New Spice Haul!

Hi Martha Friends!

I have just spent two weeks back home for a wee visit and now back and ready for some more summer cooking!

Whilst in Calgary I hit up my ultimate favourite store - The Silk Road Spice Merchant.
If you are a spice fan, you must check out their online shop, here!

I picked up these four 'lil beauties...and spent about two hours in there smelling each and every spice.
It is divine in there, trust me.

I bought:

• Indonesian Korintje Cassia Cinnamon - heaven
• Saltwater Chili-Lime Seasoning - this is going to be amazing on fish and chicken!
• Taco Seasoning - I eat a lot of minced meats and love Mexican-inspired foods, so this is going to be so useful!
• St-Laurent Steak Spice - the smell...incredible!

The STEWART SCORE (for the store!):
Appearance: I love the decor and feel of this store - 2 
Taste: I have never been disappointed with any spice or rub I have used - 2 
Ease: Spices, easiest thing to go from dull to Martha worthy - 2

The Stewart Score: A refresher

A few of you have been asking what the Stewart Score is all about!

I wrote about it a while ago, it is how I rank each recipe - letting you know if I think it was "A Good Thing" and Martha-worthy, or "Not Worthy".

It is a simple score card with three key categories that can earn a 1 or a 2, as shown below:

The STEWART SCORE:
Appearance: 1 or 2
Taste: 1 or  2 
Ease: 1  or 2

1= Not Worthy
2 = Its a Good Thing

If you try any of my posted recipes, post your own Stewart Score to let me know how it turned out for you!

                     * Taken at the Wired Business Conference, NYC. I sat behind her.
                        One of the best afternoons of my life. She smelt like a dream. Her hair
                        was perfection...in case any of you are wondering, of course.

Low-Fat Greek Balsamic Dressing

Summer is finally here in Amsterdam. When its hot out, I always feel like crunchy, crisp, cool foods - like salads!

On the Dukan diet, most dressings are off limits as they contain loads of oil, salts and fats.

Here is a deliciously simple low fat and high flavour recipe I hope you enjoy as much as I do!


What You'll Need (14 x 1Tbps servings):

• 1 medium-sized bowl
• hand blender
• jar with lid
• 2 Tbps low-sodium soy sauce
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1.5 Tbsp of your favourite Dijon mustard
• 1 Tbps honey or honey-substitute (I use a xylitol-based substitute)
• 3 Tbps of non-fat Greek yogurt (thicker and creamier the better)
• If you are not on the Dukan diet, you can also add in 1 tsp of grapeseed oil (or olive oil). This will just make the dressing a little smoother

What You'll Do:

• in your medium-sized bowl, add in all the ingredients
• blend with a hand-mixer until smooth
• store in a jar or some sort of sealed container
• keep in your fridge until ready to serve. This dressing keeps for about one week in the fridge.

This dressing also works as a nice dip for raw veggies. To make it thicker, double the amount of Greek yogurt.

I love this dressing with watermelon - there is something so delicious about balsamic and watermelon. One of my favourite, pre-Dukan diet salads recipes had the following ingredients:

Cubed watermelon
Spinach
Basil
Red onion
Candied walnuts
My Greek balsamic dressing

Let me know what you try with this dressing - would love new ideas and flavour combos!


The STEWART SCORE:
Appearance: 1.5 (its kind of a unattractive shade of brown) 
Taste: 2
Ease: 2

Easy Healthy Roast Dukan Vegetables

Today is Friday. That means my favourite day of the week is tomorrow.
The Saturday food and organic market in my neighbourhood.
I get all my fresh vegetables, bread, eggs, cheese and herbs here.
That also means I have a lot of semi-sad looking leftover vegetables in my fridge I need to use up as I hate wasting food.

A friend of mine calls this 'creme du fridge'. I love that. Using what you have in your fridge to make a meal, no recipes required.

That is the inspiration of this super easy and healthy side dish.

What You'll Need:

• 1 lemon
• 1 Tbps grapeseed oil (or olive oil. I like grapeseed oil as I just watched this news story on olive oil and found out the Italian mafia is notorious for olive oil trafficking. No, for real!)
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1/8 tsp freshly ground pepper...or something like that. I don't measure.
• any Dukan friendly veggies you have kicking around
• some of my favourite veggies, roasted are: 
• cauliflower
• eggplant
• zucchini
• tomato (as I can't stand them raw...too unpredictable)
• carrots
• onions
• broccoli
• NEVER cucumber. Cooked cucumbers are super gross.

