Sick of buying lunch? Why not make your own… Time Out asked some of the UAE’s lunchtime masters to tell us how to make their best packed lunches.
Packed lunch is for school kids, right? Wrong. Not if you have a selection of healthy and accessible lunch time recipes, shared by the UAE chefs, who feed the country’s hungry midday hoards. That January zest and joie de vivre is fading, and it is right about now that we’re all starting to flag with those zealous new year’s resolutions. Maybe 2014 was meant to be the year you finally saved some dough? Or started eating more healthily? To give those resolutions another jump start, we’ve put together recipes to help you eat healthily as well as saving money, by bringing your own healthy lunches in to work with you.
The veggie one
Australian chef patron Tom Arnel, from buzzing new café kids on the Al Quoz block Tom & Serg in Dubai, shares a recipe for a veggie friendly, Mediterranean-style wrap. It uses piadina, an Italian-style flatbread, but you can use Indian or Arabic flatbread if you can’t find this variety.
Toasted Piadina with Roast Pumpkin
Ingredients
1 piadina
15g basil pesto
100g roast pumpkin
30g feta cheese
10g kalamata olives, sliced
1g salt and pepper mix
10g rocket
20g fresh mixed greens
2g salad dressing
Preparation
• Spread the basil pesto on half of the piadini.
• Evenly crumble the feta cheese on top of the basil pesto.
• Place the roast pumpkin on top of the feta cheese. Season to taste.
• Sprinkle the sliced Kalamata olives on top of the roast pumpkin.
• Place the rocket on top of the Kalamata olives.
• Fold the piadini in half and place in a sandwich press for three minutes or until toasted and heated through.
• In a mixing bowl, lightly toss the fresh mixed greens and the salad dressing.
• Cut the toasted piadini in half and add the dressed fresh greens.
The Bento Box
Chef Renato Matcastro from Sushi Central in Abu Dhabi whip us up a Japanese bento-box style lunch, with fresh salad, shrimp and vegetable tempura and salmon with rice balls inside.
Shrimp and vegetable tempura
Ingredients
3 large headless tail on deveined shrimps
3 pieces of vegetables (sweet potatoes/carrots/aubergine) cut 2 inch length wise by half inch width
1 egg
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup ice water
Vegetable oil for frying
Flour for dusting
Preparation
• Take the shrimps and make two or three incisions on the stomach side of the shrimp to straighten them.
• Remove the dirt from the tails of shrimp, using a knife.
• Dry shrimps on paper towels.
• Beat an egg in a bowl. Add ice water in the bowl. Add sifted flour in the bowl and mix lightly
• Heat the oil to 180 degrees celsius.
• Lightly flour shrimp. Pick the tail and dip shrimp in the tempura batter. Once the shrimps are dropped into the oil, dip the hand in the tempura batter and sprinkle the batter over the shrimps in the oil to form a flaky coat over the shrimps. Fry until golden brown.
• Likewise, vegetables can be lightly floured, dipped into the tempura batter and deep-fried until crisp. (Different oil can be used to fry the vegetables to retain its flavor).
Fresh salad
Ingredients
30g Shredded carrots
50g mixed lettuce
30g walnuts
1 tsp of sesame honey dressing
Preparation
• Mix the shredded carrots, mixed lettuce and chopped walnuts in the sesame honey dressing.
Soy and honey salmon with rice balls
Ingredients
2 cups rice (Sushi short grain rice)
4 cups water (200% of rice)
1 piece of salmon steak
Soy honey dressing for marinating
Sesame oil for frying
Sesame seeds for garnish
Preparation:
• In a bowl or pot, under a tap, rinse the rice with cold water, changing the rinsing water several times until the water is almost clear.
• Drain the water and let the rice sit in the strainer for 10 to 30 mins.
• Combine the rice and water and cook it in the rice cooker for about an hour.
• Marinate the salmon in soy sauce and honey for an hour.
• Heat the flat grill pan and once the oil is hot, sear the marinated salmon on both sides for two minutes until done.
• Take 100g of the prepared rice and make into the two inch flat balls and garnish it with black sesame seeds to serve it with salmon.
The low calorie option
Chef Daniel Gamble from EasyBites in Abu Dhabi constructs a low-calorie lunch that will keep you satiated through the day, for only 312Kcal with his steamed salmon, fennel, watercress and dill salad
Ingredients
100g organic salmon fillet (filleted and deboned by your fish monger)
75g watercress, washed and dried (you can use wild rocket if you have trouble finding watercress)
75g fennel bulb (washed)
1/2 medium red onion
2 whole un-waxed lemons
A good handful of fresh dill (washed, picked and dried, reserve the stalks)
15ml extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Preparation
• First of all we need to prepare the lemon pickled red onion. This should be done a few hours ahead of time.
• Peel the onion and cut it in half then cut out the root part. Slice it as thinly as possible along the grain. Put it in a small bowl and sprinkle with a little salt to draw out the moisture.
• Leave the onions, covered with plastic wrap, for a couple of hours. They should look soft and pink. Strain them in a sieve and allow to drain before putting them back in the bowl and adding a good squeeze of lemon juice.
• Now comes the main element of our salad, the salmon. If you have a steaming basket you can cook the salmon with a few slices of lemon and some dill lining the basket… it should take about 15 minutes depending on the thickness of your salmon fillet. (If you do not have a steaming basket you can easily cook the salmon in simmering water for 15 minutes with dill sprigs, a few black peppercorns and half a lemon.)
• When the salmon is cooked it should flake easily when pressed with a fork.
• Allow the salmon to cool, then flake it between thumb and forefinger into a bowl.
• Next, remove the top portion of the fennel so you are left only with the main bulbous part. Cut this in two lengthways and cut out the thick white root section. Slice as thinly as possible along the grain.
• In your bowl or container place a layer of the watercress, followed by half of the fennel.
• Now add a little of the lemon pickled red onion and top this off with some of the flaked salmon and a good sprinkling of chopped dill. Grind some black pepper and a little sea salt… then repeat the layer again.
• For the dressing measure 5ml of lemon juice and add this to the olive oil. Add a little freshly ground salt and pepper and pour it into a sealable plastic container small enough to fit in with your salad (you can get these by ordering lots of tasty EasyBites salads and saving the dressing cups). You can add as little or as much of the dressing as you like, make it really zing with lemon or cut back on the lemon and let the pickled red onions do the talking.
