Sweet Potato Soup

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 medium brown onion, chopped coarsely
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 600g sweet potato, chopped coarsely
• 400g potato, chopped coarsely
• 2 cups (500 ml) water
• 1 1/2 cups (375 ml) vegetable stock
• 1/2 cup (125 ml) cream

Directions:

1. Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat.
2. Cook onion and garlic, stirring until onion softens.
3. Add spices and cook stirring for 1 minute.
4. Add sweet potato, potato, water and stock. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer covered for about 20 minutes, or until vegetables are tender.
5. Cool soup for 10 minutes, then process in batches until smooth.
6. Return soup to the pan and add cream. Reheat without boiling.

Lamb Salad with Yoghurt Dressing

Ingredients:

• 350g Lamb Back Strap

      Marinate:

• 1 Tsp Olive Oil
• 1 Garlic Clove, crushed
• 1 Lemon Zest / Juice
• 1 Tsp Fresh Mint, chopped

      Salad:

• 200g Red Capsicum, sliced
• 1 Lebanese Cucumber, sliced
• 1 Red Onion, sliced
• 150g Feta, crumbled
• 1 bag of mixed lettuce, rocket and spinach

      Yoghurt Dressing:

• 150g Low Fat Greek Yoghurt
• 2 Tsp Lemon Juice
• 1 Tsp Olive Oil
• 1 Garlic Clove, crushed

Directions:

1. Marinate lamb, cover and refrigerate overnight
2. Drain lamb and cook until brown all over. Allow meat to rest for 5 min. Thinly slice the lamb across the grain.
3. Place the lettuce mix, capsicum, red onion, cucumber, feta and lamb in a large bowl and toss to combine.
4. To make the dressing, gradually combine the yoghurt with the olive oil, lemon juice and garlic in a bowl. Drizzle the yoghurt dressing over the lamb salad to serve.

Fish curry

I used to make this dish with Garnisha Masala Paste which is a low-sodium mild curry paste. Garnisha looks like it has gone out of business, so I just tried making my own curry-paste from the recipe here. I duplicate it here so I can add adjustments and in case the original goes away.

Ingredients:

Curry Paste:

• 2 red chillies - sliced (recipe says birds-eye - I just got small hot red chillies)
• Approx 1 inch piece of fresh ginger - peeled and finely grated
• 5 kaffir lime leaves
• 1 lemongrass stalk - finely chopped
• 4 shallots (recipe says 4 - mine were large bulbs with two "body" sections - think garlic cloves - I used 4 of those sections instead of 4 whole bulbs)
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tablespoon paprika

Fish Curry:

• 2 medium sweet-potatoes (kumara) - peeled and sliced
• 1 eggplant - 1-2cm cubes
• Plain flour or cornflour
• 2 blue grenadier fillets - cubed
• 1 red capsicum - sliced
• 2 440ml cans coconut milk
• Oil

Directions:

Make the curry paste:

1. Chop all ingredients and combine. My kaffir lime leaves were dried, so I soaked them in water first.
2. Put into food-processor/barrel blender. Blend into a paste.
3. I refrigerated the result overnight - I don't know if this helps develop flavours, it did firm the texture a little

Make the fish curry:

1. Slice the peeled sweet potatoes into "discs". Heat a sauce-pan and fry about a table-spoon of curry-paste until fragrant. Add the sweet-potato and enough water to cover. Bring to boil and simmer until just about tender.
2. Meanwhile, shake the eggplant cubes in a bag with the plain-flour. In a large frypan or wok, fry the eggplant in oil until browned. Remove from pan.
3. Fry the remaining curry-paste until fragrant. Add the red-capsicum and stir-fry.
4. Pour the sauce-pan of sweet-potato and water/curry into the frying-pan, add the eggplant and coconut milk.
5. Bring the liquid to a simmer and add the fish
6. Allow to simmer for 2-3 minutes until the fish is cooked
7. Serve over instant noodles or rice.

This is a variation on an old recipe we used before going low-sodium from a pack of Ayam instant noodles. Although their sodium content has increased a little in recent years we still quite like it served on instant noodles.

You can probably skip the simmering of the sweet-potatoes if you don't mind them being a little undercooked.

You can adjust the heat by adding or removing chillies. This two chilli recipe was fine for my 10 year old who is being introduced to spice.

Tuna Pasta Bake

This recipe is from Best Recipes, but I have altered it to be low sodium.

Ingredients:

• 300 g pasta
• 40 g butter
• 2 tbs plain flour
• 2 tsps garlic
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 2 tsp vegetable stock powder
• pepper
• 2 cups of Nimbin low sodium cheese
• 425 g can of tuna in springwater, no added sodium
• 1 carrot, grated
• 1 zucchini, grated
• ricecrumbs or polenta
• Optional: 1/2 can of no added salt corn kernals, mushroom or any other veges

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 180C
2. Cook pasta according to directions
3. Melt butter in a saucepan and add garlic.  Cook for a minute.
4. Stir in flour and cook, stirring for one minute 
5. Remove from heat and gradually stir in milk
6. Heat until mixture simmers and thickens. Remove from heat, stir in stock powder and pepper and then 1½ cups of cheese.
7. Combine cheese sauce, tuna, drained pasta and mushrooms and place in a large casserole dish
8. Sprinkle with ricecrumbs or polenta and remaining ½ cup cheese
9. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until browned on top
   

Another Bread

This bread recipe comes from lowsodiumcooking.com. After Tanya had some up and down results I messed with what she did and it came out very well. Here's me trying to capture what I did.

Ingredients:

• 300g Water
• 35g milk powder
• 30-40g unsalted butter - room temperature
• 2 tablespoons honey (TODO - convert to weight)
• 540g bread flour
• 1.5 tsb yeast (I think its ~6g - need to check)

Directions:

1. Mix up the milk-powder with the water as per the milk powder instructions.
2. Roughly slice/dice the room temperature butter - don't melt it. Chopping it will melt it a little if its not quite at room temperature.
3. Add the ingredients as per your bread-maker's instructions (in our case, top to bottom).
4. Cook on normal bread setting.

Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (150g) plain flour
•  2 tsps Salt Skip Baking Powder
• 1/3 cup (50g) cocoa
• 1 cup (220g) caster sugar
• 1/3 cup (80g) butter, softened
• 1/2 cup (125ml) milk
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten

     
    Chocolate Icing

• 1 1/3 cups pure icing sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 20g butter, softened

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan-forced). Grease and flour or grease and line a 24cm cake tin and set aside.
2. Place all ingredients into a bowl and using a mixer, mix on high for 4 minutes.
3. Pour into cake tin and bake for 35-40 minutes or until the cake springs back when lightly touched in the centre.
4. To make chocolate icing sift icing sugar and cocoa powder into a bowl. Add butter and 1 tablespoon of boiling water. Stir until smooth. Spread icing over cake. 

Oat Cookies

Makes approximately 12 cookies

Ingredients:

• 75g wholemeal flour
• 75g oats
• 75g sultanas
• 50g brown sugar
• 75g butter
• 1 tbs milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 180 deg C.  Line a baking tray with baking paper.
2. Mix flour, oats, sugar and sultanas.
3. Melt butter and add butter, milk and vanilla extract to the premixed dry ingredients.  Mix until well combined.
4. Shape into walnut-sized balls and flatten them onto the baking tray.
5. Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes.