Baked butternut squash w/ Lettuce Salad

I need to loose some kgs if I want to go Japan in jeans and it's still freaking cold there so not much choice left, gotta start 'merumput' again. For those who are curious, 'merumput' means grassing ala cows, so yeah, you know what I mean, salads. So now I'm going back to the salad journey. And oh, this recipe is perfect for those who hate washing... It consists of 3 parts, but, no it's not difficult, all you need is a knife, chopping board, tuppleware, aluminum foil and baking sheet

Ingredient:

Baked pumpkin w/ walnut:
1/2 butternut squash - peeled, sliced to bite size
1/2 cup walnut - cut to bite size it they come in big pieces
2 tbsp honey
3 tbsp olive oil
Pepper, salt, basil

Chicken/pork patties:
250gr minced chicken
250gr minced pork
1 red pepper - burned, filmed, peeled and cut small dices
1 bunch cilantro - chopped
1 egg
1 tbsp honey
pepper, basil, salt

Cubed eggs:
4 eggs
20ml water
1 tbsp olive oil
pepper, balsamic vinegar

1 bunch of lettuce for 3 ppl serving (any green leafy lettuce is fine, but I like those bitter ones like butterhead lettuce), cut to bite size

How to:
1. Preheat oven to 190C. Layer your baking sheet w/ aluminum foil. If you like to wash your baking sheet, you don't need to use aluminum foil.
2. Baked pumpkin: In a bowl, mix well all ingredient and spread it over the baking sheet. Bake it for about 15 minutes or until the pumpkin is soft enough to bite.
3. Patties: In the same bowl used for the baked pumpkin, mix well all ingredients. By the time u done this, your pumpkin should be ready, and off it goes to the tuppleware. And now we have an empty baking sheets, it's time to go back to our patties. Using 2 spoons, scoop big limp of the mixture and keep twisting the spoon until you have a smooth meat ball, lay it on baking sheet and press it to about 1cm thick patties. Repeat the process and bake it for about 15-20 minutes (check whether it's done after the minute 15).
4. Cubed eggs: on a microwave-proof tuppleware, whisk all ingredient well and heat it high for 3 minutes. It'll come out like a puffy ugly looking thing, but it'll release the heat and self deflated and cut cube

Presentation: on a bowl, lay lettuce first then add in cubed patties, eggs and the pumpkin, and you'll have your salad :)

If your interpretation of salad is 'Salad is no salad w/o dressings', just top it off with Balsamic Vinegar dressing (balsamic vinegar + olive oil + salt + pepper)..

Storage: Do store all toppings and lettuce in separate container for longer shelf live in the fridge.

Salad 101

Do you know that with the same batch of ingredients that you buy at the same from the supermarket, you can make 1001 salad menu? I do realize this now and am add a nodding agreement why restaurants can come out with 1001 different salad menu based on the same thing.
My main batch of items bought are:
1. Some greenies. You have a wide selection in this category:

• Celery - they are very cheap, but it's an acquired taste to eat it raw and everyday, so you have to think about the consequences when you decide to pick this.
• Lettuce - examples are iceberg lettuce (very easily rotten, and that's why it's the cheapest above all and only contain water with no fibre), butter head lettuce (second cheapest option with more visible darker green colour and more flavour), romaine lettuce (love this one, but surprisingly it's highly priced in Singapore).
• Cabbage - you'll find this a nice change when you're doing Asian salad because Asian salad includes gado-gado (boiled) and kredok (raw) off course and off course the red color one is more suitable for Western style salad.
• Arugula leave - you'll find this most often at the organic section (have no idea why this leave is so expensive), but do mindful if you want to make this as your main greenies as it tastes bitter with onion-y after taste. But it does go well with fruits and nuts.
• Baby Spinach - I don't recommend cheap spinach because they have more iron taste. Unless you're in a vampire mode, you can opt for this.

2. Beans/nuts/sprouts - I don't like to suffer eating green salad, so my salad must have something from this category. And this category will make your salad bowl pretty and edible.

