Friday 13 October - Bao with Sticky Belly Pork

Not the lowest fat dish by any stretch of the imagination, but I used pretty lean pork, and the accompaniments are in the main pretty healthy!

We discovered these steamed buns during a trip to Wagamamma a few weeks ago, and I had a hunt round for a recipe as we enjoyed them so much. This one was from The BBC food website, and we've cooked it a couple of times now, but also made the buns to use up left over char siu.

The dough is a pretty basic bread dough, but made with plain flour, and a spoonful of baking powder in addition to the yeast.

While this was rising, the belly pork filling was started.

Slices of belly pork were fried, and then set to one side.

Then into the pan went an unusual ingredient - some brown sugar, which was caramelised in the pan juices.

Once this was lovely and brown, in went soy sauce, shaohsing wine, sliced garlic and ginger and a couple of star anise - the pork went back into the pan along with some water, and into the oven to braise slowly.

Once the dough was double I formed it into flat ovals - I did this by hand, no need to use a rolling pin. These were brushed with a mixture of sunflower and sesame oil , and then folded over a chop stick and left to rise again.

Once risen they were steamed over a wok of boiling water for around ten minutes

For the toppings, peanuts were crushed in a pestle and mortar, and mixed with a teaspoon of togarashi spice powder, and spring onions and cucumber were sliced up (in the same way as for duck pancakes)

Then it was a case of stuffing the buns with the toppings and wolfing them down as quickly as possible - absolutely delicious!!

Tuesday 10 October - Baked Beans

We were given some pea bean seeds by a fellow allotment holder - they were so beautiful that I ended up podding them all and putting them in a jar to eat - although we may use some of them as seed next year.

As they were so fresh, they didn't take long to cook after being soaked for a day - around half an hour rather than the hours that commercial beans can take.

I simmered the beans, then made a sauce - the last of our tomatoes, some of the lovely carrots that we have been so successful with this year, onions, garlic.

These were roughly chopped, and fried in a teaspoon of oil, along with an elderly pack of pancetta cubes which I found in the back of the fridge.

I added water, and lots of flavourings - english musard, a good squeeze of ketchup, worcester sauce and tabasco, before blending and sieving, and then thickening the sauce with a spoonful of cornflour.

Then the beans were added into this and all simmered for a while so the beans absorbed the flavours. At this stage I realised I'd been a bit stingy with the bean quantities, so I added a small tin of butter beans to pad it all out a bit.

I baked a couple of large potatoes after spraying them with olive oil spray, and sprinkling with salt (I remain to be convinced that a drizzle of olive oil isn't just as healthy)

The beans were served over the jacket potatoes, with some cheese and worcester sauce sprinkled over the top. 

I used this lower fat cheese - things have moved on a lot with low fat cheese, and it actually tastes fine, but it definitely doesn't melt in the same way as proper cheese.

As we still have a huge jar of borlotti beans from the allotment I will definitely do this one again - it's a simple and healthy meal, but it satisfies my desire to cook something rather than just open a can after work

Monday 9 October - Salmon and Spinach

There was very little cooking involved in this, but a surprisingly delicous meal for an Autumn Monday night.

Salmon fillets - I simply seasoned these, drizzled a dash of white wine over and topped with slices of lemon, before baking in the oven for 15 minutes in a foil covered dish/

A quick, low fat tartare sauce - low fat creme fraiche was warmed in a pan with some chopped parsley, some capers and a squeeze of lemon juice.

Served with some spinach which I simply stir fried along with the water clinging to it after washing, and tiny piece of butter. We added some sweet potato mash alongside.

Friday 6 October - Pumpkin Chickpea and Banana Curry

I am really not a fan of bananas, but in this curry they are amazing. I first cooked this about 30 years ago from a Vegetarian food magazine and lost the recipe, but have since managed to find it online.
We have a large number of Butternut squash this year on the allotment, so any way we can use them up is a bonus - they are actually nicer than pumpkin in this recipe as they are not as soft when oooked. This is a very simple curry, using curry paste - I found an elderly jar of tikka masala paste in the cupboard so used that here.

The squash was cubed and then tossed in the curry paste, and then fried off.

The base of the curry was onions, garlic and ginger, and I added a couple of the lovely hot red chillies that we have grown this  year to spice things up a bit.

Then in with some spices - cumin, coriander, cinnamon and turmeric and some chopped tomatoes - we are just finishing off the last of this years tomatoes from the greenhouse.

Some stock was added, then the chick peas and the squash were added and it was simmered until the squash was tender

Finally the sliced banana was added and it was warmed through.

We served with some brown basmati rice, some shop bought roti and some low fat yoghurt that I strained through a jcloth and mixed with some grated cucumber and mint sauce.

This was by no means an authentic Indian meal, but a very delicious Friday supper none the less!

Starting Again

This blog was started with the intention of keeping a record of weight loss. It's turned into an interesting record of what we eat, but I'm now a fatterandfiftysomething.

I've recently been diagnosed with high cholesterol, and decided that I didn't want to start taking drugs to manage this from the outset - so the diet is starting again, and along with that I'm hoping to update this blog more often.

