Recipe - Syn Free Chinese Chicken Curry

There has been a bit of a hoo-haa in the Slimming Community lately. Iceland stock a range of Slimming World meals, meats, sauces and soups and they released a new, chip-shop curry style sauce. Queue people loading their trolleys with tubs and tubs of the stuff, and emptying the freezers literally the minute the stores opened. I wouldn't even be surprised if there was fisticuffs. Us slimmers are a greedy bunch. Anyway, most normal people (I.e. those not willing to loose a tooth in a fight for it) couldn't get any for love nor money, but Slimming World, either being naive or extremely clever, print the recipes for the meals on the boxes with the idea being you buy it once and then make it yourself the next time. So, I got hold of a pic of the recipe from a lovely lady in my group and had a go at making it myself. I adjusted the recipe slightly, added chicken and peas, and while it was runnier than I would have liked, it was good! This recipe easily serves two greedy adults, and let's face it, if we weren't greedy we wouldn't be here, would we...

To make Syn Free Chinese Chicken Curry for two people you will need:

• one large onion or two small ones
• 2 large cloves of garlic
• 2 or 3 chicken breasts
• 1/2 cup peas
• 1 tsp cumin
• 2 tsp medium curry powder
• 1/4 tsp chinese five spice
• 2 tbsp dark soy sauce
• salt and pepper
• 250ml water
• 3 tbsp fat free natural Greek yogurt

Dice the chicken and brown in a pan. Roughly chop half the onion and blend in a food processor with the garlic and a couple of tablespoons of water until you get a smooth paste. Chop the other half of the onion and add to the chicken with the peas and onion paste. Cook for a few minutes then add the spices. Stir it all together and chuck in the soy, seasoning and water, bring to the boil and then reduce to a simmer for about 15 minutes. Take off the heat for a few minutes before stirring in the yogurt and serve straight away.

I served mine with half rice and half cauliflower rice to get my speed in, and it was really tasty. I'm going to make it again, and try to get it thicker next time so I will update this post if I manage it. But it was tasty as it was, and mixed with the rice and cauliflower the sauce was absorbed. The original recipe suggest sweetener, but I left that out as we're now supposed to syn it, and it really didn't need it at all. You could SP it up by substituting yogurt for quark, and serving with just the cauli rice.

Any ideas for thickening it up? I'm not keen on adding smash as I don't feel like it does anything for the flavour. I could always syn a bit of cornflour I suppose!

Hx

Recipe- Speedy and Saintly Chicken Stir Fry

This meal is a bit of an unappetising looking bugger, but it is packed with flavour and amazingly saintly. It's also ready in just minutes which is great if your 8 year old has developed a vocabulary that would make a sailor blush, your 6 year old has crapped himself 3 times, the baby had a meltdown because you wouldn't let her empty the bin and play with the contents or if it's generally just been a long day. AAAND it's 75% speed food, perfect for EE:SP if you're that way inclined (more on that another time), and so will definitely compensate for earlier when the spoon jumped into the nutella jar and straight into your mouth. Twice.

To make Speedy and Saintly Chicken Stir Fry you will need:

• One chicken breast
• One small onion
• One garlic clove
• One small courgette
• One small carrot
• Half a small cauliflower (or half a tub pre-prepared cauli rice)
• Soy sauce
• Pinch of chilli flakes (or more if you're brave and have toilet paper on standby in the fridge)

First of all, unless you've cheated and bought pre-prepared cauli rice, you're going to need to either blitz your cauliflower in a food processor until it resembles couscous, or grate it (messy, very messy!). Once that's done, spray a wok or large frying pan with frylight and get it hot while you slice your chicken and onion, and mince or finely chop the garlic. Once the wok is hot chuck in the chook until browned all over, then add the onion and garlic. Let that cook while you go at your courgette and carrot with a speed peeler to get nice long ribbons. You could use a spiraliser if you haven't lost it at the back of a cupboard somewhere like I definitely haven't done. Well, maybe I might have. Anyway, chuck the veg in the pan with a good glug of soy and a pinch of chilli, and stir fry until the chicken is done. Add your cauli rice and cook for 4 minutes more, serve and polish your halo.

The recipe serves one very generously, so just increase the quantities or add whatever veg you like to increase the volume. You could chuck in a stir fry pack, chop up some peppers, add beansprouts, mange tout, green beans, cabbage, brussels. Really fart it up.

Hx