salmon and goats cheese on a plate. Top with poached egg.
- Make the dressing in a small bowl and drizzle over the salad.

Yoghurt Chicken with Pumpkin & Chickpea Salad

My hubby and I went to Adelaide this Australia Day long weekend for our friends' wedding. It also gave us the chance to have a post-wedding dinner with family friends who could not make it to our wedding in Sydney. When we travel afar, we'll be eating non-stop all the way through (that seems to be our style!) - starting with a BIG dinner on Friday night, followed by lunch & our friends' wedding reception dinner on Saturday, lunch again with friends on Sunday & closely followed by a BBQ, then a big breakfast with relatives before we caught our plane back to Sydney. As you can imagine, we've gobbled a whole lot of food in our ever bulging bellies! For some reason though, I managed to lose a little bit of weight when I weighed myself as soon as I got home. I have no idea why - maybe water retention before I left for Adelaide - or maybe I was just lucky I didn't gain 5kgs!

To compensate for our overeating this long weekend, I have decided to eat light this week. No objections from hubs since he thinks he really is getting a bulging belly. Not much coz he's so lean but I think guys with a little bit of fat around the waist is cute! hahaha...that's just me though. So, as I was saying, we have to eat light this week.

Tonight's dinner was my little invention - Yoghurt Chicken with Pumpkin & Chickpea Salad. It was a joyous success as hubs gave it a big thumbs up! "This is fantastic", he says. It's a filling and low GI salad. The yoghurt chicken went nicely with the salad. The pumpkin added sweetness, chickpeas added a little saltiness, whilst the tomatoes and cucumber were both refreshing. I served the salad with my double mustard and lemon dressing. There you have it.


Yoghurt Chicken with Pumpkin & Chickpea Salad
(serves 2-3)

250gm chicken breast
1/2 small butternut pumpkin, diced
1 can (240g) chickpeas, drained
2 tomatoes, diced
2 cucumbers, diced
few stalks of parsley, chopped finely
salt &/pepper for seasoning

Marinade for Chicken
1 small tub (125ml) of plain yoghurt
1 tsp Chinese 5 spice
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp extra virgin olive oil

Salad Dressing
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp English mustard
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tsp extra virgin olive oil

- Preheat oven to 160C
- Slice up the chicken then marinade and refrigerate it for 30 mins
- Dice pumpkin and place on a baking dish, season with salt and pepper. Roast the diced pumpkin in the oven for 25-30mins or until they are ready
- When the pumpkin is roasting and chicken is marinating, drain the chickpeas, dice up tomatoes and cucumber, and make dressing
- Make the dressing in a small bowl, combining the 2 mustards, lemon and extra virgin olive oil together. Set aside.
- Pan-fry the chicken pieces until the chicken browns on both sides; then place the chicken pieces in the oven for 8 mins
- Meanwhile, combine the pumpkin, chickpeas, tomatoes, cucumber and half the chopped up parsley in a serving dish
- Top with the marinaded chicken from the oven
- Drizzle with dressing. Sprinkle the rest of the parsley into the dish.

Turkey & Mango Salad with Honey Lime Dressing

Hubby and I had a late lunch at Sushi Bar Makoto today at Chatswood. This is our favourite sushi bar (and understandably, the most popular sushi bar in Sydney). There are 2 Makoto sushi joints in Sydney, one in Chatswood, the other is in the city. This sushi joint is usually packed out at lunch/dinner and waiting in line for half an hour or more is considered as normal. There are reasons why I think they're so popular (1) the fish they use is very fresh (2) they don't give you a thin lousy piece of fish like most sushi bars, and (3) they are always coming up with some new sushi combinations. This sushi bar has never failed us.

By late afternoon we were still feeling quite full from lunch. I'm not one to skip dinner so I decided to make us a light summer salad. We had some leftover turkey in the fridge - not alot left but we shouldn't let it go to waste. So what's a girl to do with some leftover cooked meat in the fridge? You can't do much with it other than to make sandwiches out of it or to chuck the meat in a salad.

This salad is a great refreshing summer salad. I tossed the turkey pieces together with rice vermicelli noodles, cucumber, carrot and mango then combined this with a sweet and sour dressing. An extremely easy and light salad to make and perfect for summer.



Turkey & Mango Salad with Honey Lime Dressing
(serves 2)

100g dried vermicelli noodles
1 cucumber
1 carrot
1 mango, sliced
cooked turkey meat

Dressing
1/3 cup lime juice
1 tbsp honey
3cm peeled fresh ginger, grated
1 chilli, chopped finely
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
juice squeezed from mango pip

- Combine lime juice, honey, ginger, chilli, fish sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil and mango juice in a bowl. Set aside
- Place vermicelli in a large bowl and pour over enough water to cover. Set this aside to soak for 5 mins or until the vermicelli is cooked through. Drain and set aside.
- Cut the cucumber and carrots thinly
- Slice the mango into strips then scoop out the flesh
- Combine the noodles, cucumber, carrots, mango and turkey together in a bowl, toss with the dressing and serve; sprinkle in some pepper if desired

Rocket, Pear & Parmesan Salad with Caramelised Balsamic

Two weeks ago, my hubby and I went away on a 2 day trip to the Southern Highlands (Bowral, Berrima and surrounding small towns) which is around 1.5-2 hours south of Sydney. There is a winery near our resort and on our first night we decided to go there for dinner. It was called Centennial Vineyards and the food they served at their restaurant was delicious. One of the entrees we ordered was the "Wild Roquet, Pear & Aged Parmesan Salad with Reduced Balsamic". This was one good salad. I love the sweetness of the pear combined with the pepperiness of the rocket leaves. It's so refreshing to eat on a balmy summer's night and very quick to prepare. This salad dish goes well with everything - chicken, beef or fish - or to have on its own.

This is my version of the salad. Hubs thought it was just as good as the salad we ate at Centennial Vineyards :) I hope you'll like it too.

Rocket, Pear & Parmesan Salad with Carmelised Balsamic
Serves 2

2 big handfuls of rocket leaves
half a pear
1 handful of goats cheese (or fetta or parmesan - whichever you prefer)
juice of 1/2 lemon
caramelised balsamic vinegar
pepper

- Remove the pear skin with a peeler
- Cut the pear in half and deseed; julienne the pear then drizzle with a dash of lemon juice
- Place rocket leaves onto a plate; scatter the thinly sliced pear pieces over the rocket
- Drizzle with more lemon juice
- Crumble the goats cheese on top (I didn't have goats cheese at home so I used parmesan instead - would prefer to use something a little more salty and creamy here as this type of cheese would go very well with the sweetness of the pear)
- Drizzle with caramelised balsamic vinegar
- Serve immediately topped with a sprinkle of black pepper

Voila! An easy, fresh sweet and peppery salad that's perfect for a summer's night.