Supper Monday 9th

Todays supper is made up from necessity of the leftover roast beef from last night, and is something we make and then forget all about, only to be really pleased to remember about it and wonder why we don't eat it more often.
The recipe is from Sophie Grigsons Meat Course.

Thai Beef Salad
The dressing has no added fat at all and consists of fish sauce, lime juice, shallots, garlic, chillis and sugar all mixed together. Simply poured over salad leaves, cucumber and tomatoes and the thinly sliced rare roast beef (the recipe suggests cooking steak for this, but we find it great with left overs - the beef must be rare though).

For afters we will have the leftovers from Saturday evenings cook up - home made sorbets. Our best investment of last year was a Cuisinart Professional Icecream maker - this means no storing the discs/bowls in the freezer, and that we can make several icecreams in one session with  no hassle. Our only complaint is that I have managed to break two of the plastic lids in the 6 months we have had the machine - rather a poor design!
We made Cranberry and raspberry sorbet - taking advantage of the post Christmas clearance on cranberries in our local fruit and veg shop. The raspberries were the cheapest frozen ones we could find
The other sorbet was a chocolate one made with espresso, cocoa powder and a shot of  Tia Maria - surprisingly rich and chocolatey - the boys had cream with their bowlful.
We have found the texture is much improved when making sorbet if a spoonful of liquid glucose is added - I'm sure there is a science behind this, but all we know is it seems to work.

New Year, New way of eating

I have started this blog at the suggestion of my brother. We have both hit our mid forties and are carrying a bit of excess weight.  One of the main problems for me as that my main love in life is food - reading about food, shopping for food, but mainly cooking and eating food. Not a great thing when I lead a rather sedentary life and the most exercise I get is walking to the car to drive to the supermarket.

So, the start of 2012 sees me attempting to cut out the majority of fat in my diet, and the challenge is to still be able to produce food that I find interesting to cook in order to keep my interest up.
Added difficulty is sharing my home with a 12 year old son who is not a great fan of fruit and definitely not of anything green, and a partner who really needs fattening up rather than slimming down.

I also have a new camera, and a desire to use it, so what better way than photographing my attempts at cooking - although it will become clear that I am neither good at photography or food presentation!

I probably won't post actual recipes, as although I own probably upward of 300 cookery books, I rarely follow a recipe exactly. I never measure things, and often substitute ingredients if I'm missing one, or if I feel something else would work. I do however read them for inspiration, and they are wonderfully displayed on the shelves that have been purpose built for them.