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Hi I'm Alison Taafe, the Sassy Chef. Today I'm going to show you how to use pasta and
grains in your tuckshop to make some really healthy lunches for the kids.
First of all I'm going to use couscous, a little bit of cracked wheat. I'm going to
pop that into a bowl. Now there's about 250 grams there and I'm just going to add just
over double the amount of, well almost double the amount of water, 450 ml of boiling water
just going in there. And now I'm going to steam it -- I'm going to put some gladwrap
over the top and make sure you get a really good seal here because you want to keep all
that moist hot air inside this bowl. So make sure your gladwrap is really tight. And what
we're going to do now is not disturb that, not touch it, not do anything to it for about
10 minutes, we're just going to leave that to steam. I'm going to pop that over on the
side and then I'm going to start my tuna salad, so let me just pop that over there.
Okay so you can see here I've made a beautiful tuna and pasta salad. You can even use wholemeal
pasta if you really want to health-up your tuckshops but I've just used a normal penne
pasta there but anything goes. I try to avoid spaghetti and fettuccini, maybe some shells
or some macaroni, anything that's easy and portable to get in your mouth with a fork
basically. Okay so I've got some cooked pasta. Now if
you do cook pasta make sure you have plenty of boiling water. We like to teach 10 parts
of boiling water to one part pasta so that the pasta can roll around and stop getting
too sticky and sometimes it sticks together. You don't need to put any oil in the water
-- just a little bit of salt and just boil it so it's just cooked. If you're going to
cook it in advance make sure you drain it, make sure you run cold water over it so it
completely gets cold, and you can put a little bit of oil in it to stop it from sticking
overnight in the dish otherwise sometimes it comes out in a solid lump. So let's put
a little bit of pasta in here. And don't overcook the pasta -- it needs to be a little bit al
dente -- a little bit to the tooth as they say in Italy.
Okay we're going to add a little bit of fresh, well not fresh, dried sultanas in there. We're
going to add a little bit of pumpkin seeds -- we've got these beautiful pepita kernels.
It adds a nice crunchiness to the salad. I'm also going to add a little bit of chopped
sliced shallots, and let me show you how I did that. Grab one of those, I've already
washed it, I'm going to just whip off the end. And if it is quite big you might be wise
just to make it, cut it into half so that when you are chopping it you get nice little
pieces just like I have here, so you can see. Otherwise it can be a little bit strong in
the mouth if you have it too large. So a little bit of green shallot, it's really lovely,
nice onion taste and it's not as strong and as acidic as normal onion. So that looks good.
Pop that in there. It also gives a little bit of colour and crunch to the actual salad
as well which is great. Pop a little bit of extra in there as well. Lovely.
Okay so now we need to put a little bit of colour into our salad. I'm going to grate
some fresh carrot into the pasta salad. I'm going to try and get the whole palate of colours
into this salad -- the more colours, the more vitamins, the more goodness we're going to
get into our kid's lunches. So I'm just going to add a little bit of grated carrot in there.
Mind your nails, don't grate your nails into there. It's an extra bonus for the kids. Sometimes
you may even have a food processor which has a grater on it which is nice and easy. Okay
so just a little bit of grated carrot through that salad. Beautiful.
Now I'm going to add a little bit of red capsicum. I wanted to show you how to dice this. It's
not something that you cut every day. I've cut my capsicum down into four pieces and
let me just show you how I did that as well. Take the capsicum and I cut down one side,
cut down the second side, the third side and the fourth side. I even cut off the little
bits at the end so I'm not wasting it -- that way I don't have the seeds inside and I'm
ready to cut straight away. It's a very¸ very quick handy way of doing it. Okay you
might want to just cut out the little white centrepieces there because they can be a little
bit bitter. Just get rid of that. So what I suggest you do to make a nice dice is to
cut little lengths. And once, again cut on the inside of the capsicum, don't try to test
the knife on the outside, it can be quite hard to cut through. You want to get yourself
a really good chef's knife, nice and sharp. It makes the salad look beautiful because
all the food is cut nicely and that in turn gives great presentation. So line all these
little pieces up and just very carefully using that little knife technique where we're just
rocking through. And the sharp knife is less likely to cut you than a blunt knife so don't
be frightened of it, make sure it's nice and sharp. Get these beautiful little diced capsicums,
so there's no seeds in there, none of that white centrepiece, and just beautiful red
diced capsicum. Perfect. Alright so what we'll do put a little bit
of tuna fish through this. Now you can of course add any cold meat that you like -- chicken
is a great alternative as well. Tuna fish I've brought today that was in natural spring
water, so we're trying to lower the sodium content. We're getting great protein here
though so tuna fish is a great healthy alternative but, like I say, some steamed or poached chicken
is also a great thing to add here. So a little bit of flaked tuna fish going through there.
