pasta

Cajun Chicken & Orzo

Leave a comment

A simple dish ready in minutes and it is great cold too. This is lovely topped with some feta cheese as part of your healthy extra A choice. I topped mine with green chillies and cherry tomatoes.

Cajun Chicken & Orzo

Cajun Chicken & Orzo

 

Serves: 2

Syns: FREE

Time Taken: 30 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

  • 1 chicken breast, diced in small pieces
  • 1 red pepper, diced
  • 1 yellow pepper, diced
  • 1 carrot, peeled and diced
  • 1 medium red onion, finely chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
  • 1 tbsp. Cajun seasoning
  • 1 tsp paprika
  • 1 tsp chilli flakes (optional)
  • 3 tbsp. tomato puree
  • Fresh parsley and coriander to taste, chopped
  • seasoning to taste
  • 250g orzo pasta

Method

Cook the pasta in boiling, salted water for around 9 minutes. Once cooked, drain the water (reserving some for later) and cool the pasta under cold water to stop it from sticking together whilst you cook the chicken.

Spray a pan with plenty of syn free spray oil of your choice and cook the onions for around 5 minutes till they start to golden. Add a little hot water if the onions start to stick to the pan. Add the garlic and the carrot and mix well. Cook until the carrot has softened slightly.

Add the diced chicken, Cajun seasoning, paprika, seasoning and chilli flakes (if using). Mix the chicken with the spices well.

Add the tomato puree, mix and let the chicken cook for around 15 minutes (cook for longer if your chicken pieces are bigger). Add some of the reserved water from the pasta to the chicken to stop it from drying out. Add the peppers in the last couple of minutes of cooking together with the parsley and coriander. Cook for another couple of minutes before adding the cooked pasta and mix it all well together.

Mozzarella & Chilli Pasta Bake

2 Comments

This is such an easy and simple dish to put together and it tastes amazing! It is one of my daughter’s favourite dish. I have adapted the recipe slightly from the SW Veggie Deluxe recipe book and have made this quite cheesy (just the way we like it!). You can have 70g of reduced fat mozzarella cheese as healthy extra A choice but you can use less if you prefer or put a mixture of mozzarella and cheddar cheese, but remember to count the syns depending on how much you use. All the other ingredients in this recipe are Free.

Serves: 3

Syns: FREE (if using the cheese as healthy extra A choice)

Time Taken: 30-45 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Mozzarella & Chilli Pasta

Mozzarella & Chilli Pasta

 

Ingredients

  • 300g dried pasta
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 1 tbsp. Very Lazy garlic
  • 1/2 tbsp. Very Lazy chilli
  • 500g carton passata
  • 2 x Maggie seasoning cubes
  • 100g frozen peas
  • 210g reduced fat mozarella

Method

Pre heat the oven to gas mark 4.

Cook the pasta according to the packet instructions, drain well and run the pasta under cold water to stop it sticking together. Set aside till needed.

Whilst the pasta is cooking, make the sauce. Fry the onion, garlic and chilli in a pan with low cal spray for about 5 minutes or until softened. If you find the onion is starting to stick to the pan, add some of the water that the pasta is cooking in (around a tbsp. at a time if needed).

Add the passata and the seasoning cubes, stir and simmer for 3 minutes. Add seasoning if needed. Add the frozen peas and cook for a further 2 minutes then remove from the heat.

Mix the cooked pasta into the sauce, ensuring the pasta is well coated. Tip the pasta into a medium sized baking dish sprayed with low cal spray. Top with the mozzarella and bake in the pre heated oven for around 12-15 minutes till all the cheese is melted.

Prawn & Pesto Linguine

Leave a comment

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.

Lasagne – Béchamel Sauce

Leave a comment

Lasagne is one of my children’s favourite meal, they have it quite often but it is never a Slimming World friendly version for them! They love it with homemade béchamel sauce which can be very high in syns for us slimmers, so I make my own for myself so I can still enjoy the meal guilt free! I use this recipe here for the mince.

Serves: 1

Syns: FREE if using cheese as healthy extra A choice

Time Taken: less than 10 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Lasagne

Lasagne

Ingredients

  • 1 tub of cottage cheese (plain or flavoured, check if syns! I use Aldi’s cottage cheese with chives and onion, FREE)
  • 2 eggs
  • A pinch of mustard powder
  • 40g light cheddar cheese
  • Seasoning to taste

Method

Blend the cottage cheese with the eggs, mustard and seasoning with a hand held blender till smooth and no longer lumpy.

Add half of the cheese allowance into the cottage cheese mix.

Layer lasagne with mince, lasagne sheets and cottage cheese mix in an individual dish.

Top the lasagne with the remaining cheese and bake in the oven for around 40 minutes till the pasta is cooked. Cook the first 30 minutes with foil over the dish so the cheese doesn’t burn quickly.

 

 

Pesto Style Sauce

Leave a comment

This is a really simple way of making a pesto style sauce you can have with pasta or chicken. I don’t have the exact measurements as I knocked this one up really quickly whilst my pasta was cooking. It tasted fine for me but I may tweak it a little bit more in the future, maybe just use the cream cheese with quark possibly? I don’t know yet but will be sure to post on here. I used some of it for my pasta and the leftovers was used for stuffing chicken breasts.

Serves: 2

Syns: FREE if using the cheeses as healthy extra A choice

Time Taken: less than 10 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

Handful of fresh spinach leaves

Handful of fresh basil leaves

1 x 35g Philadelphia light cream cheese

2 x Laughing Cow Blue Cheese triangles

Garlic powder

Seasoning to taste

Method

Mix all the ingredients together adding a little bit of water to it and blitz it altogether using a handheld blender.

