love – CLARE HOPKINS

Falling in Love with Poke Bowls

August 20, 2018April 23, 2020Posted in ALL POSTS, FOOD, HEALTHTagged book, bowl, clean eating, fitness, hawaii, healthy, healthy eating, love, nutrition, poke, RecipesLeave a comment

For those who don’t know, Poke pronounced “poh-kay”, is a native Hawaiian dish of diced raw fish in some sort of marinade.

For most, raw fish probably doesn’t seem appetising, but when whipped up in a salad-style bowl with an assortment of other flavours it’s to die for. Raw fish is also beneficial for heart health, weight loss, and contains vitamin A and D (see more here).

I got onto the poke bowl trend after discovering a restaurant (Greenhouse Asian Salads), which does a brilliant Poke bowl with tuna, black rice, soybeans, wasabi peas, and veggies.

I must have been going on about how much I loved Poke because a friend bought me a poke recipe book (probably to stop me from dragging her all over the place to try different poke bowls).

To make them yourself, you need a protein, base, salad, marinade, and some toppings for extra flavour and crunch. Here are my favourite combinations:

Protein
1. Diced Raw Tuna in Mayo
2. Diced Raw Salmon in Soy Sauce
Base
1. Black Rice
2. Quinoa
Salad
1. Shaved Carrots
2. Green Papaya
3. Roast Corn
4. Edamame Beans
Dressing
1. Balsamic Glaze
2. Roasted Sesame Dressing
3. Extra Virgin Olive Oil
4. Sesame Oil
Toppings
1. Wasabi Peas
2. Seaweed Salad
3. Dried Seaweed (Nori)
4. Sesame Seeds

Each time I make a poke bowl I mix it up with a variation of the above! Let me know if you try it.

p.s. If you live in Sydney and want to have Poke in a restaurant, try Poke, Nude Fish, Fishbowl (Japanese twist) or Pokéd.

Mother’s Day Feast

May 14, 2017April 17, 2020Posted in ALL POSTS, FOODTagged champagne, cheat day, chicken, comfort food, dessert, favourite, feast, Jamie Oliver, love, love mum, lunch, mom, Mother's Day, mum, Mum's Day, pink, relax, Sunday Lunch, Sunday roast, treat day, white chocolate mud cake, wine-braised chicken6 Comments

Today was Mother’s Day, and to treat Mum I decided to prepare a lovely Sunday lunch that she enjoyed.

As usual, it took way longer to prepare than I expected. I woke up at 9am and immediately started baking, and was going flat out until 1pm when lunch was served.

For the meal I decided to do wine-braised chicken (with white wine, carrots, red onion, rosemary, red grapes and pine nuts), and an asparagus & grilled halloumi salad.

For the recipe, I stuck to Jamie Olivers recipes from his cookbook. If you follow his recipes well they do come out at restaurant quality.

For dessert, I went all out with Mum’s favourite cake – a white chocolate mud cake. I always use the Taste recipe when I make the cake, but I halve the mixture because the amount they prescribe actually makes 2 regular sized cakes (you could definitely stick with the actual quantities and pile the 2 cakes on top of each other with creamy ganache in the middle).

It was a lovely day, and I treated Mum to a mani-pedi voucher at our local salon, to top the day off.

What do you usually do for mum on Mother’s Day?

Valentines Day Healthy Red Velvet Cake

February 12, 2017April 16, 2020Posted in ALL POSTS, FOODTagged baking, blog, cake for two, delicious, love, mini cake, red velvet cake, special someone, starting blogger, strawberries, two, valentines day2 Comments

Happy Valentines Day! Whether you are celebrating or not, why not make cake!

Did you know that traditionally Red Velvet Cake did not use red food colouring, they had that red colouring due to the non-Dutched, anthocyanin-rich cocoa.

I couldn’t get my hands on this fancy cocoa so I’ve resorted to red food colouring, but it was still super tasty.

This cake is very moist and fluffy, and has a couple of substitutions to make it more satiating and nutritious.

You will need:

1 cup spelt flour or coconut flour – these flour alternatives contain increased vitamins and minerals which help regulate metabolism and improve immunity.
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup almond milk
60g olive oil
1 tbsp cocoa powder
1/2 cup coconut sugar
7ml red food colouring

Steps:

Preheat oven to 200˚C. In a small bowl place cocoa powder and red food colouring and mix. Add dribbles of water until the mixture becomes a smooth, velvet red paste.

Pour/sift all remaining ingredients into a large bowl and beat until smooth and fluffy. Then stir in red velvet cocoa paste.

Then you will need to grease the cake tin with coconut oil or olive oil. I used a small tin, since its a small cake, around 10cm in diameter. Afterwards, pour the mixture into the tin.

Bake for 30 minutes on 200˚C, or take out when the cake has risen significantly and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

For the icing, you can make your own cream cheese icing, or you can cheat a little and just use Betty Crockers vanilla icing which goes perfectly with the cake as well! You could also make this from scratch!

To make cream cheese icing just beat together 70g cream cheese, 40g unsalted butter and 1/2 cup icing sugar. Then ice away. Voila!

I sliced the cake in half horizontally and added a layer of icing in the middle. Then, I coated the outside of the cake in icing, and pumped little flourishes around the base and the top. Finally, I garnished with chopped fresh strawberries and an edible flower.

Enjoy! Have you made Red Velvet cake before?