https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y0NVnpGHfys
Chef and food blogger Natasha Corrett loves healthy eating – as does her army of social media fans. We speak to the Honestly Healthy guru
If you’re giving your home a clear-out this spring, Natasha Corrett wants you to spare a thought for your kitchen.
“We spring clean our wardrobes and chuck out all the old clothes we don’t want to wear any more,” says the chef and food blogger. “I do a bit of a cull in my kitchen and find things I don’t really need. The amount of times I’ve gone through my drawers and found measuring spoons broken in half, blunt knives…”
The author of the Honestly Healthy blog and cookbooks, offering tips and recipes for health-conscious foodies, Corrett knows a thing or two about kitchens. In fact, she’s currently helping her mum, celebrity interior designer and former Dragon’s Den investor Kelly Hoppen, to design the functionality of her new one.
Hoppen has been “an amazing mentor” to the chef, whose father is restaurateur Graham Corrett.
“My parents both started their businesses when they were 16. They’ve both worked very hard and instilled that in me,” says the 31-year-old, who spent summer holidays working in her dad’s restaurants.
“My mum said to me, ‘As long as you’re passionate about what you do, you’ll succeed, because that’s what’s going to get you through those late nights and early mornings and working on the weekend’, and she was right. You never want to say your mum’s right, but she was!”
The pair work out of the same office in London, but Corrett insists it isn’t too close for comfort.
“I’m always out and about, recipe-developing or filming, so it’s maybe once every two weeks that we’ll have lunch together,” she says. “It’s quite nice to have each other and have a cuddle if we’re feeling stressed, stuff like that.”
Busy Corrett – an advocate of the alkaline diet, which involves eating mainly alkaline foods for the optimum pH balance – has also teamed up with Currys PC World to create new recipes based on some of the most popular foods and kitchen appliances on social media (with papaya, roasted aubergine and pomegranates getting people talking and sharing snaps).
She confesses to the occasional evening “sitting in front of the TV and watching EastEnders”, tucking into her “guilty pleasure – a proper good old-fashioned pizza”.
“My whole philosophy is my 70-30 rule. So 70% of the time, you follow the alkaline way, 30% of the time you do whatever you want, whether it be eating meat, having a chocolate brownie, or a glass of wine or a cocktail,” she adds.
With 120,000 Instagram followers and 26,000 on Twitter, Corrett’s approach to healthy eating has been a hit. As well as the health factor, her recipes are often very simple too (as you will see below), so there really is no excuse!
She loves nothing more than getting messages from fans online who have tried out her methods.
“When you’re at home working away creating things, you can forget that there’s a whole world out there about to try these recipes,” she says. “When people take photos and upload them, and tell you how easy it was and how delicious they were, it really makes it worthwhile.”
Here are three of Corrett’s recipes to try at home…
POMEGRANATE BIRCHER MUESLI
- (Serves 4)
- 150g oats
- 1/2 lemon, juiced
- 325g almond milk (or milk of your choice)
- 1/2 grated apple
- 1tsp cinnamon
- A handful of pomegranate seeds
- 1tbsp sesame seeds
Put the oats into a bowl and cover with the milk. Add the lemon, apple and cinnamon and mix together.
Put into the fridge overnight.
Garnish with the pomegranates and seeds.
PAPAYA SALAD
- (Serves 2 as a main and 4 as a side dish)
- 125g raw papaya
- 135g mango
- 20g coriander
- Dressing:
- 2tbsp vinegar
- 1tbsp agave
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 inch ginger
- 1/2 red chilli
- 2tbsp red shallot
- 1tbsp lemongrass
- 1/2 lime
- Handful of cashews
Julienne the raw papaya and mango and put into a bowl.
Make the dressing by thinly chopping the shallot, lemongrass, ginger, chilli, garlic and put into the bowl, and then add the vinegar, agave and lime and mix together.
Pour the dressing over the top and mix in the coriander, and serve with a garnish of toasted cashews.
ROASTED ASIAN MISO AUBERGINE
- (Serves 3-4 as a side dish)
- 220g aubergine
- 1tbsp sunflower oil
- 2tbsp sweet miso
- 2tbsp mirin
- 1tbsp brown rice vinegar
- 1 inch grated ginger
- 1 spring onion (10g)
- 1/4 cup water
- 1tbsp tamari
- 1tbsp water
- 5g fresh coriander
- Fresh chilli slices
Pre-heat the oven to 180C/Gas 4.
Slice the aubergine into circles approximately half a centimetre thick.
Line a baking tray with baking paper and smear with one tablespoon sunflower oil.
Make the sauce by mixing together the sweet miso, mirin, ginger and brown rice vinegar together. Slice the spring onion thinly on an angle, then mix into the sauce.
Dip each of the aubergines on both sides into the sauce and put onto the baking tray. Repeat with all the slices.
Pour the quarter cup of water onto the tray with the aubergine.
Put into the oven for 15 minutes then turn the aubergine over. Put back into the oven for another 15 minutes, until golden brown.
Mix the tamari and water together and pour over the aubergine.
To serve, sprinkle with fresh coriander and chilli.