Remains to be seen how things go as I'm hopeless at sticking to things, but hopefully I can produce some edible food, lose a bit of weight and become a bit healthier along the way

Saturday 26 August - Chicken and French Lentils

This was a Michael Caines recipe that popped up on my Facebook page. Although on first reading the recipe looked really complex, I decided to make all the components in advance, and reheat to serve - after all I'm sure this is how it works in restuarants!
We also adjusted the recipe so that we could make use of our new toy - George persuaded me to buy a Sous Vide wand a few weeks ago, and we've had great fun playing with it recently.

We started by preparing the chicken - I had bought supremes from the butcher, as it's impossible to buy skin on chicken breasts in supermarkets. We removed the wings, and then I wrapped them in clingfilm to keep the shape a bit more, before using a vacuum sealer

These were then cooked in the water bath (or plastic box) for two and a half hours.

 

While the chicken cooked, we prepared the other ingredients.

Lentils were gently cooked with carrot, onion, garlic and some smoked streaky bacon

 

Once cooked, the vegetables were removed, and the bacon chopped up and stirred back in - this was reheated with some parsley and a spoonful of butter when ready to serve

Celeriac was cooked in milk and water, then whizzed to a puree with some butter - again to be reheated for serving

Cubed vegetables - parsnip, butternut squash and some more celeriac were cubed and browned in oil and butter, and tiny onions boiled, halved and dry fried - I placed all these on a tray, and we finished them off in the oven to serve.

Finally a sauce - the recipe called for reduced red wine and veal jus - I used red wine and beef stock (out of a tin!), but it was a bit thin, so whisked in some cold butter at the end.

Once the chicken was ready, we removed it from the water bath, and browned the skin in bit of oil and butter, before slicing up to serve.

To serve, the puree was plated up and topped with the lentils and sliced chicken. The veg and onions were dotted round the plate, and it was finished with the sauce.

Tuesday 4 July - Jerk Sweet Potato Cakes

Bob is currently building a website for Black Ass Jerk Co, and came home from a meeting clutching a jar of Jerk Paste

Jerk paste is normally something that we make from scratch, but we thought we would try this out for a midweek meal. As we are eating very little meat at the moment, I decided that we would have a play with some Caribbean flabours, and make some sweet potato cakes with jerk flavouring. To serve with it some rice and peas, and some Green Plantains that were an impulse buy when we passed a market stall at the weekend.

The sweet potatoes were cubed, and tossed with a couple of tablespoons of jerk paste and a dash of olive oil, then roasted in a hot oven for about 20 minutes until soft.

They were then mashed, along with some flavourings - chopped coriander, fresh red Scotch Bonnet, spring onions and roasted garlic.

The mixture was chilled, then formed into small cakes, which we dipped in egg and polenta, before frying. It was quite a soft texture, so the smaller cakes are easier to manage, and less likely to fall apart when cooked.

For the rice, coconut milk was boiled along with garlic, thyme, allspice berries, spring onion and a scotch bonnet chilli - for about 20 minutes, to infuse the mik with flavour.

We then added this to the rice cooker, along with some drained black beans, and some soaked basmati rice and left to cook.

 

I had to search the internet to find out what to do with green plantain, but found out that a 'double cooking' was the way to go.

The plantains were peeled and sliced into one inch pieces.

These slices were then fried for a couple of minutes on each side. We then bashed them flat with a mallet

The flattened pieces were then fried again until crisp

No one missed meat at all, the jerk paste was absolutely delicious - had obvious pieces of the ingredients that you could see. I would certainly buy this rather than making my own in future.

Saturday 27 May - Vincisgrassi

I bought a new book last week, called The DIY Cook by Tim Hayward. It caught my eye, and as it was cheap I picked it up to have a read. It turned out to be just the sort of cooking I love - making all the components of a recipe from scratch. I spotted this recipe for Vincisgrassi, which is essentially a lasagne, but a bit more special. The pasta element is so easy now that we have an attachment on our kitchen aid, that this didn't seem too daunting to start with. The main components were a slow cooked ragu, and a mushroom bechamel, plus the homemade lasagne noodles. A main ingredient in the recipe was truffles, which unsurprisingly are not available in Gosport at any time of year - however, I was given a jar of Black Truffle paste for Christmas, so it was an excuse to open that.

The ragu started with a sofrito of carrot, celery, onions and pancetta, fried slowly in butter and olive oil.

The meat was a mix of beef and veal mince, fried quickly in a hot dry pan - red wine,garlic, cinnamon and cloves were added and the wine was boiled down.

The meat and soffrito were combined, along with a small amount of tomato paste, and some fresh chicken stock, and it was left to simmer gently for three hours before finishing with some double cream.

For the bechamel sauce, some dried ceps were added to warm milk until they were soft, they were then drained, chopped and fried off with some fresh chopped button mushrooms to drive off all the water.

The mushroomy milk was made into a bechamel sauce, and the chopped mushrooms added back into this with some seasoning.

Then for the assembly.

First a layer of pasta, topped with a thin layer of ragu

Then more pasta, parma ham, some of the bechamel, parmesan and fresh mozzarella, and some of the truffle paste.

Finishing with sauce and cheese as the top layer, this was then baked until golden and hot.

I made a garlic and rosemary bread to serve with this

The only other thing we needed was a fresh green salad. We had enough left over to freeze for another day. This was a recipe I really enjoyed cooking, and was certainly worth all the effort.