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Friday Fare

Soba Noodle Salad Rolls with Peanut Sauce

May 9, 2014

So once again, I was extremely busy this week plus kept forgetting to take photo’s of possible Friday Fare options (le sigh). So instead of disappointing you all and not posting a recipe, I decided to share a soba noodle salad rolls with peanut sauce recipe created by one of my favorite healthy food bloggers, Nutritionist in the Kitch!

Some of you may know that I am a huge fan of Christal, from Nutritionist in the Kitch, and regularly make her recipes and find inspiration from her. I thought her soba noodle salad rolls with peanut sauce recipe looked incredible and I wanted to share it with you all. I actually bought some fresh spring rolls the other day, so I will be experimenting with my own fresh roll creations.

Without further ado, here is the recipe and some of Christal’s photo’s of this yummy looking dish 🙂

Soba Noodle Salad Rolls with Peanut Sauce

 

Ingredients

  • Rolls:
  • 10 sheets rice paper
  • 6.5 oz soba noodles
  • 1 carrot, peeled and julienned
  • 1 bell pepper, julienned
  • 2 green onions, cut into strips
  • small bunch cilantro
  • small bunch lettuce
  • 1 tbsp low sodium soy sauce
  • 1 tsp sesame oil
  • Peanut Sauce:
  • ¼ cup creamy peanut butter
  • ½ lime, juice
  • 1 teaspoon sesame oil
  • 1 teaspoon rice vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon pure honey
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 1 tablespoon fresh ginger (optional)
  • ¼ cup water (add more if you prefer a thinner consistency)
  Instructions
  1. For Rolls: In a large pot, heat 4 cups of water to boil and cook noodles according to package instructions. Run cooked noodles under cold water and drain. Mix in 1 tbsp soy sauce and 1 tsp sesame oil with noodles. Set noodles aside.
  2. Fill a shallow dish with warm water. Place one sheet of rice paper in dish until it is submerged, soak for 1 minute or so until it becomes soft, carefully set on a clean surface, such as a cutting board, and make sure the sheet does not bend or fold.
  3. Place about 2-3 tbsp of cooked soba noodles in the middle of the rice paper sheet, top with a few slices of carrot, pepper, onion, a few sprigs of cilantro, and a couple leafs of lettuce.
  4. Fold the top of the rice paper sheet over the filling, then fold in each side, then roll until the opposite end has closed the roll, put on a plate and repeat the process until you have ten salad rolls! (Learning this process may take a little patience, but after the first couple rolls you will get the hang of it! :) )
  5. For Sauce: Combine all ingredients in a food processor, or mix together by hand.
  6. Serve with cold rolls, enjoy!
Prep time

Cook time
5 mins

Total time
20 mins

Serves 5

Nutritional Information
Serving size: 2 Rolls & 2 Tbsp Peanut Sauce Calories: 323 kcal Fat: 8.7g Saturated fat: 1.6g Unsaturated fat: 6.5g Trans fat: 0 Carbohydrates: 56.7g Sugar: 6.2gFiber: 3.6g Protein: 9.5g
 

Soba Noodle Salad Rolls with Peanut Sauce

Soba Noodle Salad Rolls with Peanut Sauce

Mmmmm, cannot wait to make these and fresh rolls in general. You can pick up rice paper at any Asian supermarket, and they are usually pretty inexpensive … perfect for a student budget, woo hoo! Actually most things at Asian supermarkets are much cheaper in general, so you should definitely give them a visit the next time you need groceries. I picked up some sesame chili oil for only $3 or something like that. Normally sesame oil is something ridiculous like $5 … no thank youuuu!

Have any of you ever tried fresh rolls before? I first had them about a year ago at a Vietnamese restaurant in San Leandro and have never looked back!

Honestly yours,
Alice

 

Friday Fare

Dark Chocolate Chip Coconut Cookies

May 2, 2014

As you may (or may not know, it’s cool if you don’t lol) I have been working on a yummy dark chocolate chip coconut cookies recipe for this week’s Friday Fare! The inspiration for this recipe honestly came about because I had all the ingredients in my cupboard and I reeeeally was craving cookies .. I love cookies, hehe. These cookies are kind of like a beginner’s guide to taking the healthy step forward – a few people have commented on how even though the recipe’s look great, there are several hard to get or expensive ingredients in them. And I totally understand, not everyone can live near a Whole Food’s with a bulk bin section!! So these cookies have ingredients that should be easy enough for you to get at your local supermarket 🙂

Dark Chocolate Chip Coconut Cookies

Dark Chocolate Chip Coconut Cookies

Don’t they look awesome?

I used a combination of oat flour (which you can make your own by just putting some rolled oats in a food processor and whizzing it about for a few seconds) and whole wheat flour, coconut oil and dark chocolate to make a healthier chocolate chip cookie. I really like oat flour because it has quite a lot of fiber and protein in it, and I used whole wheat flour because a) it is super easy to find in supermarkets and b) as opposed to white wheat flour which usually is stripped of all its nutritional goodness, whole wheat flour contains all of the fiber and vitamins that are supposed to be there. Coconut oil makes everything taste better (in my opinion) and contains a lot of healthy fats, and the dark chocolate is there to balance out the sweetness that comes with the brown sugar. Although brown sugar really is not that much healthier than white sugar, it gives a richer flavor and more moistness to the cookie. Like I said, this is a beginner’s guide to healthier cookies!

They are also dairy free as I used Almond Breeze’s almond and coconut milk.

