Farmersgirl Kitchen

Saturday, 4 April 2015

Easy Salmon and Butter Bean Bake for Canned Food Week

Healthy Eating: It’s in the can!

- Celebrating Canned Food Week 2015 (March 30 – April 5, 2015)

Eating healthily is one thing many of us aspire to do, whether it’s by following a diet, cutting out excess sugar or trying to eat a little less. However lots of us struggle to know where to start. That’s why for Canned Food Week 2015 (March 30 – April 5), Canned Food UK has teamed up with celebrity nutritionist Amanda Hamilton, to show you just how easy it is.

Canned Food Week aims to raise awareness of canned food and its nutritional benefits. This year Canned Food UK and Amanda Hamilton have produced a set of healthy eating plans, each one with recipes that will take you from breakfast through to dinner.

Running from Monday to Sunday, seven plans have been created for a number of different audiences, from older people and students, to families with younger children and couples. Each plan also features a brand new recipe from Canned Food UK, two of which have been designed by Canned Food UK ambassador and celebrity chef James Martin.

I don't know about you, but I always have canned food in the house. Tinned tomatoes are a must, I also keep a stock of canned fish and pulses, I even have a can of snails in my larder! It's always great to have some new ideas for how to use those cans, they are brilliant for self-catering and camping holidays too.

For lots of ideas, you can download the healthy meal plans from www.cannedfood.co.uk and cook some of the meals, which will be made available during Canned Food Week. I chose to make the Salmon and Butterbean Bake by James Martin, which is featured in the Healthy Eating Plan for your growing Teens, there are no growing teens in my household any more, but it's a lovely easy dish and works just as well for any member of the family. But don't take my word for it, you can watch James Martin making this dish on the Canned Food Cooking Channel

Salmon and Butter Bean Bake
A simple and easy bake to feed the whole family

Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 x 400g can chopped tomatoes
3 x 213g can pink salmon
1 tbsp chopped tarragon leaves
2 x 400g can butter beans, drained and rinsed
4 slices brioche bread, blitzed into chunky breadcrumbs
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method:

Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5.
Heat a large sauté pan until medium hot, add the olive oil and onion and sweat for 5 minutes until just softened then add the garlic and cook for another 2 minutes.
Add the canned tomatoes and bring to a simmer, then reduce the heat and cook for 10 minutes until just thickened.
Season to taste with sea salt and black pepper then remove from the heat.
Meanwhile, place the salmon into a bowl and crush lightly with the back of a fork until well mixed then add the chopped tarragon, sea salt and black pepper.
Layer a third of the tomato sauce into a medium ovenproof dish then top with half the butter beans, half the salmon, then repeat with another third of tomato sauce, then remaining beans, salmon and last of the tomato sauce.
Top with the brioche breadcrumbs and place in the oven for 20-30 minutes until golden and bubbling.
Serve with a crisp green salad.

It was really easy to make and very tasty and filling. So handy to have recipes you can put together from your larder that will feed a crowd, I'm sure my boys would have scoffed the lot!

Remember to check out the Healthy Eating Plans and the other recipes on the Canned Food UK website.

Amanda Hamilton, nutritionist, comments: “These plans have been created to help show people that eating healthily isn’t as hard or expensive as you think – it’s all about planning ahead. Good nutrition can seem overly complex at times so I’m happy to get behind a campaign that makes simple recipes suggestions that are genuinely accessible to the vast majority – they taste great too!”

Jason Hegarty, Chairman for Canned Food UK, comments: “We know that canned food plays an important role in cooking in the majority of UK households, and that is why Canned Food Week is so important to us. During the canning process, nutrients are locked in, so canned food really does present a healthy option. By producing these plans with Amanda Hamilton, we hope to show that using canned food is a convenient and affordable way to eat healthily.”

Labels: beans, canned food week, easy, fish, food for teens, Healthy, James Martin, quick, Salmon and Butterbean Bake

Monday, 28 April 2014

7-a-day Slow Cooker Challenge Round Up

It seems that packing 7 fruits or vegetables into a slow cooker recipe was quite a challenge as, other than my own, I only had two excellent entries which I will share with you.

First up was Pravina from Indo-Global Food with a simple vegetable curry: Aloo-Palak (Potato and Spinach) Curry which can be eaten with rice, naan, roti or paratha.

My own dish was Chicken with 7-a-day Mediterranean Vegetables a great one pot meal best served with something that will soak up the delicious juices.

Natalie at The Tofu Diaries brought a Vegan dimension to the Slow Cooker Challenge. Regular readers may have noticed I have a real love of paprika, so this Sweet Potato and Three Bean Paprikash is going on my recipe wish list.

Many thanks to Natalie and Pravina for taking part in the Slow Cooker Challenge. I hope you will join me on 1st of May to find out what we will be making in our Slow Cookers as we move towards the warmer weather.

