'Diet' cheeseburger with spicy sweetcorn mayo

Another astoundingly quick and easy weeknight supper, this one, and while it may lack the sophistication of last night's salmon and lentils, it was seriously good. Ten minutes from start to finish, although I had already made the burgers and just defrosted them this morning. Probably 15 if I'd done it all from scratch.

Normally I do burgers with oven chips, but today I was craving the spicy sweetcorn mayo my parents used to make, and fancied a crusty roll with my burger but only one set of carbs per meal.

This banquet came to 16 pro points. It could obviously be made healthier with low fat mayo and low fat cheese, but I long ago decided I'd much rather have the real thing, but a lot less often.

For 4 burgers, you need:

500g pack lean mince (extra lean perfect, but more expensive)

Half a medium onion, or one small, finely diced.

A large dash Worcestershire sauce

A dollop low fat yoghurt, to bind

Salt and pepper

To serve: 100g sweetcorn and tbsp mayo per person, salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, 10g extra mature Cheddar cheese per person and a crusty roll each.

You simply combine all the burger ingredients in a bowl (you could fry the onion first, but I like the stronger flavour that comes from my laziness), hands are easiest. Then split up into four, shape into burgers, and either cook straight away (see instructions below) or freeze, wrapped in grease proof paper within your chose container so you have a hope of ever prising them apart.

When you want to eat them, first defrost burgers for several hours in fridge, and then come suppertime, cook them in a George Foreman for about 8 minutes (That's for cooked through, I'm paranoid about mince), or longer on a griddle pan. Add 10g of extra mature cheddar on top three minutes before the end.

While they're cooking, defrost 100g per person of frozen sweetcorn by running under hot water in a sieve. Drain, and put in a bowl with a tablespoon of mayo, a pinch of salt, grinding of pepper and dash of cayenne. Mix, then bung the bowl in the freezer while everything else cooks because it's nicest ice cold.

When the burgers are done, leave them to rest for a minute while you toast the inside of the buns on the grill.

Assemble your goodies, with a side salad to mop up the extra mayo, and eat, rapidly and smugly.


 

Salmon, lentils, yoghurt

I didn't take a picture of this one before eating it - a little out of blogging practice.

But a simple, delicious, diet friendly supper.

I baked two salmon fillets in a foil parcel with a slice of lemon, salt, pepper and a pat of butter.

Meanwhile, I cooked some puy lentils. (ok, I cheated. I opened and heated a pre cooked packet. Next time I'll just boil them, it's as easy, cheaper, and you can add stock and make it taste nicer.)

I seasoned fat-free Greek yoghurt with lemon, salt, pepper, and a pinch of cayenne pepper.

Then I stirred basil and salt through the lentils.

I served the salmon balanced on a bed of lentils, with the juices and the yoghurt sprinkled over.

The whole meal took twenty minutes - including about five minutes actual work.

And it was wonderful.

Soup: celeriac and bramley apple

Last winter for a while I posted a soup recipe every week. This winter, as soon as the cold winter started, I started making soup again. For a long while I got away with last year's recipes, but eventually I got bored and started again.

 

I like this soup because the smooth, earthy flavour of the celariac goes so well with the sharp freshness of the apples. It's tasty, filling, easy and healthy - next to no fat, and no Weightwatchers points.

Smoked salmon, dill and cucumber open sandwiches

This is such a simple, fresh tasting lunch - very healthy, but every mouthful shouts 'luxury', not 'diet'.

 

As with all the best simple lunches, it's almost insulting to give you a recipe, but here goes.

Slow-cooked beef stew

I've been flirting with the idea of getting a slow cooker for a while now, but wasn't sure if I'd actually use it. I was pretty certain we didn't have space for it.

But when we went to visit my aunt and cousins a couple of weeks ago, my aunt served up the most delicious, sophisticated lemon and lamb stew. Which cooked in her slow cooker while we drank and caught up. My aunt, and my cousin, who is a student, talked about how useful their slow cookers were. My cousin will put a stew on for her housemates before going to lectures.

