The Food Collective: Pork and Roasted Vegetable Salad
I love roasted vegetables. I love roasted vegetable salads. In a restaurant if I see a roasted vegetable salad I’ll immediately order it. And if it’s with some sort of meat on top then even better. I love roasted vegetable salads. They’re so simple and cheap and I had never made it at home, I always order it in restaurants and it costs a fortune when you think about how cheap the ingredients are. These fancy restaurants are robbing us blind! This is so good, this is what you’d pay 9 pounds for in a restaurant. I made 4 portions of this and my ingredients cost….can’t remember but it was surely less than 5 pounds.
And isn’t this pretty? You can imagine this being served at a restaurant, right? I’m so proud because usually I’m so bad at presentation. Food is one of those things in life that gets judged unfairly based on its appearance.
Anyway, based on my recipe below I probably made waaayy too much roasted vegetables for the amount of pork that was there, I could’ve used another pork chop and made it into 6 servings instead.
Total time: 1 hr Serves: 4 Suitable for: healthy and fancy dinner parties
Ingredients
For the Pork
2 pork chops
1/2 cup white wine
2 sprigs of thyme
For the Balsamic sauce
4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp runny honey
For the Roasted Vegetables Salad
2 bell peppers, cut in half
2 courgettes, thinly sliced or grated into long strips
about a dozen of cherry tomatoes, cut in half
1 tsp oregano
olive oil
1 aubergine, thinly sliced into round discs
2 onions, thinly sliced
2 cups rocket
Method
Start with the vegetables: Fry the onions over medium high heat until softened, reserve. Put all the other vegetables, except for the rocket, in a roasting tray and drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper (for the tomatoes add the oregano as well).
Roast in a preheated oven of 200C for about 20 minutes or until all tender. You should then be able to peel the skin off the red peppers. Discard the skin and slice into strips. Mix all the veggies and onions and rocket together. Cover and keep warm.
Put some oil in a pan over medium high heat and add the pork chops. Just let that sear for a minute and turn it over and let that sear for a minute as well. Then add the white wine and thyme. Cover and let cook for a couple of minutes until cooked through. Slice into strips when done, so you can actually cut them up in the middle of cooking to see if they’re cooked through.
The balsamic sauce: Pour the balsamic vinegar into a sauce pan over high heat and let that reduce to about 1/4, then add the honey and whisk that in. Plating up! Put a blob of the vegetable salad onto the center of the plate and place the strips of pork on top, then drizzle with the sauce.
The Food Collective: Cauliflower and Paneer Curry
I used to be terrified of curries. I’ve always loved them, but the idea of making my own curry seemed beyond impossible. Growing up in an Italian household meant that my spice drawer only had like oregano, and seeing these curry recipes with 2 dozen spices was incredibly overwhelming.
But then eventually I had the urge to make my own curry. It’s because when going to Indian restaurants, I only know how to order the creamy stuff, and if I were feeling the need to be healthy, I’d have to be an ignorant foreigner and ask the waiter if there’s anything…dry. And I hate being the ignorant foreigner in a restaurant.
I’ll keep this short and sweet because I have to go back to Maths. The thing is once you’ve read a couple of curry recipes online, you’ll understand the harmonious relationships between all the spices, and you can create your own! The following spices are pretty prevalent in most curries, so it may be a good idea to stock up your spice drawer with these (it’s only like 69p each) so you can have a curry fest whenever you want.
Prep time: 15 min Cook time: 30 min Serves: 2 Suitable for: satisfying healthy Indian cravings
Ingredients
1 tbs oil
125g paneer, cubed
1/2 head of medium cauliflower, cut into florets
1 cup peas
1/2 onion, finely chopped
2 tomatoes, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1cm ginger, minced
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp garam masala
6 curry leaves
1 1/2 tsp chili powder (less if you can’t take the heat)
1/2 cup water
2 tbsp yoghurt
1 tbsp brown sugar
Salt
Method
- Dry roast the cumin: put the cumin in a pan and toss them around on medium heat until fragrant. Put aside.
- Heat the oil in the pan, add the paneer and brown the sides over medium high heat. Put aside.
- Add the onions in the pan and cook until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, ginger, and all the spices and cook for one minute.
- Add the tomatoes and cauliflower, toss to coat them in the spices. Add water, turn the heat down, put the lid on and let it simmer for 20-25 minutes until cauliflower is softened but not mushy.
- Add the peas and paneer, stir and cook for a couple of minutes. Add brown sugar and yoghurt, and season to taste.
Variations
-If you’re not comfortable enough to mess around with the spices yet then just mess around with the veggies. Use the spice mixture as a base for other vegetables or meats or tofu or whatever you fancy.
Baked Oats for Stressful Times
I am stressed out of my mind. And to think I’m only in my second year. I haven’t had time to cook at all. My lunches have been Boot’s £3.29 meal deals and I’ve been overdosing on cereal bars for dinner. In these times of academic stress, the only meal I really care about is breakfast. A good energising breakfast is a must to prep myself for my day in the library.
Oats are just wonderful for you. They’re high in fibre, they contain antioxidants, they lower your cholesterol levels, reduce blood pressure and so on and so forth. Thus just the idea of consuming such a bowl of concentrated healthiness makes me feel good. The recipe I have below is so incredibly versatile. This one’s almost like a healthy oatmeal apple pie. I have some suggestions below as to the possible variations you could do, because there’s a bowl of healthy oatmeal out there for everyone.
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The Food Collective: Matcha Almond Cookies
When I’m not cooking or eating, I’m thinking about food.
For us lucky ones food’s purpose isn’t solely to keep us alive anymore, it’s become much more. It sweetens our long days and spices up our mundane lives. I believe food should make us happy. Whether it’s by cooking it, eating it, writing about it or merely thinking about it.
With this, I am against outrageously expensive food and incredibly unhealthy food. Good food should not be a luxury, it should be enjoyed by all, and serious heath problems should not result from the food you eat (hence I support SlowFood and Jamie’s Food Revolution).
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