Cooking Tips for Healthy Tuckshop Meals — Basic Food Preparation

Alison: Hi I'm Alison Taafe The Sassy Chef and today I'm going to show you some great salad recipes for your tuckshop. I'm going to use some fresh ingredients and I'm also going to show you a few knife skills along the way. So don't panic, sit back if you can't grab all the ingredients for the recipe as I speak don't panic because you can go to the Smart Choices website. So first of all I'm going to do a Vietnamese Chicken Salad. You can see one I've made here. Beautiful, bright vibrant colours it's going to be great for your tuckshop. So let's get started. I've got some Chinese cabbage here Wombok, Chinese cabbage. You can actually get away with any kind of cabbage but this one is the best one to use if you can. Make sure it's nice and fresh it's nice and crunchy, feels good, looks good. All of you would do very well to get yourself a sharp knife so grab a really good sharp chef's knife if you can. It makes life so much easier and it cuts so beautifully it makes the salads look really great. So what I'll do now is just take a little bit of this Wombok and I'm going to take out the inside root a little bit because I don't really like eating that it's a little bit bitter. I'm sure the kids are going to think the same as well. So let's just grab the Wombok itself take out the root get rid of that. And what I'd like to show you now is a little technique we call a 'chiffonade' otherwise known as just to shred. It sounds better though doesn't it? We're just going to roll this up into like a little cigar and then using our knife now if you're frightened of the knife don't be, just keep your fingers out of the way and let the knife do the work. All you're going to do is just roll the knife slowly through the cabbage and create this beautiful crunchy shredded Wombok cabbage. See I'm not pressing very *** that it's nice and light and it keeps that from being bruised and turning brown which is not what we want at all. So roll that up into a nice little bundle. This is a great technique for using with all kinds of lettuce as well so Cos lettuce iceberg (lettuce) I'm even going to use this technique when I make my coleslaw in just a moment. Okay so just a little shred here. This Vietnamese Salad is a great one for your lunches it's packed with good fresh ingredients so the kids are going to love it. Let's pop that shredded Wombok cabbage into our bowl. What I'm going to do now is just cut up a little bit of chilli and I'm also going to add some lovely crunchy bean sprouts which everybody loves so they're going to go in. A handful of those just going to go in there. And what I've also got here is a little bit of cooked chicken breast. So if this was raw chicken breast I'd be really careful of the board and everything and make sure that you change the board in between raw and cooked ingredients but this chicken has already been cooked. You could even just buy one already from the supermarket that's already cooked if you wish. I have chosen to poach this one so it's nice and healthy low fat and low salt which is great for the kids What I'm going to do is just slice the chicken breast down a little bit because if I don't when I cut the shred of chicken which is what I want to do I want to try and cut the same sort of size of this. We can't have big lumps of chicken in there we want it to match all the same sort of size. So we're just going to do a little fine cut chefs call this a julienne it's just a lovely fine shred of lovely moist chicken. I'm just going to pop that into our salad. Beautiful. Alright so that goes in there so the cabbage the bean sprouts and also the chicken is now in my salad. I'm going to add a little bit of chopped chilli. Now for those of you that haven't chopped chilli before and you're worried about your fingers getting too hot put some plastic gloves on or even put a little bit of olive oil on your finger. A student told me that once and it stops you from getting burnt with the chilli. I'm just going to cut this down into four little pieces like so and that makes life so much easier when you're then going to chop your chilli into fine dice. Plus you're not touching the inside of the chilli so your fingers are safe which is great. Right so a little bit of chopped chilli. Perfect. That's going to go in the salad. Now you don't have to add too much chilli if you don't want to it's entirely up to you. It's entirely what your kids love. If they're not into hot food then you know you can take away a little bit of that chilli if you like. Alright so next up I'm going to add a little bit of coriander. Now not everybody loves coriander I do. I think it's one of those things you either love or hate so I'm going to put a little bit of coriander in there. Just trim that down. And once again I'm going to use that technique where I'm just letting the knife do the work. So just nice and slowly. And if you're worried about the knife skills you're going to get better with time. Practice makes perfect right? But failing that you can just shred it in you can just pull it. It's very, very versatile. And the last little ingredient I'm going to add here is a little bit of Vietnamese mint. Now this gives the salad a bit of zing. It's great. You don't always find Vietnamese mint out there I appreciate that. So if you're growing anything in the schools fresh normal mint is fine with this one. But really this does give this a lovely taste. But don't panic, fresh mint is fine as well. And coriander as I say you can either leave it in or out it's entirely up to you. So pop a little bit of that through at the end as well. Perfect. Alright now the dressing for this one I'm going to make it in a jam jar I love this one. I'm going to add a little bit of garlic a little bit of chopped garlic. I'm not going to add any more chilli because you've already got quite a bit of chilli in there. So a little bit of garlic. I'm going to add a little bit of rice wine vinegar just a tad a little bit of fish sauce not too much because we want to make sure we're quite low in sodium for all of our recipes today. Now I do add a little bit of sugar but because we worry about the amount of sugar that we put in meals for kids at the tuckshops these days just a small amount it's really immaterial because we've got such a large salad that we're doing. So you know ratio of sugar to salad is very, very small. I'm going to put a little bit of warm water in here as well because I just want to dissolve that sugar down just a little bit. Okay now I love this bit just shake it up in the jar Really cool, hey? That's going to go over the salad which really is the Pièce de résistance this makes the salad absolutely delicious. And last but not least we're going to add a lime okay. Just press the lime down so you burst all those cells out so they just can't wait to give you all the juice which is what we really want in this salad. I'm