Keto Flaxseed Chips
Hello, hello! I’ve not been spending time on my blog for the past month! Honestly, I’m running out of ideas and I’ve been eating simple meals which I think don’t need to be on the blog. Anyways, I’m getting my groove back and certainly meal ideas for those who are on the keto way of eating.
Most chips sold in supermarkets are made from either potatoes or flour, which are obviously high in carbs. There’s reduced fat, fat free, sodium free and gluten free, but no low carb. So I was looking for something crunchy to snack on or have as dips and I came across this Low Carb Flaxseed Chips from Low Carb Recipe Ideas. I tried it out and got hooked. Hooked so much, I would make it at least once a week.
You can adjust seasoning according to what you like. I like mine a little spicy so I add a chili powder mix of cayenne, chili, cumin, and paprika. These chips are perfect as a dip or a high fiber snack.
Ingredients
- 1 cup Flaxseed Meal (Golden or Brown)
- 2 teaspoons Garlic Powder
- 2 teaspoons Onion Powder
- 2 teaspoons Chilli Powder Mix (Cayenne, Paprika, Chilli) *optional
- ½ cup Water
Directions:
- In a bowl, mix ground flax meal and seasonings well.
- Add water and mix till combined with a spatula.
- Cover and set the dough aside for 10 minutes.
- Pre heat oven to 200°c (400°F).
- Once dough is ready, roll it out between 2 parchment papers as thin as you like. (cooking times will vary according to thickness)
- Gently pull apart parchment paper from each side of the rolled dough onto the other (this is to make sure it does not stick to the paper while baking)
- Place the rolled dough with parchment paper onto a baking sheet and use a pizza cutter to cut into cracker sized pieces.
- Bake chips for 10-15 minutes (longer if thicker).
- Once chips are baked, turn off the oven, remove and break the crackers. Spread the crackers on the baking tray and return to the oven for another 10 minutes with the oven door slightly opened. (this is to dry it out so it gets crispy)
- Allow crackers to cool completely before storing.
Tips:
- Conversion Chart
- You can adjust seasoning according to what you like. I like mine a little spicy so I add a chili powder mix of cayenne, chili, cumin, and paprika. These chips are perfect as a dip or a high fiber snack.
- If you are using MyFitnessPal app to count calories, first copy the recipe URL then go to MyFitnessPal app to Recipes, select Create a New Recipe, then Add from the Web. Paste the URL, match ingredients and that’s it!
- Always match ingredients to the ones you use. Ingredient nutritional facts differ depending on brand.
- Nutrition Facts (based on my ingredients) : Per serving (8 pieces) 124 kcal, Total Fat – 9 g, Total Carbs – 7 g, Fiber – 6 g = NET Carbs – 1 g, Protein – 4 g.
Enjoy!
Apple Crumble
Apple crumble is one of my comfort food go-to’s. I enjoy eating it throughout the year with whatever apples I can get. This time though, I made this particular one because I mistakenly ordered a large bag (2.5 kilos) of cooking red apples. There was no name on the apple bag other than Grade 2 cooking apples. It was not too sweet, a little tart and crispy.
I was shuffling between making apple jam, apple butter or apple crumble…obviously went with the crumble because I have 4 types of jams in the fridge and that’s gonna take me some time to finish it off. Most recipes don’t require the apples to be cooked prior to baking, but I personally like cooking the apples prior so that it really gets infused with the spices but not too long that it gets too soft.
This recipe keeps for up to a week in the fridge and is great eaten hot or cold!
Apple Filling
- 6 large Cooking Apples
- ¼ - ½ cup (depending on sweetness) Brown Sugar
- 6 sticks / 1 tablespoon (powder) Cinnamon
- 4 pieces Star Anise
- 4 pieces Clove
- 2 pods Cardamon
- 1½ teaspoons Nutmeg
- 2 tablespoons Water
- 2 teaspoons Cornflour
- To taste Salt
Crumble
- 1 cup Flour
- 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
- ½ cup Butter, cubed
- ½ cup Packed Brown Sugar
- ¼ teaspoon Cinnamon Powder
- ¼ teaspoon Salt
Directions:
- Apple Filling
- Set aside apple filling aside.
