I'm going to try to start listing my ingredients and quantities. I weigh almost everything, and I've been keeping extensive notes over the course of this series, so feel free to ask if you'd like quantities or ingredients for anything I've posted in the past too.
This week I had an interesting task for prep, I made a huge vat of "Thai" pumpkin curry sauce for our dinner. This is a different recipe than I've used before, but we wanted to try something new, and it didn't disappoint. I say "Thai" in quotes because I cook a lot of Thai food, and this recipe does not really work up the same way I'm used to when making Thai style curry. Plus I'm pretty sure normally Thai food doesn't have bitters in it.
I regularly make my own broths out of leftover bones or veggies, and freeze them in 1 oz cubes. When I make broth, I do so without adding any salt or oil. This way when I add the broth to other recipes later, I have the option of adding salt or something flavorful and salty without having to worry about how much salt is already in my broth. If you are using a store-bought broth that contains salt or sodium, you will need to adjust the recipe.
Check out these broth ice cubes tho...
SAUCE INGREDIENTS:
1 tb olive oil
1 large shallot (about 5 oz)
2 serrano chilies
1 tb minced garlic
1 tb minced ginger
1 tb minced basil
1 can pumpkin puree
1 can coconut milk (I like Chaokoh brand)
2 cups vegetable broth
3 tb fish sauce
2 tb brown sugar
1 tb Angostura bitters
Chop and sautee your shallot in the olive oil, stirring occasionally, until it's starting to caramelize and get translucent. Add your chopped serranos, ginger, and garlic, and sautee until fragrant. Then dump in the whole can of pumpkin, the whole can of coconut milk, the basil, and your broth.
Once everything is incorporated, I like to blitz it a little with an immersion blender, but you could also transfer it to a regular blender. If you're going to use a regular blender don't put hot liquid in there, put your cans of liquid and your broth in, and then add the other ingredients from the pan.
After you've done your blending, season to taste with the remaining ingredients.
My recipe yielded 6 cups of sauce, at 1396 calories total, making each cup about 233 calories. These kind of sauces typically also freeze well, so you could make this ahead, freeze it in portions, and then thaw it to use as needed.
For breakfast I made a 1.5 egg omelet with what was left of my pork roll, some scallop mushrooms, and a bit of goat cheese.
Every other day, I cracked three eggs into a container, beat them a bit, and then used half to make that day's omelette and saved the rest in a sealed container in the fridge for the following day.
OMELETTE INGREDIENTS:
1.5 eggs
1.5 oz mushrooms
1 oz diced pork roll
.5 oz goat cheese
salt & pepper to taste
All the tasty stuff is hiding inside.
Omelette, coffee with sugar - 278 calories
For lunch, I decided to use some of the leftover pineapple rings from last week in place of the pineapple juice suggested with breakfast, and make a pear and pineapple salad. I figure if I'm going to eat a pear and some lettuce with cheese I might as well make it the most fabulous salad I can come up with.
SALAD INGREDIENTS:
1 oz spring mix lettuce
1 pineapple ring, chopped
1 oz pear, diced
1 oz gorgonzola cheese
1 oz pecans
1-2 tb dressing
DRESSING INGREDIENTS:
3 tb olive oil
4 tb balsamic vinegar
4 tb maple syrup
1 tb yellow mustard
1 tb minced garlic
salt & pepper to taste
Dressing yields about 13 tb, each tb is about 48 calories
I ended up with about a tablespoon of dressing left in my bowl every day, so even though I'm counting two tb worth of calories it may actually be a bit less.
Salad & kombucha - 443 calories
For dinner we had chicken and carrots in pumpkin curry sauce with rice.
To cook the chicken, put 1 cup of the sauce into a small sauce pan on low heat. Thinly slice the raw chicken breast and add it to the warm sauce, stirring until it's completely covered. Add a little water if needed to cover the chicken. Cover the pan with a lid and cook on low heat until the chicken is done, about 10 minutes. Serve over rice and steamed carrots, garnish with minced basil.
This picture is from the same day that I made the sauce, so I also garnished our plates with a few drips of the coconut milk that was left in the can after making the whole batch of sauce.
INGREDIENTS:
3-5 oz chicken breast
1/2 c curry sauce
1 medium carrot
1/2 c rice
1 tsp minced basil
Chicken curry with rice - 511 calories -- this is with up to 5 oz chicken, it's much less if you use less chicken.
Total day's calories - 1232
Next week is another weird fruit salad lunch... should be fun! Thanks for reading and see you next week!
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