Wholemeal pasta with creamy cottage cheese and seafood sauce

So Mr J has requested for more greens and less meat this week; his appetite seem to change every week, but I guess we're still adapting to the freedom of actually choosing what we want to eat! Another new-found hobby of mine now is to minimise food wastage each week; shopping always feel like a risk when I haven't got the slightest idea what I'm going to cool with the food I buy... 

Well tonight's recipe was created from wanting to create a healthy light dinner, yet clearing out what I have in the fridge. Well just happened that a friend of ours left us some cottage cheese, which he has been eating as part of his super strict diet; apparently cottage cheese is high in protein, perfect for the calorie conscious ;b ... So here it goes, a super healthy cottage cheese sauce, and to top up the healthiness - Wholemeal pasta! (Guilt-free for the pasta-lover in me :) ) 

Ingredients:

- 2 small servings of Wholemeal pasta, cooked al dente and drained.

- 1 cup of cottage cheese 

- 1 egg 

- 1 cup of pasta water 

- herbs for flavour: a few sprigs of thyme (just happened to have some fresh sprigs in the fridge too) 

- 1-2 cloves of garlic

- 4 large button mushrooms

- prawns and ling fish fillets, marinated 

- salt and pepper for seasoning

How to make it: 

- Cook marinated meat/seafood with herbs. When browned outside and semi cooked, add pasta water, cottage cheese and egg, stirring until it becomes a creamy mixture, the meat should cook thoroughly by this time. If the sauce is too thick, add a splash of pasta water or milk. Season to taste. 

* I left the fish in there for too long, it kinda disintegrated into the sauce... 

On a cold winter's night...

Not so cold if you live in Sydney, but winter nonetheless.

With almost three months into married life, things are settling and finally I am motivated to revive this blog =) And now that I have my own kitchen, I have been making more savoury, main-meal types of food, so the main reason for this blog is for easy access to recipes that I have used and tried, let's keep it brief and get into it!

Red Wine Beef Casserole

Ingredients:

• Chuck steak ~2kg, diced, marinated with salt, pepper, coat with flour
• Chicken stock 2 cups
• 2 cups dry red wine
• Herbs: Thyme, Oregano, Bay Leaves
• Vegetables: Mushrooms, Celery, Carrots, Onion, Garlic

Brown meat first. Add stock, wine, garlic, onion, herbs, half amount of carrots and potatoes. Leave to boil gently (takes about 3 hours on the stove if you don't have a pressure cooker). Add remaining vegetables when the meat is tender or 30 mins before ready to serve.

Baked Whole Trout

Ingredients:

• Whole Ocean/Rainbow trout
• Marinate: Olive oil, sea salt, cracked pepper, garlic, thyme, oregano, lemon juice, lemon slices

Bake at 180 degrees C for ~30mins (depends on size of fish).