A soup so scrumptious it got me blogging again: Thai carrot and coriander

The weekly huge batches of soup started up again about six weeks ago. Once again it's cold enough in Edinburgh for a huge mug of warm, comforting soup to be the best possible lunch option.

Up until this weekend I'd been repeating myself, cooking things I'd done (and usually blogged) before. One week the weekend was so busy we bought a stack of cans of soup instead. The world didn't end, although gratifyingly they weren't as good, as healthy or as cheap as the ones I make.

But this one is so good I had to share. It's based on one my aunt gave us for lunch when we went to visit last weekend - a delicious bought fresh soup. The budget's too tight for us to buy fresh soup for weekday lunches, so when we got home we decided to experiment, and came up with the following. It's got a kick to it, and is thoroughly warming and filling on a cool day. Lovely. And if you care about such things it's very low fat, and only one propoint a portion.

Simply scrumptious: lemon sole with chive butter

Sometimes, I crave simple, clean flavours. After a heavy weekend, being spoilt rotten, by Monday night I would have happily eaten nursery food

But on reflection, I decided that what I wanted most was the delicate flavour of white fish.

I know you shouldn't buy fish on a Monday, but I decided I trusted our local supermarket to only sell us something fresh, and sent the husband to investigate while I was at work. He returned with two lovely lemon sole fillets, some new potatoes, and some broccoli. This became a delicious 15 minute meal.

Guacamole-ish

I've been having some luck with the special offers corner in my local Waitrose lately. After the £1.11 beef joint which yielded two steaks and two rather yummy salads, I've been casting my eye over it every time I walk past. I've never got that lucky again, but for one, wonderful week, it became apparent that someone was putting the ripe and ready to eat avocados into the discount shelf at 6pm on the day they went out of date. As ripe and ready to eat avocados rarely are, I grabbed them thinking they'd be good - and most of them were. Bizarrely, though, one pack of two consisted of one gorgeously soft avocado - and one so hard it could have been made of rubber.

I'd planned to make this guacamole recipe, one from the hairy bikers that I picked because it didn't contain cream or mayo or anything else odd - I wanted it to taste super-fresh, not like a dip. But the recipe calls for three avocados. I'd planned to make it with two, reducing things slightly - I used a couple of chillies, rather than four, and just one tomato - which would have been fine. But after the rubber avocado, I found myself with a pile of chopped other ingredients, and just one av. So I shrugged and ended up making it with one.

It worked. The result was light, fresh and zingy. It still had the creaminess of the one super ripe avocado, but in texture it was more like a salsa. As someone who's never been that fussed by most salsas - I'm not the world's biggest tomato fan - it was like a perfect blend of salsa and guacamole.

It tasted so light and fresh I didn't want it with tortilla chips or anything greasy - so instead, we use lettuce leaves. They were perfect - little scoops. And because they were so healthy, I didn't feel in the least bit guilty about polishing off a lot of guacamole in one go!

Nigel Slater's griddled chicken and aubergine stacks

So, as briefly mentioned in a previous post, we've treated ourselves to a George Foreman grill. A teensy-tiny one for our teensy-tiny kitchen, and also because I wasn't entirely sure we'd use it and thought we should at least get a cheap one that wasn't going to be a complete pain to store. I'd used my parents' while house-sitting and found it handy for cooking chicken breasts to go in a salad, and could see a few things we'd use it for, but there's always a risk with kitchen gadgets and I don't have space or money for big mistakes!

It's now in use almost every day. Partly, it's because it's summer, and simple griddled meat and veg are so appealing right now. But it also cooks steak well, quickly, and my homemade burgers in three minutes flat. And bacon for weekend breakfasts with a lot less faff then doing it in the proper grill. 

This recipe is one we've been doing for years. When I  met my husband, he had a large scrapbook of recipes his mother had typed and printed out for him when he left home to go to uni. In the back he'd stuck other recipes - pulled out of newspapers, mostly - that he liked the look of. Since we've been together we've supplemented it with other things pulled out of newspapers, and it's in constant use alongside my recipe file. It's a lot easier, because you can just stick things in, rather than writing them out again. But it's also now getting full.

