Winter Flu-Fighting Foods: Honey-Ginger Salmon with Brown Rice and Asparagus...

Make sure you get as many vitamins in your bodies as physically possible, in order to ward off any cheeky viruses flying around...

It's that time of year when there are tons of grimy germs rocking around and I have no intention of letting them into my temple-like body! So how to fight them when they are absolutely everywhere?

Well, a lot of it is obviously about diet. An orange a day keeps the flu-virus away! But that's obvious right? Did you know though, that red peppers, yogurt, nuts, green tea, mushrooms, tomatoes, salmon, butternut squash, asparagus cheese, garlic, ginger and even dark chocolate are also flu-fighting power foods? Well, they are! So is a meat-eaters recipe I've just thrown together to keep your mingy colds at bay... I will post up a vegetarian option before next week.

For Carnivores... Serves 4

INGREDIENTS

4 Salmon fillets

1 drizzle of cooking oil

2 finely chopped garlic cloves

The juice of 1 lime, plush lime-meat (should be super pulpy!)

Finely chopped coriander

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon honey

3 stalks of asparagus per person

2 cups of brown (or white if you want it to be less healthy!) rice

COOKING METHOD

1) Pre-heat the oven to 200C gas mark 6. Cover a baking tray with foil, drizzle it with cooking oil and place each salmon fillet on the oiled foil. Don't put in oven just yet!

2) Boil a saucepan of water with teaspoon of salt. Once it is bubbling, pour the rice into it. Once the rice is in, turn the heat down until it is lightly simmering (tiny tiny bubbles) make sure the water does boil (big big bubbles) by turning the heat a bit further down if it does. Put the lid onto the saucepan and stir the rice ever 6-8 minutes to make sure it's not sticking to the bottom of the pan. Brown rice can take anything from 25-45 minutes to cook depending on your technique and how you like it, so keep an eye on it and taste it every now and then!

3) Make the sauce! Mix the ginger, garlic, lime meat, lime juice, soy sauce, coriander and honey together. I often mush it all together to get the flavours all out and mixing.

4) Put your knife into the top of the salmon fillets three times before pouring the sauce evenly over the salmon. Cover loosely with some more foil and wang the baking tray into the oven. It should only take about 15 minutes, but slice a fillet in half to make sure it's cooked through, if not, give it a little longer.

5) Boil a couple of inches or so of water in a small-ish sauce pan. Chop the bottom of the asparagus off (you don't want any stringy stalk if you can help it!) Rinse them through, then pop them into the beastly-boiling water. Pop the lid over the pan and let it do its thing for about 5 minutes then taste it. If it needs longer it will be super chewy, so you should leave it for a bit longer. If not, stick it on a plate... it's ready!

6) By the time you've been through all this palaver, your food should be ready to serve. Divide the asparagus out onto the four plates, covering about half of each plate. Using a fish or cake slicer lift the salmon fillets from the foil... this might be hard at first as it may stick to the foil. Place each fillet on top of the kale and scrape any sauce left on the foil onto each piece of salmon. Finally, divide the rice across the four plates into the remaining half of the plate. FINISHED! Bon appetit!

I cooked this for my mom tonight, and surprisingly she seemed to really enjoy it (I'm surprised because she doesn't like honey, ginger, or even soy sauce that much...) I'm sure she wasn't just pretending because if you know my mom then you know she really doesn't mince her words when she dislikes something, no matter how much effort you've put in! Haha, bless her.

This meal is a nice winter warmer and is full of tons of vitamins and minerals which will help you keep naughty illnesses at bay. Hope you like it... I invented the recipe myself and I think it's rather yummy if I say so myself.

Enjoy guys!

Love

gabriellasofia