Clean and Lean - Turkey Burgers

Turkey can often be seen as a drab and boring meat. It's bad reputation is down to the tendency to over cook it on Christmas day and then be forced to eat leftovers for weeks afterwards. It's a shame really because turkey is lean, cheap and can be very tasty!

I actually bought all of the ingredients for these burgers from Lidl making them exceptionally cheap compared to many meat-based dishes. The turkey wasn't super lean but at half the price of Sainsbury's I didn't mind a couple of extra % of fat!

I was actually really pleased with how these turned out, they were quite refreshing which is an odd word to use to talk about a turkey burger but the lime zing really came through. I'd definitely reccomend giving them a go.

Turkey Burgers - adapted from James Duigan

Ingredients:

• 400g turkey mince
• juice from 2 limes
• 2 lemon grass stalks, bashed
• sea salt
• ground black pepper
• 5 spring onions

1. Chop the spring onions and a small amount of the lemongrass and put into a large bowl. Smash the stalks of the lemongrass with a knife. (The recipe calls for 4 stalks of lemongrass but that sounds like far too much for me as I'm not a great fan).
   
2. Add the turkey mince and squeeze the lime juice over the mix. Combine with your hands and leave to marinade for 30 minutes in the fridge.
   
3. Run your hands under cold water and shape the mixture into patties - I made 4. 
   
4. Heat a little olive oil in a frying pan and then cook for about 4-5 minutes on each side. 
5. Serve - the book suggests wrapping the burgers in lettuce and serving with oven roast veg. I opted for sweet potato mash and grilled asparagus - yummy!

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Clean and Lean - Super Mince

I'm slowly making my way through the Clean and Lean diet cook book and have been meaning to make this so called "Super" mince for a while. Given that I still had 4 packs of mince in the freezer (thank you Waitrose and your half price event in January...) and wanted to keep the grocery bill down this week, I thought it was a good opportunity to make this.

Please forgive the unflattering photograph, it did look more vibrant than this! Also, for you beady eyed readers - this shouldn't be served with rice, let alone Uncle Ben's Mexican rice! If you're truly keeping clean and lean you should have it on it's own or with brown rice or pasta. It's pretty tasty and a great winter warmer. We took ours to work in a tub and heated it up for dinner before heading out to the theatre, a thrifty dinner as we have our holiday to save for.

Clean and Lean Super Mince, adapted from James Duigan

Ingredients:

• 1 red onion
• 1 red pepper
• 50g peas
• half head of broccoli
• 1 aubergine
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 500g lean mince (ground beef)
• 400g carton of passata
• 2tbsp tomato puree
• 50-100ml water
• 2 cloves of garlic
• sea salt
• ground black pepper

1. Slice all your veg into similarly sized chunks - no need to be too precise
   
2. Heat the olive oil in a large pan and brown the mince. Add the vegetables, passata, tomato puree, garlic and season. Add the water as necessary. (400g passata just wasn't enough to coat all my veg!)
   
3. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 40-45 minutes until all the veg is tender. 

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Clean and Lean - Pancakes

In an effort to overhaul my diet before heading off to Australia in a month I've decided to revisit the clean and lean diet. It seems more relevant than ever, given that there has been a lot of talk recently about how it's really sugar that is the food villain, not fat. I completed a successful week last week but knew with pancake day approaching that it was going to be hard to stick to -  I love pancakes, especially the fluffy American ones I have blogged about before.

Fortunately, this is a recipe for pancakes in the Clean & Lean Diet book. I have to admit though, I was dubious! Eggs, oats, cottage cheese and cinnamon doesn't sound anything like my normal pancake recipe. However, I'm please to report these were quite tasty and certainly kept me filled up until lunch. 

Serves 1 (if you're greedy like me!)

Ingredients:

• 50g oats
• 100g cottage cheese
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• blueberries (to top)
• natural yoghurt (to top)

1. Place the oats, cottage cheese, eggs and cinnamon in a food processor. Whizz up until a batter smooth(ish) batter is formed. 
   
2. Heat a pancake pan, or other small frying pan) up over a medium heat. Pour in the batter and cook for 2-3 minutes on each side.
3. Serve immediately with natural yoghurt, honey and blueberries.

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Clean & Lean - Roasted Butternut & Broccoli

Well we've made it to day 5 of the Clean & Lean diet. How are we feeling? Not quite full of energy as hoped but I think we've both lost a bit of weight our sugar cravings are now subsiding. We did, however, treat ourselves to a bit of dark chocolate today which tasted phenomenal.

Tonight's dinner was surprisingly easy and tasty. We did modify the recipe from James Duigan's Clean & Lean Cook Book as it called for 1.25 cups of feta cheese! OK, we get some fat is good for us but just couldn't justify that much of it. We also cut back on the seeds too as we'd snacked on them throughout the day. We have to confess that since our butternut squash was quite small we gobbled down the whole meal which was supposedly for four....

Ingredients

1 butternut squash, cut into wedges

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 teaspoon of cumin seeds

1 teaspoon of chili flakes

1 large handful of broccoli

1 handful of seeds

Feta, salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Toss the butternut wedges in the oil, cumin seeds and chili flakes. Place in an oven pre-heated to 200c for 35-45 minutes.
2. Boil the broccoli until al dente, about five minutes, and then add to the roasting dish with the butternut. 
3. Add the seeds, feta and season. Serve immediately. 

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Clean & Lean - Chicken, Asparagus and Cashew Nut Stir-fry

On Saturday we scared ourselves by watching The Bitter Truth about Sugar on YouTube. On Sunday, after a bit of consideration, we decided it was time to clean up our diets a bit. We don't want to lose weight but we certainly want to feel better mentally and top up our energy levels.

After a quick bit of searching on amazon we came across the Clean & Lean Diet Book, written by James Duigan, which had fantastic reviews. Instead of supporting amazon we nipped down to Greenwich Waterstones and picked up a copy there.

For the past three days we've managed to abstain from the temptations of the birthday treats at work, alcohol and any other drink apart from water. We're not feeling too different yet, but we're certainly not feeling any worse so we'll keep on persevering!

Chicken, Asparagus and Cashew Nut Stir-fry from the Clean & Lean Diet book by James Duigan

Serves 2

1 skinless chicken breast, cut into 1cm strips

1.5 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 clove of garlic, crushed

25g cashew nuts

1 thin red chilie, thinly sliced

3 spring onions, sliced

125g asparagus, cut into small chunks

125g mangetout, cut length-ways

40ml chicken stock

1 tablespoon chia seeds (Hollands & Barratt sell these)

1. Heat half the oil in a wok over a high heat. Add the chicken, cashew nuts and garlic and stir for 3-4 minutes until the chicken is nearly cooked and the cashews are lightly toasted. Tip into a bowl.
2. Add the other half of the oil and throw in you chillie, spring onions, asparagus and mangetout. Stir for 2 minutes. Add the stock and cook for another 2 minutes. The stock will mostly evaporate.
3. Add the chicken and cashew mix back into the wok for a final couple of minutes to warm back through. Stir in your chia seeds and add a squeeze of lime if you fancy. 

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