All diets work...

Tikka Mackerel on Salsa with Bombay Wedges

In this, my latest, attempt to lose weight, I am not following a particular diet plan. I am counting no points or calories, and I won't cut out any food groups. So, certainly no 'just eat xyz for a week'.
What am I going to do then? - you might well ask.

Well, I think: ALL DIETS WORK.

If you stick to them, that is. Some people claim that they did and still didn't lose weight. That's not my experience. I always did lose weight, although sometimes not as much as the diet promised.
I think what doesn't work is the maintenance. Once you've achieved your goal weight, the old bad habits creep back in, you lose the impetus to keep up the exercise, and before you know it, you're back to square one.
As I said before, one overweight person isn't like the next. I can only talk for myself, really. Even with the best intentions, there comes a point when I can't be bothered to count and weigh and add up. There comes a point when I just haven't got the time. There comes the point when I'm grateful when HE offers to cook...

After numerous attempts of losing it and putting it back on - I refuse to call it yo-yo - I have come to the conclusion that, basically, I need to stay on a diet for the rest of my life. That I have to see the whole thing as a handicap, as a dear friend of mine called it recently.

There are many, many reasons why this is difficult, one of them:

Healthy/Diet recipes are not suitable for the whole family

Of course, some of them claim to be - and maybe they are, somewhere in the universe - but they're usually not suitable for MY Family.

But if I want to keep this up indefinitely, and don't want to cook several meals, then they have to be not only suitable, but actually LIKED by my family. So, my very personal, tailor-made plan is:

• I will draw on all the recipes that I have liked from any of the diets I have been on in the past
• I will test out recipes that may fit in, i.e. suitable for all of us, and ideally, under 400 calories for the main meal
  

My men will give each main meal a rating of up to three stars.

no star = don't cook it again
1 star = we will eat it again
2 stars = we LIKE this one
3 stars = we LOVE this one

This is an adaptations from a recent Tesco magazine recipe:

(Serves 4)

4 mackerel, filleted (I bought just 3 fillets)
1 Tbsp Tikka curry paste (I used Pataks)
juice of 3 limes (I used half lime, half lemon)
1 red chilli, chopped
3 tbsp fresh coriander

For the Salsa:
1/4 cucumber, peeled and diced
4 plum tomatoes, diced
1/2 small red onion, very finely chopped
1/2 tsp toasted cumin seeds
1 Tbsp fresh mint, chopped

For the Bombay Wedges:
As many small new potatoes as you allow per person, scrubbed and cut into wedges
1 - 2 tsp Bombay spice
1 - 2 tsp olive oil

1. Soak wooden skewers in water for 30 minutes
2. Skewer the mackerel and place into a shallow dish
3. Spread with the tikka paste
4. Add chopped coriander chilli to lime juice and drizzle over the fillets, leave to marinate for 10 minutes
5. Boil water and blanch wedges for 2-3 minutes, then pat dry
6. Pre-heat the oven for 10 minutes to 2oo C
7. In a small plastic bag, combine olive oil, Bombay Mix and wedges, mix well
8. Spread wedges out on a non-stick baking tray and season. Bake for ca 20 minutes
9. Mix all the ingredients for the salsa and arrange on the middle of your plates
10. Pre-heat the grill for the mackerel, grill for 3 - 4 minutes

I served ours with Bok Choi, but Savoy Cabbage would have been equally nice. My men gave it 2 stars, so this will become one of my staple oily fish dishes. The original Tesco recipe had no extra stodge or veg but salad leaves added to the salsa and came - at 2 fillets per person - to 255 calories.
As you can imagine, my men cannot start to comprehend the idea of 'no stodge', so I added the potato wedges. Not sure what the exact calorie count would be for my version. I didn't have the wedges, and I was perfectly full and satisfied.

Tesco's were selling mackerel fillets which were already marinated, and although I did go through the trouble of following the recipe, my verdict is that you could use them straight away without the bother, especially as all that good marinade is tipped away.