- Take 1 teaspoon of water and mix it with the cornflour. Add to apple filling and mix well.
- Cook on medium high for 15 minutes.
- Add to a saucepan or pot. Except for the cornflour, mix in all the apple filling ingredients.
- Core and cut apples into 1 inch chunks.
- Crumble
- Remove and combine more by hand.
- In a food processor, add all the ingredients and pulse until large crumbs are formed.
- Assembly & baking
- Pre-heat oven to 190°C.
- In a 9 x 9-inch glass or ceramic baking dish, add the apple filling.
- Pour crumble evenly over the filling.
- Bake for 30 minutes.
- Serve immediately with vanilla ice cream, cream, or even custard.
Tips:
Onde – Onde (Klepon)
Onde-onde, ondeh-ondeh or in Indonesia – klepon is a dessert or tea-time snack made out of glutinous rice flour or sweet potato, filled with gula melaka (coconut palm sugar) and coated with grated coconut. Onde-onde can be found in morning markets, school canteens and sold by Mak Cik’s or Pak Cik’s (aunties or uncles) selling kuih (cakes).
This recipe was requested by my close friend Martin. I can’t remember how the subject came up but he said ‘make onde-onde lah…then put on your website’. So right after I got off the phone with him, I started gathering the ingredients. Lucky for me, I had all of it on hand. The only thing that’s missing is freshly grated coconut. I have yet to find finely grated coconut here, so I used desiccated coconut but steamed it for 30 minutes before using it. This is to rehydrate the desiccated coconut. It does taste and feel different compared to the freshly grated ones, but what to do! Below is a machine used to grate coconut in Malaysia. Here’s a video on how it’s used.
Though I am able to make it at home, I still prefer the ones sold in Malaysian markets. Perhaps I’m a little stingy when it comes to using my gula melaka since I only have limited stock from Malaysia. Of course you do not need to use the ones from Malaysia as most Asian shops sell palm sugar from Thailand or Vietnam.
Recipe adapted from Sea Salt with Food
Pandan Extract
- 12 Pandan Leaves
- 1 cup Water
Coconut Topping
- 1 cup Desiccated Coconut / Freshly Grated Coconut
- To taste Salt
Onde - Onde
- 2 cups (204 grams) Glutinous Rice Flour
- 1 cup Pandan Extract
- 1 tablespoon Sugar
- 1 small block Gula Melaka (Coconut Palm Sugar), chopped into small pieces
Directions:
- Pandan Extract
- Wash pandan leaves. Cut pandan into 2 cm strips. (This helps to blend faster)
- Add cut pandan leaves and water into blender or food processor.
- Blend till juices have been extracted. About 3-4 minutes.
- Strain pandan extract with a cheesecloth.
- Coconut Topping*
- Mix desiccated coconut and salt in a heat proof bowl.
- Steam for 30 minutes.
- Onde – Onde
- Mix glutinous rice flour with pandan extract (you may not need all) and sugar until it forms into a dough.
- Roll dough into small balls (about 1 tablespoon each).
- Flatten dough and fill the centre of dough with gula melaka (about 1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon).
- Seal the gula melaka with the dough and gently roll it to form a ball.
- Bring a medium sized pot of water to boil.
- Boil the onde-onde in batches. Do not overcrowd the pot.
- When the onde-onde floats to the surface, use a slotted spoon to remove.
- Coat the onde-onde in steamed grated coconut immediately.
- Allow onde-onde to cool before serving.
Tips:
- You can get palm sugar from any Asian shop.
- If you do not have fresh pandan leaves, you can use pandan extract or flavouring.
- Store onde – onde in a container and enjoy within 2 days.
- Do not refrigerate, it will become very hard.
- 1 cup glutinous rice flour = 104 grams
- Cups to Grams conversions
* If using freshly grated coconut, you can skip this step.
Enjoy!
Roasted Green Beans
Since I’ve been at this whole eating healthier/trying to shed some weight, I’ve been trying to eat more vegetables. I like vegetables, just that sometimes I don’t pay attention to it as much as I do my protein and starch. Most of the time I like to just dump my vegetables into a pot to boil or I would buy ready-made frozen spinach where you just have to put it in a pot with a tablespoon of water and cook it.