Pesto Pasta

Pesto Pasta

Pesto-Stuffed Chicken

Pesto-Stuffed Chicken

 

Pasta Arrabiata

Leave a comment

A really simple and delicious pasta dish.

Serves: 2

Syns: FREE if using cheese as Healthy Extra A choice

Time Taken: 40-60 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Pasta Arrabiata

Pasta Arrabiata

 

Ingredients

  • 2 red onions, chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 tsp Chilli flakes
  • Carton of passata
  • 1 red pepper, chopped
  • Chopped frozen spinach
  • a handful of fresh chopped basil or 1 tsp dried basil
  • Salt and pepper
  • 2 cubes of Maggie Seasoning, crumbled (optional)
  • 300g Pasta
  • 80g light cheddar cheese

Method

Fry the onion, garlic and chilli flakes in fry light till golden. Add the chopped pepper, passata, spinach and herbs. Season, cook for about 20 minutes.

Cook the pasta separately according to the packet instructions. Drain and mix with the sauce. Put the pasta into a dish, sprinkle the cheese and cook in the oven for about 20 minutes.

Crustless Quiche Muffins

Leave a comment

I love making this SW crustless quiche recipe. There are so many variations to it but this one has to be my favourite. The basic essentials you need are eggs, cottage cheese and Pasta ‘n’ Sauce, you can then add anything you want to it –  any veg or meat/fish of your choice. The possibilities are endless! I made them into muffins but you can easily just make a large one and then slice it up before eating.

Makes: 15

Syns: FREE

Time Taken: 30-45 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

  • Packet of Batchelors Pasta ‘n’ Sauce Cheese & Broccoli flavour (0.5 syn for whole pack)
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 tub of cottage cheese
  • Any veg of choice – I used mushrooms, 1/2 red pepper and some spring onions

 

 

Basic Quiche Essentials

Basic Quiche Essentials

Method

Cook the pasta in 350ml of boiling water for 10 minutes.

Pre heat the oven at gas mark 6.

Blend the cottage cheese with the eggs in a large bowl and then add the veggies you are using.

Once the pasta is cooked, mix in the cottage cheese mixture with the veggies and place the mixture in silicone muffin cases.

Bake in the oven for around 20-25 minutes till cooked. If you like you can also add some cheese from your healthy extra A choice before placing the muffin cases in the oven.

 

Crustless Quiche

Crustless Quiche

 

Asda Shopping Haul

Leave a comment

I don’t tend to stick to one supermarket when shopping but one of my favourite has to be Asda. I am more likely to pick up what I use most in an Asda rather than any other supermarket, so it is always my first choice followed by Aldi then Tesco!

I went to Asda this morning to pick up my essentials and this is what it looks like!

Asda Shopping Haul

Asda Shopping Haul

My favourite fruit includes raspberries, banana and pear. I am obsessed with clementines at the moment though, I’ve lost count on how many I have in a day! I picked up a melon and some strawberries and apples to vary my fruit a bit.

We eat a lot of pasta in our house. We go through a lot in a week and I tend to buy a big bag. We never run out of pasta in our house!

Passata is an absolutely essential store cupboard item for us slimmers. I use it to make pasta sauces and curries.

Eggs is another food item that I buy often! I usually make 5 or 6 boiled eggs in the morning so I can snack on them whenever I am hungry throughout the day. That amount usually lasts me a couple of days unless my youngest daughter and hubby decide to have some too! I’ve seen Asda and other supermarkets sell a couple of boiled eggs with some spinach leaves for £1 or so, I wouldn’t pay that much for it. You can get a box of 6 free range eggs for less than £1 and make your own in minutes!

I always buy packet salads for convenience as I am the only one that eats them at home and add cherry tomatoes, jalapeños and any other pickles I have in my fridge to it.

I bought leeks and celery today as I intend on making a soup with it in the next couple of days, or I might make a Homity Pie with the leeks! I am not too sure yet.

Kia Ora is our family favourite sugar free cordial, we don’t like any other brand.

It is the first time I bought best of both milk, it was on offer for £1 instead of £1.50 so why not? You can have 300ml as a healthy extra A choice. It is supposed to taste like semi skimmed milk but has a lot less fat in it. I also bought the Low Low cheese for the first time. Not sure if it a healthy extra choice but it is handy for my girls to sprinkle on their pasta!

I bought the teas for my members at groups. I am not a fan of tea, I prefer coffee. I like to offer my members a variety of drinks to choose from to enjoy in group.

We love baked beans in our house and it has to be Branston. I only buy Heinz baked beans if it’s the chilli ones.

Lastly on my shopping is the halal turkey slices. Perfect protein rich snack to enjoy anytime or as part of a meal.

What are your essentials? Comment below with your favourite items x

Easy Pasta Sauce

Leave a comment

One of our favourite family meals has to be pasta! We all love it so much. We are quite happy just having plain pasta topped with cheese for a quick meal but on the days we need a sauce this tomato sauce is a saviour. It is super easy to make! You can also add pretty much anything to it if you wish – tuna, chicken, mince etc.

Serves: 4

Syns: FREE

Time Taken: 10 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Easy Pasta Sauce Ingredients

Easy Pasta Sauce Ingredients

Ingredients

  • 1 tub of passata
  • 1 tsp garlic granules
  • 1 tsp onion granules
  • 1 tsp chilli flakes (optional)
  • 1 tbsp dried basil
  • 1 stock cube or 2 Maggie seasoning cubes
  • Seasoning to taste

Method

In a pan pour out the passata and add all the rest of the ingredients and heat through thoroughly for about 5-8 minutes. Once heated through, you can add any chicken/tuna/veg you may be using and cook till it is done. And that is it! How simple is that?