The Heathrow Injection Diet

Christmas 2008

2008-12-26T01:43:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I added to this blog, and our festive Christmas meal of yesterday seems a good way to start it up again.

We did the 7 course meal that has become traditional since moving to The Netherlands. As there are only two of us, we need something extraordinary to feel festive.

Two amuses to begin: an avocado tartare and a carrot cream brulee. The tartare is very simple, and the secret is in the dressing. The full recipe calls for 1/2 cup of muscat vinegar, 3 tablespoons maple syrup, the zest of two limes and the juice of one lime. You reduce this until it becomes syrupy. I wasn't concerned about the maple syrup, as the amount you use per spoon is so small, it hardly matters. I didn't have any limes so I left out the zest and used juice from a tired lemon.

The carrot cream brulee called for juice from 4 oranges, reduced down, and a small amount of sugar. Once again, the amount per serving is so small I don't think it's worth fussing over.

The soup was a three onion soup, using red onion, white onions and a green onion. Meh, don't bother, it tastes just like normal onion soup. What was interesting was the parmesan crisp instead of the bread and cheese you would expect. They're easy to do, just make little circles of parmesan cheese on a nonstick baking sheet and bake at 180 centigrade until they just start to brown. I would say it takes about 10-12 minutes, I simply watch them like a hawk.

This was a salad of artichoke bottoms (fresh, but you could use canned, green beans and tomato petals. I was supposed to roast the tomato petals but these are fresh: I used centigrade instead fahrenheit when trying to roast them and ended up with tomato crisps. The dressing is the tomato flavoured oil from the tomato crisps and red wine vinegar.

My cop-out: giant garlic and parsley shrimp from the Albert Hein Festive Season selection. I did have to pan-fry them, though.

The main course was venison, a very Dutch choice. In this case, fillet of wild boar, which I just pan fried and serve with steamed broccoli and chocolate sauce. The chocolate sauce was from our Cooking Club Christmas dinner. The recipe (for 15 people) asks you to soften 500 grams of shallots and 4 cloves of garlic in 30 grams of butter, with 4 sprigs of thyme, 2 teaspoons of peppercorns and 2 bay leaves. Deglaze with 4 tablespoons of raspberry vinegar, then add a bottle of red wine and reduce down to 200 ml. Add 2 litres of veal stock and reduce down to 120 ml, then strain and season to taste. Just before serving, heat the sauce then add 80 grams of grated extra-dark chocolate. You can't reheat it after adding the chocolate, so either make it for a lot of people, or measure out small quantities of the reduced mixture and adjust the amount of chocolate you add.

These are goat cheese rounds wrapped in bacon that I bought from the organic market. I baked them for about 15 minutes then let them cool to lukewarm. They are served with a port wine reduction: reduce the port down to about a third of the original volume and chill. It's actually wonderful with all soft cheeses, and you need just a little.

This dessert looks spectacular and actually tastes pretty wonderful too. Per person you need a half apple, baked. You can remove the skin after baking. I used some pistachios and dried cranberries in the centre for a festive flair, but you can leave them out and obviously for everyday low-carb eating, the cranberries should certainly vanish! Cover the apple completely with Greek or Turkish yogurt, the 10% fat version. Then scatter grated coconut over it. I used fresh coconut, which I grated myself, but you can use store bought if you can find unsweetened.

Today, it's leftovers!

Trio of Leftovers

2008-06-12T13:53:00.000-07:00

Last night I forgot to take a photo of the stunning stuffed portobello mushroom.
However, I have recreated some elements in miniature in this little trio of leftovers we had for lunch.

In the glass is leftover Chicken Avgolemono soup.

Top right is chunks of shrimp mixed with a herbed cream cheese and mayonnaise mix, on top of a slice of avocado. The original dish was portobello mushrooms with the stem removed, seasoned with salt and pepper, and then baked stem side up (well, where the stem used to be) in a 200 degree oven for 10 minutes. Then the mushrooms were flipped over and baked another 5 minutes. Leave the oven on while you fill the mushrooms.

Into the stem side went enough chunks of cook shrimp to fill it generously. This was covered with a sauce made of equal parts of mayonnaise and herbed Boursin (allow about one tablespoon per person), lemon juice (about half a teaspoon per person), and about a heaped teaspoon of parmesan per person. Mix well. The original recipe included some frozen spinach, but I didn't have any so I left it out. On top of the sauce sprinkle some parmesan as well, then pop the whole lot into the oven for about 5 or 10 minutes till the topping is warmed through. It was delicious!

Bottom right is a leftover portobello mushroom sliced in half lengthways (I had to make one mushroom serve two people so that's how I did it.) I baked it as above. Onto each half I put two thin slices of Brie, put some leftover chicken breast on top of that, and covered it with some leftover grated cheese I found in the fridge. Probably Gruyere.

Now if I hadn't told you they were leftovers, you would never have guessed, right?

Chicken Avgolemono Soup

2008-06-11T20:15:00.000-07:00

This is a variation on the soup we had at Cooking club on Monday. Well, considering that Monday's soup was made with chicken wings and a special stock, plus basmati rice plus cornflour, I guess it's more based on that soup than a variation.

First I used chicken stock I had ready-made in the fridge. Every time I roast a chicken, and we've been having a lot of those lately, I throw the bones into a slow cooker with whatever vegetable ends I have, like carrot tops and bits of onion, and simmer it overnight. Then I strain out all the bits and reduce the stock to about 1/3 of the original volume. Then I cool it before pouring it into ice cubes and freezing it. In this particular case I had about two cups of jellied stock int the fridge that I hadn't yet made cubes with.

I had a couple of roast chicken carcasses, so I picked all the good meat off those. I would guess it came to slightly over a cup. More would probably have been better. I chopped that finely, added it to the stock and heated it up to boiling point.

Then I squeezed out half a lemon, added that to an egg yolk, and beat the two until foamy. I think 2 egg yolks would have been better, given that I didn't use rice or cornflour as an added thickener. I took some of the hot chicken with stock, about half a cup, and added it to the egg mixture. I did that twice more before pouring all the egg mixture back into the stock. I stirred and stirred while it reheated over gentle heat and thickened, avoiding boiling. And then I served it up with some flat-leaf parsley for garnish.

That's one way of doing it. You could make it from scratch by using a whole chicken leg, thigh and drumstick, with a medium carrot, small leek, small celery stick, 2 or 3 parsley stems, a small onion, a bay leaf, a couple of crushed peppercorns and about a teaspoon of salt. Cover that generously with water, bring it to the boil, then let it simmer for around an hour and a half to absorb all the flavour. Strain and measure the amount of stock you have. Reduce to about three cups, or add water to make it up to three. Remove the chicken from the bones, discarding the skin, chop it finely and add it to the strained stock. Reheat, then do the bit with the 1/2 lemon and 2 egg yolks.

The lemon gives it a nice freshness of flavour.

Pineapple carpaccio

2008-05-14T19:02:00.000-07:00

It may be worth embarking on this diet just to eat this dessert. Understand that I don't really like pineapple, and you'll get just a glimmer of how fabulous it was.

You want to start with a nice ripe pineapple. The way to choose pineapple is to sniff the base. Once it starts smelling like pineapple, it is ripe, and the more pineappley, the riper.

Cut the top and base off, and then take off the peel as evenly as you can. Slice the pineapple as thinly as possible, about 1 to 2 millimetres. If you have a mandolin or electric slicer, that is ideal, otherwise just do your best with a really sharp knife and try not to cut your fingers off in the process.

Spread the slices out on a plate.

Now make the dressing. You need one part Kirsch to two parts fruit flavoured oil. I used Clementine. Lemon is more readily available and I think it will work. If you try it before I do, please post a comment and let me know.

Drizzle the dressing over the pineapple and leave it for at least half an hour to soak in. Just before serving, decorate with thick cream or yoghurt, and red berries.

Fennel cream soup

2008-05-13T02:30:00.000-07:00

The weather is still glorious, so iced soup for lunch is an option.
This one is easy.

Take yesterday's leftover fennel salad and blend it with equal volumes of yesterday's poaching liquid. Stir in some whipping cream, chill well and serve in glasses for eye appeal.

If you want to make it from scratch, because you don't have any leftover fennel salad from yesterday, here's what to do. Allow about one smallish fennel bulb per person.
Take a slice off the base of the bulb, cut the bulbs in half and cut out the hard centre core. Leave the top green bits on. Poach the bulbs in water to cover, with about half a cup of white wine as well as a teaspoon or so of salt. It takes about 15-20 minutes for the bulbs to become tender. Let them cool a little so you don't burn yourself blending them.

Put the bulbs in a blender with an equal volume of the poaching water. This doesn't have to be exact. Add 1 teaspoon of white wine vinegar and 2 teaspoons of olive oil per bulb, and about a teaspoon of parmesan cheese. Blend until smooth, stir in some whipping cream, a tablespoon or two per bulb, and chill.

You could serve this hot as well, in which case you would stir in the cream just before serving.

Steak kebabs with fennel salad

2008-05-12T21:17:00.000-07:00

It's been gloriously sunny for a week, and not much incentive to stay inside and cook. That's why I used steak for these kebabs, it cooks very quickly. Adding vegetables means you can serve more people with less steak, which is also a win.

I used mushrooms, courgettes and red pepper because that's what I had in the house. It looked pretty, anyway.