This recipe has been typed out, but in a different font to all the others, so I think perhaps it's one he copied out himself. It says it's a Nigel Slater, and the version we have certainly reads like him, but I can't find it anywhere online, or in our books, and don't have the scrapbook with me, so the version below is the one I have in my head. 

Anyway, it's delicious and healthy and yummy. Using a griddle plan, as we used to, works well but is a bit of a faff as it takes so long and the kitchen fills up with smoke. But worth it. Using a George Foreman, though, makes it much, much easier.

Ingredients for two people

For the stacks:

Two chicken breasts

An aubergine, cut, ideally, into four slices, but I often end up getting six out of a big supermarket aubergine.

Pesto - about two tbsps.

For the tomato accompaniment

Four to six normal sized tomatoes

A few basil leaves

A shallot, or half a small onion

Olive oil

Grill the chicken breasts for about six minutes a side if you're using a griddle pan, or six minutes in total if you're using a double sided grill. Check they're cooked through, and put them aside to keep them warm.

Then griddle the slices of aubergine, for three minutes a side on the griddle pan, and three minutes in total in the grill - until done and yummy looking. If you're using a teensy-tiny George Foreman and cut six slices rather than four, you'll need to do this in two batches.

Spread one side of each of your aubergine pieces with pesto, and stack, making a sandwich with the chicken breast.

To make the accompaniment, while the chicken is griddling, dice your onion/shallot and soften it in a little olive oil, and dice your tomatoes. Then, while the last slice of aubergine is doing it's thing, warm the tomatoes through in the pan, and tear the basil leaves on top.

We have this with hunks of fresh bread to mop up the juices from the tomatoes. The bread below is the central slice from our home-made breadmaker bread, which why there's a strange dent where the paddle was.

Seared beef, lime, chilli and ginger salad

While we were on holiday in London a few weeks ago we ate at Wagamama's. They don't have a branch in Edinburgh, bizarrely - they have one in Livingston, but even the delicious noodles and discount shopping aren't enough to tempt me through. The Husband had never eaten at Wagamama's before and didn't really understand why I got quite so excited - and insistent - when we happened to be walking past a branch at lunchtime. He did when the food came. Yeah, I know Wagamama's hasn't been exciting or new for oooh... a decade now. But I like it. So shush.

It was a hot day and we decided to go for salad rather than a huge, steaming bowl of ramen. What we went for was the "ginger beef and coriander salad" - they described it as "seared steak with caramelised red onions,
beansprouts, red peppers, cucumber, carrot, mooli, ginger and coriander tossed with mixed leaves and
wagamama house dressing. garnished with sesame seeds." It was lush. 

Fast forward a couple of weeks and we were back in Edinburgh. I'd nipped into Waitrose on my way home from work for a pint of milk and happened to pass by the discount shelf. And then got a lot closer when I saw beef joints there. There was an amazing rib of beef which I was tempted to grab, but in my heart knew that two people would never be able to do it justice. But there was also a rump roasting joint - about a pound of lean aberdeen angus beef for £1.11. I swiped it and put in the freezer for the weekend.

I cut two slabs of steak from it, which we griddled and ate, juicy and rare, on the Saturday night. Mmmm. The meat was incredibly lean - so much so I'd be surprised if it was nice roasted, but it did very well as a steak. 

The next day, we decided to take the leftover bit - about 150g - and try to copy the salad. Not having the menu in front of me, and not remembering every detail, and not feeling like going on a mooli quest on the streets of Morningside, we didn't do it perfectly, but it was very, very good. 

Ingredients (serves two)

Juice of two limes

A red chilli pepper, diced (although it was actually much too hot and the ginger gave plenty of heat so maybe leave this out unless you're a chilli fiend)

A bunch of coriander

Pickled "sushi ginger" (we just got ours in Waitrose). A packet. That's not helpful. Um. Shall we say an ounce/30g?

Light soy sauce

Bag mixed salad (yes, I'm cheating, so sue me)

150g rump steak/sirloin steak/whatever 

I marinaded the steak for a bit (What's a bit? Um, a cup of tea then a Sunday morning shower and get ready... about an hour?) in the juice of a lime, with chopped up chilli and coriander.

