🥗 Brown Rice Biryani Salad
Top Recipes Of 2023 + My Resolutions + A Year In Review + New Cookbooks
Happy New Year!
Welcome to all new readers and old friends. Believe it or not, we are already into a week of 2024. I don’t know how that happens. It seems time moves even faster when you slow down. I had a lovely few weeks of sleep-ins, breakfast for lunch, lazy evenings, long walks, reading books, hosting friends and slow chats that spilled into late dinners. Stayed close to home and didn’t do much besides feeding the native birds, watching the sun dance over the treetops in the valley and filling little mason jars with freshly cut flowers from the garden. It was wonderful. I hope the end of your 2023 and the beginning of 2024 have been as languorous, delicious, heartwarming and fulfilling.
Resolutions Or Habits?
I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions, because as my oldest likes to remind me - resolutions come with an expiration date but habits go the distance. So there are a few habits I would like to cultivate this year
Prep a little fruit plate every morning with 3-4 different varieties of fruit.
I have been accused of never cutting fruits (and never ironing clothes .. but that isn’t relevant here!) I have been so lazy to cut fruit all my life that I mostly eat or hand out fruits that don’t need cutting - bananas, apples, berries, etc. A few weeks ago, I cut a large fruit platter to take to a neighbour’s for breakfast and realized how nice it was to have beautifully cut, chilled fruit to pick from.Since then, I have decided to grow up and cut 3-4 varieties of fruit on a small plate to share at our breakfast table. Fruits like mango, peaches, watermelon, passionfruit, etc, that you can’t eat whole. It has been life-changing! In just 3 weeks, we have eaten more fruit and more variety than we did all of last year.
Get serious about my Sunday morning meal prep.
Last year, I meal prepped on and off every weekend for about 6 months but this year, I want to make a habit of meal prepping 3 weeks every month. This will hopefully help reduce my food wastage, save money on groceries, reduce stress at meal times and most importantly ensure that we are having a wide variety of foods every day.
I hope to share my monthly Meal Prep Report with you from February along with recipes (mine as well as from other blogs/authors). This will help motivate you to get organized in the kitchen so you have meals ready for school lunches, work lunches and dinners.Drink more water and green tea.
I bought this Frank Green bottle in a beautiful soft stone colour. It has a 1L capacity and keeps water oh-so-chilled. I aim to fill it once in the morning and sip on it throughout the day while I work. Simple. This accounts for 1L of fluids which is what I was missing out on every day. The remaining 1.5L roughly comes from other fluids I drink during the day. Amazingly, this extra 1 L has helped me feel more satisfied, calm and cool. It has eased my joint pain, gives me more clarity and makes me feel energetic and bouncy.
I cannot drink hot matcha. It just isn’t my thing. But I like chilled/cold matcha. So, I have been making an extra effort to have a teaspoon of matcha every day in the form of an Iced Matcha Latte. I brew matcha in 2-3 tablespoons of hot water. I blend a cup of almond milk, a teaspoon of maple syrup and half a cup of ice in my Nutribullet. I add the brewed matcha to the cold milk and enjoy. It is utterly refreshing and I get all those beautiful green tea antioxidants.Stretching and breathing.
Last year was tough because I sprained my neck and back. I am fully recovered now and have discovered stretching and breathing in the process. Again, this has been life-changing and I hope to solidify this habit in the new year.
I stretch first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I do my “Cat & Camel”, the “Child Pose” and “Lying Down Windmill”. I do a few other arm and shoulder stretches before settling into my 4-7-8 Deep Breathing routine. This one is hard but I have now been doing it for approximately 3 months and it has gotten easier. You breathe in for 4 seconds, filling your body with all that fresh air and oxygen, you then hold for 7 seconds and finally exhale and release the breath over 8 seconds (this is the hardest part and I am only at 4 seconds). Not only is it fantastic for oxygenating all your organs, but it is also amazing for expelling toxins via your breath from the body. It reduces stress and calms you down (I have felt a distinct difference in my stress levels and my blood pressure has come down by almost 10 points in the course of the last 3 months)Walk 10k steps every day.
This one is a continued goal that I have been achieving 95% of the time over the last 4-5 years. I want to keep walking 10k steps but slowly increase that to 15k steps daily rather than increasing my runs. At 46 years of age and in my peri-menopause stage, strenuous running and high-intensity workouts might be good but they also increase stress/cortisol which is counterproductive. Walking, I find is the easiest and best way to sustainable and prolonged fitness.
Cold Showers.
I have worked up my way to 10 seconds of an icy cold shower blast after every shower. 10 seconds may not seem like much but it is bloody hard and unbearable in winter. But it also makes you feel alive and boosts your immunity. This year, I want to continue this ritual without any breaks.
