Recipes

Ramadan Meal Planner v.2018

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One of the best ways to be successful at food optimising during Ramadan is to plan, plan and plan. Planning is the key to success.

I already have a 7 day planner I did last year. Please click HERE to see the 2017 version of the planner. That page also has a lot of information on how to food optimise during Ramadan. I will be tweaking the planner slightly so it fits into my routine this Ramadan.

As the days are so long and the time we can eat & drink in is really really short (approx. 9pm to 2.30am), I intend on planning my days from iftar to suhoor.

So, fasting starts this Thursday. For me personally I’m changing my view of the ‘day’ – the time in which you can eat. I’ll try to explain:

The suhoor meal I will have on Thursday I will be counting the syns/healthy extras on Wednesday. That means everything I eat from iftar on Thursday night till suhoor very early on Friday morning will be counted as the same day.

You don’t have to follow my logic if it doesn’t make sense to you. Ramadan Mubarak!!!

Ramadan 2018 Meal Planner

Fried Rice with Salt & Pepper Chicken

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This recipe was one that was put together in minutes and have had many people asking me how I made it, so here it is. Apologies for the delay lovelies.

I used this Salt & Pepper Spice mix that I made following the Pinch of Nom recipe: http://pinchofnom.com/recipes/syn-free-salt-pepper-chicken-slimming-world/

It isn’t just adding salt and pepper to the chicken like I thought it was when I heard people talking about salt and pepper chicken in group! Please tell me I am not alone in thinking that 🙈 The spice mix makes quite a lot so once you’ve made some, you can store it in an airtight container and use it next time you need it. It is definitely worth making it! If you don’t have the time to make it or cannot be bothered with the hassle, you can buy ready made Salt & Pepper Spice kits from places like JD Seasonings (https://jdseasonings.com/product/salt-pepper-chips/).

I didn’t really measure anything with this recipe, you can add as much or as little soy sauce, chilli flakes and salt & pepper spice mix as you like.

I cooked the chicken in the actifry, here’s a link to the one I have: https://www.tefal.co.uk/Cooking-appliances/Healthy-Fryers/ActiFry-Original/p/1500637231

Fried Rice with Salt & Pepper Chicken

Fried Rice with Salt & Pepper Chicken

Serves: 2

Syns: FREE

Time Taken: 20 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

  • Cooked, leftover rice
  • Packet of stir fry veg
  • Soy sauce
  • 2-3 chicken thighs, chopped
  • Salt & Pepper spice mix
  • Chilli flakes

Method

Spray a wok with a low cal cooking spray and fry your stir fry veg. Once they’re cooked, add the rice and soy sauce and mix well together till the rice is heated.

Sprinkle the salt and pepper spice and chilli flakes on your chicken before placing it in an actifry and cook for 20 minutes.

That’s it! Really simple and so quick to make. Hope you enjoy it x

Oat Pancakes

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These pancakes are super easy to make and syn free if you’re using the oats as part of your healthy extra B choice. If you’re using your healthy extra for something else, you will need to syn these at 7 syns. This mixture makes 8 fluffy pancakes. The key to this is to use baking powder, but you don’t need a lot of it. Using too much baking powder can affect the taste of the pancakes and you’ll need to syn it at 0.5 syn per 1 tsp if you choose to use more than stated in the recipe! If you like your pancakes quite sweet, then you may need to increase the amount of sweetener used. But remember that if you’re using more than 1tbsp of sweetener, you’ll have to count it as 0.5 syn per tablespoon!

Stick to the recipe below and it will be syn free.

If you’d like to enjoy these on a SP day, you can replace the yogurt with plain natural quark. 2 or 3 tablespoons of quark should be enough.

Oat Pancakes

Oat Pancakes

 

Serves: 1

Syns: FREE (using oats as healthy extra B choice)

Time Taken: 45 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

  • 40g porridge oats
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 pot of Activia 0% vanilla yogurt (or similar)
  • 1tsp vanilla extract
  • 1tsp sweetner
  • 1/4tsp baking powder

Method

Blitz all ingredients together with a hand blender and let it rest for at least 30 minutes (very important to let it rest so that the mixture can thicken up).

Spray a frying pan with syn free cooking spray of your choice and add a dollop of the mixture to the pan. If you want, you can use a metal ring to make all your pancakes the same size but I don’t bother with that. As long as you’re adding roughly the same amount of mixture to the pan each time, you’ll get similar sized pancakes!

