Healthy Polenta Chips

Potato chips replacement!

Finally. Let's be honest here, you can not just stop with eating 1 chip.

Here is the healthier version of potato fries. Eat them by itself or eat them as a side with a juicy steak.

What you need:
- 2.5 cups of water
- 1 cup of polenta
- 1.5 tsp of chicken stock (powder preferred)
- 1 tsp of rosemary
- Salt to taste
- Olive oil spray

Ingredients needed

Note that you will need to prepare a aluminium lined dish/container/baking pan.
Here I used 20cmx20cm.

Step one:
Pour the water and chicken stock into a saucepan, let it boil.

Step two:
In thin steady stream, pour the polenta into the boiling water mix while stirring.
Not too fast because you do not want it to clog up in mix.

Steady Stream

Step three:
After the polenta mixture become thicker and mashy, sprinkle the rosemary evenly while stirring.

Step four: 

While it's still hot, pour the polenta mix to the aluminium lined tin and press it down. Make sure there are no bubbles. 

Set aside to cool and set.

Step Five:
When cool, take out polenta out of the tin and start on cutting them into pieces.
Here, I cut them into 6cm x 3cm x 0.7 cm

Step Six:
Preheat the oven on 180C.
Lay the pieces on baking paper lined tray and spray them with olive oil.
When finish, pop them into the oven for 20 minutes.

Step seven:
Take them out from the oven, let them cool for a bit and then enjoy!
Good to go with BBQ sauce or chilli sauce.

That's it for now!

Until next time,

Tania xx

Potato Skins with Blue Cheese

With the Ashes Test still going, I wonder what will be the best munchies to go with it?

POTATO SKINS!

Here I used both golden delight potato and red delight potato.
Pick golden delight potato if you want to be able to fit more fillings and crunchier skin.
Pick red delight potato if you want more of 'bite-size' potato skins, as they are available mostly in medium size (flatter compared to golden delight potatoes) and they have tender skins (which tends to curl when you bake them).

Red and Golden Delight potatoes

Potato skins is similar to pizza, you can throw anything in the fridge and you are good to go.
This time, I have leftover blue cheese. So, here we go!

What you will need:
- 1kg of potatoes
- Oil Spray
- 150g Chopped bacon
- 50-75g Blue Cheese
- 100g Mozzarella Cheese
- 100g Red Capsicum (or any other colour)
- a handful of chopped onion spring
- Jalapenos and chilli flakes (if you like it spicy)

Step one:

Preheat the oven on 180C

Wash the potatoes and put them in the oven for 45-50 minutes

Bake for 45 minutes

 Usually, while waiting, I will cook the bacon, chop the capsicum, jalapenos, and onion spring.

Cooked bacon

Step two:
Take them out and cut them in half, length wise.
Scoop the inside, leave about 5mm of potato. (Careful! They are hot!)

Scoop them out!

Step three:
Put the scooped potatoes skin-side up on the rack and spray them with the oil.
Put them back into the oven for 10 minutes.
After that, flip the potatoes over (skin side down), spray and pop them into the oven for 10 minutes.

Step four:

Put bacon, capsicum, jalapenos, cheeses on and put them back to the oven for 10 minutes.

Ready to be put into the oven

Step five:
Take them out of the oven and let them cool a bit.
I know you can't wait to eat them up, but believe me, hold your horses.
You can serve them with sour cream and sweet chilli.
But I like them as they are, the blue cheese give that enough saltiness that you don't have to add anymore flavour.

Do not forget to sprinkle the onion spring and they are ready to eat!

DONE!

Beer on your left hand, potato skins on your right, what more can you have..?
Enjoy!

That's it folks!

Until next time,

Tania xx

Healthy Homemade Kale Chips

I think it is safe for me to say that NO ONE can stop at only eating one chip when you have the whole packet in front of your eyes.

So lets make your own Kale Chips when you don't have to feel guilty if you can not stop eating them.

What you need:
1 Bunch of Kale
2 tsp of olive oil (Preferred olive oil spray)
Salt and pepper to taste

Steps 1:
Wash Kale leaves with water and dry them with paper towels. Make sure they are dry.
Tips: It is better to wash them while they still intact with the big stem and dry them after you cut the kale leaves into smaller pieces.

Steps 2:
Preheat oven at 170C.
Lay baking paper into a flat tray. Equally scatter the Kale leaves, do not overlay each other.
Spray olive oil and sprinkle salt and pepper into desired amount. (not too much!)

Step 3:
Pop them into the oven for 10 minutes. Every oven is different, so, take them out when the edges of the leaves turn into brown but still have green in the middle part.
Take them out and let it cool for a few minutes. Eat them while its hot!
Tip: Store them in airtight container.

DONE!
Now you can nibble on these Kale Chips without having to run miles to work on the calories!

Until next time,


Tania xx