Dark Chocolate Chip Coconut Cookies

Alice Williams
Melt in your mouth dark chocolate chip cookies with coconut.
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Ingredients
  

  • 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
  • 1/2 cup oat flour
  • 1/2 cup coconut oil
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
  • 2 tbsp unsweetened almond milk I used Almond Breeze's almond and coconut milk blend mmm
  • 1/2 cup or 4 squares of 70% dark chocolate pieces I buy the Lindt kind and break it up into small chunks, you can use a knife to chop them too
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1/4 tsp high quality salt

Instructions
 

  • 1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees farenheit
  • 2. First, mix all of your dry ingredients (MINUS the dark chocolate) and then mix all of your wet ingredients. Now you can fold in the dark chocolate chunks.
  • 3. Roll the batter into small balls (should make 12) and then use a spoon to flatten them out on your baking pan.
  • 4. Bake the cookies in the oven for 8 minutes and then take out.
  • 5. Leave to cool for 10-15 minutes and then enjoy!

Notes

The cookies are meant to be a bit more cake-like in taste 🙂
Dark Chocolate Chip Coconut Cookies

Dark Chocolate Chip Coconut Cookies

I hope you all enjoyed this edition of Friday Fare. I had a lot of fun making these (and eating way too many in the process) and I hope you have just as much fun as I did. Next week I am thinking of featuring a sweet oatmeal dish but made using an interesting and different process from just boiling the oats or letting them soak overnight … 🙂 Either that or some sort of Thai curry.

Dark Chocolate Chip Coconut Cookies

If there is ever anything you would like me to make (a breakfast, dessert, salad or etc) then please let me know. I say this every week but I truly love hearing from you and appreciate your input and suggestions.
Have a great weekend everyone!!

Honestly yours,
Alice

Friday Fare, Health

Easy Shrimp Tacos

April 11, 2014

Easy Shrimp Tacos

This week’s Friday Fare is dedicated to my friend, Tenny, who requested an easy shrimp tacos recipe for the upcoming Cinco de Mayo!

shrimp tacos

I thought this was a great idea because a) I wanted to make taco’s anyway and b) Now you can all make these taco’s for your cinco de mayo parties, or to just eat and enjoy. This taco has my own Alice twist on it. Instead of cabbage, I have included spinach because then you don’t have to spend ages shredding cabbage. Plus, spinach is extremely healthy for you and very, very tasty. I decided to use guacamole to spread onto the taco (like butter on bread) AND also as a topping. The main ingredient in guacamole is avocado, which is a source of healthy fats and has quite a range of vitamins and minerals. Healthy fats are a necessity to aid your body’s absorption of vitamins and minerals too, by the way.

Your carbohydrate source comes from the corn tortilla’s, and your protein comes from the shrimp! I am a mega fan of shrimp (as those of you on Instagram know) because they are low in calories but quite dense in protein. For example, 4 ounces of shrimp is only 80 calories and has 18 grams of protein!

For all you students out there, I recommend buying frozen shrimp in bulk because it is much cheaper and it is really easy to thaw – you just put it in hot water for a few minutes and it is ready to cook.

Shrimp Tacos

Alice Williams
Celebrate Cinco de Mayo with these tasty and healthy shrimp tacos!
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Ingredients
  

Ingredients

  • For the taco's
  • 2 corn tortilla's I used blue corn tortilla's from Mi Abuelita Bontia Naturals
  • 1 cup fresh spinach
  • 4 oz shrimp or 8 jumbo shrimp
  • Juice of half a lime
  • 1-2 teaspoons cumin
  • 1-2 teaspoons garlic salt or 1 clove of crushed garlic and 1-2 teaspoons of high quality salt
  • For the Guacamole
  • 1 ripe avocado
  • 2 crushed cloves of garlic
  • Juice of 1/2 a lime
  • 3-4 cilantro leaves
  • Optional - 1/2 diced jalapeno

Instructions
 

  • 1. Prep the guacamole first. Trust me, you will devour the taco's and forget all about the guacamole if you have not made it first! To do that, mash all of the ingredients listed above for the guacamole in a small bowl and set aside.
  • 2. Now get a large frying pan and put over a high heat. Wait 30 seconds to 1 minute until the pan is quite hot and then put the taco on it. Cook each side of the taco for 30 seconds to 1 minute - until they are lightly browned.
  • 3. Once both taco's are cooked, you can spread your guacamole onto them. I used about half of the guacamole I made to spread onto the taco's. Then add a layer of spinach onto your taco's, will require about 4 spinach leaves, depending on how big they are. Set aside for now,
  • 4. Saute the shrimp in a frying pan, using either coconut oil or olive oil. I used a spray olive oil to minimize the calories and fat since I am getting a substantial amount of healthy fats from the avocado already. Sprinkle the cumin and garlic salt over the shrimp, and then drizzle the lime juice over the shrimp. Please adjust the amount you add to your taste.
  • 5. Once the shrimp has cooked (does not take long, maybe 5-8 minutes?) place them evenly onto your taco's, and place another layer of spinach on top of them. Add some more guacamole if you want, and some salsa if you have made or have some as well.
  • 6. Place a few cilantro leaves on the top of the taco's (if you want), drizzle some more lime juice on them and then fold, and enjoy!
Shrimp Tacos

Shrimp Tacos

 

Shrimp Tacos with guacamole

I hope you have all enjoyed this week’s edition of Friday Fare! I love this recipe because it is quite a light dish, yet very satisfying, tasty and healthy all at the same time 🙂 I prefer to use corn tortilla’s because flour tortilla’s tend to have a lot more ingredients in them whereas corn tortilla’s are much simpler. Annoyingly though, flour tortilla’s do have more protein and fiber but corn tortilla’s have less calories. And for those who are intolerant to wheat and gluten, corn tortilla’s are the obvious winner here. I think corn tortilla’s are tastier too hehe, but that is just my personal opinion!

As always, if you recreate these, please please use the hashtag #fridayfare and tag me in your post so that I can see them! And if you like the posts, why not subscribe .. 🙂

Honestly yours,
Alice