You need three kebab sticks per person, and you should soak these in a bit of oil and vinegar for about ten minutes. That helps prevent them from burning when you cook, but only if you cook quite soon after assembly.

While they soak, cut your steak into cubes of about an inch, and then cut the other vegetables to match. Put everything into a bowl and toss with some olive oil and spice mix. Use any spice mix you like, I used a sun-dried tomato mix.

Thread it onto the skewers, then cook in a grill pan till done, about 5 minutes for a mediumish steak. Turn the kebabs several times so they cook evenly.

The fennel salad needs more forethought, so you should actually do that first. Cut the tops off the fennel and set them aside. Cut a thin slice off the base as well. Those you can discard or throw into your stockpot. Cut the bulbs in half and remove the hard middle bit, then slice into manageable wedges.

Poach these wedges in water to cover, with salt and about half a cup of white wine added. They will be tender in 15 to 20 minutes. Lift them out of the water, drain them and arrange them on a plate. Make a vinaigrette with one part white wine vinegar to three parts oil and drizzle this over the fennel. Now chop up the green leaves from the tops and scatter that over the fennel with a tablespoon or two of parmesan.

Don't throw the poaching water away. It makes a nice soup base.

Veal with asparagus and red pepper dressing

2008-05-03T02:44:00.000-07:00

The dressing for this dish was awesome and I can't remember exactly how I made it.
I will buy some more red peppers and try it again to get the quantities exact and put that in the comments.

The main part of the dish is very easy. Per person you need one veal schnitzel, 2 spears of asparagus (use white or green, whichever you prefer) and 2 spring onions.

Start by preparing the asparagus. Bend the spears lightly so they break naturally. The bottom half is the woody part and you can discard that or add it to a stockpot.
Trim the top parts neatly. If you're using white asparagus, peel the outer skin off with an apple peeler if you're not handy with a knife. Then steam them until just done, which is not more than 10 to 15 minutes at most. You want them still a bit crisp, not soggy.

While they steam, pound the schnitzels as flat as you can with a meat pounder or the back of a heavy knife. Trim the edges so you have a piece as rectangular as possible, then cut them in half. You want two short pieces, not two long pieces. Trim your spring onions to about the same size as the asparagus spears.

Season the schnitzels lightly with salt and pepper. Then place an asparagus spear and a spring onion across each half, and roll the schnitzel around them. Fasten with a toothpick or two.

Heat some cooking oil in a pan that's big enough to hold the little parcels. I use cooking grade/non-virgin olive oil or coconut oil usually. Put the parcels in toothpick side down to seal them, and pan-fry them for about 5 to 7 minutes, turning regularly so that they brown evenly.

You need a stick blender for the dressing, which is one part wine vinegar, three parts extra-virgin olive oil and and unknown quantity of deep red pepper.

Lamb with peanuts

2008-04-06T22:43:00.000-07:00

After a breakfast of fruit and yoghurt, and emergency food when we got back from the concert (grilled vegetables with feta) we needed something a little hearty for supper.

It came in the form of a lamb stew with peanuts, which falls into the life is wonderful category. The recipe came from epicurious: as I didn't have any jabaneros I used my canned chilis in adobo sauce instead. And I didn't remove them.

Vegetable platter with goat cheese

2008-04-05T06:50:00.000-07:00

For lunch we had leftovers from our evening meal in Antwerp: blanquette de veau, beef carbonnade and I cooked up some green beans to go with it. It was a heavy meal, and filling, and we could probably have skipped dinner quite happily.

We didn't. But we kept it light. A vegetable platter with tomato vinegar butter and baked goat cheese.

The goat's cheese is easy: buy the ready sliced rounds, put them on a baking tray and bake at 180C for about 10 minutes till they start browning. At the same time I put in a platter of cherry tomatoes drizzled with oil.

While they baked, I steamed some vegetables of choice: in this case, asparagus and courgettes.

While they steamed, I melted three tablespoons butter in a small pan, and when that was a nutty brown colour, stirred in a tablespoon of tomato vinegar. You could use a champagne or herb vinegar too, or even plain lemon juice. I also fried a couple of mushrooms.

All the vegetables went onto a plate with the cheese, and then I drizzled the butter over them. Delicious!

Shuwarma ex pita

2008-04-03T21:59:00.000-07:00

Normally you would expect a shuwarma to be served in pita bread. In fact, one day I must try this cheat in a thick slice of split aubergine. Not today, though. Here, I simply grilled some slices of aubergine sliced lengthwise. These can soak up vast quantities of oil, so I use a mixture of oil and water very successfully.

On top of that you place your fried shuwarma strips, and decorate with chopped lettuce, onion, tomato, sour cream and grated cheese.

Or whatever you takes your fancy.

Rack of lamb with Marsala Sauce

2008-03-11T21:24:00.000-07:00

This is leftovers from Cooking Club. Rack of lamb is easy enough: heat the oven to 160C. While it heats, sprinkle the lamb with salt and black pepper, then brown in a hot pan with oil. Stick it on a baking tray lined with foil (saves cleaning!) and cook for 15-20 minutes depending how pink you like your meat. Take it out and let stand for 5 minutes before cutting into chops for serving.

The sauce was more complex and you need to start it long in advance. Finely chop about three cloves of garlic and soften them in a little oil. Then add 1 cup of marsala and 1 cup of stock. We used canned lamb stock, but you could as easily use chicken. Just strain out any bits of meat that may be in it before using. Stir in 1 tablespoon of tomato puree and about two tablespoons of red wine.Bring it to the boil, and then turn it onto simmer and reduce it down to about 1/3 to 1/4 of the original volume. Beat in a knob of butter and stir in some flat-leaf parsley and your sauce is ready!

I served this with the leftover green peas, double-shelled broad beans and peeled cherry tomatoes. Yes I know the peas and beans aren't on the food list, but that's what we had so that's what I ate. This would be nice with fresh asparagus, tomato and green beans or sugar snaps, which is what I will recommend for you!

Crustless Broccoli, Bacon and Goat Cheese Quiche

2008-03-09T22:35:00.000-07:00

This was reasonably quick and easy, which I needed after spending longer at Scrabble than I intended. Plus I hadn't eaten much during the day, just some nuts and cheese. So I needed something robust for supper.

This was made with 125 gram bacon strips, which I fried until crisp; about 1 cup of broccoli flowerets, which I steamed in the microwave, and about 60 grams of soft goat's cheese, the kind that comes in a little roll. You can get these cooked while you heat the oven to 180C.

Sprinkle the bacon and broccoli over the base of an ovenproof dish, and spread the goat cheese across the top. I cut the piece into think slices, so they were little round.

Then beat 2 eggs with 300 ml of milk or milk and cream (I added cream, pour it over the bacon, broccoli and cheese, and pop it in the oven for about 20 minutes till it's golden brown. You don't really need to add salt to the quiche custard because the bacon is salty enough.

This served two of us.

Duck with apple and sauerkraut

2008-03-08T22:47:00.000-08:00

Multiple courses this evening!I was feeling celebratory as I have a lovely new 22inch wide screen monitor which makes the food photos look fabulous.

Let's begin with the soup. It was sublime! Carrots are not my favourite vegetable, but we've been having a lot of them in the weekly vegetable bag. I took three medium ones, and half a bunch of celery, and sliced that all up. Then I put them in a pot over gentle heat to let them soften a bit while I peel about an inch of fresh ginger and chopped it quite finely. I added it to the vegetables with about 750 ml of chicken stock. You could easily use water; I just happened to have stock in the fridge. Bring that to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer till the vegetables are soft. Add salt and pepper to taste, then purée it till smooth. Add about half a cup of cream, then reheat very gently. I served it in a glass, and floated a little cream on top, sprinkled with ground ginger. This I will make for Gordon Ramsay should he ever come to dinner. Any famous chef, I don't care.

This orange and goat's cheese salad is finicky more than anything else, because you need to prepare the orange carefully. I used one orange for two people, but you can use as many as you like. You need to peel them, and then separate the flesh from the membranes. Do this over a bowl so you can catch the juice. Check out how much juice you have, and add about half as much lemon juice to it, then twice as much oil. Blend till smooth. Toss the oranges in some of the dressing, and drizzle the rest over the plate and the goat's cheese.

Duck breast is always quick and easy, so it made up for the care that went into the oranges. I use one duck breast for two people because I find it so rich. Sprinkle it with salt and pepper, then put it in a pan over low heat, skin side down and just leave the fat to sizzle out. After about ten minutes you can turn the duck breast over and cook the meaty side in the fat, also slowly. While you're doing this, you can chop some apple and mix it with sauerkraut, and heat that. I used half an apple to about a cup of sauerkraut. The other half I cut into thin slices.

When the duck stops looking red on the outside, after another 7-10 minutes, take it out of the fat and let it rest. While it does that, fry the apple slices in the duck fat, also over low heat.

Slice the duck, and serve it on the sauerkraut topped with the apple.

Don't season the sauerkraut at all: I did this and it was too salty. Otherwise, the combination was nice and a different take on duck.

Roast chicken with herb butter

2008-02-27T20:25:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, I completely forgot to take a photo before eating. Probably because the cooking did not go smoothly.

It started off when I saw recipe for Roast chicken with sorrel butter in one of my books. What caught my eye is that the chef roasted the chicken without legs. Now, I just happened to have a legless chicken in the fridge, as I had removed the legs and smoked them.

I have no sorrel, but I thought sage and rosemary could be nice, so I made the butter and tucked it under the skin as instructed. The recipe said it should be ready in 25 minutes.