At £1.77 for the three fillets, it was also incredibly cheap.

Eurofret #1

Spaghetti con Aglio e Olio

We're back from our holidays, and I'm very pleased that my contribution for Dinner and a Movie went out as scheduled. It's the first time that I left a blog entry to be published in absentia. (Ironically, the deadline was extended to today!) But that is not what the fretting is about. "Eurofret" is a sign somewhere around the ferry port of Dunkirk, and each time we go that way, it strikes me as an ideal title for a TV show where people can complain about Europe.
Well, we've been to Germany, Denmark and Sweden, and I've got a lot to fret about. So I thought I 'd start a little series. I'll make it food-related if I can.
That shouldn't be too difficult - with the pound so weak, everything was astronomically expensive, so, lots to fret about. The above dish, re-created today, was one of the exceptions, a mere 6.50 € I think, which is nearly £ 6.50 now. But if you think how little goes into it...

My 'version' came with cherry tomatoes and 'Pepperoni'. On the Continent, those are types of small, spicy pickled peppers (often known as peperoncino or peperone piccante in Italy and pepperoncini or banana peppers in the U.S.), not the spicy variety of salami in Italo-American dishes. However, when you look up the recipe, the 'classic' one would not feature anything much besides the oil and garlic in the title.

But what the heck, I liked the addition of tomatoes and spicy peppers. I also liked the use of red chillies, as opposed to chilli flakes, which I found in online recipes. Everyone seemed to agree on the use of parsley - but I didn't have any. I had bought 'sun-kissed oregano' at Waitrose instead (because I'm a sucker for 'romantic marketing'). So, this is what I did:

Spaghetti, enough for x people
1 tbsp of olive oil per person (I used a very special one, 'Colonna Gran Verde', with the zest of organic lemons, which I bought in a delicatessen in Henley-in-Arden, because the addition of lemon juice and zest was also recommended in a number of recipes)
1 large clove of garlic per person, cut into slivers
2 cherry tomatoes, halved, per person
1 fresh red chilli per person
2 yellow pickled peppers per person (mine were from Lidl; very mild)

Boil the spaghetti in salted water until al dente.
In a large pan, heat oil and add the garlic slivers, keep stirring. It's important the the garlic doesn't turn brown. Add chillies, peppers and tomatoes.
Add the drained spaghetti to the pan and mix well.
Season liberally with salt and pepper.
Add finely cut oregano right at the end.

I served it with a mixed salad and a glass of red wine. Grated parmesan is optional.

I had this first in the port of Husum, Germany.

Dinner and A Movie: Breakfast at Tiffany's

Picture a Yellow NY taxi

Holly:

People don’t belong to people. I’m like cat here. No-name slobs. We belong to nobody and nobody belongs to us, we don’t even belong to each other.

Paul:

You know what’s wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You’re chicken, you’ve got no guts, you’re afraid to stick out your chin and say, ok, life’s a fact.

People do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that’s the only chance anybody’s got for real happiness.

For my favourite on-line foodie event,

organised jointly by Susan and Marc, Susan chose an absolute classic this time: Breakfast at Tiffany's. The film, with its innovative costuming by legendary designers Edith Head and Givenchy, predominantly in black and white, produced some of the most iconographic images ever, thanks to Audrey Hepburn’s elegant beauty.

She plays 19-year-old Holly Golightly, a self-declared wild thing who abandons relationships and responsibilities when they threaten to jeopardize her freedom. Her desire for "breakfast at Tiffany's” (absurd, as Tiffany's do not serve food) symbolises in its unattainability her struggle against conventional constraints such as settling down in a stable relationship. (Oh, I’m so with her!! She’s 19, for heaven’s sake!!!)

Apart from the fashion, and the equally famous music by Henri Mancini (Moon River), one of the most striking aspects of this 1961 film is the perpetual smoking and cocktail drinking. Clear evidence, if any was needed, that drinking yourself into a comatose state wasn’t invented in the 90s. It just wasn’t called binge drinking.