• Tofu - the cheapest above all and meet the nutritious chart too. I like hyakko tofu as you can just pop it out of the box, wash, cut and throw to your bowl. For other type of tofu, you can vary it by bake it with sprinkle of sesame oil and cilantro.
• Pine nuts - my favorite nuts. It has high fat content so do use it wisely.
• Chick peas - they usually come in cans. It's filling and starchy and goes well for east or west style salad.
• Alfalfa sprouts - although this is not in my top list due to the smell but i find it nice to eat especially if you use liquid dressing as it holds the dressing when you fork it out from the bowl.
• Soy bean sprouts - I like this as a topping but you need to process it first. First, blanch it then wash it with cool water to stop it from cooking and strained (must be as dry as possible). Then, mix it with sesame oil, sugar and salt to your taste. And if you have some kimchi mix on hand, it won't hurt to throw that in too.

3. Fruits - This is my favorite because they add color to your plain salad bowl with no unnecessary taste (bell pepper is OK but can't use it too much and will end up go to the dust bin).

• Oranges/Grapefruits - Full of vitamin C and fibre. They add flavour and juices to your salad. And they're good for packed lunches because they don't change color.
• Apples/Pears - They're good for eating at home salad and must eat immediately. You wouldn't want to eat brownish color apple salad right? Pear is a nice combination with Arugula leaves.
• Dried fruits (eg. Cranberries) - they're good substitutes for nuts but off course with different texture and taste

4. Meats - I'm a meat person so my salad will forever have this category.

• Chicken - breast meat if you want to have it grilled or just simply minced chicken turned to patties
• Fish - baked fish is a nice topping for your salad. I like to marinate them in orange juice and cayenne pepper
• Ham - it's expensive but once in a while it's OK to splurge on what you eat right? Always been a honey baked ham girl, I rarely take any smoked ham.
• Flanked steak/Roasted beef - Not recommended for your everyday salad as it's expensive and troublesome to make. But off course it's a nice combination to have.
• Eggs - The cheapest meat substitute. It never fails in any salad style. Do try it in egg mayo, pouched egg, or just sliced hardboiled egg.

My ideal kind of salad must have 1 item out of the 4 categories, so when I do groceries there always be 1 greenies, 2 nuts/beans/sprouts, 2 fruits and 1 meat. And you can have at least 5 varieties of salad to play with for the rest of your weekday.

One example of my salad:

2 stalk celeries, thinly sliced

1/2 packed tofu, baked

2 oranges, peeled and cubed

2 small chicken patties, cubed

Dressing: tsuyu sauce (you can buy any soba/somen sauce, any Japanese tsuyu based salad dressing is a treat). They're low fat and no oil (at least it's not visible, if any).

So, salad anyone?

Chicken Patties and Orange Salad

Still commemorating the salad week, now I start venturing other alternative for greenies because as our logic says, eating greenies for 1 straight week can be sickening if you're not a vegetarian. So, with that in mind, there I was, yesterday at Carefour's fresh produce section, pondering for almost 1 hour, practically memorizing all the price combination. FYI, now I can tell you how much is the minced chicken per kg compare to the filleted chicken breast (it's more expensive, btw). Or, how much is the towan fish compare to Cod fish, and start to calculate how much 1 bowl of salad will cost you after all the combination is calculated. Surprisingly you don't need excel spreadsheet to forecast how much you'll spend for 1 week salad combination. And even more amazing, I can memorize all these price tags with just one glance but can't even remember people's names that I just meet.

So during my venture with my brain keep working on combination and possibilities, one item hit me in the head, Orange! Why didn't I think of it before? It's CHEAP (cheaper than those greenies definitely), full of Vitamin C, and good for your skin, and it has flavor. So here is the next salad recipe.

2 small chicken patties, diced (recipe below)

2 oranges, peeled and diced

1/4 can chick peas (obviously what's left over from my previous salad experiment)

Dressing: Heinz Light Salad dressing (this time I'm too lazy to make my own dressing), max 2 tbsp

Alternative dressing: Honey mayo (mix mayo and honey with a dash of lemon pepper)

Assemble: Throw everything into a bowl and mix well

Recipe for chicken patties
500gr minced chicken

1 packet cilantro or Thai parley

zest of 2 oranges, thinly sliced and chopped

3 tbsp corn flour

Seasoning: lots of lemon pepper

1. Set oven to 200C

2. Mix all ingredients and seasoning well in a bowl. Make sure all the corn flour is well incorporated

3. Align baking sheet with aluminum foil and grease it with cooking spray. Using 2 spoons make huge chicken balls, lay it on the foil and flatten it. Repeat the step.