Might put a little bit of diced Spanish onion in as well for a little bit of extra colour.
And what I will do is pop a little bit of pepper in there. Now go easy on the salt -- you
have tuna fish which is naturally salty. You don't want to add too much here. So as much
pepper as you want, I don't mind that one, that's great. We may eve use a few fresh herbs
as well because fresh herbs give taste and flavour and can also help without too much
seasoning on the salt side of things which is great. So any fresh herbs that you can
get your hands on. And you know some of you here in schools these days have herb gardens
growing which is great so go out and ransack the kid's herb garden. Perfect. Anything goes
for this one. And if all else fails I suppose you could use a few dried herbs if you have
to but I appreciate that not all of you can get fresh herbs. But pretty sure that most
of you can get hold of some parsley or something in the supermarkets.
So a nice little shred using that same technique as we just used for cutting that capsicum,
just shredding through those herbs. And if you want to you could even just pick through
them and just break them up. Some people say that's an even better way of doing it because
then you're not cutting the herb and maybe running the risk of bruising it which is not
good. Okay so let's get our tongs in there and give this a little bit of a mix through.
So you can see how beautiful the colour is there -- you know it's going to be healthy
because it's got this array of beautiful, fresh, abundant colours which is great. I'm
going to use a little bit of olive oil in here. Now I'm choosing not to dress this one
with mayonnaise. I'm trying to keep the fat healthy in the diet. So I'm going to use a
bit of balsamic vinegar for this one and I'm just going to dress this lightly with olive
oil and balsamic, that way I'm not adding extra fat in the form of a mayo. But if you
do want to use mayonnaise you can use a nice light mayo variety if you wish. It's entirely
up to you. Alright so I haven't added any extra salt
in there and I don't think I need to because I've got lovely flavours, the herbs are in
there, all the beautiful extra vegetables are through there and the balsamic and oil.
It's a fantastic salad. I'm sure that everybody is going to love this one.
So meanwhile back at the couscous which has been steaming nicely -- I haven't touched
it, I've resisted the urge to uncover it. So about 10 minutes and you kind of know it's
ready when all the couscous looks like it's stable, in other words there's no water present.
So whip off the gladwrap, take a fork and then just go through and fluff it up so you
break up all those little granules but not too heavy handed otherwise you're going to
smash it up. So just fluffing it up nicely, get rid of a little bit of lump by just using
the fork, and the fork is quite a light way of doing this. So you can see that 250 grams
of couscous makes a lot of couscous. I'm just going to use a small amount of this today
just to show you how to finish this off. So I'll pop that into this other bowl, get myself
a couple of lovely spoonfuls, you've got lovely, fluffy, beautiful, light couscous which is
great. Okay so we've got a nice little bit in there. I'll just make sure I get rid of
all those lumps. Perfect. Okay just pop that out of the way. That stores quite nicely as
well -- you can keep that in the fridge for up to two days, make sure it's covered all
the time. So this looks a little bit bland at the moment,
we've got to really health this up and get some lovely flavours and colours and textures
into this one. Okay I actually have a little bit of chicken going into this, just to add
a little bit of protein here and it's low in fat, it's been poached or steamed. You
can buy chicken already cooked and, if you do, what you need to do is cut up a very small
dice of the chicken. So let me show you how I did that. Take a chicken breast, just cut
it into slices, so just nice and thin slice which is nice and easy. And then what you
do, just a little bit like the capsicum that we just did before actually, cut it into strips.
We chefs call this a julienne because it's rather a fancy technique, a fancy name for
really just dicing and shredding. Let's chop that up into nice little fine manageable pieces.
We're trying to get small pieces like the couscous so it's nice and easy to eat and
you only need a fork or a spoon to eat this one as well which is very easy. Okay some
beautiful cooked chicken. Now be careful when you're cutting up cooked chicken, it's fine
on the board, but if you're cutting up any kind of raw chicken make sure you whip the
board into the wash-up and use a new one -- we don't want to have any contamination of raw
food and raw meats in our salads. Okay so the diced chicken goes into that couscous,
so adding a little bit of extra protein in there. I've also got some pepita kernels,
now you know I love these, I used those before. A nice way of getting a crunch in there without
using nuts, so that's perfect. They give a nice colour as well and also, as I said, texture,
which is important. Some spring onions which I showed you how to cut before with the pasta
and tuna salad, a little bit of spring onion in there. And a little bit of diced onion.