I then had a play with my new George Foreman and grilled the steak until it was just slightly rare - probably for about three or four minutes? Cook the steak however you'd normally cook steak, basically. I did it for longer than usual as I get slightly squeamish about very rare meat once cold, unless it's steak tartare. 

Leave it to rest and cool slightly so it doesn't cook your salad.

Then I cut a carrot into matchsticks, cut the ginger into similar-sized slices, and finely chop the coriander.

I mixed the juice of the other lime with a good glug of light soy sauce to make a dressing. You could add toasted sesame oil if you wanted. I didn't. If you're using chilli, I'd combine it with the dressing too.

I divided the salad between two bowls, topped with the carrot, coriander, sliced beef, and then poured over the dressing.

And lo, it was good. Although not quite as good as it would have been if I hadn't put a silly amount of chilli in it.

A summer work packed lunch

 

A few weeks ago, I stopped posting weekly soup recipes, because I'd stopped making soup for packed lunches at work.

But what have I been eating in the meantime? Now, I'll admit that, having spent more days not working in April than working, thanks to a magical combination of bank holidays and birthday annual leave, I've not had to be quite as organised as usual. And there have been one or two weeks where I've just nipped out to the Co-op near work or even to Pret if I was feeling flush.

However, most of the time it's been salads, based around beans or grains, with lots of veg, and a little bit of cheese, or tuna, to perk it up.

This is one of my favourites - bulgar wheat salad. Very loosely based on tabbouleh. Even more so at the moment, when my new parsley plant is looking too fragile to plunder and I'm not putting any in!

These quantities serve 4, or two people for two days. I'll admit that if we're having something like this I'll boil double quantities of wheat on Sunday, get it cold as quickly as possible, save half, and make up four portions. To me, the veg is ok when chopped for up to two days, the bulgar wheat for four, which is why I do it that way. But follow your nose and your own standards when it comes to how long you think food lasts for!

150g bulgar wheat

Stock cube/powder

Four tomatoes

Half a cucumber

Half an onion diced very finely, or four spring onions, or a large bunch of chives

Juice and zest of a lemon

Tsp mustard

20 or so black olives, pitted and halved

100g of cheese - feta, goats, or halloumi you cook while the wheat is boiling are all lovely (I know this quantity might sound mean, but actually, it's plenty)

Cook the bulgar wheat as per packet instructions, only substituting water with stock made up with the cube or powder.

Cool it down as quickly as you can - I find spooning it out in thin layers in the flattish Tupperware I use for packed lunches helps this.

While it's cooling, dice your veg and divide them, the olives and the lemon zest evenly between the four containers. 

Finely dice or crumble your cheese, and split it evenly between the containers.

In a jam jar or similar, combine lemon juice and mustard. Put the lid on and shake, or mix in a more sedate fashion with a spoon.

Split this between the containers, and use a fork to mix up the ingredients and fluff up the bulgar wheat. 

I keep mine in the fridge at home, and on my desk once I get to work, and have never yet given myself food poisoning!

Recipe: Low fat and luscious strawberry pavlova

When Caroline from Second Hand Shopper told me she and her Dapper Chap were coming to town this weekend, I knew we just had to have them over for dinner.

It was a fantastic evening – as sore heads and the number of empty wine bottles lined up the next morning testified – and lovely to see Caroline after much too long and meet the lovely Dapper. (Who is indeed Dapper. I identified it was them in the taxi outside because I could see the perfect amount of shirt cuff appearing from a jacket sleeve.)

Because it was quite a short notice thing, and I’d been working all day, The Husband and I decided to keep the catering simple.

He cooked one of his signature dishes - a Nigel Slater recipe involving chicken thighs, herbs, white wine, slow frying and much licking of plates. It’s one of our favourites and I was embarrassed to discover we’d served it to Caroline last time she came to stay – enough to tempt me to start keeping an old-fashioned guest book! However, she was kind enough to insist that she’d loved it then, and certainly cleaned her plate!