Green beans are the one of our top favourite vegetables. However, my husband likes it boiled/steamed till it’s very soft (like most restaurants in Switzerland) whilst I like it still crunchy. I thought roasting it would solve our problem of having our beans two different ways as it gets soft but still has a crunch due to the high temperature of roasting it. He is not a fan of this but I love it. In fact, I just had this for lunch. Just roasted green beans. Belly is still grumbling, but what to do!
This recipe is very basic. Just green beans, some oil, salt, ground black pepper, and garlic powder. Many recipes call for adding parmesan cheese, but that’s simply up to you.
Ingredients
- 500 grams ( 1 pound) Green Beans
- ½ Tablespoon Olive Oil
- ½ teaspoon Garlic Powder
- ¼ teaspoon Salt
- To Taste Freshly Ground Black Pepper
Directions:
- Pre-heat oven to 200°C (400°F) and prepare baking tray with parchment paper.
- Break the top and tail of the green beans and rinse it. Dry with paper towels.
- Spread green beans onto baking tray. Drizzle with oil and sprinkle with salt, ground black pepper and garlic powder.
- Mix green beans to coat evenly.
- Bake for 20 minutes. Serve immediately.
Tips:
- Conversion Table
- You can use fresh or frozen green beans. Frozen green beans need to be defrosted before baking.
- For nutritional information, please visit my Yummly page and scroll to the bottom of the recipe.
- If you are using MyFitnessPal app to count calories, first copy the recipe URL then go to MyFitnessPal app to Recipes, select Create a New Recipe, then Add from the Web. Paste the URL, match ingredients and that’s it!
- Always match ingredients to the ones you use. Ingredient nutritional facts differ depending on brand.
Enjoy!
Malaysian Chicken Yellow Curry
Looks like Autumn has begun in Switzerland! Finally some cold days after a very hot summer. But don’t we all just complain about the weather? Whether or not it’s cold or hot, there is always something to complain about. I personally love the cold, that’s because I’m always at home and ready to snuggle up on my sofa with lots of pillows and blankets…and when it get’s colder, I have a great excuse to make some hot chocolate.
As with most Malaysian recipes, there’s no real precise measurement. There’s a word in Bahasa Malaysia which we use for this : agak-agak which means circa, to guess, approximately, more or less, or estimation. For unseasoned cooks, doing it the agak-agak way can turn out either really good, or really bad. I’ve had my fair share of bad dishes (but still edible) due to my bad agak-agakness. Malaysian cooking derives a lot from helping or watching the cooking parent or grandparent in the kitchen. Lucky for me, I use to love standing behind my mother while she cooked (mainly to get the first bite of it) and that has somehow worked out a little for me…I could have done more watching and paying attention.
Anyways, this recipe not an official Malaysian yellow curry. Every family has their own version of a yellow curry. It is also known as masak lemak which means (when directly translated) fattily cooked due to the use of coconut milk. The basics of a masak lemak dish consist of coconut milk, lemongrass and some chilli to spice it up. In this recipe, I also add kaffir lime leaves to give it a nice scent and flavour to the dish. This is totally optional, but you won’t regret it.
For the spice paste, this one is another Malaysian thing you have to learn. Westerners call it, fry till fragrant. But all these spices are already so fragrant before cooking, you might under cook it – resulting in less tasty dishes or just less in every aspect of it. We call it fry till the minyak pecah which means fry till the oil breaks. If that makes sense to you without any explanation then, thumbs up! It’s also quite hard to describe this minyak pecah thing. But I will try! It’s fry till the oil starts separating from the paste and the paste does not look emulsified. It has to look like a Hollandaise sauce that has split. This can take between 15-20 minutes, sometimes even more – depending on how much paste you are frying. If someone else has a better was of explaining this method, do send me an e-mail!
I wish you all the best of luck and hope you cooking this dish.
Ingredients
- 400g / 14oz Chicken
- Half White Cabbage
- 2 cups Thick Coconut Milk
Spice Paste (grounded or blended )
- 3 stalks (while part only ; reserve rest to fry) Lemongrass
- 1 medium sized Yellow Onion
- 2 medium sized Red Onion
- 4 cloves Garlic
- 2-inch Ginger
- 2-inch / 2 teaspoons Turmeric Root / Powder
- 8 pieces Candlenut
To fry
- 1 cup Peanut or Vegetable Oil
- 1 teaspoon Mustard Seeds
- 3 stalks (green part) Lemongrass
- 4 pieces Kaffir Lime Leaves
Directions:
- Cut chicken into small pieces. You can use any part of chicken.
