Chicken and Avocado Wrap | You've Got Meal!

 

The previous post was all about making the most out of chicken leftovers. A salad is always a great way to use them, but let's not forget about the wrap. Probably my favorite choice for lunches at the office. Just like in a salad, you can incorporate a lot of healthy options in a wrap, but also add lots of flavor.

We used the rest of the roasted chicken we talked about and add one by one:

• half of avocado (mashed with a fork)
• some fresh red onion rings
• some hot pepper slices
• some thin slices of tomatoes
• cress leaves
• yogurt based dressing

For the yogurt dressing I used:

• 150 ml yogurt
• the juice from 1/2 lemon
• finely chopped parsley leaves
• 1 crushed garlic clove (optional)

Adding the avocado and cress leaves and using yogurt instead of mayonnaise is a great healthy choice and I can guarantee you will not lose taste and flavor.

Enjoy,

Chicory, Green Apple and Mozzarella Salad | You've Got Meal!

Simple and healthy croutons salad idea. A recipe using endives, apple and Mozzarella. Perfect lunch/light dinner salad or as a starter.

Can’t believe that it took us so long to actually make a post about this dish. We’ve been making it for the past couple of years and we got the recipe from either Jamie Oliver or Good Food, can’t quite remember who we have to give credit.

Nonetheless, it’s a great salad, full of crunch, flavor, and it’s so light that you can use it as a starter to a longer meal. 

You’ll need:

• fresh mozzarella (for 2 generous portions we used 2 balls with roughly 150 grams each), 
• 1 rather tart green apple (Granny Smith), 
• 2 medium sized chicories (or endives, if you know them by that name), 
• a couple of slices of bread, 
• salt, pepper, 
• olive oil, lemon juice. 

1. Just roughly chop the endives – by the way, the salad looks better if you can find and use both red and yellow - tip types, and cube the bread. 
2. Heat up some olive oil on medium high heat and stir-fry the chicories for 2-3 minutes, remove from the pan and set aside. 
3. Next, in the same pan add the bread croutons, splash a small amount of olive oil on top and cook them until they are slightly crunchy and browned all sides.
4.  Meanwhile, cut or break the cheese in any way you like, dice about 1 quarter of the apple per portion and add it to the mozzarella. 
5. Make a vinaigrette of 1 part lemon juice/ 3 part olive oil, salt, pepper and pour it over the endives, apple and mozzarella. After that, pop in the croutons and mix well.

The next part of the recipe is optional, but we definitely recommended it: open your very well chilled bottle of Prosecco, pour yourself a tall glass of the bubbly and enjoy this great salad that will make you love it at first taste.

Cheers,

Tuna and Chili Pasta | You've Got Meal!

No Heat Pasta Sauce * Simple Pasta * Tuna Pasta

This is probably one of the simplest recipe on our blog and it is a great way to use an ordinary can of tuna. Pasta dishes are usually great fast solutions for weekday dinners or home made lunches in a hurry. This one is even more convenient because it only takes as much time as the pasta needs to boil and actually the skill to boil water is the only one required. :)

The final taste is quite complex, rich from the tuna, balanced by the lemon, the parsley give it the freshness and the chili just the kick it needed. The only tip I would give, especially since the dish is really affordable, is to use a nice quality tuna flakes can, being the main ingredient it really makes the difference.

Ingredients:

• 250 g store-bought spaghetti
• 1 185 g tuna can 
• 1 small red onion (or half of a big one)
• 1 hot pepper ( 1 used 3 tiny chilies)
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 tbsp capers, drained
• 1/2 handful of parsley
• 2 tbsp oil
• 2 tbsp lemon juice

1. Pour the pasta in boiling water with salt and a drizzle of olive oil (for extra shine).
2. Cook the pasta according to the package instructions. For our spaghetti we boiled them for 7 minutes.
3. While the spaghetti are boiling, finely chop the onion, the chili and the parsley.
4. Crush the garlic and drain the capers.
5. Add all the ingredients in a big bowl.
6. Add the canned tuna.
7. Mix the lemon juice with the olive oil and pour the resulting sauce over the ingredients.
8. Toss everything until it is well combined.
9. Drain the pasta, add them to the sauce and mix well.

It is barely cooking, but the result is really delicious and comforting it is it worth saving the recipe for hard times, lazy nights, pasta craving or any other culinary emergencies.

I hope you try.

Enjoy,

Halloumi, Tomatoes and Zucchini Skewers- Easy Appetizer | You've Got Meal!

Maybe we should have started our posts in 2014 with this one. We had this appetizer for our New Year’s dinner and it was great. It can hold its own at parties, breakfasts or brunches and it can bring some Mediterranean kick to your menu. 

Like any appetizer should be, this dish is dead easy. You’re going to need:

•  some diced Halloumi cheese, 
• cherry tomatoes, 
• diced zucchini, 
• thin bacon strips, 
• olive oil, salt, pepper, basil, mustard, lemon juice.

1. If using wooden skewers, place them in water for half an hour before cooking so they don’t burn. 
2. The only preparation before cooking is to cover each zucchini piece in a thin strip of bacon. 
3. Skew the veggies and cheese in any order you want. 
4. Lightly drizzle the skewers with a dressing made of 1 tsp. of hot mustard, some olive oil, lemon juice from half a lemon, pepper. 
5. You can make this on an ultra hot grill or in the oven – we opted for the second way, mainly because we didn’t feel like smoking our house. Be warned that in the oven the veggies- especially the tomatoes will leave some juice that could use removing – keep an eye for that. It takes around 15-20 minutes, 170 Celsius, or until the bacon in done.
6. Serve with some more of that mustard dressing on top and (optional) some freshly chopped basil.

Enjoy,

Leftover Fish Salad- Express Post | You've Got Meal!

I remember watching this cooking show on TV once and seeing this lady being asked what she and her family eats during the week.  She named some dishes, but there was one thing that kept being repeated: leftovers.

I honestly believe that, sometimes, we waste our food way too easily, creating waste and, at the same time, emptying our wallets. So this is why (maybe not often enough) we make a couple of easy, super fast dishes, that make most of leftover cooked foods or leftover ingredients. In our last post we cooked some haddock and had a couple pieces of fish left. One of the things we love to make when dealing with leftovers is salads, so we’re going to show you how we saved a couple of on the verge of being thrown away ingredients.

We used: 

• about 200 grams of haddock fillets, 
• 1 ripe avocado, 
• a salad mix (of your choice, or you can just use the leaves that you have in your fridge as long as they are eatable fresh), 
• the juice of 1 lemon, 
• olive oil, 
• chives, 
• rosemary, 
• 1 garlic clove, 
• salt, pepper.

Heat up some olive oil and throw a rosemary twig in there. Cook the fillets until they can be easily broken into flakes. Arrange the salad  mix in a plate (we had iceberg, red cabbage and carrots mix) and flake the fish on top. Finely slice a garlic clove and do the same to the avocado, add to the salad and fish. Pour the lemon juice and a good splash of olive oil, salt and pepper. Garnish with some chopped chives. And, the most important part of the recipe, open up a chilled bottle of Prosecco, pour yourself a glass and enjoy your leftovers. Because, sometimes, these can truly be the star of a meal.  

Enjoy,