Thursday 19th January - A Long Day At Work

Working in Newbury for the day, so at the mercy of rush hour M27 and M3 and not sure what time I'd be arriving home. Skin off chicken breasts were marinaded in yoghurt and some ready made Tandoori spice blend for several hours. These were then oven baked and served with a sort of pilau rice - basmati cooked with twice the volume of water and some added cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, a couple of cloves, bay leaves and a bit of turmeric. Salad of chopped cucumber, onion and tomato was dressed with a squeeze of lemon juice and some mint sauce out of a jar. No added fat at all in the ingredients, and no loss of flavour at all.
One to do again although I can still smell tandoori in the air and in my hair the next morning....

18th January - Fish Cakes and a Very Strange Salad

Not having to cater for George tonight, so can cook a meal containing things that he claims to hate, despite him never having tried them in living memory....
Fish cakes made with tinned tuna - mixed with baked potato flesh, touch of dried dill, and some small capers. I would normally egg and breacrumb, but as the mix seemed quite firm I baked them with just a brush of oil and no crumb casing.

Was going to serve with peas, but decided this would be a bit dry, so invented a salad to serve alongside - tinned butter beans mixed with tomatoes, cucumber, red onion and olives - lemon juice and a dash of olive oil. Had a taste, and altogether too bland - so a large dash of tabasco was added which was an improvement.

This wasn't the worst thing I've ever cooked, but having finished a plateful have to confess to still feeling rather hungry, and beginning to yearn for cheese.... I think I need to be very determined now to keep going.

I did give up smoking though, and if I could do that, losing a few stone can't be that hard surely....

Good news is that I've lost 5lb so far, so at least I can say it's working.

Monday 16th January- Plenty of Lentils

Back to an old favourite for Monday evening- Delia Smiths lentils with marinated chicken kebabs - the green lentils are cooked with red wine and a bit of onion and rosemary. Chicken marinated in lemon. olive oil, garlic and rosemary. The recipe stated 3 tblsp oil, I used around half a spoonful and upped the lemon juice.

Tonight is going to be a beef stew. I know this doesn't sound like diet food, but what I'm doing is changing how I cook. So whereas three weeks ago I would have used vast amounts of meat, added dumplings and served with mashed potato laden with butter and maybe even cream, this weeks stew will be a different dish altogether!
The meat has been cut down to a small portion - I'm actually using frying steak which was fairly cheap, and is very lean. To this will be added a 'stew pack' of carrots, swede and parsnip. I'll cut all these up and make a sort of hotpot in layers, with some sliced potato at the top. Served with some purple sprouting - of course far too much was cooked, but the chickens enjoyed the stalks and the leftovers of this.

14 Jan - Homemade Pasta

Very lacking in Saturday inspiration - all our normal Saturday meals were out of bounds - I'm really missing cheese now after two weeks!

George decided homemade pasta was the way to go, so I made a ragu in the normal way, but using a mixture 5% fat minced beef and the lowest fat minced pork we could find -8% free range pork mince from Waitrose. Our other option would have been to mince a pork fillet, but that seemed rather a waste! If I make a chilli I would use Quorn while watching my fat intake, as I can't tell the difference, but bolognese requires meat to taste decent!

George wouldn't use the food processor for his pasta dough, insisting it had to be made by hand.
These are his ingredients - he also added some salt and a dash of olive oil.

All mixed together using his trusty spirtle, and then kneaded for around 8 minutes until stretchy. Then vitally rested in the fridge, wrapped in clingfilm so as not to dry it out.

Then through the pasta machine, until the correct thickness to cut into tagliatelle - then dried on our improvised pasta drying rack - we set off yesterday in search of wood to make one, and ended up buying a rack designed for hanging off a radiator  to dry pants and socks...

13th Jan - The Weekend is here!

I like to cook on a Friday night to celebrate the start of the weekend. Not my  main cooking day, as that is reserved for Saturdays, but one to find things in the cupboard/freezer and have an inventing session.

Today I decided to make use of another of my Christmas presents - this beautiful and useful tagine.

I found some chicken breasts on the bone in the freezer and decided to use these, along with various other stock cupboard things that were available. I did have to stop on the way back from the school run this morning though to buy fresh coriander. I addicted to this, and see it as essential when I'm cooking spicy food.

One of my favourite shops is Akram Stores in Southsea. I always ensure I stock up on preserved lemons when I visit, as they are far cheaper than buying them in the supermarket. Another addictive flavour, and I always add it to Moroccan inspired stews - I quarter the lemons and remove all flesh, then finely chop the skins. I used two in todays stew.