There is no food to speak of at these parties, so no inspiration there. We do see a pressure cooker exploding, but I really had no wish to repeat this experience, I vividly recall the eruption of my lentil soup some years ago, with the tiny legumes reaching even the most remote corners of the ceiling.

Another draw-back this time was the circumstance that the list of ingredients I am allowing myself, after being seriously ill, drastically reduces my range of recipes. Just as I felt I couldn’t possibly invent something that would be good enough to reflect this superb film, it came to me in a flash: The Little Black Dress Diet!

Not only does it have Holly Golightly on the cover, it’s also contains really healthy diet meals. I opted for a breakfast (of course), and decided to serve it in a cocktail glass (of course, again).

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

(adapted from Michael van Straten’s The LBD Diet)

Fresh pineapple (representing gold)

Cinnamon

Cardamom seeds, pounded

Coriander seeds, pounded

Honey

Blueberries, redcurrants (representing rubies and sapphires)

Cut up your pineapple into bite-sized pieces, put on a foil covered baking sheet. Pound the spices with pestle and mortar, and sieve the husks out. Mix with cinnamon and honey, then spread the mixture on top of the pineapple pieces and grill until golden brown. Serve in a cocktail glass together with the rubies and sapphires.

The original recipe uses only cinnamon and brown sugar. I used local honey instead as that is supposed to be good when you're a hay fever sufferer.

The film is of course based on the 1958 novella of the same name by Truman Capote, whom Norman Mailer described as "the most perfect writer of my generation". When the story was adapted for a mainstream audience by scriptwriter George Axelrod, it was to lose its obscene language and explicit sexual references, and the plot and character details were drastically changed, the most striking of which was to turn the relationship between Holly Golightly and Paul (George Peppard in the film) into a conventional heterosexual love story.

Never mind, it’s a glorious film, and I’m reading the book right now, so I’m divinely happy, darling! Thank you Susan for another inspired choice!!

Waiter, there's something in my... The Bistro Edition

Salade Provençale

Red choice tomatoes*, crispy Cos lettuce, crunchy French beans, slivers of garlic, shallots and black olives are complemented by sea salt capers, cucumber chunks and slices of marinated artichoke hearts. The salad is tossed in our very own Vinaigrette Niçoise and topped with pan-seared, line-caught tuna, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil, surrounded by Old Cotswold Legbar eggs durci à point** and served with crusty baguette bread.

If you thought that was a rather OTT and pretentious description of that old staple, Salade Niçoise, you'd be absolutely spot on. It is my first contribution to a blogging event called

"Waiter, there's something in my..."

This time, it was hosted by Johanna, the passionate cook, and the theme was "bistro food".

Jean Béraud, Au Bistro

According to Wikipedia (where I also got the above image), a bistro is a small, unpretentious restaurant, serving moderately priced simple meals, with an emphasis on foods that could be prepared in quantity and would keep over time: slow-cooked foods like stews.
Hmm, doesn't sound like the dishes you've seen on bistro menus lately? Thought not. This could easily change in the current economic climate (cf here), but up to now, I'd say one of the defining features of current bistro food is its emphasis on being " innovative"... or being clever with words... strong on the marketing side of things: the verbal and visual appeal.

The cuisine is 'eclectic' and 'fusion': baby vegetables may be glazed, caramelised or candied; there is nothing that can't be pureed and spiced with a hint of Asia, or laced with Wasabi for that Japanese touch; meat and fish is braised, roasted or pan-seared, or better still, served as a confit; it's de rigueur that salads are tossed and drizzled, and let's not forget that everything must be plated on white porcelain and feature citrus zest, a dipping sauce (preferably sweet chilli or gingered), or something that can be "frenched up". More often than not, they get it wrong, either in terms of spelling or the dish it self. When you order Chips & Aioli you're probably going to be served chips with a garlic flavoured mayonnaise. It's highly unlikely that German is ever going to be perceived as a sexy language (for food or otherwise), but should it ever happen: Pommes Rot-Weiss are just chips with both mayonnaise and ketchup. Don't say I didn't tell you.