just going to give it a little bit of a squeeze of fresh lime juice which is so beautiful and fresh in there just makes it absolutely sing. Perfect. Right now we have the salad already done How easy is that? It takes less than five minutes to prepare this salad and the kids are going to love it. My two nephews they're seven and 11 years old they absolutely love this one. I don't put any nuts in it because they don't like it and for schools these days we try to avoid the use of nuts anyway. So this salad is complete the way it is. We're going to pop that into that lovely noodle box just so that I can show you how beautiful and fresh that looks. Your kids are going to absolutely love you when you give them that. So we've finished off our beautiful Vietnamese Chicken Salad let's now make a wrap. This is lovely this one you're going to love it. I'm going to show you how to make a little coleslaw I'm going to do a really lovely coleslaw with a bit of Granny Smith apples some sultanas and loads of seeds kind of hidden in there for goodness. I always have to hide the seeds from my husband because otherwise he wouldn't eat them. So it's a really nice alternative to nuts. So what we're going to do is grab a little bit of white cabbage crunchy fresh white cabbage and going by the last little segment that we did with the Vietnamese Salad we're going to now use that same technique to shred the cabbage. So we're going to just go through very gently and just shred that cabbage. Some of you might even have machines to do this that would be great wouldn't it? Really fast. But if you're old fashioned like me you're going to cut this into that little chiffonade cut that we talked about before. So you've got this beautiful lovely fine shredded cabbage. I always break the cabbage down into small pieces so it's easier to cut plus it's not too long for us to put in our mouths. So cut it into nice manageable pieces and just a very easy shred. Like I say some food processors do this as well so you can add an attachment and it's very easy and very safe. So once we've get our beautiful you know what I'd rather you waste a bit of cabbage than cut your finger so chop the last little bit out grab a bowl and pop that into a nice large enough bowl to get all our ingredients in there because next up we're going to add a carrot which we're going to grate just like the old fashioned coleslaw we're just going to grate our carrot. I've grated my fingernail many times so be careful when you do this. And once again, if you're lucky enough enough to have a food processor you can do it with the attachment. But if you're not just be really careful waste a bit of carrot not your fingernail. Okay just a little bit in there. Perfect. Pop that into the coleslaw. Just get the last little bit off my clean board. Okay I'm now going to add an apple which adds a little bit of extra natural sweetness to this which is great. Kids love it as well. I'm using Granny Smith because it's probably better than using another sweeter alternative. So Granny Smiths are great they've got a lovely natural sugar in them. Cut this apple down into quarters like I just did take out the core cut each quarter into half so you're working on like an eighth of the apple and then the same thing again nice little cuts nice and safe and don't forget the last little bit of apple it's not worth it really. So pop that in there. I always find that I cut better on a side that's not shiny so don't try to cut into the peel side try to cut onto the inside of the apple it makes life a little easier with your knife. It also keeps your knife a bit sharper for longer which is what we want. So we've got a little bit of apple in there. Alright let's pop that in that's enough. Okay now we're going to add some real goodness in here we're going to add some sultanas just a few, just for a little bit of extra sweetness. And you can add those or you can leave them out depending on what you prefer. A few pumpkin seeds going in a wonderful way of adding a bit of crunch without adding nuts and some sunflower kernels as well. So it's a real fancy coleslaw it's gone from just being the cabbage and carrots to this whole work of art. So a little bit of light mayo because we're trying to keep down the amount of fat and the amount of salt that we put into our food for the kids. We're just going to toss that around. Now if you find that that is a little bit thick you can always add a little splash of warm water. Rather than reach for more mayo a little bit of warm water in there will help to loosen up those ingredients nicely. Now I don't mind how much pepper you add because that's great but I do mind how much salt. So if you want to add a little bit of salt just a tiny pinch. I'm using sea salt but I realise you know not everybody has access to that so just a little bit of salt. You might even find that you don't need it at all when you put the tuna fish in. So this is going to be a lovely wrap of fancy coleslaw and tuna fish and the tuna fish is in normal spring water no extra added salt no extra added oil which is great. It's a great source of protein for us as well. Alright so let's start. We're going to add our beautiful coleslaw with our lovely Granny Smith apples and all our seeds and goodness is hidden in there. They won't even know they're there which is great. Pop that in. And what I will do is add a little bit of flake tuna which has already been drained. You can also put chicken in this one. You can go for your life once you get the whole technique of the coleslaw any meat or fish or chicken anything's perfect. So pop a little bit of tuna fish on there. And if you want to add a little bit of extra green you could always add a little bit of lettuce a little bit of shredded lettuce in there as well would be great. And once again that lovely chiffonade cut that we learnt before. Perfect. Okay now we're ready to go what a beautiful lunch treat. We're just going to wrap this up tuck both ends in fold over the wrap supporting the inside and then just roll it up nice and tight so it stays together just like that. Okay, just like that. And now what I've done here is I've wrapped it in a little bit of greaseproof paper and I've cut it in half just so that you can see the inside. It might be an idea to take a photograph of that to put up in the tuckshop or even display one so the kids know exactly what they're getting inside. Pop that into some greaseproof paper once again tuck over the ends just roll it up like a little parcel nice and tight and if I were you I'd probably gladwrap that and stick them in the fridge until you're ready to serve. So we've done our Vietnamese Salad we've done our beautiful tuna and coleslaw wraps. So cooking with fresh ingredients is a great way of greening up your tuckshop and also a really cool way of promoting healthy food and smart choices in your school. Thanks for watching guys. I'm Alison Taafe - the Sassy Chef.