I love to cook and I normally use fresh ingredients, including the herbs and the spices. But there are days when I don’t feel to cook everything from the scratch, because it’s been a busy day, I’m too tired or the kids are just too handful. I’m not pretending I never used boxed meals from the supermarket, but I don’t like them, they often too bland or too salty for my taste. If I’m short on time, I just toss some veggies into my wok pan and cook some rice or couscous on the side. For these occasions cook sauces can be very handy. I recently tried a new brand which is based on chilli and one can create four different delicious, warming and typical Latin-American flavours with them. Capsicana is a single use cook sauce, and I tested the Brazilian Chilli And Coconut flavour.

I prepared a a very easy and quick meal, which is perfect for midweek dinners but at the same time it’s healthy and home made. I liked cooking with the sauce, it cooks very fast, all I needed to do is add it for the last 15 minutes of cooking time. The cooking sauce serves 2 people and so does the recipe. Here it goes:

Wok Vegetables With Grilled Halloumi And Caramelised Onion Rice

Ingredients:

About 2 handfuls of each vegetables of your preference. It really works with a lot of vegetables, the combinations are endless. A perfect way to use up the bits of vegetables sitting in your fridge.

I used:

150g diced butternut squash

100g carrots, peeled and sliced thinly

1 medium red onion finely sliced

2 medium bell peppers

100g fine green beans trimmed and halved

2tsp of olive oil

Method:

In a wok pan or skillet, firstly toss the carrots and the butternut squash and simmer for 5 minutes. They need a bit more cooking time then the rest. Add the beans and the peppers, and let them soften on low heat for 20-25 minutes, until the carrots and the squash are al dente. Add the red onions for the last 15 minutes, so they won’t loose their beautiful colour, but they will be soft. Along with the onions add the cooking sauce as per instructions.

For the caramelised onion rice, you’ll need:

1 medium onion, finely chopped

80g jasmine rice

1 tbsp olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Wash the rice and drain it. Set it aside. In a pan, on low heat, cook the onions with the oil gently stirring occasionally, to avoid burning, for 10 minutes until they are golden brown. Then add the rice and just enough water to cover it. Cover it with a lid. On low heat, cook the rice, add more water if necessary.

For the grilled halloumi, you’ll need:

250g Cypriot Halloumi

Slice the cheese into 1-1.5 cm wide slices and on the grill or grilling skillet fry quickly both sides for about 2 minutes on medium heat.

Serve immediately.