- Shred cabbage into bite sized pieces and clean.
- Set aside
- Spice Paste
- Cut onions into quarters.
- Slice the white part of the lemongrass finely. Reserve the rest of the stalk for frying.
- Peel and slice ginger and turmeric root. You might want to use gloves if using turmeric root as the colour stains nails and fingers for a few days. Alternately, you can use 2 teaspoons of turmeric powder to substitute.
- Add all into food processor or blender together with chillies, and candlenuts.
- Blend till it forms a smooth paste or till you can’t see the fibres from lemongrass.
- Set aside.
- To fry
- In a wok or large pan over medium high heat, add spice paste and green part of the lemongrass.
- Stir fry for 15 minutes or till the paste starts breaking up. *see above text for some explanations*
- Once paste is ready, add mustard seeds and fry for a minute.
- Add chicken and fry in the paste for 2 minutes.
- Add kaffir lime leaves.
- Stir in coconut milk and 1/2 cup water (optional).
- Let it simmer till chicken cooks and the gravy thickens.
- Add in cabbage and simmer till soften.
- Season with salt.
- Serve immediately with steamed white rice or let the curry sit for a few hours before serving. This improves the flavour.
Tips:
- Curry will taste better the next day
- Take out lemongrass stalk and kaffir leaf before serving
- Cups to Grams conversions
Enjoy!
Avocado Egg Salad
A month has flown by so fast. Could 2016 be any faster? I’m just hoping February and March would past even faster cause by the end of March I would be done with my weekly allergy shots to prepare for spring. For the past 2 springs I had up to 3 months of suffering from my allergies. The first year I thought I was just having a very long cold. But last year it happened again and this time it got worse. I could barely breathe throughout the night causing me sleepless nights and finishing up 3 boxes of tissue a month was annoying. I was jumping from one antihistamine to another until I finally found one that reduces half the blocked nose and so on. By the time I started taking it, the amount of pollen subsided and it got better. So, I decided to take a test to see what was I allergic to exactly. Turns out I’m allergic to cats and grass! I find it a little ironic how I, from a tropical country is allergic to grass out of all things. Don’t mind being allergic to cats cause I’m more of a dog person.
Anyways, this recipe is a twist on the regular mayonnaise based egg salad. It’s also a basic so you can freely add whatever condiment you like such as onions, pickles and so on. If you do not like mayonnaise and butter this is a good solution. Plus, avocados are very nutritious. Also a good way to get vitamins, healthy fats and other nutrients for kids who do not like veggies.
You can of course add mayonnaise into the mixture but it’s simply not necessary. Goes perfectly with toast, oopsie rolls, cucumbers, celery or crackers. I dipped mine in whole wheat crackers but from now on I would go the vegetable route instead.
Ingredients
- 3 Hard Boiled Eggs, peeled
- 1 large Avocado, roughly chopped
- To Taste Salt
- To Taste Black Pepper
- ½ teaspoon Lemon Juice*
- 1 Tablespoon Crème fraîche (optional)
- For Garnish Dill
Directions:
- In a bowl, mash eggs till small chunks.
- Add avocado, crème fraîche – if using, salt and pepper. (Add lemon juice if you are not eating the salad right away. This is to prevent the avocado’s from going dark/black – oxidation)
- Mix ingredients together.
- Cover bowl with cling wrap and refrigerate for an hour or serve immediately. I like cold egg salad.
Tips:
- Conversion Table
- Per serving : 161 calories, 12 grams total fat, 4 grams total carbohydrate, 10 grams protein.
- For nutritional information, please visit my Yummly page and scroll to the bottom of the recipe.If you are using MyFitnessPal app to count calories, first copy the recipe URL then go to MyFitnessPal app to Recipes, select Create a New Recipe, then Add from the Web. Paste the URL, match ingredients and that’s it!
- Always match ingredients to the ones you use. Ingredient nutritional facts differ depending on brand.
Enjoy!