4. Spray the top of patties with the cooking spray and bake it for about 15 minutes or until it's well done.

Salad tips (yep, another one :p)

1. Do mix and match your greenies with fruit. It's fun. And it adds color to your bowl :). Try fruits like apple, pear, all kind of berries. melons (cantaloupes will be nice). Even the nasty watermelons are worth trying (I don't eat watermelons).

2. Never store fruits together with your greenies. While greenies can be prepared the night before, fruits will be the other way around. The best it to always cut them only when you want to eat them. But off course for busy bees that will be very tough, but you still want to eat fruits. So, the solution is buy an airtight container. Off course this container doesn't apply for fruits like apples, bananas, pears and the likes, which leads to point #3.

3. Soak cut apples/pears with salt water for about 1/2 hour and rinse them before storage. But this old school method won't last your fruits in their cheeky clean feeling color for that long too. Definitely not 24 hours. So fresh cut is still the best. Do allow 10 minutes of cutting fruits in your schedule when preparing salad for your lunches.

4. Add more protein to your bowl. Nuts and peas will be good. I initially want to use pine nuts instead of chick peas. But to my dismay, I can't find any pine nuts. I do find some sunflower seeds in the organic aisle. But why do I want kuaci on my salad? And pay a hefty price to buy it just because it's ORGANIC? So As usual, i try to find cheaper alternatives, and I remember Rachel Ray very often mentions to store chick peas can in your kitchen, it'll come in handy. Thanks Rachel.

5. Fresh fruits give you hassle because you have to cut it? You can have dried food instead. They sell from dried cranberries, blueberries, strawberries (surprised?), cherries, pineapples, apricots. mangoes, orange skins and even now durian is dried. But off course when fruit is dried, their sugar content is also higher than when they're fresh, so you might want to limit the usage.

Butterhead Lettuce Salad with Chick Peas and Balsamic Vinaigrette

It turns out that living healthy in Singapore is not cheap, folks. It seems like anything green and related to 'ang moh' eg. lettuces and the gang are priced like a gold in here. With a 5SGD bill, guess what you get, just 2 cute bouquet of red and green crispy lettuces, or a very, very slim romaine lettuce. I have to carefully reading all the descriptions on the price tags hanging above those lettuces. And I don't even bothered to go beyond lettuce. If the main salad ingredients are priced like this, it'll be more horrifying to see what's the price for the topping. This makes me miss US, where lettuce are abundant and very much bigger and cheaper.

So with this in mind, I have to be smarter and more creative in what I should throw to my salad bowl, or I'll spend equally like if I buy any salad from a bistro.

After mix and match, here is a new recipe that at least still fits in my budget.

1 pack of butter head lettuce (consists of 2 cute bouquet, just nice for 4 portion), cut to bite size

2 red bell pepper, diced thinly

1 can chick peas, washed and strained

4 eggs, hard boiled, sliced

Vinaigrette: 100ml balsamic vinegar, 50ml olive oil, lemon pepper to your taste, marjoram to your taste, mixed

Assemble:

1. On the bottom place lettuce, then bell pepper, top it with the chick pea and eggs

2. Drizzle the Vinaigrette for finish, 3 tbsp is enough

Storage tips:

1. All ingredients MUST be dry before go into the fridge. With that said, it means that everything must be strained to the last drop of water. Lettuce is the most particular. You'll get a rotten lettuce if you store it wet inside a Tupperware. One way to avoid this is to put 1 layer of strainer inside your Tupperware. This way, at least the water stick to your lettuce will be slowly go down.

2. Separate all the leavies and greenies separate. Mixing them up will cause them to rotten faster. It's the same principle when you see pre-packed salad bowl in supermarkets. They separate your dressings, croutons and greenies, so that it lasts long.

3. Greenies should not be stored more than 3 days, unless you like to have your greenies with dry and red colored ends. I'm very particular about this and that's why I'm so fussy about storage.

4. Eggs should be stored in whole, not cut. Only cut when you want to eat it.