Cook the pancakes for a couple of minutes on one side before turning them and cooking them for another couple of minutes on the other side.

You can serve them with fresh chopped fruit and yogurt.

Easy Risotto

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Serves: 1

Syns: 1 syn plus healthy extra A choice

Time Taken: 30 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

  • 100g risotto rice
  • 350-400ml hot stock
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 1 tsp Very Lazy chopped chilli
  • Handful of frozen peas
  • 2 Najma Foods Turkey rashers
  • 30g Primula cheese with Jalapenos

 

Risotto Ingredients

Risotto Ingredients

Method

Fry the chopped onion in a pan with low calorie cooking spray oil till it softens. Add the chilli and mix.

Add the risotto rice and the stock, a few tablespoons at a time, whilst stirring the whole time. If the rice is not cooked after you’ve used all the stock, add a little more stock till it is cooked. It should take around 30 minutes to cook the rice.

Add a handful of frozen peas towards the last few minutes of cooking the rice and mix in the cheese.

Fry the turkey rasher separately and add to the risotto once it is ready. Each turkey rasher is 0.5 syn, you can use more if you wish just remember to count the syns accordingly.

Easy Risotto

Easy Risotto

 

Khichdi – Rice with Lentils

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Serves: 4

Syns: FREE

Time Taken: 30 minutes plus soaking time

Difficulty: Easy

Khichdi with Kheema

Khichdi with Kheema

 

Ingredients

  • 1 cup basmati rice
  • 1/2 cup yellow lentils
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 1 tbsp. ginger/garlic paste
  • cinnamon stick
  • 3 whole cloves
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 1 green chilli, chopped
  • a pinch of turmeric

Method

Soak the rice and lentils in cold water for 30 minutes.

Fry the onion for around 5 minutes to soften them before adding the ginger/garlic paste, cumin seeds, green chilli, cloves, cinnamon stick and turmeric. Stir fry them for a couple of minutes before adding the rice & lentils (drain the water first) to the pan.

Mix everything well together and cover with 3 cups of boiling water. Season to taste. Cover the lid and cook the rice and lentils on a low heat for around 20-25 minutes, or until all the water has evaporated.

I like to serve this rice with kheema but it is lovely on its own too.

White Chocolate Mousse

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A few weeks ago I bought tofu as I’ve always wanted to try it but didn’t know what to do with it! I finally got round to making this super easy & delicious mousse after getting some advice from friends on Instagram.

One thing I didn’t realise was that there are different types of tofu you can buy, luckily I bought the right one to be used for making desserts – silken tofu.

Are you a fan of tofu? Are there any recipes that you’d recommend? Please comment below with your fave ways of using tofu.

Silken Tofu

Silken Tofu

 

Serves: 2

Syns: 1

Time Taken: less than 5 minutes plus chilling

Difficulty: Easy

 

Ingredients

  • Silken tofu
  • 1/2 tbsp. sweetener
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • one sachet of Options white chocolate

Method

Put all ingredients together and blitz till smooth. Divide the mixture into two ramekins and chill for at least an hour.

Tofu Mousse

Tofu Mousse

Prawn & Pesto Linguine

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A really quick and easy meal ready in less than 15 minutes! The pesto sauce can be stored in the fridge for a couple of days but I prefer to make it when I need it as it is super quick to prepare. If you do make extra, you can use the spare pesto over chicken and bake it for another quick meal.

This is syn free if you use the cheese as part of your healthy extra A choice (you can have 30g), I only use half the cheese allowance as I use milk in my coffees for the other half of healthy extra A choice. It is perfectly fine to split your healthy extra choices, you may not get the full calcium/fibre benefits but that is okay. I tend to do that with healthy extra B choices too. If you follow me on Instagram (@RahemaSW) you may notice that most of my breakfasts consists of 1 chocolate Weetabix, I almost always have a hifi bar for the other half of my B choice. You can find more information about splitting healthy extra choices on lifeline online if you are SW member, or your consultant can give you more info about it.

I have added chilli to this (I know, you don’t add chilli to pesto) but you can leave it out. I think most people know that I love spicy food so I tend to add chilli in almost everything! This isn’t a conventional pesto sauce as I didn’t use pine nuts (too many syns!) but tastes amazing nonetheless. Let me know if you make this and feel free to tag me if you’re on social media.