But for all my insistence on simplicity, I had a new hand mixer to play with. Time to attempt meringues!

Everything needed to be made between me getting home from work at some time after half five, and guest arriving at half seven, so I went for a quick meringue recipe that gave a soft result, rather than drying everything out slowly in the oven overnight, which I’m planning to attempt last time. This meant the meringue did crack when transferred to the serving plate – but who cares, when it’s got stuff piled on top to hide it? It also that it was quite soft – lovely in the context, but I’m going to play at getting harder meringues.

I discovered using yoghurt rather than cream in pavlovas a few weeks ago, after going on Weightwatchers. I was expecting it to be a bit of a compromise – better than no pudding, but not as good as cream. I was wrong – I love the way the sharpness of the yoghurt contrasts with the sweet meringue and fruit.  I love this Total stuff because it’s so creamy and thick, despite being 0% fat. And also, yoghurt doesn’t need whipping – a major bonus if you don’t have a hand mixer, or you’re just washing-up averse!

Serves 4

Two egg whites

110g/4oz caster sugar (I used golden, for a pretty colour and a slightly more complex taste)

Two punnets strawberries or other soft fruit.

Quarter teaspoon cream of tartar (you can omit – it helps the egg whites puff up, though, so is handy)

Extra tbsp for macerating strawberries

One 150g pot Total 0% fat yoghurt

Turn the oven on to 140C (less if fan)

Line a baking tray with baking parchment.

In a large, scrupulously clean bowl (if it’s even slightly greasy it makes it harder to get the eggs to fluff up) whisk the egg whites until they form stiff peaks when you take the whisk out of the bowl. If you have a hand mixer this takes seconds. If you’re doing it by hand, it will happen eventually.

Arrange on the baking tray in a large circle. (I say arrange. I splodged it and then smoothed it out).

Bake for 45-60 minutes till the outside is crisp, and then leave the oven, turned off with the door open, for half an hour. This can be done ahead.

While the meringue is in the oven, or an hour or two before serving, whichever is later, core and halve the strawberries, sprinkle with a the extra sugar, and leave in a bowl to macerate.

Just before serving, place the meringue CAREFULLY on a serving plate, add yoghurt on top, and then arrange strawberries.

Friday night curry

A couple of years ago I bought myself Anjum Anand's Indian Food Made Easy. I hadn't watched the TV series - strangely, I don't much like watching cooking on television, I'd much rather read about it (although I'll confess to being addicted to Masterchef - largely because it's not really about cooking!)

It took me a while to get into it - for a long time I was slightly too scared of all the ingredients in each recipe. One or two I couldn't even find at the shops. But then Caroline over at Second Hand Shopper came to stay and told me how much she liked the book. She even posted me some dried mango powder to get me going.

And I'm very glad she did! There are a number of recipes in the book I love, but the one I come back to again and again is this one. 

Just to warn you - it's another marinade recipe so requires a little thinking ahead. What we always do is pop the chicken and marinade in a freezer bag in the fridge the night before we want to eat it.

It's enough food to feed an army, and so I tend to quarter the amount of chicken, but halve the amount of sauce and marinade - partly because to quarter it would result in just too little sauce to marinate anything in, and partly because the sauce is amazing.

The reduced quantities mean that the yogurt would reduce too quickly if I left it as it is, so I tend to pop a quarter pint of water in at the beginning and keep an eye on it. I've never made full quantities but suspect it wouldn't be a problem if you were.

And it works perfectly with low fat yogurt, which means that you can actually make it astoundingly healthy.

But the magical thing for me about this recipe is the taste of the sauce - it's spicy but not hot, fresh and just beautiful. Although the recipe says chicken, as the star is the sauce I think it would work equally well with vegetables, chick peas or meat substitute, adjusting the cooking times accordingly.

The result is pretty damn tasty. So tasty, in fact, that when I photographed it I did so in a screaming hurry to go away and eat, and didn't check the results before digging in. Hence dodgy blurred photo below. Apologies - just take it as proof of how good it tastes!