I haven't shown you how to cut a diced onion and I want to do that. So I'm using a Spanish
onion because Spanish onion is a little bit milder in taste and it's a little bit sweeter
as well. So just going to cut down the onion like so and use my little knife to take the
top and bottom off. And I'm just going to then whip off the peel like so, make sure
I wipe my board down. Now what I want you to do with this one -- I'll just move these
out of the way so you guys can see nicely as well -- is have a look where the root of
the onion was on one side, and then just cut little tiny cuts and only two thirds or three
quarters of the way up. And this is the root end where the root was in the onion, it holds
it together nicely for you. So cut little tiny thing cuts. And then maybe change knives
and what you need to do is cut a little bit into the onion just like so, cut a little
bit into the onion that way, and then, hey presto, when you cut down you end up with
this beautiful diced onion and no tears because I haven't cut the onion all over the board
so I'm not getting all that acid in my eyes. So I've got the beautiful little chopped onion
-- easy, you can show your friends that one and really show off, they're going to love
it. So pretty much I don't need any more of that into my dish, so we're done.
Okay so the onions are in there, now I'm going to add a little bit of chopped dates. This
is for sweetness. So a little bit of natural sugar in the form of dates. You can use sultanas
in here. You can even use apricots if you like. So get the date and just cut it into
half. And then be careful because the dates are a bit sticky when you're chopping it and
I'd hate for you to cut yourself so be very, very careful. Just cut little bit sized pieces
of the date, just like so, and pop those in. As I said, sultanas or even prunes or even
apricots, anything really to add a bit of sweetness in there. I'll pop the rest of those
in there. And I think we're almost good to go with that one. The only thing missing is
a little bit of citrus -- we're going to add some lemon and some oranges. I'm going to
use a Microplane Zester -- and if you haven't got one of those, don't panic, you can use
a grater. But a good trick with the grater is put a bit of gladwrap over the grater first,
press it into the small part of the grater, and as you are taking the zest off the orange,
when you lift the gladwrap off it's all there, you aren't going to be chasing it through
the grater. So it's a very, very good tip. Okay so if you have a Microplane, great. Just
get a little bit of zest off in there. This adds a little bit of freshness and a bit of
zing to this couscous. Couscous can be a little bit bland -- it's a bit like rice, it depends
what you add to it, that's what's going to give us the flavour. So I'm going to add a
little bit of orange juice, I've already got my zest in there. Just be careful of the pips.
Beautiful, orange juice, and a bit of lemon juice in there. That's going to be our dressing.
I'm not using vinegar, I'm going to use citric acid as the acid in my vinaigrette dressing
for this one. And a little bit of lemon juice. And the last little thing in there is a little
bit of seasoning and a little bit of oil and we're done. Beautiful. Okay a little bit of
cold press olive oil going through there. So we are looking to lower the fat content
of food and olive oil is a great way of adding some good fats into our diets. So let's just
toss that around. Now before we mix it any further I am going to add my salt and pepper
now and I'm going to put some fresh herbs in there too. Now if you can get hold of fresh
herbs, perfect. Use parsley, dill, coriander, whatever you can get your hands on. And if
you can't, don't panic, it doesn't matter. It's your tuckshop, you can do whatever you
want and make sure it just looks good and tastes great, that's what we're after. A little
bit of salt, not too much, make sure we keep this low sodium if we can. And just toss it
through and if you think it needs a little bit of extra seasoning, it's always easier
to add a touch more than it is to try and take it out, right?
Okay so what I want to do is grab a little bit of fresh coriander, because I'm lucky
because I've got beautiful herbs here, a little bit of fresh dill and maybe a little bit of
parsley, whatever you can get your hands on, I don't mind. And a little shred through at
the last minute. And I wouldn't put these herbs in too early folks because you want
them to stay nice and green and vibrant. It's all about freshness for us. I'm really happy
with that couscous, it takes probably less than five minutes to make. It's really great.
So what a great way of actually health-ing up and greening up your tuckshops at school.
I think it's great. It's a good way of promoting healthy smart choices for your school. Now
don't panic if you haven't followed the ingredients and the recipes as quickly as I've gone through
them -- you can always go to the Smart Choices website and you can download the recipes straight
away. Thanks very much for watching folks. I'm Alison,
the Sassy Chef. That's my couscous, that's my tuna and pasta folks. See you.