I took it out after 25 minutes, looked at it, and put it back for another 5 to brown some. It didn't brown all that much, but I left it to stand for 5 minutes and steam-fried some cabbage. When the standing time was up, I cut the chicken and it was still just too pink inside.

So I put it back in the oven for another ten minutes, and gave it some microwave help at 180 watts as well.

After letting it stand again, it was still slightly pink. I cut a thin slice off the top, that was white, and we ate that. The cat got some pink stuff.

It would seem even a legless chicken needs a full cooking time. But the herb butter was nice.

Bangers!

2008-02-26T20:52:00.000-08:00

These pork bangers are not from the expat shop. I made them myself, with my own two hands. I used this recipe and may I say it was a good one! Yes, there are breadcrumbs in it, but spread across all that meat I doubt it matters much. I made a half recipe, and used about half a cup of breadcrumbs instead of three quarters. Also, next time I may reduce the salt in the seasoning slightly; I found the sausages marginally salty. Luckily, the cabbage was very plain.

The meat I chopped in my food processor. The butcher at In de Bogaard gave me some sausage casing when I went in to find out where to buy some; I filled the casing using a pastry bag and my widest nozzle.

I only made four, because the pastry bag was hard work. Time to look into an electric sausage machine I think, because I could do this more often. There are a whole lot of recipes on that site!

Steak and mushrooms

2008-02-25T21:03:00.000-08:00

Paul had the day off, and what a lovely sunny day it was too! Cold meats and salads, then - let's pretend it's summer.

The carrot salad was the same easy one I've become addicted to: the dressing is one part passion fruit vinegar to three parts oil. That's it. The other dressing was leftover from the Cooking club Partner's Evening, as was the cold lamb. Otherwise it's all pretty straightforward.

We needed a quick supper, as Paul had to do a telephone survey and get to choir practice time. Grilled steak - what better or quicker? Cream does not go well with singing, so I did plain fried mushrooms. Normally I like sour cream in there, in the stroganov style. Plain, steam-fried beans.

Sole with Lemon Butter

2008-02-15T21:55:00.000-08:00

Sole is one of my favourite fishes. We used to get quite nice frozen baby soles in South Africa, so when I saw frozen sole here I bought some and stuck it in the freezer for one of those days.

Well, today was one of those days, so I whipped out two soles. Unfortunately it seems that these soles should have defrosted in the fridge first - and not be cooked from frozen as is usually the case. Tough. I pan fried it from frozen in butter, then used the same pan to make lemon butter sauce. This is easy, just melt some butter (however much looks good to you, a couple of tablespoons is more than enough for two people) and let it get slightly brown, then stir in some lemon juice (how lemony do you like it? I never measure the lemon, I just add it until it smells right, but you could taste it I guess.)

I served the sole with lettuce, tomato and carrot salad.

It was a little tasteless, much like the sole I had in England. Whether this is because it was cooked from frozen, or because it's just naturally tasteless, I'll only know next time I cook it - then I will defrost it in advance, as suggested.

But I suspect that fresh sole from the fish shop is still the way to go.

Beef curry in coconut milk

2008-02-14T21:34:00.000-08:00

The curries I like best are those simmered in coconut milk, so that's what I did here. I didn't use any particular recipe, just curry basics: fry onion, ginger and garlic in oil until soft but not coloured, add curry spice to taste. Then the cubed meat goes in, and you brown it slightly. Then you add the coconut milk and water to cover the lot and leave it to simmer for a couple of hours, checking to make sure it doesn't boil dry. The liquid should reduce down to a gravy that clings to the meat.
Stir in some garam masala towards the end, to round out the flavours, and check for salt at the same time.

Normally I would like to do a couple of sambals with a curry, such as yogurt, cucumber, chopped tomato and onion. In fact, I had none of these in the house. I did have a mango, and a wonderful sambal it made!

Instead of rice, I steam-fried some aubergine and then mashed it coarsely. It wasn't a great mix with the curry, because aubergine has a particular taste; it's not a bland vegetable. But it was all I had. If I were shopping particularly for this meal, I would get cauliflower, which goes with everything.

Shuwarma

2008-02-13T21:29:00.000-08:00

This is the dead straightforward shuwarma strips you can buy at any supermarket butcher in the Netherlands. These were spiced with provencal spices.

The issue here is how to serve them without pita? I piled it onto slices of grilled aubergine. Slice the aubergine lengthwise for best effect, brush with olive oil (NOT extra-virgin!) and grill in a hot grillpan for a couple of minutes each side. You can pour in a little water while grilling: aubergines absorb an awful lot of stuff, and while I have no religious objections to eating oil-soaked aubergine, I just think it tastes better if the oil is diluted somewhat.

For the rest, do all the normal shuwarma toppings: chopped onion, chopped tomato, sour cream. It was yummy.

Cooking Club Leftovers

2008-02-12T21:14:00.000-08:00

A three course tasting menu of leftovers! First on the list is the salad with liver and black pudding. Luckily I had some leftover, if somewhat bitter, lettuce in the fridge to make the liver and black pudding look more like a salad.

This is the leftover langoustine I described yesterday, complete with foamy goat's cheese sauce. Also the leftover ratatouille.

Finally, the leftover rabbit tournedo. Here I stirred mustard into the leftover goat's cheese sauce to make a mustard sauce to accompany the morsel of meat.

That gives you a brief glimpse of what we do at cooking club. There is a movie you can watch, taken in April last year, if you'd like to know more.

Cooking Club

2008-02-11T02:06:00.000-08:00

No photos today as I don't usually take a camera to cooking club. I did once make a movie, which you can see here if you're really interested. I may redo it with a voice-over and post it elsewhere.

One of the things my cooking club has to understand is that if you're serving a six-course meal, then each course needs to be just a couple of mouthfuls. I usually eat half or less when the courses grow too big, and take the rest of the plate home, so you may still get to see some photos during the week.

The menu was:
Trio of Amuses. Well, I always through trio meant three, not an entire platter. I guess because they made a lot they thought it best to serve it all. The trio comprised:
- choux pastry filled with a trout cream. I managed to snag one of the platters with just one of these, as I'm not supposed to be eating any flour at the moment. I did, of course, on the principle that one day should not make that much of a difference in the bigger scheme of things.
- courgette roll-ups filled with ricotta. These were very nice and low-carb friendly. I may well make them and then you will be able to see what they were.
- A quails egg on a bed of radish.

Salad with calf liver and black pudding
Those are heavy meats, and you would expect just a sliver of each. Nope. That was a main meal and most of it came home with me. It was a bit of lettuce topped with a generous slice each of liver, black pudding and fried apple. The black pudding is one specially made for Paul van Waarden, one of our Michelin chefs, and you can buy it at Slagerij Waayer , 275 Frederik Hendriklaan, The Hague. I've never eaten black pudding before and found it delicious!

Jerusalem Artichoke Soup with Jerusalem Artichoke Chips
A very nice soup made with equal parts poultry stock and milk and finished with cream. Some lemon and shallots, but just a touch. Some of the artichokes were sliced thin and deep fried for garnish. I don't know if Jerusalem Artichokes are on the allowed list, they aren't mentioned, but I guess they're not commonly eaten in this part of the world.

Smoked langoustines with ratatouille and Goat's Cheese sauce
This was the dish I cooked, with Martine. We peeled and cleaned the langoustines (2 per person) and then smoked them for about seven minutes in stove-top smoker. Those are cute and I may get one. Then me poured basil and garlic oil over them (15 basil leaves, a clove of garlic, 100ml oil blended together) and left them covered in the fridge.

Interesting ratatouille method: chop up one aubergine, one red pepper, one yellow pepper, one courgette, into tiny 1/4 inch squares. These are each fried separately, until soft and just cooked, without colouring. One onion+one shallot+one clove garlic are all chopped finely and softened and then combined with a bit of tomato paste. I think I'd leave the paste out, it dominated the dish somewhate. The vegetables are combined and warmed just before serving.

The sauce was dead easy: 100ml vegetable stock, 200 ml cream and 75 gram goat's cheese for 15 people. Warm through and melt the cheese, then beat until foamy.

Just before serving we warmed the langoustines in the oven for about two minutes.

I have leftover ratatouille, sauce, and uncooked langoustines. The smoked ones were very rich, by the way, and two was more than enough.

Rabbit tournedos with mustard sauce

I brought most of this home as well, so a picture will come later.

Mandarin sorbet, chocolate tarte and orange compote

Yes, I did, I'm afraid. They did give me the merest sliver of chocolate tarte, which was a buttery crust with nuts and a chocolate ganache topping. Something I will make I think, it was delicious - but it will wait till I'm at least the weight I was in England. The biggest culprit was certainly the sorbet, as this is made with sugar syrup.

However, I am no heavier this morning than I was yesterday. I may take an extra dose of metformin during the day to compensate for the sugars.

Lunch was leftover greek chicken with carrot salad and tomato. Breakfast was simply a bowl of all-bran with milk though I had a bit of yoghurt at around 11. I just did not wake up hungry like I normally do!

Danish Cabbage Soup and Leftover Lamb

2008-01-05T04:17:00.000-08:00

Saturday again, and once again we have things to do other than eat. It's sad that, as eating can be such a pleasure.

Anyway, brunch was a trio of hams, one from Spain, one from Italy, and one normal everyday ham. There is not much to choose from between the two specialty hams and I would guess you can interchange them. The taste differences are subtle.

