Joint collaboration with Mr. Chef
The goal of this diet is not to really go on a diet. Instead, we aim to change our eating habits and lose weight at the same time without cutting out food that we love. Eating salads everyday and in small portions can be quite boring and demoralising. We are more likely to fail on this diet method.
With sirt-rich foods, you will be limiting calories to a certain extent. Coupled with keeping fit, they will help you in shredding weight and make you feel good. These have certainly worked for us and made our lockdown here in the UK enjoyable, especially with positive results at the end of it!
Here is Mr. Chef’s chicken pie recipe that he has been cooking for years. Of course, the recipe has been adapted to fit the sirtfood diet regime. Written by him, this is certainly a real winner. Fairly easy to do, it comes with a real reward once the oven door opens!
Serves: 2
Difficulty: 3/5
Calories per portion: 596
Notes
You can use butter if you wish, it will just increase the calories.
If you don’t eat pork, then the chicken will be just fine without the ham.
We served this with a small celery and endive salad on the side, but it’s fine on its own due to the vegetables inside.
Buckwheat short crust pastry
Ingredients
- 135g Buckwheat flour
- 65g Olive oil Butter/spread – I used Bertolli
- 3 Tablespoons water
- Pinch of salt
Pie filling
Ingredients
- 750ml Water
- 125g Carrots – peeled & grated
- 85g Mushrooms
- 40g Celery stalk – diced
- ½ Red onion – peeled & diced
- 1 Vegetable stock cube
- 1 Chicken breast – 160g
- 2 Cloves garlic – peeled & crushed
- 2 Slices Parma ham
- 5g Flat leaf parsley chopped
- Pinch of salt
Method
- Start by making the pastry. Rub olive oil butter with the flour together, and a pinch of salt until breadcrumbs are formed.
- Add 3 tablespoons of water and bring the dough together. There is no need to knead the dough, just bring it together. If you need more water, you can add a little but not too much. Wrap in a cling film and place in the chiller. Leave it to rest for an hour.
- For the chicken, slice the breast in half vertically and wrap each half in Parma ham. Place it in the chiller until needed.
- To cook the vegetables, bring the water to boil together with the vegetable stock cube and garlic, followed by the mushrooms, carrots, red onion, and celery. Cook for 5 minutes on a low heat.
- Remove the vegetables and leave them to cool down. Reduce the stock to about 250ml and then remove from the heat and let it cool down.
- Preheat the oven to 190oc with fan.
- To assemble the pie, you will need a small casserole dish or something similar. I used a frying pan, simply because I didn’t have a casserole dish! Place in the vegetables first, followed by the chicken, and then the reduced stock (this should be room temperature). Finally, sprinkle the parsley over the top.
- For the pastry, I rolled it out on a sheet of greaseproof paper as it can be quite crumbly. Start by pressing down with your fingers as thin as you can, ensuring the pastry doesn’t break. Then, roll out with a rolling pin to about 5-6mm thick. Cut the pastry to the size of the pan and carefully turn over onto the pie.
- With all of the pastry trimmings you can roll out again and make some leaves for decoration as you wish. Brush the pie with a little milk to finish.
- Bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes until the pastry is golden brown. Leave it to rest for 5 minutes before serving. It’s great on its own, or you can choose to enjoy with a simple salad on the side!
