Eating fast-food meals isn't considered healthy. Burgers, chicken nuggets, pizzas or hot-dogs (whether bought frozen and cooked at home or eaten at a fast food restaurant) belong to a league of foods people are advised to scarcely consume.
Nevertheless, a fast-food meal can be turned into a good home-made dinner when cooked at home with your choice of healthier ingredients and a bit of love.Why not create your own chicken nugget or burger recipe kids will salivate over, instead of having them beg for a visit to the local fast food restaurant?
We never really know the quality of meat used in the nuggets, burgers or even pizzas at our local fast-food restaurants. Take matters in your own hands and be the one to choose what goes in your family's belly. Choose the quality of meat to create your burgers and the type of oil to fry/bake your chips/wedges. Compliment you dishes with fresh vegetables and regulate the amount of salt in every portion.
From time to time I prepare home-made burgers which everyone enjoys. Each one can add their own choice of ingredients and sauces. I keep mine simple. I compliment my beef burger with green salad leaves, tomato, pickle cucumber, pineapple slice and cheese all tucked in a toasted burger bun accompanied by home-made potato wedges.
Check out this wonderful recipe (under main dishes) and enjoy a healthier burger meal at home.
I was recently watching the animated film 'Ratatouille' with my son. The film is about a mouse interested in French cuisine. The mouse dreams of becoming a chef and ends up fulfilling it. The story shows us how the mouse can follow a recipe but also use some of its imagination to alter the recipe to make it its own.
One of the dishes the mouse cooks at the end of the film is the famous 'ratatouille', a traditional Provincial dish. I got really interested in the dish itself and looked up the real recipe for ratatouille on the net. There are many different alternatives to follow. None of the pictures on the pages I visited presented the dish in the same way as the mouse in the film. I found out that ratatouille is actually a very complicated dish consisting of very simple ingredients. After having done my research, I tried to recreate Ratatouille's ratatouille dish รก la Marianna :)
With a little improvisation and common sense plus some tips from the animated film itself I created the dish. To my surprise it looked and tasted great and it was not as time consuming as a real ratatouille dish. Here is my result:
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| Before baking |
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After baking
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But it not just Ratatouille-the film which inspires me to try new things and add my own twist. Great Chefs like Gordon Ramsay, Chuck Hughes and Jamie Oliver have been an inspiration. I mostly follow their recipes without changing a thing but sometimes there is space for improvisation. Some of the best recipes I have tried from these great chefs are Chuck's homemade Chicken Nuggets, Jamie's Chicken-bacon skewers and Gordon's basic lasagna. I tried Gordon's lasagna recipe which I followed word for word and this is the result:
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| Lasagna |
No matter if you follow a recipe word for word or you decide to add your own personal twist always remember to make it fun! Also, try recipes which will work for the whole family and can be cooked again and again. All three recipes mentioned above are ones I tried and have, since then, cooked many times :D