Dinner we started with a Danish Cabbage Soup. This is actually surprisingly delicious! Also very easy to make.

For three people, slice a small onion, remove the core from about 400 gram of cabbage and slice the leaves very thinly. Melt a heaped tablespoon of butter and stir in about a teaspoon of soft brown sugar. Really, this is such a small amount of sugar it doesn't make any difference in anybody's life! Stir the sugar till it melts and caramelises a litte, which takes about two minutes. Stir the sliced onion and cabbage into the caramelised sugar and cook for about four minutes, till they're well-coated and starting to simmer, then pour in 400 ml of water or stock - I used chicken stock. Add a pinch of allspice, some salt and pepper to taste, cover it and let it simmer gently for about 35 or 40 minutes. Just before serving stir in about 75 ml of sour cream or decent yogurt, heat through and enjoy. It really was very nice!

Then we finished off the lamb from the other night, with some pumpkin and fennel. The vegetables were steamed very plainly, as the lamb fills your mouth with flavour. It was not as good as expected but perhaps we should have eaten the leftovers the very next day and not left them as long as I did.

Leftover salmon

2008-01-04T04:25:00.000-08:00

Unless I vary from the usual egg and something, I guess there's no reason to write it down. I do need to make a better effort with lunch though.

Dinner today started with a simple salad of lettuce, tomato, onion and cashew. Probably a dressing of some kind, they're easy enough to make: one part vinegar, three parts oil, seasoning to taste. The trick comes in choosing nice vinegar and nice oil. Dressings are where extra virgin olive oils take pride of place: you ruin them when you cook them.

There was still leftover salmon, so I cooked some leeks until tender and combined the two, with a dash of cream to round out the flavour. Nothing exciting going on here at the moment.

Marinated pork

2008-01-03T04:12:00.000-08:00

Breakfast and Lunch have long since been forgotten, but luckily photos remind me of dinner. It was a Thursday, so probably egg for breakfast, nuts and cheese for lunch. That nuts and cheese is very addictive.

Dinner was one of the sections from the gourmetten pack that we hadn't yet eaten: little morsels of marinated pork. I grilled them and served them with leftover sauerkraut and carrots. Sour cream just ... goes... with sauerkraut.

Steak, red cabbage and guacamole

2008-01-02T04:19:00.001-08:00

Back to the usual breakfast. Egg. In this case and omelette with mushroom, cheese (recognise any leftovers?) and tomato.

Mid-morning I was hungry. I guess that's what comes from ditching the diet for a day. Rather than let my blood sugar plummet, I had slice of melon with yogurt and nuts.

Lunch was another slice of melon with 2 slices parma ham. Someone has to eat the stuff, it may as well be me. I also had some vegetable soup with slices of cheese instead of bread.

Dinner was a simple grilled steak with guacamole and a red cabbage and apple salad.

The salad was equal volumes of thinly sliced cabbage and peeled apples cut into julienne strips tossed in a dressing. Use any dressing you like. It doesn't keep well, so don't make too much.

Ditch the diet for a day

2008-01-01T04:22:00.000-08:00

I need time off from this full time eating.

Breakfast. Well, seeing as I bought an entire melon to make two melon balls for the amuses, breakfast was leftover melon. A generous slice with yoghurt and two slices of Parma ham.

Then I gathered all the leftover bits of pieces from last night's Gourmetten. I softened the onion and fennel in a little oil, then added all the other vegetables plus the leftover chili in adobe, added water and let that simmer till I thought about it again. When I did, I tasted it, and it was a little hot with the chili. So I added the two turkey drumsticks and let it simmer some more until I thought about.

When we felt ready for lunch, I removed the drumsticks, took the meat off the bones, took off the soggy skin, chopped the meat and added it back into the soup. Everything looked a little thin, so I took half the soup, puréed it and added it back. Hey presto, instant body. For serving I stirred in the leftover sour cream and grated some cheese.

That was it I'm afraid. No salad. No 50 gram of something proteiny plus a side of veggies. Just soup.

Dinner was much the same. I took one complete set of meats, little marinated pork pieces, and grilled them. We had that with some sliced raw courgette (not carpaccioed, though I did add a little feta for the look) and a couple of cherry tomatoes. And we drank lots of wine.

I also took no metformin today, not at lunch nor before bedtime. (Too much wine!)

As I said, ditch the diet for a day.

Gourmetten

2007-12-31T04:20:00.000-08:00

Breakfasts don't really change all that much here. Usually I settle for an egg until I can't face them anymore. And themes recur. Yesterday was ham and mushrooms. Today was scrambled egg, ham and mushrooms. Surprise.

Lunch? Who knows? Who cares? I was probably too busy thinking about dinner.

The Dutch have a custom called Gourmetten. I've never really understood how this works, but I bought myself a Gourmetten Set, which is basically a Raclette Grill. Mine is kinda nice because it has a stone grill and a little ridged teflon thing.

While I was wandering around the shop looking for ideas for a nice New Year's Even dinner I spotted a tray of Gourmetten meats which had no sausages or crumbed things on it. It was in a box, so I picked it up and was trying to figure out what was in it, when a man came up, rattled off the contents, and stuck a 35% off sticker on it. Well, that decided that, then.

As you can see, it's a selection of mostly pork with various marinades, little hamburgers cut into quarters, and some plain beef.

Being new to all of this, I wasn't entirely sure what to do, but I also prepared a plate of vegetables to cook on my toy.

In separate bowls I also had little servings of sauerkraut and broccoli.

I had an idea one needed sauces, so I made my simple cream sauce. (Yes, I know the diet says AVOID cream due to cholesterol, but it doesn't say NO cream, and in any case I'll worry about cream once my body starts producing less cholesterol than my food provides. Body fat is the biggest source of cholesterol!)

Anyway, to make the sauce, pour plain whipping cream into a pot and cook it over a low heat until it reduces to half. I guess you could add salt and pepper, or any flavouring you like, but believe me, there's nothing wrong with a simple cream sauce.

I grated some mature Gouda, and crumbled some roquefort into a small bowl.I chopped up some chillis in adobo (thanks MK for bringing them all the way from the States!), some garlic and some olives.

The way we handled this was we cooked the veg on the stone grill, and the meat on the teflon grill, then we combined them in the little raclette dishes, covered them in toppings and put them under the grill to brown.

Well, there were just two of us and the set is for eight, so we had four raclette pans each at any time. I think we're supposed to get by with one. So having done this now, I think a better way would be to have a salad or two ready, a tray of vegetables and toppings, the meat/fish/chicken, and bread for those not on a starch-free diet. Cook the meat on the grill while you whip up a delicious little vegetable accompaniment in your (single) raclette dish at the same time. I'll try it sometime and let you know.

The diet says to eat only three meals a day, but we have a New Year tradition that needs to be observed. We see the Old Year out with a little dessert (an ender) just before midnight. In this case, it was a simple baked apple with cream, but very delicious. We open the champagne, and then just after midnight we have a little starter. In this case it was a trio of amuses that I made myself.

We have an amuse spoon with salmon and sour cream; a lollipop with a cherry tomato cut in half and sandwiched around a filling of brie and a little glass with serrano ham and a ball of melon.

Happy new year!

Moroccan lamb

2007-12-30T08:17:00.001-08:00

You may have noticed that I've got as bored with my photos as I get with my food and have tried new ways of cropping them. They look so nice when they're large and full screen on my computer, and sort of ... sad... when they're shrunk to a manageable size.
So here's an exciting crop of today's breakfast, ham and mushrooms.

Lunch was the main meal of the day. Paul was starving because the smell of the stew cooking all morning and had been titivating his taste buds.
We finished off the broccoli soup. There was enough to fill the amuse glasses. More like 50 ml each than 500 gram, but it's still a soup course.

Salad. Umm, how about a tomato, feta and olive salad. It's a shared tomato, but it's still a salad!

Then we had the Moroccan Lamb Stew from the Epicurious website. I left out the honey, mainly because I was too lazy to fetch it from the pantry. I don't think 1 tablespoon of honey across a kilogram of meat is going to affect anybody's diet too adversely. I served it with chinese cabbage stir-fried with finely-chopped fresh ginger and garlic. A poor substitute for couscous I know, but needs must...

The lamb was nice. I really like the flavour of the orange coming through. I think it will be stunning tomorrow, after an overnight infusion. I made a full recipe, so there will be plenty of opportunity to test the theory.

Supper was leftovers, in the form of a salmon mousse. This is really easy to make! i took the leftover roast salmon and leftover smoked salmon, and mashed them to a creamy paste in the food processor. You can use just roast salmon, or just smoked salmon, or if you don't have any leftovers, open a can of salmon. What the heck! Then add salt and pepper to taste, and a spoon or so of sour cream, yoghurt or ordinary cream. Voila! Delicious.

Of course, this is fabulous with thinly sliced bread, currently verboten. I used thinly sliced fennel, which is kinda tasteless but crunchy. I guess you could use any firm leaf as well, such as raw Belgian Endive or Little Gem lettuce.

Er, leftover turkey and sauerkraut, take 2

2007-12-29T08:54:00.000-08:00

Paul was having a long doze in, so I had half a mango and yoghurt while he slept. Not much of a breakfast, but still a breakfast.

Lunchtime, the sun was shining. It was icy cold out, but the sun was shining. Celebration! I made a salad platter with whatever looked salady in the fridge and some leftover roast salmon.

