Nutritious Winter Recipes
2 simple recipes to inspire you to cook and eat well and keep you nutritionally nourished this Winter.
Working from home?
How about my lunchtime Curry in a Hurry? Ready in 20mins. Batch cook more and freeze so there’s always something yummy at hand on those days when time just isn’t on your side.
Lazy Sunday?
If you’re like me, it’s rarely a lazy Sunday and most always a crazy weekend of sport with my teenage boys. Find just 20 mins to chop and prep, pop in the oven, then hey presto, when you get home, there’s a warming, super tasty, nutritious meal that all the family will love.
Leftovers are brilliant to take to the office – invest in a thermos and you’re good to go. Add in half a sachet of quick cook microwave brown rice for an extra hit of fibre and slow release energy to keep you feeling fuller for longer, staving of those mid-afternoon office munchies.
Curry in a hurry (25 mins)
Ingredients (Serves 2)
1 tin of chickpeas, drained
1 tin full fat coconut milk
1 sweet potato, chopped into bite size pieces
1 red onion, finely diced
1 small bag of spinach (or 3 clumps frozen spinach)
1 small punnet of mushrooms, halved
1 sachet of vegetable stock. Use the best quality veg stock you can afford – free from additives and fillers that can be damaging to our health
1 tbsp curry powder (mild/medium to your preference)
1 heaped tsp ground cumin
1 heaped tsp ground coriander
1 heaped tsp ground turmeric
Thumb size piece of fresh ginger, grated
2 garlic cloves, crushed
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.
Method:
Fry the onion, mushrooms and crushed garlic in a saucepan for 5/6 mins with a pinch of salt until lightly browned and a little soft. Add in the spices to the onion mix (ginger, turmeric, cumin, coriander and curry powder) and toast in the pan for another minute.
Add the coconut milk, chickpeas, diced sweet potato and stock to the same pan and cook on a gentle simmer until the sweet potatoes are cooked (they should feel soft when you insert a knife). Add in the spinach and cook for 2 minutes or until wilted.
Serve with dollop of organic yoghurt or coconut yoghurt, some chopped fresh coriander and some extra fresh red chilli if you like it hot and spicy.
Coming in at a whopping 5 of your 30 plant points in just one meal makes this something worth cooking and eating.
Your gut and the millions of microbes that live there all like to munch on a diversity of different plants to ensure that they thrive and stay healthy, in turn ensuring that you do too. Studies have demonstrated that there is more gut-diversity in people who eat a wide variety of different plant foods on a weekly basis than those who don’t.
Slow cooked Sunday beef stew (20mins prep, 3 hours cooking time)
Ingredients (serves 4)
600g braising beef cut into chunks (organic if possible but otherwise buy the best quality you can afford)
2 tbsp plain flour, seasoned with a little salt and pepper.
4 large carrots, peeled and cut into very large chunks
2 red onions, sliced into thick half moons
1 punnet mushrooms, halved
2 sachets of beef bone broth (Waitrose stocks Borough Broth) or, buy the best quality fresh beef stock you can afford
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and left whole
1 sprig of fresh rosemary
4 sprigs of fresh thyme
2 tbsp of tomato puree
Salt and pepper to taste
Method:
Heat oven to 140 degrees Celsius (fan)
Dust the cubes of beef in plenty of the seasoned flour, then fry in olive oil until brown and caramelised.
Add into a stew pot (or slow cooker) with onions, bone broth, garlic, fresh herbs and tomato puree, a pinch of salt and a few good grinds of pepper. Pop a lid on and place into the oven.
Cook for approximately 2 hours, then take out the oven, top up with a little water if the stew is drying out. Add in carrots and mushrooms and pop back in the oven for another hour. The beef should be soft and falling apart, and the carrots and mushrooms cooked through. Adjust the seasoning to taste.
Serve with buttery mash plus 2 other types of your favourite fresh veg.
The method of slow-cooking helps preserve the nutrient integrity of seasonal ingredients by comparison to other methods; cooking food in one pot minimises nutrient loss as all nutrients are retained in the pot.
Beyond the nutritional advantages, whilst life is pressured and we are always in a hurry, embracing the art of slow cooking offers more than just physical health benefits. It becomes an opportunity to slow down, appreciate the simplicity of cooking and reconnect with the seasons. We can both nourish ourselves with seasonally available, anti-oxidant rich roots and mineral-dense vegetables whilst enjoying all that is delicious and comforting about Winter soups, stews and spices.
Phew...Happy cooking👩🏻🍳👩🏻🍳👩🏻🍳
I'd love to know if you try any of these recipes, tag me in your Instagram stories @victoriathomasnutrition