What You'll Do:

• pre-heat your oven to 180C
• cover your baking tray with tinfoil
• mix the oil, pressed garlic and pepper into a small container
• rough chop all your veggies and place them into a sealed bag. You may want to use a large ziplock bag...of which there are none here in The Netherlands

• pour in the oil mixture and shake the heck of of the bagged veggies
• pour, evenly on your foiled pan
• squeeze a little lemon juice over top for good measure
• twist on another sprinkle of pepper
• bake for 20-30 minutes (baking time will be dependent on the veggies you use. Heartier veggies, like cauliflower and broccoli take longer than say tomatoes)
• that's it!

These go great as a side with my Polenta, Oatbran Chicken Nuggets!

The STEWART SCORE:
Appearance: 2
Taste: 2
Ease: 2

Dukan Polenta Oatbran Chicken Nuggets

The Dukan diet friendly polenta, oatbran chicken nugget is one of my favourite recipes. Its easy, healthy and for a nugget, pretty darn handsome.

Even Martha loves a handsome nugget.

                     I placed the sliced lemons on the plate to make them look real fancy.

What You'll Need (serves 2):

• 2 chicken breasts
• 1/2 cup cornmeal, or 'polenta' as it is called in the Netherlands
• 1/2 cup of oatbran
• 1 Tbps Herbs de Provence (if you can find them in your neck of the woods. If you can't, dried rosemary and pepper is darn tasty, too). I like using Herbs de Provence, as it makes me sound so continental
• 1 medium-sized egg
• George Foreman lean, mean, fat-busting grill...or suitable alternative. You can also use a non-stick frying pan to cook these little buddies.

Unfortunately (for me), no-one knows who the heck George Foreman is in The Netherlands, so I had to buy a sorry excuse for the lean, mean grilling machine...but, as long as it grills and is none stick - it'll do me.

What You'll Do:

• dice your chicken into slightly-larger-than-bite-sized pieces, ensuring you remove all the skin and weird bits you want to forget about
• crack your egg into a small bowl
• mix your cornmeal, oatbran and spices into another, separate small bowl

• plug in George to get him nice and toasty...or heat up your pan
• dip each piece of chicken into the egg (this is called 'dredging', which I think sounds morbid and eery, so I shall day 'dip')
• make sure each chicken piece is not too drippy before you place it into the dry mixture

• fully cover the chicken piece with the dry mixture
• place into George or onto your pan

• cook until done (Martha likes chicken cooked, and so should you)
• that's it!

Crispy, tasty and a nice accompaniment to a Dukan-friendly side dish, like these easy, healthy, roast Dukan veggies.

The STEWART SCORE:
Appearance: 1.5
Taste: 2
Ease: 2

A Dukan Orange Cake...Attempt

It is pouring in Amsterdam today so what better time to bake?
I pulled out my shiny new French Dukan cookbook to see what caught my eye (and had few instructions that I had to then translate).

I love citrus, it cheers me up, and a dreary day like today could use a little pick-me-up.

The gluten and sugar-free Dukan recipe called 'Far a l'Orange' appeared delicious...and easy.
Two things I value.
I am not sure what 'Far a l'Orange' means...when I translate it, it says 'Far Has Orange'.
Thanks for nothing, Google Translate.

I would like to think it means 'Exotic Orange Cake Tasting of Faraway Lands'.

Look how fluffy, neat and unburned it looks! I am sure I can recreate this tasty 'lil guy (she says optimistically before attempting...).

