Turkey Meatball Tagine

A quick and simple recipe based on the Moroccan tagine.

Serves 2

Meatballs
250g Turkey mince
Half a small onion, finely chopped
Half tsp ground cumin
Half tsp ground coriander
1 tsp chopped coriander
1 red chili
Salt and ground black pepper

Sauce
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed or finely chopped
1 400g tin tomatoes
100ml Chicken stock

Half tsp ground cumin

Half tsp ground coriander

1 tbsp chopped coriander leaf

Quarter tsp turmeric
Salt and ground black pepper

Prepare the meatballs in a bowl. This makes about 8/9 meatballs the size of golf balls. If possible, leave the meatballs in the fridge for 1-2 hours.

Heat some olive oil in a frying pan to a medium heat. Fry the meatballs until they just turn brown. Remove from the pan and set aside.

Heat olive oil in a saucepan over a low-medium heat. Sauté the onion and garlic for 3-4 minutes, until soft.

Add the tomatoes, stock, spices and coriander leaf. Season well with salt and black pepper.

Bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer and add the meatballs. Simmer for 20 minutes.

Serve with couscous.

Summer Salad 2: Broccoli and Roast Garlic

A quick and low-calorie side salad that goes great with pasta salads, cold meats, or couscous salads.


1 head of Broccoli, cut into small florets
6 cloves of garlic, skins still on
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil


Pre-heat oven to 180 degree celcius (200 if it's not a fan oven)

Roast garlic in 2 tbsp of olive oil for 20 minutes.

Blanch broccoli in boiling water for one minute. Drain and immediately drop the broccoli into cold water.

Drain and place in a salad bowl. Stir in the roast garlic cloves and serve.

Summer Salad 1: Beetroot and Walnut Salad

A light and nutritious side salad perfect for picnics or summer lunches.

Walnuts were recently declared the King of Nuts for their top-notch nutritional value. So it's always good to find new ways to incorporate superfoods into your diet. With summer now here, salads become more appealing in the warm weather. This salad is a real superfood salad, packed with goodness.  I use pre-cooked beetroot in this recipe. This means minimal preparation time and the vinegar beetroot are traditionally stored in adds a nice zing to the salad.

For a real low-calorie alternative, omit the walnuts.

4 cooked beetroot
1 small red onion, sliced into thin rings
2 handfuls of baby leaf spinach
25g walnuts
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Freshly ground black pepper

Cut the beetroot into roughly 1-2 inch sized chunks. Place in a salad bowl and add the onion and spinach, and the balsamic vinegar. Mix together.

Break the walnuts into small pieces and sprinkle over the salad.

Season well with freshly ground black paper.

Turkey Chili

This recipe for a hearty Turkey chili is a much lighter affair than the traditional Chili con Carne. Turkey meat is lower in saturated fat and replacing beef stock with chicken stock also reduces the richness of the meal. This is not to say that the traditional recipe of Beef Chili is not fantastic, of course it is! But it is nice to update such traditional recipes, and with the weather getting warmer, it's nice to have some lighter alternatives while still enjoying a great chili dinner. 

Serves 2

250g Turkey mince
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed or finely chopped
2-3 green or red chillies, chopped (de-seed if you want)
1 red or green pepper, sliced
1 tsp ground cumin
Half tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp oregano
1 400g tin tomatoes
100ml chicken stock
1 400g tin red kidney beans
Salt and ground black pepper

Heat olive oil in a large pot over a medium heat. Sauté the onion and garlic for 3-4 minutes until soft. Add the chopped chillies and sauté for a further minute.

Add the turkey mince and cook until it changes colour, this should take about 3-4 minutes. Add the ground cumin and cook for a further minute.

Add the sliced pepper and stir.

Add the tomatoes, stock, kidney beans, cayenne pepper, and oregano. Stir well and season with salt and ground black pepper.

Bring to the boil then reduce to a low simmer. Leave for one hour, stirring occasionally.

Check seasoning and serve with brown rice or crusty bread.

Chicken and Chickpea Curry

Enjoy a delicious homemade curry for dinner tonight with this simple and quick recipe. 

I love making up quick and easy curries for dinner. I am also a big fan of including chickpeas in curries and this recipe can easily be turned into a vegetarian dinner by omitting the chicken and doubling the amount of chickpeas. I serve this recipe with couscous, but it also works with pitta bread or rice instead. Read how to cook couscous here.

