Low in fat, not low in taste..

I was chatting with someone at the gym last week about my weight loss and was hugely inspired when she told me that she had been overweight as a teenager and kept her weight off for over 30 years! But she mentioned that she cooked very healthily at home, "except for desserts of course", because otherwise her children would complain and be upset...

I felt that this was a bit of a shame and a missed opportunity; since starting this journey myself I must admit that I HAVE changed the kinds of desserts I cook for everyone on Shabbos and Yom Tov, and I don't think that anyone has been worse off for it! Occasionally I'll make a full fat apple crumble, and serve myself a portion with just fruit, but in general we all eat the same and nothing has more than 4pp in it... My Succos dessert menu includes baked apples with sultanas and parev custard; the poached pears in pomegranate juice I described in an earlier blog; and lots of different baked goods served up with sugar-free compotes.

This recipe, for summer fruit mini muffins, is a new one I developed for our pre-Yom Kippur meal, and judging by the oohs and aahs I got, and pleas for seconds, no-one felt deprived by the lack of oil or margarine! I hope your family will enjoy them too.

INGREDIENTS

100g low fat spread (eg Smartbalance)
10g splenda
2 large eggs, beaten
0.5 tsp almond essence
125g flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
Frozen summer fruits

Preheat the oven to 160'c (fan-assisted) and prepare 18 fairy-cake cases in appropriate trays. Combine all the ingredients except the fruit into a smooth batter and drop by heaped teaspoons into the cake cases. Drop about a teaspoon of frozen fruits on top of the batter in each case. Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until cooked through and starting to brown on top.

These are excellent served warm. Less than 2pp each!

Fishing for Compliments

Sometimes I just get bored of making gefilte fish every Shabbos. Not least because my dear husband won't touch the stuff that comes in the freezer ready rolled, and there is a dearth of fishmongers in the area with sensible opening hours.

At times like these, I have a great standby - vegetable fishcakes. Just as low in points as gefilte fish, and actually much less of a palaver to make - no standing over a smelly pot for ages! These are equally nice served hot or cold, and would make an excellent light meal as well as a Friday night starter. They work out at between 1 and 2pp each, depending on how large you make them.

INGREDIENTS

200g potatoes, peeled
150g butternut squash, peeled and chopped
450g frozen plaice fillets - defrosted
1 onion
Salt and pepper to taste
4fld oz matzo meal or fine dried breadcrumbs
0.5 tsp paprika
2 medium eggs
0.5tsp baking powder

Boil the potatoes, onion and butternut squash in a pan of water for about 15 minutes. Add the plaice fillets and continue to cook for another 10 minutes. Drain and cool slightly. Blend the potatoes, vegetables and fish in a food processor and add the remaining ingredients. Roll into balls with damp hands and place on a greased baking tray. Spray the tops with frylight. Bake for 30 minutes on 160'c.

Makes approximately 20 - 24 fishcakes. Can be frozen.

A Lesson in Leftovers - it's a wrap!

Like many people, I'm struggling to finish up the yom tov leftovers in my fridge before it's too late! One of the really successful dishes I turned out over Rosh Hashanah was my smoked salmon salad with avocado salsa - unfortunately I can't show you a picture of my beautiful plating efforts (masterchef eat your heart out) but I can give you the recipe for the salsa and show you what I did with it this evening...

TANGY AVOCADO SALSA

2 medium avocados
Half a cucumber
1 large tomato
2 limes
1 tsp dried dill
2/3 tsp dried mint
1 tsp splenda or other granular sweetener

Peel and chop the avocados and the cucumbers. Place in a bowl and squeeze the limes over them quickly, before the avocado has a chance to turn brown. Stir in the dill, mint and splenda. Add the chopped tomato and mix well. Serve on a bed of smoked salmon as an elegant starter!

Alternatively - spread a tortilla wrap with a teaspoon of low fat mayonnaise and sprinkle some chilli flakes on top. Lay 40g of salmon and 2 tablespoons of the salsa in the centre of the wrap and fold up takeaway-style.

The only thing you need to point in the entire salsa recipe is the avocado itself  - my wrap this evening cost me 6pp in total.

Winning ways with pomegranate juice!

OK so Rosh Hashanah has just ended and ostensibly I'm a bit too late with this pomegranate post. But some of the pomegranate-inspired dishes I came up with this yomtov will definitely bear repeating over Succos, so I thought I'd share them with you!