What You'll Need:

• one mixing bowl
• cute little baking containers as shown in the recipe (of which I have none, so I used muffin tins...don't tell Martha)
• one large orange so you can zest the heck out of it
• 8 Tbps of fat-free quark (or low-fat Greek yogurt)
• 2 eggs
• 3 Tbps of your powdered sweetener of choice
• 6 Tbps of cornstarch
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp orange flavouring
• 4 Tbsp of low-fat milk powder

What (the recipe says) You'll Do:

• pre-heat your oven to 160C
• mix all the ingredients together in a medium-sized bowl (I like to mix my wet and dry ingredients separately, as Martha would do that, but when and how you introduce your wet and dry is totally up to you)
• pour your batter into your cute little cake pan, or muffin tins (for me it made 8 muffins)
• according to the recipe, bake for 30 minutes...if you like things burned!! Its a good thing I kept an eye on these little babies as they cooked super fast. I left them in for 15 minutes and the tops were already turning an unsavoury shade of charcoal

• on a positive note, they smelled like a little piece of heaven whilst cooking
• on a negative note, they semi-exploded, glooping out angry looking batter projectiles which, thank goodness, did not drip into my oven. Burny, drippy ovens are the worst!
• that's it

Admittedly, they are not that handsome of a cake. Martha would shake her well-coiffed head and send me packing.
They look like they are sticking their batter tongues out at you, mocking your failed culinary attempts.

They taste delish though.
Really and surprisingly so. They also have a nice, light texture, which surprised me with so much heavy quark.

I am not easily defeated. A Munro hates to loose. I will try this recipe again!


The STEWART SCORE:
Appearance: 0
Taste: 2
Ease: 2

Dukan Cauliflower Mashed 'Potatoes'

Potatoes are not a part of the Dukan diet until you reach the stablization phase and can start incorporating 'celebration meals' and once-per-week starches.

I am from the Canadian Prairies and therefore a meat and potatoes kinda gal. I am really trying to break that habit though by incorporating other vegetables that offer me a lot more in terms of health benefits.

I started reading up on the wonders of cauliflower (or, 'bloemkool' in Dutch:) and thought I would try to create the perfect cauliflower mashed 'potato'.

Did you know cauliflowers are:

• an excellent source of vitamin C - a great anti-oxidant (I know, and they're not even orange;)
• very high in vitamin K - which helps aid in decreasing inflammation
• high in fiber
• a good source of protein
• a super tasty alternative to potato...so here is the recipe!

What You'll Need (serves four):

• a blender
• one medium-sized cauliflower
• one 1/2 cube of low-sodium chicken stock
• 1.5 cups of water (to be boiled)
• generous twist of freshly ground pepper
• large dollop of fat-free plain Greek yogurt (my favourite kind is the Total 0% brand - super thick and creamy)

                                I know what you are thinking...I should be a hand model.

What You'll Do:
I have a steaming oven (and so does Martha, I'm sure), so I use that to steam my vegetables, but, if you don't, never fear - you can steam your cauliflower the conventional way on your stove top by covering it in seasoned water and letting it simmer, covered, until soft.

• prep your cauliflower by removing all the green leaves and stem
• chop your cauliflower into smaller chunks 
• place the pieces in your pan, cut side down
• boil 1.5 cups of water
• place your 1/2 cube of low-sodium chicken stock in the boiled water
• stir until dissolved

• Pour the chicken stock mixture over your cauliflower
• Let simmer for 5-10 minutes, or until very tender

• Using a slotted spoon, take the softened cauliflower from your steaming pan and place inside your blender
• Plop in your dollop of fat-free Greek yogurt

• Twist in your pepper
• Add a whisper of the remaining, seasoned water (I usually use about 1/4 cup but this depends on the freshness of your cauliflower. If it is older and drier, you may find you need a little more water. Easy does it though as you don't want your mixture to be too watery)
• Mix through using a spatula
• Blend until semi-smooth (I like leaving a few little lumps as it makes the cauliflower mixture much more believable in it's potato disguise)
• Remove from blender and serve with another twist of ground pepper on top
• That's it!

I just love this recipe as you can eat this as it is, as a side of mash, or you can use it as a topper. For example, I love to make Dukan-friendly 'Sheppard's Pie' where you add this on the top. Or, when I make zucchini boats, I add this onto the top.

Other additions you can try with this recipe:

• If you fancy garlic, add in a clove of this either in the seasoned water mixture while steaming for a milder taste, or into the blender for a stronger taste
• Not on the Dukan diet? Add in some shredded cheese while blending
• Don't have low-fat yogurt on hand? Use low-fat quark or even low-fat cream cheese.

Play around with it. I would love to know what other recipes you use this on!

The STEWART SCORE:
Appearance: 1.5 (Its hard to make them magazine-spread worthy looking)
Taste: 2
Ease: 2