Dinner was scratchy. No soup, no salad. The same ingredients as last night, except that I had broccoli instead of carrots. And I changed the presentation slightly.

I sliced the leftover turkey breast thinly. I grated some cheese. Then I put a small cylinder (two actually) on some aluminium foil on a baking sheet. (The cylinders are actually bean tins with both ends removed.)

First I put in a layer of thinly sliced turkey. Then a layer of sauerkraut. Then a very thin layer of sour cream and grated cheese. Then another layer of turkey. Another layer of sauerkraut. You have to press everything down firmly so it holds its shape. Very firmly. Then I mixed the grated cheese with some mayonnaise (bought, but not low fat, this won't work with low fat mayo) and topped the creation with that.

I put it in a 180C oven for about 12 minutes until the cheese mayo mixture had melted and looked yummy and bubbly. Took everything out of the oven, transferred the cylinders to plates and sprinkled some steam-fried broccoli florets (yes, the same ones I didn't use for the soup!) around the plate. These were flavoured with salt, black pepper and nutmeg but you could use anything that turns you on. Then it's time to carefully remove the tins and serve the leftovers and everyone thinks you're a brilliant cook.

You could call them Turkey Reuben Stacks if you wanted to be really fancy.

Leftover Turkey and Sauerkraut

2007-12-28T06:47:00.000-08:00

A bit of fun with breakfast. I scooped the insides out of two tomatoes and filled them with scrambled egg. They don't take a lot of egg though, I need bigger tomatoes, so i served the rest on the side with some bacon.

I was still hungry so I finished off the half orange left over from last night's butternut salad with some yoghurt and nuts.

Lunchtime, I mixed the scooped out tomato with the last of the vegetable soup and warmed that through, and ate it with some yoghurt as garnish. I had another courgette carpaccio. Then I had two handfuls of nuts and some cheese. I couldn't face anything heavier.

I was unmotivated for dinner. The vegetable pack was full of cabbage: red cabbage, chinese cabbage, sauerkraut. Oh wow.

I had it mind to do a nice turkey sauerkraut thing, but didn't have the energy nor the appetite to be honest. So we had the turkey thighs, some sauerkraut and some sliced carrot for a bit of colour. There were beetroots in the bag, which would have been better for colour and would have suited the sauerkraut better, but they are verboten. I might give them to my neighbour.

Roast Salmon

2007-12-27T04:04:00.000-08:00

Breakfast was virtually the same as Christmas day, without the new dish.

Lunchtime I took a single metformin, I think I need to work myself into the lunchtime dose slowly. I had with a mug of leftover soup from last night. I made a courgette carpaccio to follow, that was my salad.

Then I had a sliver of turkey with gravy, a handful of nuts and 2 nartjies. How much is a handful? Well, I weighed it. 10 grams.
A nartjie is a South African generic term for all things mandarin, clementine and the like. Here's what I had, and the size.

The shops were open and I needed some basic stuff like catfood. I trawled through the post-Christmas markdowns and found a side of salmon for roasting. OK it's Scottish salmon, which I normally avoid because the stuff is so full of hormones. But I guess once in a while it can't be too bad.

We started with a broccoli soup, which I made with the thick stalky parts of the broccoli that aren't great to eat as a vegetable. Just cut the stalks off your broccoli and save the florets. Easy. I steamed those until tender. While they steamed I just softened up some onion and celery over a slow heat. I threw the whole lot into the blender with some of the water from steaming and a couple of cubes of frozen reduced stock from the deep freeze, and then reheated it. I served it in glasses with a little cream poured over the top.

Then I made a butternut salad. I peeled a piece of butternut and grated it, then mixed it with some orange zest, orange pieces and the resultant orange juice. Normally I like to do this with passion fruit, but it's winter here and my choices are limited. Raw butternut is fine! Try it!

I did the roast salmon with some steamed and glazed belgian endive. You know, I think I don't like this endive stuff much. It really is a bitter vegetable. I ate the inside bits, and only about half the salmon. It was too much food.

Roast Pork leftovers

2007-12-26T04:02:00.000-08:00

Breakfast was not leftovers, Breakfast was a BLT omelette. It was delicious!

Also, I'm getting worried about not eating enough food. So today we definitely aimed for three meals. I we used up the leftover duck in a fresh salad. You don't need a recipe, you can see all the ingredients! A nice vinaigrette is fine as a dressing.

For dinner I tried to follow the diet suggestions, though in greatly reduced quantities.

A tomato and mozzarella to start.

I revisited yesterday's soup by adding the tomato offcuts from breakfast, plus the pumpkin I didn't use before, and whizzed it up to get a totally different colour! I did warm it, but the tomato kept its fresh taste and gave a nice tang.

And then it was the leftover pork roast from the other night. I cooked a little plain broccoli to go with it. There was also leftover gravy with onion and green beans in it.

Three whole meals on a public holiday!

Christmas!

2007-12-25T22:59:00.000-08:00

Despite my best intentions we ended up with a two-meal day.
A late brunch, almost lunch, of scrambled egg, smoked salmon and a little tomato on the side. I served them in the new dishes I got for Christmas.

Besides the turkey, I hadn't really thought about Christmas dinner at all. But there was plenty of stuff in the house, so it was easy to busk it. I made a brine for the turkey (300 mls salt, 6 litres of water, a handful each of peppercorns, juniper berries and star anise, plus about 100 ml of brown sugar. Bring this to the boil, add another 6 litres of cold water and let it cool. Then put the turkey in a LARGE tub, cover with the brine, cover the tub and leave it in a cool place for 2 hours per kilogram).

I put my turkey tub outside for four hours, rinsed it off and then roasted it breast side down for 45 minutes. At that stage I turned it, added the parnsips to the same dish and put the mushrooms in alongside and left it in the oven for another 30 minutes. It cooked at 180C.

Let's begin with a photo of the festive table.

You can see the now-familiar amuses from Albert Heijn. That's the last of them. One was paté and cranberry sauce with cream cheese, and the other was melon and ham. The cranberry sauce was probably a no no but at less than a tablespoon, and plenty of protein in the meal to balance it out, I decided it would be fine.

We can buy carpaccio packs here, and I bought one rather than make my own. So all I had to do was put the beef slices on the plates, sprinkle them with dressing, pine nuts, and parmesan, and leave them to stand to come up to room temperature and infuse with flavour.

Soup was easy. I puréed a selection of the leftover roast vegetables (trying to leave the pumpkin out so I would get a nice green colour) with a bit of stock and heated it slowly. The garnish is fresh chopped peeled tomato.

Then came the mushrooms, which by now had cooked. I took them out of the oven along with the turkey and left everything to stand, the turkey especially needs to rest before being carved. I took the centre stem out of the mushrooms, seasoned the mushroom cup and then tossed on some sliced cooked bacon and sliced red pepper. I covered that with slices of goat cheese and left it to bake for 30 minutes. 20 minutes may have been better, but I was eating the earlier courses while it baked so I didn't check them.

The mushrooms were very rich, so a little palate-cleansing salad was very welcome. This was just lettuce, radish, olives and little of the now almost finished wasabi ginger dressing, that tastes neither of wasabi nor ginger.

At last, the highlight of the meal, the turkey, with roast parsnips and nuked green beans. The parsnips were woody and unappetising so we didn't eat them. Clearly they need to cooked and served when very, very fresh.

And yes, we did squash in dessert. Mango and yoghurt, layered in a glass, and topped with a hint of whipped cream.

That was a lot of food! I felt quite replete at the end of the meal and had to sit relaxing on the couch for it all to settle, drinking lovely Christmas tea from Simon Levelt. It's a tea laced with dried fruit and spices, and is like gluhwein, except non-alcholic. Wonderful!

We had Wolf Blass champers with the first couple of courses, which was disappointing. It had very little mousse, although the flavour was nice. The main wine was the Wolf Blass President's Selection, which was rich and full-bodied and very satisfying.

Duck a l'orange

2007-12-24T02:51:00.000-08:00

What better way to start the festive week? Simple scrambled egg, a couple of rashers of bacon, fried mushrooms, a little salad.

Lunch I thought I'd have the leftover garlic prawns and some avocado, but the prawns looked so unappetising as a leftover even the cat wouldn't eat them. So I threw them out and just ate the avocado.

Dinner was quite late as we put up the Christmas tree and made the lounge look festive. It was a duck breast a l'orange from the Albert Heijn festive range. I roasted some vegetables alongside (hint: I use a melon baller to scoop out pumpkin once I'd sliced it in half; much easier than trying to peel the bloody thing, and much prettier than my uneven cubes.)

Roasted veggies are easy and delicious. Take any selection you like, get them into bite-size pieces, put them in a casserole with a cover or a cooking bag, add s&p and drizzle with olive oil. Shake well to coat all the veggies with the olive oil then put in a 180C oven for about half an hour.

I tried some fresh orange slices with the duck. If the oranges had been sweeter (yikes, they were sour!) it would probably have been magnificent rather than OK.

Lamb chops with aubergine

2007-12-23T01:12:00.000-08:00

Does this look familiar? It's the chopped beef for the moussaka, except I added a whole two tomatoes to it to make it juicier. Paul had his over a slice of bread. I made do with getting carbs from 3 nartjies. Just not the same as having the gravy over bread, though. There's something about bread and gravy...