In short, bistro menus read as if written by frustrated English graduates. It's a little known fact that this practice was first used at Essen University's mensa, where the epitome of the eternal student, a middle-aged, bearded man in Birkenstock, Germanistik im 15. Semester, spruced up even the most modest canteen offering to such an extent that you weren't just hivering and hovering as to which option to go for, you were positively drooling over all three 'menus'. Just thinking about their Westfälischer Sauerbraten mit Rosinen makes me quite peckish, and they certainly did do the best chips ever.
Ah, "There is no seasoning quite so tasty as nostalgia"! Nigel Slater wrote this, and he did so, supremely fittingly, in a feature on Salade Niçoise.

Before I started to research it, I had no idea how much the 'true' ingredients are debated. Lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, green beans, tuna, hard-boiled eggs, anchovies, no? Apparently not.

First, there is the shocking assertion, "...la salade niçoise ne contient pas de légumes cuits" from a Nice site. What, no green beans??!!
Then there is Heyraud's 1903 recipe in La Cuisine à Nice, which stipulates " ...quartered artichoke hearts, raw peppers and tomatoes, black olives and anchovy fillets (...) parsley, chives, chervil and tarragon" (quoted from Slater, op cit), but not a single lettuce leaf or tuna flake!
On the other end of the scale, you find numerous recipes which even include potatoes!

I certainly didn't want to add those. After all, I had opted for a salad so that I could avoid "Event Fat Gain" (that's when you cook/bake something for a blogging event that contains far too many calories; EFG for short; I appropriated this term for my specific use from Rob Poulos). I also wanted to incorporate fresh tuna, even if, according to some, all Niçoise salads are made with canned tuna (cf here).

And let's face it, at the end of the day, whatever the arguments for or against ingredients and their treatment - the Niçoise site is wonderfully poetic about the dead colours of cooked vegetables versus the vivid colours of Southern France, which ispired Cezanne, Renoir and Matisse - they're often simply a reflection of individual taste. Nigel Slater leaves out green peppers because they don't agree with him. Ditto. Other people might omit black olives, or even, shock, horror, anchovies.

For the latter, I may have stumbled across the ideal solution. I agree with Slater: "To be true to its name this salad must be true to its geography - it must reek of olives, garlic, anchovy and tomatoes", but I found myself near enough out of anchovies. That is to say that my little jar contained only crumbly remains which would not have graced the salad. So I minced them into the vinaigrette. This method of incorporating the anchovies (anchovy paste would be an alternative) might work for people who do not like to bite into the fillets as such. It is one of the reasons why I called my dish Salade Provençale, and the Vinaigrette Niçoise.

Ingredients

Salad:

tomatoes*, quarters

Cos lettuce

cucumber

shalotts

capers

garlic, slivers

black olives

boiled eggs**

marinated artichoke hearts, sliced

green beans

Vinaigrette:
olive oil
Dijon mustard
red wine vinegar
salt, pepper
parsley, chives
minced anchovies

Plus:

1 fillet of fresh tuna, pan-seared and cut into thin slices.

Mix the salad ingredients with the vinaigrette, pile on to a plate, arrange the tuna slices so that they lean against the salad mound, garnish with the egg halves, black olives and chives, drizzle with some more olive oil.

*

Red Choice Tomatoes, exclusively for Waitrose, from the Isle of Wight, with the leaf emblem (Leaf = linking environment and farming)

**

Clarence Court Old Cotswold Legbar free range eggs, beautiful eggs with a touch of blue, available at Waitrose; cooked to a medium point (lit.: hardened)

The eggs provide proteins and vitamins, the tuna and anchovies contain omega-3 fat, and the olives and olive oil supply mono-unsaturated fat. All this plus fibre and antioxidants from the vegetables.