Other flavourings I added to the onions, ginger and garlic were lightly toasted and then crushed cumin and coriander seeds. dried crushed chillis and some saffron strands. The harissa paste will be added to some reserved cooking liquid and served seperately for those who like added heat.

The stew prior to going in the oven - I guess it will take around 45 minutes to cook. I've also added a tin of chick peas, and some black and green olives. I was going to add butternut squash cubes too, but ran out of space. Also toyed with the idea of dried apricots, but decided it was olives or apricots and the olives won.

This will have to be served with cous cous - my cupboard contained the normal variety, but also a box of giant cous cous, so both have been prepared, and I've mixed them together.  I'll microwave to reheat once the stew is cooked through. The difference in size can be seen below - the giant cous cous is not far off looking like tapioca, and from an initial taste, possibly not worth the extra cost over supermarket standard cous cous.

Diet cooking wise, the only added fat in the cooking was a couple of teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil to fry off the onions at the start - I think this adds flavour, so not too worried about a small amount. A few weeks ago I would have added loads of butter to the cous cous when reheating, but have not added anything at all this time. 

It feels like a decadent meal, but all in all, I think this is probably pretty low in fat, and if it tastes as good as the smells coming from the oven at the moment should be one to repeat.

12th Jan - Not Much Cooking, and A Look At My Kitchen

No posting for yesterday, as was in London for a meeting and didn't arrive home until 830, so not really in a mood to think about food or to cook properly. Supper was wonton soup made with left over homemade wontons filled with prawn and chicken that we had frozen for just such an evening. The stock was a Knorr Stockpot with some added garlic, ginger and soy to make it a bit more Chinese flavoured.

Tonight is also not really a cooking night, so we are going to invent a sort of fish pie, but using tinned tuna. Will make a parsley sauce but using cornflour instead of the usual roux to thicken it, and use up the last of the potatoes from our most recent sack. I know it doesn't sound the most appetising thing in the world, but hopefully should be fairly filling as the cold weather is setting in again.

For someone who is obsessed with cooking, I think my kitchen is probably slightly unusual, but I love it. I think it was probably last updated cupboard wise in the 1950s, and we have worked around this by adding odd bits of shelving etc, most of it purchased from Lidl (my favourite shop!)

The oven is housed in the old chimney breast - note my lovely kettle which was my Christmas present.

TV - this is necessary in the kitchen so I can cook whilst watching cookery programmes

In the top right hand corner is my PG Tips Monkey Tree - we don't even like PG Tips, so this is a very good example of me being influenced by marketing - many boxes of nasty tea were purchased and cups of watery PG Tips forced down in order to obtain all those knitted monkeys in t-shirts.....

The lefthand glass cupboard is the reason I don't get a fitted kitchen as I wouldn't want to lose it. The problem with not having a fitted kitchen though is the lack of storage space. My kitchen doesn't look like this because I'm untidy - not at all!!!

Just outside the kitchen door lots of tabby things start to gather and make a noise at about 430 pm

Julia, Leonard and Derek are the greediest cats I've ever met, and would probably eat 24  hours a day if they could open tins themselves.

The thought of a fitted kitchen is always at the back of my mind, but I rather love the quirkiness of it
The main problem is that no one else understands my 'system' and so can't find anything when I'm not here.

10th Jan

Lunch was artichoke soup from our home grown artichokes (less said about the side effects the better) served with homemade (ok, from the bread machine) bread.

Supper was from an old favourite book which has been brought out of mothballs after quite a few years.

Chicken Chana became Turkey Chana as that was lower fat/cheaper when we did the shopping at the weekend.

To serve with it yoghurt and cucumber. Our homemade yoghurt was a bit on the watery side, so we drained it through an old baby muslin in a sieve before mixing it with deseeded grated cucumber.

The curry had 1 tblsp of oil in the recipe, added half way through, but I couldn't see this added anything really so just added a drizzle I used tinned chick peas as it is midweek and can't bear the smell of cooking chick peas -  reminds me of wet dogs.

I bought this for Bob a few months ago, as if he cooks when I'm not here he can never find things in my spice cupboards, and has to go out and re-purchase things. It was supposed to be a present for him, but I've stolen it, and I imagine he has no idea what the spices in it are at all 

The finished curry, served with very wholesome brown basmati and wild rice 

Leonard liked it too........