Monday 12 November - Risotto

Last night we roasted a Guinea Fowl - something I'd not tried before. It was roasted with lemon and lots of thyme and black pepper - and the left overs were simmered all night in the slow cooker to make a rather rich looking stock.

This along with a purchase we made yesterday in Morrisons made the basis of tonights risotto.

Morrisons in Gosport has had a rather massive face lift, and now sells the most amazing fruit and vegetables I've seen outside Borough Market in this country. So we purchased at huge expense a small handful of Girolles and a couple of King Oyster Mushrooms. These were padded out with normal button mushrooms.

The base of the risotto was shredded leeks, and the button mushrooms, along with a couple of bits of finely chopped chicken, and some bacon lardons I found lurking in the bottom of the fridge.

 

I chopped the Oyster Mushrooms and Girolles and fried these seperately in a tsp of oil to add once the risotto was finished, along with some more chopped thyme.

 

This was the first time I've ever made risotto using meat, and it was absolutely delicious, and a massive hit with George who cleared a bowlful sprinkled with parmesan very quickly indeed!

 

 

Monday 5 November - Indian Potato Cakes

I've fancied trying to make these for a while, and as I suspected they weren't as easy as the recipes all imply!

I based these on a Sophie Grigson recipe I found online - but adjusted the spices in the filling.

Basically it was onion, carrot, peas and chilli processed together, and fried (although I added water to a tsp of oil and evaporated it off. Then added spices - chilli, cumin, coriander, garam masala and some turmeric, along with ginger and garlic paste.

Chopped coriander and lime were stirred in, and left to cool a bit.

The potatoes were boiled in their skins, then mashed with some flour and salt. Formed into patties with the filling in the middle (this was the hard bit!)

Fried on a griddle which I had brushed with a tsp of oil - the trick seems to be in not fiddling with them and turning them as little as possible.

 

We served them with mango chutney and pickle, and my favourite low fat salad of chopped onion, cucumber and tomato mixed with jarred mint sauce, salt, pepper and lemon juice

Monday 29 October - Autumn Pasta

When searching for a recipe at the weekend, I came across a recipe in a Rick Stein book for Orecciete with Cavolo Nero.
Plenty of kale at the allotment, so this seemed to be an ideal replacement for the cavolo nero.

A very simple dish - garlic, chilli flakes and anchovies cooked in a dash of olive oil until the anchovies 'melt', then cooked pasta and the greens stirred into it, and topped with a sprinkle of grated parmesan.

Despite my hatred of whole, hairy, nasty anchovies, I do enjoy them in dishes as a seasoning, and they worked very well here. I could have eaten twice as much though..

Needless to say, George wouldn't eat this, as it had green things in it, so I did my very unauthentic Carbonara for him - horror of horrors I use cream, and after frying the garlic, I add white wine and reduce it down. It went down rather well though, despite it's deviation from the proper version.

Sunday 21October - Hainanese Chicken

After the excesses of Saturday, something light and very low fat was required. I found this recipe in one of my diety books (Skinny Meals in Heels by Jennifer Joyce), and it looked just the thing.

Chicken poached very gently in plain water. Served with a dipping sauce of Ketjap Manis, mixed with ginger, chilli, garlic, sugar and rice wine vinegar.

 

We added garlic rice as per the suggestion in the book - cooking this in the poaching liquid from the chicken.

We did however mess about with the cucumber a bit, making my favourite Japanese style salad - marinating the slices in rice wine vinegar, sugar, salt and ginger, and dressing with chilli and a drop of sesame oil.

The chicken bones went back into the remaining poaching liquid along with an onion and some chopped carrot, and this is going to be the basis of a soup later in the week.

For desert and for snacks for the boys during the week, I made a plum and almond cake to use up the plums in the fruit bowl, and also a ginger cake as we had been talking about them earlier in the day, and I've never made one. The boys tried these with cream, and I had a tiny piece of each with some low fat custard.