Thank you Johanna, for organising this event! I can't wait to see everyone else's take on this topic!

Hake - impaled at last!

Hake & Tuna Kebabs with Tomatoes on the Vine and Grilled Hampshire Asparagus

Tuesday is 'white fish night' because the bin men come on Wednesday morning. I was going to bake monkfish parcels wrapped in parma ham, but Waitrose didn't have any yesterday, so I grabbed the chance to Deal with Hake.
The rather drastic way of expressing myself faced with this fish has a specific reason. Many years ago, a person of not dissimilar a name, wreaked havoc in our family's life, and that of many others. I came close to plotting semi-criminal revenge on him at the time. Reason prevailed, but the wish to inflict unspeakable deeds in a sinister ritual manner upon hake remained. Alas, there always seems to be a more alluring alternative to hake. Fast forward to the Bank holiday weekend, when, by sheer chance (1), the man was talked about twice within 48 hours. My anger resurfaced with the kind of bile and venom normally reserved for a certain Mrs. T. So I impaled him, err, it. He, err, it, was too weak to withstand the grilling though. No surprise there. Wrapping it in parma ham could have prevented its predictable flakiness (2) but that would have been too good for him.

I devoured fish and vegetables with a salad, and The Boy had pasta with gorgonzola sauce - the superquick one that comes straight from the freezer (Lidl, excellent value). Very useful when you haven't got ANY time to get the food on the table. Again, super easy and super quick, and definitely heart-healthy as most of the chilli and garlic oil I brushed everything with remained on the foil.
_______________________________
(1) Or is it? My friend B. and I used to maintain that there is no such thing as a coincidence.
(2) 'flaky'- bei Fisch so etwas wie flockig, locker; also wenn er zwar noch bissfest ist, aber in Stücke zerfällt; bei Menschen, vor allem AE = merkwürdig, verdreht, skuril, exzentrisch, leicht verrückt, nicht ganz da, launenhaft, unberechenbar, wankelmütig, labil

Marinated in Smugness?

Grilled Salmon on a Bed of Spinach and Black Beluga Lentils

This is my first instalment of How I cheat on my husband, and this recipe was inspired by what I had l had to use up in the fridge and what I found in the cupboard when searching for something else. You know how it is...

Serves 2

bag of spinach (250g?)
small onion or 2 spring onions
olive oil, garlic, freshly grated nutmeg, salt & pepper

2 salmon steaks
dash of lemon juice
coarse black pepper

1/2 pepper, orange
1 spring onion
100g of black Beluga lentils (1/2 cup)

(I don't know the calorie count or points; it's at the higher end as far as diet meals go because salmon is an oily fish, of course. The lentils add 150 calories for each person.)

As you can see, the lentils are tiny in comparison to green ones, and in their dried state certainly do make you think of Beluga caviar.

There's no need to pre-soak, you simply rinse them in water, then bring to the boil and simmer for 15 - 20 minutes or so. For a few more vegetables and colour, I added the spring onion and the pepper during the last 5 - 7 minutes (add them earlier if you don't like them crunchy). In the meantime, salt the fish, then give it a squeeze of lemon juice and add plenty of pepper. Put under a pre-heated grill.

Wash the spinach and remove as much water as possible. Heat the oil and fry the onion and garlic, add the spinach in batches. Once wilted, add more. Season with plenty of nutmeg and some salt and pepper. Assemble when the salmon is ready. Wait for the response.

This is so tasty! This is the nicest piece of salmon I have eaten for ages!

I kid you not. Of course, I hadn't done much to the salmon at all. In fact, I had simply treated it in the heart-healthy fashion. I told him that it was probably the quality of the fish: line-caught, from Waitrose.

"Ah," he said, "marinated in smugness for a few weeks!"

But so was I...
Sure, he felt he needed a couple of mandarins straight after, he also ate an apple and a banana later - but that's what we want: more fruit and veg. If he hadn't then made himself a sandwich after midnight, we would have been winning.