These are the habits I hope to cultivate and continue with this year. I find that if I “voice” them, then I have more accountability and am more likely to see them through. If you have any habit resolutions/goals planned, I would love to hear all about it if you’d like to share in the comments below.
Thank you for being here and I hope you are ready to share another year of gorgeous, nourishing food and lots of vegetables and fruits with me!
Top Recipes of 2023 on Cook Republic / 675+ Recipes
I have been blogging since 2004, which means in a few months from now I’ll be celebrating my blog’s 20th anniversary! I can’t believe how time has flown. These 20 years have been life-changing for us, as a family. We have explored flavours and cuisines and learned to eat cook and eat delicious, nutritionally balanced food. In this time I have created and published hundreds of recipes for the blog, hundreds more for food clients and publications around the world and another hundred for my cookbook.
2023 was amazing on Cook Republic! We had millions of people cooking from the blog and these were the most-cooked recipes. Have you made them all too?
Live More Veg Milestones
Not only did my paid newsletter “Live More Veg” become a Substack bestseller last year, but it quietly crossed another little milestone - 105 Recipes!!
A quarter of these are still free but if you are looking to amp up vegetables in your daily meals and looking for exciting new ways to cook with them or try out different flavours and cuisines, make sure you sign up for the paid membership. You get instant access to the full archive and brand new (or several) veg-lovin recipes in your inbox every week.
As always, thank you for your support and I am looking forward to sharing many exciting things this year!
2024 Weekly Member Recipe Schedule Starts on Tuesday, 9th January featuring “Retreat Dal”
New Cookbooks
Last year was a busy one and I didn’t buy many cookbooks at all. So in the last week of 2023, I did a huge book order. I bought 15 cookbooks. Lots of different cuisines and writing styles, rife with stories and techniques. Perfect reading material for the holidays. I have roughly made my way through half of them - exploring, reading and cooking. They are wonderful!
Recipes From Rome - Katie & Giancarlo Caldesi
Tokyo Cult Recipes - Maori Murota
How to Fall In Love With Tofu - Emma De Thouars
Food Savers A-Z / Cornersmith Kitchen Companion - Alex Elliott-Howery & Jaimee Edwards
Sundays - Sophie Godwin
Gohan - Emiko Davies (Emiko’s Substack)
Ester - Mat Lindsay
Rice Table - Su Scott
Time & Tide - Emily Scott (Emily’s Substack)
Repertoire - Alice Hart
Thai Food - David Thompson
The Woks Of Life - Bill & Kaitlin Leung
Roast Figs, Sugar Snow - Diana Henry
Australia The Cookbook - Ross Dobson
Bonus Recipe
Brown Rice Biryani Salad
This recipe first appeared in my cookbook Tasty Express (2014). It is a delicately fragrant warm salad that is super quick to put together and goes well with a piece of grilled protein on the side. It travels well in lunch boxes and can be eaten warm or cold.
Serves 4
For the brown rice
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups water
1 cup raw brown rice
For the salad
1/4 cup olive oil
1 Bay leaf
1/3 cup cashew nuts
1/3 cup sultanas
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1 small carrot, julienned
12 green beans, sliced
1/2 sliced purple cabbage
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 teaspoons garam masala
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
Pinch of salt
½ cup fresh coriander leaves, edible flowers and lemon wedge to serve
To cook the brown rice combine water and salt in a saucepan on high heat and bring to a boil. Add the rice and cook for a minute.
Reduce heat to low, cover with the lid and simmer for 25 minutes until the rice is done. Remove from heat and allow to rest with the lid on for another 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork.
Heat oil in a large sauté pan on medium heat. Add the Bay leaf, cashew nuts and sultanas. Stir fry for a minute, until the nuts start turning golden and the sultanas are plump. Add the onion, carrot and beans. Sauté for two minutes until the vegetables are glossy.
Add the cabbage, lemon juice, garam masala, cinnamon, cardamom and salt. Increase heat to high and sauté for a minute until everything is well combined. Remove from heat.
Add the rice to the pan and toss to mix well. Top with coriander leaves and edible flowers Serve warm with a wedge of lemon on the side.
Can be stored in the fridge for up to 2 days. Warm gently for 40 seconds in the microwave before eating.
housekeeping
A “free” cooking newsletter like this one every Sunday with a mix of things. New recipes from my blog Cook Republic, occasional Cookbook Author Interviews & Cookbook Recipes, occasional free recipes, cookbook chat, and delicious links to read, watch and explore.
A “paid member” newsletter every Tuesday for members with an exclusive downloadable and printable veg-forward recipe, full seasonal meal prep sessions, new cooking techniques and fresh inspiration to shop, plan and cook with more vegetables. Non-members will also get this via email but only an “excerpted” version.
All past newsletters can be accessed here. The ones with a “lock” sign next to them are members-only newsletters while the rest are free for all to read. The full newsletter recipe archive can be accessed here.