So that was breakfast. Paul was going to sing in the Messiah and had to be at the Anton Philipzaal by 11am for rehearsals. I joined him there at about 13h30 and we had lunch at Havana. We had to wait a long time and barely had time to eat. I ordered a tomato soup and a chicken and cashew nut salad. I didn't eat much of the soup; I don't think it had too much real tomato in it anyway and given the time constraints the salad looked the safer bet.

We got home well after 6, so my intended lamb stew was once again postponed. For dinner we clocked up another two of the amuses from Albert Heijn, I'm building up a collection of those little glasses. I need 8.

Instead of stew we had lamb chops. I had originally thought these would make a nice Christmas Day course, but that was before I bought the turkey. These I doused with Robertson Barbecue Spice (bless all my friends and family who keep me supplied with this wonderful, unbeateable South African spice mix.)

I FRIED (yes, in lots of oil) some aubergine slices. What the heck, it's low carb, and aubergine is really nice fried. It absorbs so much liquid that normally I par-steamfry it, and then finish it in a little oil. (In fact, if you ever really have to drink half a cup of olive oil for any reason, just put it in a pan, and fry aubergine slices in it. A much tastier way of ingesting neat oil.)

I finished that off with a sprinkling of feta. What better combination?

Instant Moussaka

2007-12-22T08:34:00.001-08:00

The neighbour came around just as I was serving brunch, which was the last pieces of fish from the Gourmet platter, scrambled egg and tomato. I have no idea what kind of fish it was, it tasted a bit like tilapia, but it had some orange marinade stuff on it.
It was fine, not great.

She wanted to borrow cutlery, crockery and glassware for Christmas day, as she is having 12 guests and has nothing. But she knows well that I am well-stocked! I suggested she may want to serve her soup in shot glasses, but she said it was a plain vegetable soup and not fancy enough for glasses. Ha ha ha. I told her it was the glasses that made the soup fancy, and not the other way round.

Perhaps she should have popped around at dinnertime. I had planned to make a lamb stew, but left it a bit late. So instead we started with a melon and ham amuse from the Albert Heijn Festive range.

Aren't those glasses cute? That's why I bought them.

Then tomato carpaccio. I have an electric slicer, not a mandolin, and I cut the tomato about 2mm thick. I used bottled dressing (wasabi and ginger, which tastes neither of wasabi nor ginger, but makes a reasonable vinaigrette), s&p, parsley and feta as a sprinkle over the top. It's always nice to let these stand for a while so the tomatoes can absorb the flavours.

Main course was leftovers. There was about 250 gram of leftover roast beef in the cold drawer and I wanted to use it up before it went off. I chopped it finely in the food processor, and cooked it up with some chopped shallot, a peeled tomato, and a dash of red wine. That mix went into individual ramekins (there was too much for just 2) and I topped it with peeled aubergine slices. Very thin slices. Then I made a sauce with one egg, half a cup of milk and about 4 tablespoons of freshly grated parmesan cheese, which I poured on top of the aubergine. All that went into the oven for 20 minutes, and hey presto, instant moussaka.

I served it with cooked beans tossed in walnut oil, with walnuts added for show.

Fish Quartet

2007-12-22T08:32:00.000-08:00

What did I eat for breakfast and lunch? Who knows, because I have forgotten completely and Paul is no help. Almost certainly an egg for breakfast. Omelette? Scrambled? Did I have fruit? Can't remember.

Lunch, ah yes, I recall eating the leftover roast vegetables with some cheese. I did not have leftover pork, but other than that my recollections are faint.

Supper I cooked up a Fish Gourmet platter. (Gourmeting is a particularly Dutch thing, you get little bits of meat, cook them on a raclette grill then add them to a little pan with sauces and put that UNDER the raclette grill.) I skipped all those steps, and made up the meal using the Amuse dishes from the other evening and cooked them in the oven like the Amuses.

I bought a second Fish Amuse from the Albert Heijn Festive series. Both the Gourmet Platter and the Amuses had prawns, salmon and white fish, so I hauled out my new dishes from the other night, cooked some broccoli, beans, red pepper and courgette to match the amuse, and made up a second set. I also added bits of extra fish and veg to the original amuses to make them more substantial.

You can do these in any ovenproof dish. Use any vegetables you like as a base, add fish on top, cover with a bit of sauce (real mayonnaise will do fine!) and some shavings of parmesan, and pop them in a warmed 180C oven for about 8 minutes.

Voila!

Albert Heijn's Festive Pork

2007-12-20T11:39:00.000-08:00

Breakfast was cheese and tomato omelette followed by strawberries with yoghurt. It's not the season for strawberries, but I guess they're getting them out of the greenhouses for Christmas. They were tasteless and about half squishy. I kept the squish ones aside and used them for another cheat lunch.

Yup, I did the metformin trick again. Took the dose, then drank a strawberry yoghurt drink made with the squishy strawberries.

For dinner I had no energy. I threw the Albert Heijn Festive pork fillet with creamy pepper sauce in the oven, alongside a dish of various vegetables cut into bite-size pieces, sprinkled with salt and drizzled with olive oil. Then I put the lid on the dish and gave it a good shake to get all the veggies coated. 35 minutes is plenty, and the roasted vegetables were delicious!

Garlic Parsley Prawns

2007-12-19T21:40:00.000-08:00

Breakfast was exciting, I managed to buy eggs fresh enough to fry! So we had a proper fried egg and bacon breakfast with 3 rashers bacon followed by the leftover mango with yoghurt.

I had a busy day, so at lunchtime I took the two metformin to suppress my appetite, and ate a handful of nuts. Bad, I know.

For dinner, I made a celery and celeriac soup. I don't know if celeriac is allowed, it's not mentioned, but I had some so I used it. I made this by cooking equal volumes of celery (mainly the green parts of the stalk) and peeled cubed celeriac in about twice the volume of chicken stock, added s&p to taste, then puréed it.

Then we had another of the Albert Heijn Festive offerings, giant prawns in garlic and parsley, which I served with avocado.

Festive amuses and a mushroom burger

2007-12-18T07:25:00.001-08:00

Breakfast: same as yesterday, scrambled egg with 2 slices serrano ham.

Lunch: almost the same as last night. I finished off the vegetable soup and followed that with mango and yoghurt. This is nowhere near the amount of food the dietician is expecting me to eat. As a reminder, an advisory lunch is 500 g of cooked vegetables pureed into a soup with some bouillon; 50-100 gram of a protein source such as meat, chicken, fish, egg, nuts or cheese; a salad with an oil and vinegar dressing and about 150 grams of fresh fruit.

Dinner: It should be a soup, with meat/chicken or fish and vegetables
A generous 100-150 gram of a protein source with 200-300 gram of vegetables, and a salad with oil and vinegar dressing.

What it turned out to be was a selection from Albert Heijn's Christmas goodies.

First, a trio of amuses: a miniature meatball, salmon mousse and some goat cheese. I guess that accounts for around 20 gram of protein food?

Then, a duo of soups, one being tomato with mascarpone, the other being a gorgozola and white wine, I think it was:

Then, two fish amuses from a selection of four. I had the prawns and a white fish, and Paul had the salmon and the other white fish. These I had to bake in the oven for about 8 minutes, and obviously something baked onto the little dishes.

The reason I bought all of these strange things was for the dishes, of course. Much cheaper than buying them in a kitchen shop, and they come filled with goodies, to boot!

OK, onto the main, which was a proper portion size of cheese and mushroom burger:

What I did here was remove the central stem of two portobello mushrooms, and I grilled them until they were done before I cooked the burgers.

Then I dressed the mushrooms with onion and tomato as you would do for a bun.

The burgers I made with minced beef, and I chopped the mushroom stems into it as well. If you want to make burgers at home, use a lot more seasoning than you think you need; something about that minced beef just absorbs it and it can be pretty tasteless if you aren't prepared.

So I grilled the burgers and topped the mushrooms with them, and then added a slice of cheese and put them in the oven. I don't know that lightly matured gouda is the best cheese for this. I think that's better eaten raw. Next time I'll use the fully mature.

Weight report and scrappy meals

2007-12-17T22:25:00.000-08:00

This morning my weight was down another 1.4 kg. That makes a weight loss of nearly 4 kilograms over three weeks. This is in the middle of winter when it's usually impossible to lose weight. Encouraging!

OK, breakfast was the usual egg, this time scrambled, which I had with 2 slices of serrano ham. Lunch was a handful of nuts and a bowl of yoghurt. Paul was home late, and I was hungry, so I had more nuts and yoghurt at around 7. By the time he came home, it was too late for me to eat much, so I had half a bowl of vegetable soup with cheese.

Witloof Cappuccino and Roast Chicken

2007-12-15T20:32:00.000-08:00

Supper we started with a belgian endive soup. This was from a Dutch book by Francois van Arkel, called Amuses.actually quite simple. I'm sure you could do it with any vegetable, but in this case it called for Belgian Endive and I happened to have quite a lot. You basically chop up one head of denive and a shallot, and sweat them in oil for about three minutes. Then you add half a litre of stock, bring it to the boil, then simmer for ten minutes until soft. Then you purée it. Oh boy, was this bitter! The recipe calls for 75 ml cream but I didn't see that cream would ease the bitterness. I added a load of nutmeg, which helped some, and finally threw in about 200 ml of coconut milk. That improved it no end.

Next step is to serve it in little glass cups, with frothed milk on top and some crispy bacon bits.

Main course was roast chicken with roast parsnip and a small salad. My food list doesn't say anything about parsnip. I would think it not compatible with a low carb diet, but then neither is fruit and carrot, both of which are allowed. And I had parsnip in my weekly organic bag, so parsnip it was.