Prawn & Pesto Linguine

Prawn & Pesto Linguine

Serves: 2

Syns: FREE if using cheese as healthy extra A choice

Time Taken: Less than 15 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

  • 200g linguine
  • Cooked Prawns

Pesto Sauce:

  • 25g basil leaves
  • 15g rocket leaves
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • 30g parmesan cheese
  • 50ml vegetable stock
  • 75ml fat free fromage frais
  • 1 green chilli (optional)

Method

Cook the linguine according the pasta intructions and whilst that is cooking make the pesto sauce by adding all the ingredients together and blending it all till smooth. Set aside till needed.

Once the linguine is cooked, drain and mix in the pesto and prawns. You can serve this with extra rocket leaves and cherry tomatoes.

Coffee & Almond Rice Pudding

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Rice pudding is one of my fave foods ever – it is a complete bowl of comfort food, I could eat it anytime! This is an adapted version from the latest Slimming World magazine issue. The original recipe was coffee and walnut but I didn’t have any walnuts at home so made it with almonds instead. My recipe is slightly higher in syns as I used dark chocolate flavoured almond milk instead of the unsweetened almond milk the original recipe states. But having said that, the extra syns are totally worth it as it makes this rice pudding even more indulging!

You will love this if you love coffee and dark chocolate, it is such a perfect combination.

 

Serves: 4

Syns: 5

Time Taken: just over 2 hours

Difficulty: Easy

Coffee & Almond Rice Pudding

Coffee & Almond Rice Pudding

Ingredients

  • 120g dried pudding rice
  • 500ml Alpro Dark Chocolate Almond Milk
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 4 tbsp. Beanies Amaretto flavour  brewed coffee
  • 3 tbsp. sweetener
  • 350ml water
  • 20g almonds, roughly chopped

Method

Pre heat your oven to gas mark 2. Mix the pudding rice with the almond milk, vanilla extract, coffee, sweetener and water in a deep baking dish.

Cover with foil and bake for 1 1/2 hours. Stir, then re-cover with the foil and bake for a further 30-40 minutes, or until the rice is tender and creamy.

Divide the rice pudding between 4 bowls and top each with a quarter of the chopped almonds.

Falafels

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Delicious little treats, perfect as a snack or as part of a meal.

Makes: 20

Syns: FREE

Time Taken: 30 minutes, plus chilling

Difficulty: Moderate

Falafels

Falafels

ingredients

  • 2 tins chickpeas, drained
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • 4 spring onions, chopped
  • 1 tsp ground cumin
  • ½ tsp baking powder
  • handful of fresh coriander
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • Low calorie cooking spray

method

Put all ingredients together in a bowl and blitz together until the mixture is a coarse paste.

Shape mixture into falafels and chill for at least 15 minutes to set their shape.

Cook them in a preheated oven, gas mark 6 for around 30 minutes turning them halfway.

Peri Peri Chicken & Rice

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Serves: 4

Syns: 1.5 syns per serving

Time Taken: 60-75 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Peri Peri Chicken & Rice

Peri Peri Chicken & Rice

 

Ingredients

For the chicken

  • 4 pieces of skinless chicken legs
  • Encona Peri Peri sauce (to taste, 1tbsp is 1.5 syns)
  • 2 Maggie seasoning cubes, crumbled
  • 1 tbsp Peri Peri seasoning

For the rice

  • 1 cup rice
  • 1 red onion, finely chopped
  • 1 carrot, peeled and finely grated
  • 1 tbsp tomato puree
  • 2 cups chicken stock
  • 1 tbsp Peri Peri seasoning
  • 1/4 tsp chilli flakes
  • Handful of frozen peas & sweet corn

Method

Mix all the marinade ingredients for the chicken together and rub it all over the chicken pieces.

Let it marinade for a few hours if time permits.

Pre heat the oven and cook the chicken for around 45 minutes till it is mostly cooked.

Remove from the oven and grill the chicken till it is fully cooked, around 30 minutes, turning the chicken often and brushing it with the Encona Peri Peri sauce.

For the rice, spray a pan with plenty of low cal cooking spray and gently fry the onion with the carrot for a few minutes.

Add the tomato puree, Peri Peri seasoning and chilli flakes and cook for another couple of minutes.

Add the rice alongside the stock, stir and let it cook for around 15 minutes on a low heat with the lid on the pan.

Add the frozen peas & sweet corn towards the last 5 minutes of cooking.