Tag Archives: almonds

#421 – Greek Pasta Salad Lunch

#421 - Greek Pasta Salad

If you follow me on Twitter you probably read my tweets about my newly acquired bento from The Crazy Store.  Fellow Tweeter and bento fan Amanda pointed it out to me and I’m so glad she did! It’s a great little set and I got to take it out on it’s maiden voyage today.

Today’s Lunch:

  • Greek flavoured pasta salad: pasta tossed with garlicky braised tomatoes, feta cheese, cucumber and yoghurt dressing (recipe below) topped with wilted pea shoots,
  • apple slices,
  • almonds and
  • wasabi peas.

I received a jar of Kara’s Original Greek Herb Dressing in my goodie bag at the SA Food Bloggers Conference earlier this year and since the conference I’ve used it to dress leafy salads and steamed vegetables with great results.  Here is my simple recipe for a Greek flavoured yoghurt dressing using this herb mix.

Ingredients:

  • 3 tsp Kara’s Original Greek Herb Dressing Mix
  • 6 tsp warm water
  • 1/2 tsp celery salt
  • juice of half a lemon
  • 150ml plain yoghurt

Method:

  1. Add warm water to herb mixture and leave to rehydrate for a few minutes
  2. Add celery salt and lemon juice
  3. Stir into plain yoghurt

This is enough to dress half a packet of pasta (250g dried). I think it would also make a great marinade or dip, although if you plan to use it as a dip you may want to use less salt.

Daring Cooks July 2010 – Nut Butter

Daring Cooks July 2010 - Nut Butter

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

The first part of this month’s challenge was to produce a fresh nut butter using nuts of our choice.  I chose to make a raw almond butter and because the end result would be used in a savoury dish I loosened it up with a little garlic infused avocado oil. For awhile I thought my little food processor wouldn’t be able to handle the nuts or produce anything but nuts crumbs. But with a little patience and a few added teaspoons of avocado oil we eventually got there.

Daring Cooks July 2010 - Nut Butter

The final part of the challenge was to produce a savoury dish using our freshly made nut butter. I chose the butter chicken recipe as it is a dish I’ve wanted to cook for awhile.  It came out really well and yet again I find myself wondering what I was so afraid of and thinking that sometimes things are not as complicated as you think they are.

Daring Cooks July 2010 - Butter Chicken

All recipes from this months challenge can be found here.