Serves 2

Half tsp ground cumin
Half tsp ground coriander
Half tsp garam masala
Half tsp curry powder
Quarter tsp chili powder

1 chicken fillet, chopped into pieces
Half tin chickpeas
Half tin tomatoes
50ml chicken stock (or vegetable stock)
1 medium onion
1 clove garlic
Half tsp chopped ginger

Heat some olive oil in a pot over a low to medium heat.

Sauté the onion, garlic, and ginger in olive oil until the onion begins to turn golden brown.

Add the spices and sauté for a further minute.

Add the chicken and cook for two minutes or until the chicken has almost turned white.

Add the tomatoes, chickpeas, and stock, and stir well. Reduce to a simmer and leave for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Sprinkle chopped coriander over the curry to serve.

Mediterranean Roast Vegetable Couscous

This is a simple and delicious recipe that will help you get to your 5-a-day vegetable intake. This can be eaten straightaway, or cool in the fridge and have for your lunch the next day. Either way, it tastes great! You can also choose to amend the selection of vegetables in this dish - aubergine would also work great in this recipe.

Serves 2

1 courgette, cut into 1cm discs
1 large red onion, cut into large chunks
1 red pepper, sliced
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
Half tsp chopped basil
Half tsp chopped rosemary
Half tsp chopped thyme
Salt and freshly ground Black Pepper

120g dry couscous
100ml vegetable stock

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius

Put the vegetables into a roasting dish. Add the olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and herbs. Season and stir well. Roast in the oven for 15 minutes.

To make the couscous, put the dry couscous in a bowl, add the stock (at near boiling temperature), and cover. Leave for 5 minutes. Then fluff up the couscous with a fork.

Remove the roast vegetables from the oven. Tip the couscous into the roasting dish and mix with the vegetables to get all the flavours from the roasting dish.

Serve with a roast chicken or salmon fillet and this also tastes great with a dollop of hummus :-)

Mother's Day and Breakthrough Breast Cancer

Mother's day is fast approaching and what is a better way to show your Mum you care than by cooking her a delicious dinner? Let you Mum put her feet up and impress with a new and tasty recipe. To celebrate Mother's day and raise awareness for a great cause, Breakthrough Breast Cancer are launching an online pamphlet with several delicious recipes that you can prepare on Mother's day. 

The picture below is for Asian Steamed Sea Bass, which looks delicious, but there are also several more recipes to choose from. You can download the recipes here. But also read below to get some information on Breakthrough Breast Cancer and their reasons for creating the recipe pamphlet. 

Make Mother’s Day Matter

Show your Mum you love her by cooking her something special this Mothering Sunday

To celebrate Mother’s Day this April, pioneering charity Breakthrough Breast Cancer and bestselling author Jane Greenhave teamed up to release a free exclusive recipe booklet, with accompanying photography, to encourage people to get cooking for their Mums.

The free recipe booklet, which is available to download from http://breakthrough.org.uk/mothersday, features 8 delicious and easy-to-make recipes from Jane Green’s newest novel The Love Verb.  Jane wrote The Love Verb, after her experiences of nursing her best friend Heidi through breast cancer, a fight that Heidi tragically lost. One of the ways Jane supported Heidi and her family was by cooking for them, and so Breakthrough Breast Cancer and Jane Green are encouraging people to show their Mums they care, by treating them to something special and home-cooked this Mother’s Day.

Also available to download and send are a selection of Mother’s Day e-cards.  Featuring mouth-watering photography of each of the recipes, they carry a pledge to make the dish pictured as a Mother’s Day treat.

Breast cancer is a disease which devastates nearly 48,000 women and their families every year. That’s why this Mother’s Day, Breakthrough Breast Cancer and Jane Green are asking people to remember those affected by this terrible disease.  Anyone who downloads the recipe booklet and finds it useful is encouraged to make a donation to help the charity continue its life saving work and help to create a future free from the fear of breast cancer.

For more information about the campaign and to download the recipe booklet visit http://breakthrough.org.uk/mothersday or join the conversation on Facebook.com/BreakthroughBC.

The Healthiest Nut Winner: Walnuts!

New research has found that walnuts are the health champion of nuts. Packed with antioxidants, walnuts offer the best health benefits of all nuts.

Check out the BBC story here. Then go buy some walnuts...