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.

Sunday 7 October - Char Siu

The plan was to eat three courses last night, but we pigged out on the usual low fat wontons, and decided to save the pork for Sunday night.

It was improved by marinading for 24 hours in the yellow bean, hoisin and ginger and garlic prior to roasting.

To serve alongside my favourite is pak choi with mushrooms, but as George was eating it the green stuff had to be separated out.

I also saved the marinade and heated up to pour over the steamed rice

As Mum and Dad had brought round pounds and pounds of apples yesterday, ,we made a strudel with some chopped up fruit, and some dried fruit soaked in calvados, mixed up with ground almonds and chopped up walnuts (basically all the packets in the larder that needed using up)

Obviously served with Asda custard!

Saturday 29 September - Low Fat Paella

Set off on our bikes this morning to the wonderful Viviers Fish Sheds in Old Portsmouth as we had Paella in mind for supper.

A wonderful selection of fish was available as usual, and we came back with clams, mussels and raw prawns to add the box of baby squid I already had in the freezer at home

There are not many jobs I really, really dislike in the kitchen, but cleaning squid is one of them, Bob had to take over as I got to number 6 as it all got too much for me!

Normally we add chorizo to Paella - it's one of the best bits to be honest, but that is not part of the low fat diet, so we did some experimentation with little chicken fillets dusted in paprika and then added to the Paella at the start of the cooking process.

I always start the squid off at the beginning of the cooking - so it was fried along with the onions and garlic, in a bit of spray cooking oil.

I then added some chopped peppers and seeded skinned tomatoes and the paella rice and chicken pieces. Stock and wine were added and right at the end in went the cleaned shellfish.

 

The chicken wasn't quite the same as having chorizo in it, but a fairly good substitute! As usual we made far too much of this as it's so hard to cook in small quantities.

Thursday 27 September - Fragrant Chicken Wraps

Been for the results of my blood tests today, and I don't have diabetes, or high cholesterol which is all good news  - I'm still fat though....

I've decided not to go for immediate surgery for my gallstones, I need to lose weight and change my diet and the gallstones are the incentive I need to keep up with this low fat, high excercise depressingly low alcohol way of life.

I am very impressed with Gok Wans book to date, and tonight we cooked the recipe that made me buy it in the first place. Stage one was to mince some chicken - I would have gone for thigh, but low fat is the idea here, so breast it was...

This was stirfried with ginger and garlic, then put to one side

The added flavourings were, peppers, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts and mushrooms.

Some soy, rice wine and fish sauce were added, along with chopped cashews

Served on a lettuce leaf, with a topping of cucumber, tomato and sesame oil.

Was very tasty, a good mix of textures and taste - next time I will add chopped coriander though, as felt that was the missing link...

Wednesday 26 September - Steak and Kidney

Eating as little fat as possible is proving to be easier than I thought, but I'm finding the majority of meals a bit unsatisfying - in some ways it's probably doing me a world of good as I'm filling up with many glasses of water instead of wine, and eating more fruit in the last couple of weeks than I've probably eaten in my entire 46 years.

Autumn is most definitely here now, so fancied something a bit more satisfying - had picked up some very lean beef skirt and a couple of pigs kidneys last weekend, so these were retrieved from the freezer and a beef, kidney and root vegetable hot pot was devised.

Beef and kidneys were cubed, and fried in a pan which was just brushed with oil to stop the meat sticking

 

We chopped up a selection of vegetables - onions, carrots, parsnips and swede, and these were then layered in a casserole dish with the meat.

We added some beef stock mixed with a bit of red wine, and some worcester sauce and then topped the whole thing with sliced potatoes and shoved it in the oven.

It's currently bubbling away and smelling rather good - we'll serve this with some steamed savoy cabbage.