 

Lime and rosemary marinaded lamb kebabs

 

As the summer approaches, trees blossom and bulbs come to life, I find myself turning my back on the heavy, comforting foods of winter, and beginning to think of barbecues, outdoor dining, lighter meals for lighter evenings.

Of course, living in a first floor flat in Edinburgh, outdoor dining and barbecues won't kick in until later on in the year - until I trust the weather not to do something disgusting just as I've carted all the ingredients down the stair and out the back door.

So for now I'm throwing open the windows (then closing them again when it gets chilly) and inviting the summer into my kitchen.

And to do that, without the impractical fun of the barbecue, I've got out the griddle pan. 

I'll be honest with you - the griddle pan is an all-year-round feature in this flat. Got so hot it smokes and threatens to set off fire alarms, it's the only way I know to cook steak so it's charred outside but still red inside - and that happens all winter long.

Although I have a fondness for Le Creuset I only managed to fund by making an honest man of The Husband, my griddle pan is a cheapy from Ikea that actually predates him by several years. I got it as a Christmas present when I was a post-grad student in 2002. It's still going strong. 

But now I've started using it for other things - things I want to cook lightly, but intensify their natural flavour - a sure sign the summer is here.

This is one example, cooked on the first really summery Saturday of the year. Just to warn you - although it's incredibly easy, and probably takes only 20 minutes of work, it requires a little thinking ahead. If you're cooking it for dinner, pop the lamb in to marinate ideally at lunch time, but in any event, when you put the butternut squash in to roast, a good 50 minutes before you'd like dinner on the table.

For the lamb and marinade, serves two.

250-300g whatever lamb meat looks likely in the supermarket. Shoulder or leg, probably. Cut into chunks, fat trimmed.

Rosemary sprigs, just ordinary 6 inch ones from a packet if you've killed your rosemary plant like me, 4-6 depending on how much meat you've gone for.

Juice of one lime

For the cous cous

Half a butternut squash (or a whole one if you're hungry!)

Pinch of cayenne pepper

Frylight/olive oil

100g cous cous

Mint (fresh, ideally)

Parsley

Chives if you have them handy

Two tomatoes

Lemon or lime juice

Stock cube

Glug of extra virgin olive oil if you fancy

At lunchtime, ideally, strip all leaves but the top ones from the rosemary sprigs, chop lightly, and place in a non-metallic bowl with the lime juice. Toss the lamb in it, and cover with clingfilm to stop it drying out. Periodically, when you're in the kitchen for more tea, give it a stir. (You can add olive oil to the marinade if you like, it stops the lamb drying out so you don't need the clingfilm. But you don't need it.)

You can roast the butternut squash now, or later - I like doing it earlier on because then dinner itself is the work of minutes. 

Heat the oven to 180C ish (for a fan oven).

Tackle the butternut squash. Take a SHARP peeler and peel it. Then take a SHARP knife and halve it, scooping out the seeds, and cut it into inch sized chunks. The peeler and knife must be sharp - if you use something blunt, you'll probably lose a finger in the process of peeling and cutting the wretched thing, and you'll certainly lose the will to live.

Bung it a roasting tin with some frylight or olive oil, and a sprinkling of cayenne pepper if you fancy it, and roast for 40 minutes. Allow to cool (unless you're doing it at the last minute, when leave it hot!)

Just before eating, start to heat your griddle pan, and put the kettle on while you assemble the skewers. Use a real metal skewer or something else pokey and sharp to make holes in the lamb so you don't break your rosemary twigs, and thread the lamb on them.

Cook the lamb skewers in the griddle pan for up to ten minutes, turning regularly, depending on how pink you like your lamb. I think we did ours for about six.

Meanwhile, make up your cous cous according to packet instructions with the boiling water, but lob a stock cube in, and cover it and leave it to do its thing.

While you're waiting, cut up the herbs and the tomato and juice the lemon or lime. When the cous cous is ready, stir these through, with a good glug of extra virgin olive oil if you're not trying to be good, and the butternut squash.

Heap the cous cous into pasta bowls or deep plates, and put your lamb skewers on top.