Saturday 20 October - Mums Birthday Cake and Meal

Saturday was Mums 80th Birthday, and the family clubbed together to buy a construction to be built in the garden, and the plants to grow up this - so the challenge initially was to recreate this in the form of a cake.

We began with our old trusty fruit cake recipe from Good Housekeeping - the only change I make to it is to replace the peel with more raisins as I can't bear candied peel.

This was covered in marzipan after a couple of weeks being fed with rum and brandy, and then a final layer of green icing was added to represent the lawn.

We tend to work as a team on cakes, as Bob is artistic, and I am most certainly not. We decided to do the trellis as a topper to add to the cake, so it would be easier to transport on the day - so the base was made of balsa wood covered in fondant. The trellis was fashioned from coffee stirrers and matches, held together with wire and glue and using a teeny tiny drill.

I then had great fun making all sorts of colours of icing in the Kenwood with the dough hook, and we started making very basic flowers and leaves using some cutters.

We attached these using wire, and edible glue, and added some fantastic little gardening tools I had found on the internet to finish off the whole garden effect.

Overall, quite pleased with this one, as it looked how we imagined it was going to when we started out (and apparantly the cake tasted ok too!)

 We served this cake in the afternoon, and then in the evening served a three course meal - this was adapted to make it low fat, but hopefully so people not on diets weren't aware of this.

First course was Mums famous 1970s Crab Mousse, but instead of using mayonnaise and cream, we made it with less than 3% fat mayonnaise and low fat yoghurt. This was made in individual moulds to make it look posher, and served with devilled tomato sauce.

 Second course was a Pork Paprikas - basically pork Goulash made with hot, sweet and smoked paprikas, tinned tomatoes and finished with low fat soured cream. This was served with Spatzle noodles and green beans.

The final course was as requested by Mum - she wanted a tower of profiteroles. This was one course I didn't really get to try, although I had one to test them.
This was a sort of Profiterole Belle Helene - as the filling was pastry cream mixed with finely chopped pears, and a rich chocolate sauce made of cream, and a mixture of plain and milk chocolate poured over the top.

 

Happy Birthday Mum!!!

Saturday 13 October - Rice Pudding

Tonight we conducted 'The Great Rice Pudding Exeriment' to see if low fat was much different from the normal variety.

Dish one was:
2oz rice
1oz Sugar
Spoon of vanilla bean paste
1pint Jersey Gold Top Milk -  5.2% fat
Some butter to dot over the top

Dish two was:
2oz rice
1oz Sugar
Spoon of vanilla bean paste
1pint skimmed milk - 0.1% fat

In the photo below, the high fat version is in the bigger dish.

 

Both were cooked together on the same oven shelf for the same amount of time. 

The results were rather surprising, and we can only think that the size and depth of the dish is actually the main factor in the differences that we found when we tried them

The high fat version had a distinct skin on it, with rather stodgy rice and no liquid around the rice.

 

The low fat version had less of a skin, a nice creamy sauce and the rice had a slight, and pleasant bite to it.

 

Of the two we both preferred the low fat version, although when making it again, I would probably reduce the sugar down by about half, and maybe serve with fruit puree rather than on its own.

Thursday 11 October - Oeufs Florentine

The chard on the allotment has resurrected itself since the pumpkins have been harvested, so Bob was sent down to harvest a bag of it (along with next years supply of snails as babies)

This was steamed, and along with some lightly poached eggs from the Orpingtons who have now started to lay fairly regularly, bacame my highest fat dish for about 3 weeks.

The sauce was made with a bit of lurpack, but I used 'low fat' cheese, along with lots of Dijon Mustard and tabasco to add some kick

Served with Bobs fabulous sunflower seed loaf

Rather proud that after grilling it all, the yolks were still runny - fresh eggs poach with no problem and popping them in iced water after poaching seems to be the trick for this dish.