Woo hoo! I must have left the linky open longer than I though and the lovely Sarah of Tales from the Kitchen Shed has snuck in at the last minute with a delicious Vegetable Biryani and what a gorgeous vibrant photograph.

Labels: 7-a-day, beans, Biryani, potoates, Round Up, Slow Cooker Challenge, spinach, Sweet Potato, Vegan, Vegetables

Monday, 21 May 2012

White Bean Soup - Random Recipe #16

It wasn't really soup weather yesterday, but I had planned to make my Random Recipe for the challenge at Belleau Kitchen and I was bloomin' sure I was going to make it! The theme this month is 'First and Last' with the rules as follows:

randomly select a book
2. look at the first and last recipes
3. choose one (or both if you're feeling flash..) of the recipes and make it
4. post the recipe on your blog with a link back to my blog and include the random recipes logo
5. deadline is midnight on the 29th May

The book I picked was the Good Housekeeping Best 30 Minute Recipes which I see is still available to buy, although I must have had mine for over 20 years. It's a great book which I have used a lot, but never have I made the first recipe for White Bean Soup.

White Bean Soup
Serves 4

1tbsp oil
125g onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 level tsp copped fresh rosemary or 1/2 level tsp dried
425g can haricot beans, drained and rinsed (I soaked dried cannelini beans overnight then boiled for 30 minutes before adding to soup)
1.1 litres vegetable stock
salt and pepper
Toasted wholemeal croutons and sprigs of fresh rosemary to garnish

1. Heat the oil in a large saucepan and saute the onion with the garlic and rosemary for 1-2 minutes. Add the beans, stock and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 10 minutes.
2. Puree half the soup mixture in a blender or food processor and return to pan. Bring back to the boil, stirring all the time. Adjust the seasoning.
3. Serve the soup sprinkled with croutons. Garnish each bowl with a sprig of rosemary.

This was our first meal outside on the patio this year, my son joined us and, on taking a spoonful of soup, pronounced 'That's really good' with a sound of surprise in his voice! Praise indeed.

Labels: beans, cannellini beans, haricot beans, Random Recipes, Rosemary, Soup, vegetarian

Monday, 30 January 2012

More 'Bilbao' than Boston Baked Beans!

I seem to have established a bit of a reputation for comfort food. Until I started blogging I don't think I realised just how much I like warming stews and casseroles, bakes, crumbles and pies. Not wanting to disappoint my followers, here is another one! It started out as Boston Baked Beans but as I had no belly pork as per the recipe, I subsituted the spicy chorizo sausage which was in my fridge, so the dish moved continent and ended up in sunny Spain.

I'm entering this for Slow Sunday on Karen's blog 'Lavender and Lovage'

Bilbao Baked Beans with roasted roots

350g dried cannellini beans, soaked overnight and drained

1 tbsp sunflower oil

1 large onion, peeled and sliced

4 sticks celery, sliced

200g chorizo sausage, cut into chunks OR 200g Quorn Meatballs

1 x 200g can tomatoes

2 tbsp tomato puree

1 tbsp molasses or black treacle

1 tsp mustard powder

600ml chicken stock

Roasted Roots

4 parsnips, peeled and cut into chunks

4 carrots, peeled and cut into chunks

1 small swede, peeled and cut into chunks

2 tbsp 'Do me a Flavour' Roast Parsnip Seasoning (optional)

2 tbsp sunflower oil

1. Bring the beans to the boil in a pan of fresh unsalted water. Cook them for an hour until tender but not mushy.

2. Put 2 tbsp sunflower oil in a roasting tin add the chopped veg and the seasoning, if using. Mix together and roast in the oven at 200C for 40 - 50 minutes. The swede I had was using wasn't cooking very well, so after about 30 minutes, I covered the tin with foil and cooked it for about 20 more minutes, then uncovered to finish it off for 5 minutes.

3. While the roots are roasting, make the bean dish, put 1 tbsp of sunflower oil in a pan and add the onion and celery, cook gently until starting to soften then add the chorizo chunks, or quorn meatballs (you might want to add half a teaspoon of smoked paprika if you are using the quorn) and stir around until the onion and celery start to take on the colour of the chorizo.

4. Add the beans, the tomatoes, tomato puree, molasses or treacle, mustard and stock.

5. Cover the casserole and cook in a preheated oven (160C) for 1hr 30 minutes. Add the roasted root vegetables to the casserole and cook for another 30 minutes.

This dish is quite a long way from either Boston or Bilbao but was inspired by both, and also by what I needed to use up from the fridge!

Labels: beans, carrots, casserole, chorizo, comfort food, Do me a flavour, one pot, Parsnips, tomato, vegetarian

This Page

Farmersgirl Kitchen

Saturday, 4 April 2015

Easy Salmon and Butter Bean Bake for Canned Food Week

Monday, 28 April 2014

7-a-day Slow Cooker Challenge Round Up

Monday, 21 May 2012

White Bean Soup - Random Recipe #16

Monday, 30 January 2012

More 'Bilbao' than Boston Baked Beans!

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