All Food Recipes

Since Aquarians love fruits, serving one isn’t enough. I’ve mixed some of the best yellow fruits with orange juice for a simple yet tasty salad.
Cut up mangoes, honeydew melons, lemons slices and mix with Mandarin orange segments and golden raisins. Arrange the fruits attractively in a bowl. Mix orange juice with a little Cointreau and 7-up. Pour over the fruits and serve immediately.

Choose a chicken of any size. If you are organising a sit-down dinner of, say, six persons, you might be better off preparing six spring chickens. Your guests will surely be impressed as they are likely to believe that you have gone through a major production number just to feed them.
Chickens roast beautifully with the simplest marinate. Just rub a little soy sauce and pepper all over the bird. Brush with corn oil and get it into a moderately hot oven. If you’re unsure about how long your bird should remain in there, consider this general rule. It’s 15 minutes for every 500 g of the chicken plus an axtra 15. While the chicken is baking, baste it with its own juices in the roasting pan.
To make a delicious stuffing, combine chopped fried ham with chopped onions, finely diced apple, chopped celery leaves, clove of garlic, chopped walnuts, some thyme and breadcrumbs. Add an egg to bind. Stuff the chicken and seal the ends by stitching them up or secuting with toothpicks.
When the chicken is ready, scoop out the stuffing and serve it separately. Don’t leave it inside the chicken for you guests to excavate!

If you want to cook like a chef but don’t have the time to master the intricacies of the kitchen, Singapore chef Florence Quinn offers the following “cheat sheet” to bring out the best in your meals:

1. Can’t find good ripe tomatoes for pasta sauce or a simple soup? Buy a good Italian brand of plain canned peeled tomatoes. Tomatoes are usually canned when at their best, very ripe, full of flavours and definitely tastier than any tomato that is harvested too early so that it can withstand long storage and transport.

2. To add extra flavour and texture to vegetables for a salad or a soup, roast them first with a bit of olive oil and some sturdy fresh herbs such as thyme or rosemary. Try it with potatoes for a roasted potato salad, and squashes and pumpkin for soups.

3. Buy dry spices whole and keep them in a dry and cool place - they’ll keep for years. Before using, roast them in a dry pan to release the flavours, then grind them down with a mortar and pestle or an electric coffee grinder. Use right away when the flavours are the strongest.

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Eating low-fat but deliciously is as easy and painless as scarfing a pint of Haagen-Dazs’ Cookies & Cream… (stop right there!). Promise. Stick to the menu for a week and you’ll never go hungry or crave for sweets, coz this balanced high-energy diet lets you have your cake, and cookie, and eat it too. For the lactose intolerant or those not partial to milk, substitute with low-fat soya milk. Alternatively, you trim more fat with skim milk. If you’re a veggie freak you’re in luck - load up on the raw stuff till they sprout from your ears. But remember, even if yourself, extra weight doesn’t pile on overnight. Simply get right back on track the next day. The aim is for steady, gradual loss - no more than half a kilo a week. Here’s to a trimmer, healthier you!

MONDAY
Breakfast
1 glass fruit juice
1 cup ready-to-eat cereal topped with 1 banana and 3/4 cup low-fat or skim milk
1 slice toast with 1 tsp butter or margarine
coffee or tea

Lunch
90 g grilled skinless chicken breast on whole wheat bun with tomato slices, shredded lettuce and 1 tsp salsa
1/2 cup coleslaw
1 cup low-fat milk
2 fig cookies

Dinner
1 serving linguine stir-fried with green beans garlic
spinach-mushroom salad with 2 tsp vinaigrette
1-2 slices wholemeal bread
1/2 cup fruit sorbet

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Can’t cook, can’t bake? You can still make an ice-cream cake that could make your reputation as a hostess.

Transfer your ice cream into a pan. Press it with a spatula to pack it in. You can line the top (which will be the base when you turn it out), with crushed biscuit, or layer with different ice-creams. Cover with waxed paper or plastic wrap, so you don’t get icicles, adn leave in the freezer for at least eight hours.

To remove, peel off waxed paper and overturn on a cake board. Place pan under running water for a few minutes to loosen the ice-cream and it will slide onto the board.

Here’s when you have to work quickly. Spread prepared whipping cream (try Pour N Whip) over cake. The cream insulates the ice-cream. Then stick nuts, or sponge fingers around the sides, top with grated chocolate, fruit, etc. Return the cake to the freezer to firm up. To serve thaw for 15 minutes, dip knife in warm water and you’ll get neat slices.

Nothing could possibly be simpler to cook than plain boiled rice; even a boiled egg requires more finesse. But you can cook rice in Indonesia in as many different ways as potatoes in Ireland, so the matter is worth condsidering in some detail. Ideally, rice should be boiled and then steamed. The first process requires an ordinary saucepan, the second demands a streamer with a perforated basket. The traditional Javanese dandang is large copper vessel with a narrow waist; the kukusan, a woven bamboo container which holds the rice, is conical in shape and sits on the sloping sides of the dandang, just above the level of the water. These elegant pans are still made in java, and possibly in some other parts of Indonesia, though copper has been largely replaced by tin and aluminium. Many people, however, now use a deep straight-sides pan with a metal basket hung inside it. These can be bought easily enough in Holland, though I have not yet seen one in London. They are very light and easy to clean, and if not allowed to boil dry too often will last for many years. If you relly eat a lot of rice, you may find it worth while to buy an alectric rice cooker. These are imported from Japan and are sold mostly in Chinese and Japanese shops. They are not cheap, and though they are certainly very convenient and efficient I have never felt much need for one. If on the other hand you cook rice only occasionally, you may not want any special utensils for it at all-and in that case you will find that you can cook rice to protection in any thickbottomed saucepan. The only slaight disadvantages are that this method requires more care, and a little rice is usually lost.

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It’s nice to serve dessert and coffe away from the dinner table. Guests like to feel reposed, stretched on the sofa in the living room surrounded by sweet music. The glow from a Christmas tree adds a romantic feel to the post-dinner wind-down.
Rather than serve individual portions of, say, pudding, offer a platter of finger dessert, which your by now-extremely-grateful guests will be able to indulge in at their  own time. Also if there are those who would rather skip dessert, they can opt out inconspicuously.
A favourite of this writer are waffle sandwiches filled with whipped cream and fresh fruit. In keeping with the said colour theme, strawberries and kiwi fruit pair well. Flavour your whipped cream with a little Grand Marnier.

Nutrition Dogma says eat your vegetables raw. But a study from the University of Arkansas suggests that cooking carrots can actually boost their nutrient value.

Food scientists found that blanched, pureed carrots had 34 per cent more of the antioxidants called phenolics than the raw root. Antioxidants protect the body by neutralising free radicals; these rogue molecules can damage cells, leading to chronic disease such as cancer.

How did the cooked carrots come out ahead? Heating softens the fibrous root, allowing more phenolics to be released from cell walls.