Roast chicken is one of the easiest meals in the world and it depends on the chicken you buy. So buy a free range one if you can, they taste much better because the exercise gives them flavour. Sprinkle it chicken spice mix, barbecue spice, whatever you have. You can stuff a lemon into the cavity, or a bulb of garlic, it's all optional. Put it in a cooking bag, close the bag and stab a couple of holes in it. I usually put the bag with chicken into a dish in case there's any leaking. All of that goes into an oven of about 180C for an hour an a quarter. Just set the timer and forget about it.

I set the timer for 45 minutes so I could add in some thickly sliced peeled parsnip to roast alongside it for 30 minutes. Just put them on top of the bag, it's fine.
It needs to stand about ten minutes before carving, a good time to do some last minute veggies or in this case, cut up some cukes and tomato.

Ah, dessert today! This time I cooked the fruit. I cored an apple, cut it in half across the middle, and stuffed the two cores with nuts and goats cheese, topped it with more goats cheese. I put this in a dish and chucked it in the oven for half an hour alongside the chicken. yeah, when I added the parsnips. It was just so fabulous, I need to make it again.

Italian Fish from a box

2007-12-15T12:26:00.000-08:00

Weekends we hardly ever have three meals. It's usually two. A late brunch, and dinner.

I can't eat egg everyday. It's not an emotional decision based on current research on eggs. It's a physical nausea and gagging. In any case eggs have to be really fresh for me to eat them at all.

So late brunch is a good excuse for something different. And I was lazy. So I had fish from a box for brunch. I had the choice between italian and florentine, and chose italian. Salad on the side.

Speklapjes

2007-12-14T07:52:00.000-08:00

Bleah. I had an upset stomach which I blamed on two doses of metformin so close to each other. Normally I would have dry toast or a banana to cope with that, but as those are now taboo foods, I had half a pear and yoghurt for breakfast. And I had more yoghurt at 11.30.

I had a latish lunch, but I forget what it was. Possibly a handful of nuts. I had no appetite, anyway.

Supper I did speklapjes (sliced belly pork) with cabbage and a sort of curly kale they call boerenkool here. I ate the meat. The vegetables were disgusting and I threw them away.

Orange salad and leftover rabbit

2007-12-13T07:58:00.000-08:00

Oh boy, being on diet is a full time job. I need to be doing these things daily.

Let's see. Thursday. Breakfast was half a pear, half a kiwi fruit, with some yoghurt. And separately, a scrambled egg.

Lunch. Why can I never remember lunch? Oh yes, leftover roast beef. Three very thin slices, with all the vegetable gravy piled on top. There were peas in the gravy, taboo food peas. Tough. I ate them.

Dinner. We had dinner very late. And I had the metformin before dinner.

We started with an orange, onion and olive salad from Robert Carrier's Gourmet Vegetarian. It was entirely unremarkable.

After that I delved in the bottom drawer of the fridge (the one at zero degrees, wonderful for keeping stuff fresh for longer) and fished out the leftover rabbit. I scooped that into individual serving dishes and did some leftover kookavond vegetables, carrot and kohlrabi.

Grilled Steak

2007-12-12T08:01:00.000-08:00

Best I write these up while I still remember what I ate, and add photos later if I have them.

Breakfast.
A one-egg ham and cheese omelette with 3 slices tomato, plus half a pear with a couple of spoons of yoghurt. Dead simple.

Lunch:
A mug of leftover vegetable soup with LOTS of cheese. Then I had a handful of cashews, and more cheese.

Dinner:

I pureed the leftover vegetable soup and added a hearty dose of nutmeg. Served it up with a dollop of creme fraiche.

We ate late. I could have skipped supper quite happily actually, but Paul was hungry. These tablets take away all my appetite. So grilled steak is very quick. With grilled courgette and grilled tomato.

We had wine. I'm still trying to find a balance with wine, as it reacts most dreadfully with the metformin. One glass is definitely fine. Two glasses is also fine. More than that seems to leave me very queasy.

Meals 11 December

2007-12-11T08:08:00.000-08:00

We started with a simple vegetable soup. You know the kind. Sweat onion, carrot and celery in oil for ten minutes, add water or stock, add more chopped vegetables. In this case I sweated carrot and kohlrabi, both being leftover from Cooking Club on Monday, and then added whatever was in the fridge. There was quite a lot of carrot, which made it quite sweet.

Then we had a green pepper stuffed with mince and mushrooms, topped with cheese. Courgette on the side.

Earlier, breakfast was the standard omelette with ham, while lunch I only had at three and it was a courgette carpaccio.

Not too much in the way of calories, there. :( I have been wondering whether my calorie intake is too low. At some stage soon I will feed these meals into Mastercook and get an opinion.

December 10: Cooking Club!

2007-12-10T08:10:00.000-08:00

One week after seeing the dietician, my weight is down another 1/2 kilogram. Not as dramatic as the first week, regretfully, but the trend is still down. It looks promising.

What did I have for lunch? I have no idea that I even had any. Possible a courgette carpaccio at around 3?

The Cooking Club menu was a Christmas menu, and most of it was fine.
The sorbet of course is pure sugar, and the dessert was a lemon tart in a crust. I did have a bit of each, I reckoned the rest of the menu would balance it out.

Which was:

An oyster amuse served in the shell, on a bed of seaweed.
Leek cream with mock caviar.
Pheasant soup
Turbot stuffed with langoustine
Sorbet with fig
Venison cutlets with a potato/mushroom gratin and glazed vegetables
Lemon tart

I was assigned to cook the venison cutlets, which were crumbed with nuts, then pan fried and roasted.

No photos!

Trio of cheese

2007-12-09T08:11:00.000-08:00

When I woke up, I scarfed down some cottage cheese, knowing that Paul would not be available for a meal until much later. Much much later, as it turns out, as I have Scrabble on Sunday afternoons at Schiphol airport. I had a Runway Salad at the venue, a nice salad with duck rillettes,smoked duck and walnuts.

Paul fended for himself, eating rolls and cheese. He's getting kinda desperate for bread, so I bought a packet of rolls on Friday.

Dinner was a cheese meel, starting with tomatoes and mozzarella. This is the straightforward classic with oil and basil.

Lots of Belgian Endive in this week's organic bag, so I steamed two, sliced them in half, sprinkled blue cheese and cream over them and stuck them in the oven for half an hour. I think Rozanne Gold gave me the idea a while back, in her wonderful book Cooking 123.

I was really stuck for ideas, so I ended up with cheese soufflé. You don't need flour to make a cheese sauce; just nuke cheese and uht cream in equal volumes. I didn't have uht cream, so I just cooked normal cream together with about twice as much cheese, over the stoveplate, and then beat in the egg yolk. I folded in the white and stuck them in the oven when we began eating the Belgian endive. They worked really well, but couldn't hold up to my fumblings with the camera.

Courgette carpaccio, french onion soup and roast beef

2007-12-08T08:17:00.000-08:00

We usually end up having only two meals over weekend days. Looks like this was an omelette again. My Working the Plate book has a lovely garnish with radish and sprouts, so I had a go at that with a brunch omelette:

For dinner I spread the components out to give them more interest.
For starters, a courgette carpaccio from Clotilde Dousoulier's Chocolate & Zucchini. I find it works better if it stands longer than 10 minutes. This stood a couple of hours, while the soup cooked.

The soup was French Onion, with cheese of course. Paul had some bread with his. French Onion soup is really easy to make if you can just exercise a modicum of patience. You need 4 or 5 onions for a moderate amount of soup. Slice these finely, and then sweat them in a little olive oil over a low heat for 30-45 minutes. Yes, that long. Do this in a pot. They should brown gently and not burn. It does take some watching, hence the patience. Then add enough water to make soup, I guess about a litre and a half. Add some salt, bring to the boil, and then let it simmer for about half an hour so all the onion taste can move into the water. That's all there is to it.

Then finally we had the roast beef dinner I had planned for Friday night. This was an Albert Heijn ready-meal, just pop into the oven. Comes complete with veg and gravy. There were some peas in it (not allowed) but I decided a teaspoonful would hardly matter.

And I had my first glass of wine in two weeks.

Dull stir-fry

2007-12-07T20:27:00.000-08:00

This was the night when I wanted a celebratory dinner with wine as the new windows would be fully installed. However Paul came home late, and we first had to move furniture before I could cook. So we had a somewhat dull pork and mixed veg stir-fry. He complained about it no end, even suggesting I should cancel the bag of organic vegetables.

More fennel, cabbage & bacon

2007-12-06T08:29:00.000-08:00

Fennel, fennel, fennel. The organic vegetable was full of it, and last night's carpaccio did not finish it. So today I caramelised it, then braised it and serve grilled goat cheese rounds on top. It turned out to be very tasty.

The other thing we've been having lots of is cabbage. so I stirfried a lot of that up with some bacon bits, and topped it with a slice of bacon.

Fennel, pork chops, pear

2007-12-05T20:12:00.000-08:00

What did I have for lunch? Who knows, I forgot by the time I actually got around to writing this post. Probably leftover broccoli cheese soup. That seemed to last forever.

Dinner was another story.

The vegetable is from a lovely Dutch book called Carpaccio! by Thea Spierings. I had masses of fennel, so I tried her Fennel Carpaccio with Orange. The carpaccio part is briefly poached in water and orange juice, and the dressing is raw fennel, orange juice, orange and a vinaigrette. It was a little bland; next time I'll try adding a lot more orange. Maybe into the carpaccio part as well.

Then we had a pork chop with green beans. The pork chop was simply spiced and grilled. The beans were steam-fried and then I added a little olive oil.

Needed to add fruit, so I did a pear with blue cheese and walnuts, also from the Carpaccio! book. Though it's not as flat as a normal carpaccio.

It's very easy. Slice a pear in half and remove the core. Cut slices but keep the pear joined at the top, and fan it out on a plate. Sprinkle with crumbled goat cheese and walnuts and then sprinkle with dressing. The dressing I used was 2 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of crema balsamica (you could use red wine vinegar instead, but then add a teaspoon of mustard too), 2 tablespoons of port and a tablespoon of chicken stock that I had handy. I just whizzed that up with my hand blender, used about half, and kept the rest for tomorrow.

Omelette and sliced oranges with yoghurt

2007-12-05T09:08:00.000-08:00

Time to start with photos, I guess.
Breakfast on the 5th was pretty large. I'm having trouble eating everything on the diet, so I thought I would spread it more through the day.
To begin, a delicious ham and probably cheese omelette:

As you can see, still no fried tomatoes but I made it up with some fresh cherry tomatoes and lettuce. I make the omelettes with two eggs and cut them in half, so we actually have just one egg each.

Then a fruit; in this case half an orange, topped with Turkish yoghurt and ground almonds:

How low-carb is this diet, really?

2007-12-05T06:59:00.000-08:00

It's a question that has been worrying me since I got the diet sheet.
I've never seen a low-carb diet with fruit on, because fruit is naturally high in sugar.

Boiling the diet down to what I have eat per day, divided over three meals, I get this:

300 grams meat, chicken, fish, nuts, cheese or egg
800 grams mixed vegetables
500 grams mixed fruit

That excludes any oil for stir-frying or adding onto salads.
Guess we can add

3 tablespoons oil.

I feed that into Mastercook, using chicken for protein, and what do I get?

1517 calories
69.6 grams fat
178.1 grams carb (39.6 grams fibre)
50.8 grams protein

Percentage wise:
40.6% fat
46.2% carbs
13.2% protein

Low-carb? Not! In fact, 178 grams of carb is worth nearly 9 slices of whole grain bread. Hmm.

Better description would be grain-free, starch -free, even high-fibre. But there are carbs a-plenty! Cut out some of that oil, and the percentage carb shoots up way high!

Originally I called this blog The Low Carb Foodie. Now you can see why the name changed.

Stir fry, and pears.

2007-12-04T06:55:00.000-08:00

One of the recommended breakfast options was a 2-egg omelette with ham and fried tomatoes.

Easy peasy, though I didn't have tomatoes. We had the Ham omelette with a small salad instead. I have a lot of lettuce to eat my way through.

Lunch. Same story as before.
Guidelines recommend
* a large portion of pureed vegetable soup
* salad with oil and vinegar dressing
* 50-100 grams of meat, fish, chicken, egg, cheese or nuts
* about 150 grams of fresh fruit

Well I had some leftover broccoli/blue cheese soup.
I found an old orange in the fridge, so I peeled that and had it with yogurt and nuts. (one of the breakfast options is yogurt with All Bran, or Quark and fresh fruit. So yogurt and fresh fruit seemed like a good option.)

There was some leftover beef stew in the fridge, about half a cup or so, so I had that with my tablets. It was time, however, to go shopping for some fruit.

Tuesday night I stir-fried the remainder of the Hollandse Roerbak with some spiced pork shawarma strips (I know, I know, but that's what they call them!). It was as boring as it sounded.
Fruit wise, I took a pear, cut it in half, cut each half into fans and dressed it with the last of the blue cheese, some walnuts, and a lovely dressing made with balsamic creme, port, chicken stock and olive oil.

No photos yet.

Dietician Day

2007-12-03T18:00:00.000-08:00

For the past week, I've been doing my own version of a low carb diet to work with the metformin. I started the metformin slowly, with just one tablet before bedtime. After two such days, I moved onto two tablets before bedtime. I haven't begun taking the second dose yet. In just one week, between specialist and dietician, my weight has dropped 2kg.

Today, Monday 3rd December was dietician day. What was interesting, is that she is Dutch, and lived in Central Africa for many years. When she returned to the Netherlands, guess what - she put on 5 kg in record time for no rhyme or reason. I always thought that Paul's weight has stayed constant because he was born in these latitudes; bang goes that theory. The endocrinologist is right: it must be genetic!

The dietician solved her problem at the time by going on a low-carb diet. She didn't say anything about medication, so it may be that if you know what you're doing, and you catch it early, diet may well be enough.

Essentially the diet she gave me to start with allows carbs only from vegetables, excluding most root vegetables. No grains. No starches. No refined sugars. Actually, for me that's not hard.

She also discussed the medication with me. The before bedtime dose is to clear out the system of spare insulin; the daytime dose is more of a hunger suppressant. In which case, is it a good idea to take it before dinner, as prescribed? Dinner is when I eat the least anyway, I am hungriest at lunchtime.

Take them at lunchtime, was her advice.

Thus armed, I went home to have lunch. The lunch guideline is:
* Generous portion of pureed vegetable soup (water, a stock cube and 500 g cooked vegetables, pureed)
* 50 - 100 grams of meat, fish, chicken, eg, nuts or cheese
* a salad with an oil and vinegar dressing
* 150 grams of fresh fruit.

Yikes! I'm hungry at lunchtime but not that hungry! Anyway, I took the two metformins as suggested, the first time I've taken the second dose since getting the prescription.

I made a broccoli and blue cheese soup, as I had a huge chunk of broccoli in the fridge. No stock cubes, I substituted freshly made chicken stock that I happened to have in the slow cooker. It may have been 500 g of vegetables, but Paul and I both had some for lunch, and there was plenty left.

Fail on quantity.

Then I tackled the lettuce in the fridge, added a couple of radishes, half a red pepper and a very small handful of leek sprouts, topped that with leftover chicken and used bottle wasabi/ginger dressing. We shared a banana for dessert. It's not an approved fruit, but it was there. Lunch for a king, portion-wise. I'm wondering whether the portions are designed for 6'10 Dutchmen or 5'3 me.

I had rabbit in the fridge which I cooked for supper with garlic and canned tomato. I also had a bag of "Hollandse Roerbak", the most boring vegetable stir-fry mix you can imagine. The vegetables I do not choose, they arrive on Fridays in a bag of organic vegetables, so it really is a surprise every week what I'm going to eat. I added the remainder of the red pepper and some of the broccoli florets to half the bag, and stir-fried that. I could only manage the very smallest portion of rabbit: I was still full from lunch!!

Recommended supper was
* Soup - chicken, meat or fish, with vegetables
* 100-150 grams of meat, fish, cheese or egg
* 200-300 grams of cooked vegetables
* salad with an oil and vinegar dressing

Somewhere along the way I was supposed to have a fruit portion before supper, but I skipped that. I find it hard to eat after 8pm at the best of times.

So that was Monday's meal. In summary :

Lunch:
* a large bowl of broccoli/blue cheese soup
* chicken salad
* half a banana

Supper:
* Rabbit Cacciatore with stir-fried veg.

No photos yet, sorry.

Introduction

2007-11-27T12:45:00.000-08:00

"Heathrow Injection" is fairly well-known among South Africans, Australians and New Zealanders moving to Europe: it manifests as sudden and inexplicable weight gain.

Thanks to Modern Media Hype, most people dismiss their weight gain as eating too much, not exercising enough, a change to a more fatty diet. I would guess that most of them are actually bewildered that seemingly small dietary indulgences result in such massive consequences.

Well, I didn't fall for the media hype and the typical insults. I knew what I was eating, and it was not significantly different from my South African diet. Plus I knew that I was walking a great deal more as I no longer had a car.

In England the usual battery of tests all returned normal and the NHS doctors (NHS = Nobody's Health Service) left it at that, telling me to cut out of my diet all the things I never actually eat.

In the Netherlands, which is darker and colder than England, the problem got worse. I tried a daylight lamp, as used in SAD, and the occasional sunbed. After all, when I go on holiday to a warm, sunny place, no matter what I eat or drink the weight just drops off.

That didn't help. So again, I went to my doctor and asked him if he had any ideas why 75 degrees of latitude could affect one's weight so. I wasn't really expecting an answer.

He listened to my tale with interest, and then said, "Very interesting. Just two weeks ago I was at a seminar on the effect of climate on metabolism."

Basically, he said, what you eat or drink makes very little odds. Metabolism is the secret.

After sending me for the usual tests to make sure there was nothing measurably wrong with me, he referred me to an endocrinologist who has a particular interest in climate and metabolism.

He explained that Heathrow Injection is basically a form of hibernation which is genetically triggered. Not much he can do about that, but he did have some ideas on reducing the excess weight.

He could not immediately implement idea no 1, as the excess weight has sent my blood pressure up.

Idea no 2 was to prescribe metformin, a drug normally used to treat diabetics, in conjunction with a low carb diet. Metformin helps makes the cells more responsive to insulin.

So it seems the hibernation effect triggers a massive insulin resistance, and the only way to overcome that is to drop the starchy carbs immediately and take medication if necessary.

This blog will be a journal of what I've been eating since seeing the dietician on the 3rd December. And probably also a progress report.