Haddock and Broccoli Pie with Healthy Cheeseless Cheese Sauce and Quinoa Topping

Frozen haddock fillet

This recipe uses my Healthy Cheeseless Cheese Sauce.  I did a blog at Hubpages about this.  You'll get it here.  It's a variation of the Tuna and Broccoli Pie with Healthy Cheeseless Cheese Sauce and Quinoa Topping blog.

'Variety is the spice of life' - they say.
 
Ingredients:

100g of Broccoli florets chopped into 1" pieces.
1fillet of haddock

Uncooked broccoli with haddock fillet lurking below

Cheeseless cheese sauce as per recipe here.
Cooked and seasoned quinoa as per recipe here.

Method:

Put the raw, defrosted haddock fillet, into a microwavable dish, with the raw broccoli on top.  Microwave it for about 5 minutes.  Until the fish is cooked (it breaks apart to the touch).

Then smother the broccoli and fish with the Cheeseless Cheese Sauce.  Get the recipe here. 

Cover this with a cooked spicy quinoa topping.  Get the recipe below - or here.

Spicey Quinoa Topping

Cooked quinoa

Ingredients:

½ a cup of dry quinoa
1½ cups of water

Method

Put these two ingredients into a saucepan and bring it to the boil, and then immediately turn the heat down as low as possible to simmer for 10-15 minutes.  The quinoa absorbs all the water.  Take it off the heat.

Add to the cooked quinoa:

½ teaspoon of Fajita seasoning or Cajun mix
¼ teaspoon of ground turmeric (for colour)
1 tablespoon of olive oil or rapeseed oil

Coat the quinoa in the seasoning and oil and sprinkle it over the Cheeseless Cheese Sauce. 

You can give the dish a whirl in the microwave and lightly brown the topping under the grill to make it crunchy if you like things piping hot.  But remember that the more you heat this healthy food, the less healthy it becomes.  You can protect the essential oils in the rapeseed oil (omegas 3 + 6) by simply adding it last - i.e. after the cooking process.

How To Make A Healthy Spread or Margarine Using Coconut Oil and Canola Oil

This is a quick, healthy recipe.  I don't know if it's unique to me; I doubt it, because it's a real no-brainer-cinch. 

My wife said, "What does it taste like?"  I said, "A bit like margarine with a hint of coconut, I suppose."  And she thought that might be a bit peculiar.  However I spread some on her home-baked bread and she liked the taste, so I thought it's worth blogging about.  Here's the recipe; don't blink or you'll miss it. 

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons of rapeseed (canola) oil
1 tablespoon of coconut oil

Method:

Put both ingredients into a small dish and gently heat them until the coconut oil melts. Virgin coconut oil melts at 76 °F (24 °C), so you don't need to damage it by overheating.

Stir them together and let it cool.  Refrigerate.

The Healthiest Possible Salad Cream Ever Created By Me So Far

Healthy Tuna Fish Crumble With Quinoa Flour and Olive Oil

This is a real quickie.  It's a savoury crumble, which went well today.  I seem to remember, from my days as a chef, a Fish Crumble recipe.  The trouble is the name is all I remember about it. 

Anyway, I'll call it Healthy Tuna Fish Crumble With Quinoa Flour and Olive Oil. 

I just used the same base/filling as I do with Quinoa Crunch With Broccoli and Tuna in Coarse Tomato Sauce.  Here's the link:

http://dbmcbain.blogspot.com/2011/07/quinoa-crunch-with-broccoli-and-tuna-in.html

So, the new thing about today was that I made a Quinoa Flour Crumble Topping, instead of  Whole Quinoa Crunchy Topping.

Ingredients:

1 Heaped tablespoon of quinoa flour
1 tablespoon of olive oil
¼ teaspoon of ground turmeric (for colouring)
¼ teaspoon of Fajita seasoning

Method:

Put all the ingredients into a mixing bowl, and rub them together to get a crumbly texture.

This is better done in a slow oven - about 200-250°. 

If you have vegetables in this dish that you don't want overcooked, put them in raw.  Remember, the thicker you chop the vegetables the longer they take to cook through - hence you'll kill off fewer vitamins.

Healthy Scottish Shortbread Made With Quinoa Flour Xylitol and Coconut Oil

 This is an experiment with healthy ingredients that worked first time.  It'll fill the base of an 8½”/21.5cm baking tin. 

Ingredients:

4 heaped tablespoons of quinoa flour
3 heaped tablespoons of Xylitol sweetener
4 tablespoons of melted coconut oil

A soft sticky dough - but healthy

Method:

Put all the ingredients into a mixing bowl.  Don't overheat the coconut oil to melt it; it melts at 76 °F (24 °C).  You’ll get soft dough, which you can just flatten evenly down into a greased and floured baking tray. 

You can mark out the wedge shapes with a knife and crimp or use a fork to decorate the edges. 

Bake for about 30 minutes in a preheated oven at 200°. 

To check if it’s cooked you can put a knife or fork into the dough at the centre of the baking tray and if it comes out clean (no uncooked, moist dough sticking to it) the shortbread is cooked. 

Let it cool and settle for a few hours to get the traditional hard, crumbly shortbread texture. 

The Healthy option for Scottish shortbread

Most people who Google this sort of blog up onto their screen will already know that the three ingredients in the blog's title are known for their health benefits, i.e. quinoa flour, Xylitol sweetener and coconut oil.  Although, I’m not convinced about coconut oil, there’s no official (government, for what that’s worth) advice that coconut oil is any healthier than other saturated fats, like butter.  There’s plenty of information on the web about the different kinds of fatty acids and why the saturated fat in coconut oil is healthier than animal fat (it’s something to do with the length of them). I won’t try to BS you that I know anything much about that, but here’s an article I found on the web.


http://www.thevirgincoconutoil.com/articleitem.php?articleid=163
http://hubpages.com/hub/coconut-oil-for-cooking

The traditional Scottish Shortbread is made with butter, but if you believe the guff about coconut oil being healthier, then coconut oil does the job. 

Here's some guff about quinoa:

Quinoa has the nine essential amino acids the body needs for muscle building protein, and fibre for a healthy colon. Quinoa has minerals like magnesium for relaxing your muscles and blood vessels, manganese and copper antioxidants, which protect against cancer, and it has more calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, iron, copper, manganese, and zinc than wheat, barley, or corn.

Health gurus recommend whole grains nowadays, but quinoa isn't really a grain; it's a seed. It's more nutritious than grains, with: amino acids, fibre, vitamins and minerals, enzymes, phytonutrients and antioxidants.

Here are some articles about quinoa:

http://hubpages.com/hub/GetSomeQuinoaInYa
http://www.suite101.com/content/nutritional-benefits-of-quinoa-a189657

Xylitol is a natural sugar substitute - they make it from birch tree bark and often, corn.  It attacks the bacteria that cause the plaque, which is the cause of tooth cavities - whilst, as we all know, sugar rots teeth and gums.  It also has a low GI (glycemic index), which means that diabetics can use it safely.  It's much lower in calories too. 

So with Xylitol, you're a winner all round, as long as you're not a dog.  IT KILLS DOGS!  However, I know you're not a dog; otherwise, you'd be in the circus - being, as you are, able to read this, and work a computer. 

Here’s some guff about Xylitol:

http://www.xylitol.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylitol