Some low calorie dishes

[ianinfrance]

[Suelle]

Best of luck, Ian! I found the 5:2 diet one of the easiest to stick with, so hope it works for you too.

[ianinfrance]

[Suelle]

[ianinfrance]

Second fast day today. This time it's Mexican eggs for lunch - finishing off the turkey for supper. I've not got the egg recipe in the computer at the moment, will post it if we think it's good.

[ianinfrance]

Another couple of dishes. First of all was a dish I found on line which is a slightly different variation - probably more authentic - that the Moroccan eggs recipe I posted before. This one is called Shakshuka. Here's the recipe. Beware, commercial harissa is spicy hot.

Shakshuka. Moroccan Eggs in a Spicy Tomato Sauce

3 medium red capsicums
1 Tbs olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
400 g tomatoes, concassée
2 tomatoes, peeled and diced
1 Tbs tomato paste
150 ml water
1 Tbs fresh harissa paste
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp fresh ginger, grated
2 Tbs fresh parsley, chopped
2 Tbs fresh mint
2 tsp honey
1 Tbs red wine or cider vinegar
sea salt and black pepper
6 free range eggs
to serve
mint and/or coriander leaves

To Make the Sauce

Roast red peppers in a hot oven until skin is blistered and charred. Deseed, peel and slice when cool. In a wok or wide frying pan, heat the olive oil over medium high heat. Add the onions and cook for 5 minutes, until soft and translucent.

Add the harissa and tomato pastes, ginger, cumin and paprika. Cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant then deglaze the pan a little with the honey and vinegar.

Stir in the roasted and sliced capsicum and fresh chopped herbs. Add both the canned and fresh tomatoes and the water. Cook gently for 10 to 15 minutes until thick and saucy. Add more water if necessary to achieve a good consistency. Season with sea salt and pepper to taste.

When Ready to Serve

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Divide the sauce among 6 oven-proof ramekins. Set the ramekins on a baking tray. Crack an egg into the centre of each ramekin. It helps to use the back of a wooden spoon to make an indentation in the sauce as you do this.

Bake until the eggs are cooked to your liking, basting the whites with some of the sauce midway during baking, about 10 to 15 minutes.

Serve hot straight out of the oven with a scattering of fresh herbs.

Servings: 6

Nutrition (per serving): 195 calories, 91 calories from fat, 9.8g total fat, 241.8mg cholesterol, 318.9mg sodium, 522.1mg potassium, 11.7g carbohydrates, 3.3g fiber, 9.4g sugar, 10g protein.

Recipe Type: 5:2, Brunch, Dairy, Middle East, Vegetables

4 stars -

Author Notes
165 calories per serve -91 calories for sauce add 75 calories for each egg)

This evening we did a dish called "Herby baked chicken" This was less of a success, we felt. After the cooking time was up the chicken was overcooked, the vegetables weren't ready, the dish was lacking salt and our choice of herbs (mainly parsley with some mint, thyme and chives) not a great success. However it wasn't bad by any manner of means.

Herby Baked Chicken (2 servings)

"Calories per serving 275"

250 grams new potatoes
250 grams skinless chicken breast fillets
3 Tbs chopped mixed herbs (such as parsley, chives, chervil or mint)
1/2 clove garlic -- crushed
3 Tbs low fat creme fraiche
4 baby leeks
1 head Witloof chicory
75 ml chicken stock
pepper

Cook the potatoes in a pan of boiling water for 12 to 15 minutes. Drain then cut into bite-sized pieces

Make a slit lengthways down the side of each chicken breast to form a pocket. Make sure you don't cut all the way through. Mix together the herbs, garlic and creme fraiche, season well with pepper and then put a little into each pocket.

Put the leeks, chicory and potatoes in an ovenproof dish. Pour over the stock then lay the chicken breasts on top. Spoon over the remaining creme fraiche mixture then bake in a preheated oven at 200°C for 25 to 35 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through and the vegetables are tender.

Servings: 2

Cooking Times
Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 45 minutes

Nutrition (per serving): 298 calories, 46 calories from fat, 5.1g total fat, 81.1mg cholesterol, 218.4mg sodium, 1242.1mg potassium, 29.7g carbohydrates, 4.8g fibre, 1.6g sugar, 32.3g protein.

Recipe Type: 5:2, Main Dish, Poultry

The preparation time was quite a bit longer than that shown as well. We'll probably try it again, but looking hard at the herbs we use and the preparation of the vegetables - and the seasoning.

[ianinfrance]

We made another couple of recipes that were new to us today.

Lunch was a low calorie version of "Huevos Rancheros".

For 2 people
4 large spring onions
150 g red pepper, weighed after coring.
1/2 tsp chilli flakes (I use sichuan chillies)
2 tsp olive oil, though you can get away with less.
The equivalent of 400g tomatoes, concassées (we make 500g equivalent jars, so 4/5 of that)
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
plenty black pepper
4 small eggs (just 2 will save 70 cals per head)
Chopped parsley.

Chop the spring onions very finely. Weigh the pepper cored, then slice thinly. We didn't try this, but it might be an improvement to char/grill the skin and remove as usual. Sweat the onion, pepper and chilli in the olive oil in a small frying pan for about 10 minutes or less, until well softened. We cooked it covered. Now add the fairly finely chopped concassée tomatoes and the vinegar, together with salt & pepper. Stir well, bring to the boil and cook a few minutes more until excess liquid has evaporated and and the tomato well incorporated. Check and correct seasoning if need be. Form dips in the surface of the sauce, break an egg into each, and raise the heat slightly. When the white begins to turn white at the base of the eggs, turn to a simmer, cover and cook until the white is set but the yolk still runny. The first stage took about 5-7 minutes, the second about the same. Uncover. sprinkle over the parsley and serve.

275 calories per portion with 2 eggs each, about 210 with only 1 egg.

This was delicious and we'll definitely be repeating it. We've tried a few baked egg dishes and they are just about all wonderful.

Supper was this from the Beeb Good Food pages. We used 200 g of fresh hake, weighed prepared, though I was tempted by a monkfish tail, and 200g of mussels. Instead of using canned tomatoes with garlic, we used our own home made concassée tomatoes with a little garlic. It took much longer to cook the finely chopped celery and sliced onion in a little oil then the recipe said - nearer 20 minutes and more wouldn't have gone amiss. Again, once we'd added the next ingredients, the simmering sauce was still a bit unfinished after their suggested 10 minutes, and because concassée tomatoes are drier than fresh, we added a good 100 mls of water and in fact simmered nearer to 20 minutes here again. Seasoned with salt & pepper, though this wasn't in the recipe. We then laid the fish and cleaned mussels on top of the sauce and cooked covered 5 minutes as they said. The fish was perfectly cooked but the mussels slightly overdone. They should only have had about 2 minutes.

Anyway, the dish was delightful and quite filling. We could see this with some rice or potatoes as a "normal" meal, not just one as one for a fast day in the 5:2 diet.

Two real goodies.

[ianinfrance]

We made another dish from the Beeb Good food pages today. This was by Silvana Franco and was called "Steamed fish and pak-choi parcels" it racks up about 210 calories with 35 g of rice (weighed raw) between us. The Beeb says that without the rice it would have been 124 calories, which I reckon is a tad optimistic, though not significantly so.

Pretty easy to make and simply delicious, when cooked with some of the pollock we got down in Brest and froze. Using our fan oven, with the parcels in a roasting tin, the fish was perfectly cooked after 15 minutes as in the recipe. The only thing we did slightly differently was to blanch the stalky part of the pak-choy in boiling water folr just long enough for them to soften a bit as Fuschia Dunlop suggests for all her recipes.

This is definitely another keeper. Especially precious to us as we don't have that many good fish dishes in our repertoire.

[StokeySue]

This recipe Ian?


looks good

Here's a link to my Chicken Tagine on the other thread



one thing I notice about the Kate Harrison original recipe is that she specifies 2 chicken thighs to a portion and doesn't give a weight or size, which is sloppy for an allegedly calorie0counted recipe. If you used the chicken thighs I currently have in the freezer the calories would be well in excess of 400 per portion, not the planned 230!

[ianinfrance]

[ianinfrance]

Hi,
We made one of the fish dishes I said I'd found on the web recently. This was for a that I found on a blog called Lavendar & Lovage written by a lady who divides her time between the UK and SW France.

The recipe was simple (just 5 minutes preparation, or a tad more if you use fresh spinach, as I did) to make and very good indeed. You make a layer of cooked spinach, put the skinned fish on top, smear over some low-fat sour cream and sprinkle over some grated parmesan and top with sliced tomato. Then you bake the whole thing half an hour in the oven.

Delicious. We're certainly going to do it again. The fish salts the spinach well, and the cream and tomatoes make a delicious contrast. When we next make it, we will probably use pepper and nutmeg to season the spinach, of which we'll use more (at 25 cals per 100g, it's not exactly a great threat to the diet). I felt it was better to chop it than leave it whole leaf, too. As a counsel of perfection, I'd be tempted to dry it off a little, rather then merely squeeze it dry, but that's no great deal.

[StokeySue]

[ianinfrance]

[StokeySue]

[ianinfrance]

[ianinfrance]

We made another new (to us) recipe today. This was from Kate Harrison's book:- for a Chicken, Lemon & Olive Tagine with couscous. KH uses 200g of chicken meat (leg) per person which is far more than we usually allow, but only counts 35g couscous for two.

We gave it to some friends for supper tonight, but with about 50g couscous a head as we weren't trying to diet. As we made it, we thought it was utterly delicious and we'll certainly be making it again soon. At 367 Kcals per head, even with a full 60g couscous per person, it would be easy to make it part of a sub 500 cal/day diet.

[Peaches_von_Purr]

These are great recipes. Trying to lose a bit of weight, so will definitely give these a go.

J x

[ianinfrance]

Hi Peaches (Congrats)

Have a look .

[Peaches_von_Purr]

Thanks Ian (and for the congrats!). Those look like great recipes.

J x

[ianinfrance]

[Seatallan]

[ianinfrance]