The base I started with for each recipe was a bottle of Pompure juice - any pomegranate juice will do but try and make sure it is pure juice and not a 'pomegranate juice drink' as this will be much more watery as well as not as good for you, and the resulting flavours won't be anywhere near as intense.

JUDY'S POMEGRANATE MARINADE AND DRESSING

1 bottle pomegranate juice
2 tablespoons splenda or other granular sweetener
3 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons cornflour

Boil up the pomegranate juice until it is about 50% reduced. Add the sugar and splenda. Take out about a tablespoon of the juice and mix it with the cornflour to form a paste, then stir this back in. Simmer for a few more minutes to thicken and remove from the heat to cool.

POMEGRANATE CHICKEN

Pour the pomegranate marinade over the chicken pieces and leave for about 6 hours. Bake covered on 160' for 90 minutes, then uncover for a further 30 minutes. Scatter with pomegranate seeds before serving.

WARM SALMON SALAD

Bake cubes of salmon in a sauce of equal parts honey and soy sauce with a sprinkling of garlic powder. Serve on a bed of spinach leaves with grilled cherry tomatoes, and pour over some of the warmed pomegranate dressing.

The pomegranate dressing is also excellent served cold as a regular salad dressing with the veggies of your choosing!

POACHED PEARS IN POMEGRANATE JUICE

1 bottle pomegranate juice
2 cinnamon sticks
6 conference pears

Peel the pears and sliced a little off the bottom so they are able to stand upright. Place in a pan and cover completely with the pomegranate juice. Add the cinnamon sticks to the pan as well. Bring to the boil and simmer until the pears are a deep pink colour and the flesh is tender.

Serve warm in a dish with a little juice. Goes beautifully with meringues.

Bolognese Light - Dare to be Different!

Before I started Weight Watchers my family used to eat quite a lot of red meat; probably twice during the week and then again on Shabbos. Apart from the fact that it's not very healthy , red meat is quite expensive, so switching us over from the cow to the chicken was probably one of the best things I've done. These days, I barely ever need to buy any beef - one packet of goulash meat stretches to about a month's worth of cholent (for which my fat-free recipe will no doubt be appearing one day soon...)

In fact, nearly every recipe that calls for beef or lamb will work just as well with chicken or turkey instead, particularly when it comes to mince.

This recipe for chicken bolognese is so much lighter than the traditional ragu sauce in every way - less calories, less fat, but just as much taste. It's softer and stickier to work with than minced beef, and obviously paler in colour - but besides that, you can barely tell the difference.

MOCK BOLOGNESE SAUCE

Ingredients

2lb minced chicken
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 carton passata
1 large white onion
1/2 punnet of small closed cap mushrooms
1 tsp bisto gravy original powder
Mixed dried herbs
2 garlic cloves
Salt and pepper to taste

Finely chop the onion, garlic and mushrooms and fry in spray oil until starting to soften. Then add the meat and break up with a fork until well mixed with the vegetables and about 80-90% of it has cooked through.
Add the chopped tomatoes and passata, followed by the bisto and herbs. Mix well and lower flame to a steady simmer. Cover and leave to cook for about 45 minutes. Can be served immediately or refrigerated/frozen and reheated (once defrosted) for 45 minutes on 160'c.

Serves 6 at around 4pp per very large portion!

Judy's Fudgy Chocolate Brownie Squares

My little girl turned 3 today and I couldn't decide whether or not to carve out a sizeable chunk of my propoints allowance for what would probably be a miniscule slither of her bakery-bought birthday cake.

Fortunately, I did some baking of my own this morning, and it occurred to me that one of my fudgy chocolate brownie squares would make a very satisfactory alternative while everyone else tucked into the 'proper cake' - all for a very respectable 2pp... (though in the end of course I did a fair amount of fondant-icing picking and cream-filling swiping, so it was lucky I had some extra propoints floating about as emergency cover!).

This chocolate brownie cake is lovely and moist and very quick and easy to make. It goes extremely well with ice cream, a bit of squirty cream, or lightly warmed with some 0pp fruit compote.

JUDY'S FUDGY CHOCOLATE BROWNIE SQUARES

Ingredients

2 large eggs
1 egg white
1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/2 cup plain flour
3/4 cup splenda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
Pinch of salt
4 tablespoons ground almonds
1 heaped teaspoon coffee granules dissolved in 4fld oz hot water
8 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla essence

Beat the eggs, egg white and applesauce till smooth and add in the dry ingredients. Mix well. Stir in the coffee and vanilla essence and beat again till no lumps remain. The mixture will be extremely runny - don't panic. Pour into a greased 8 x 6" tin and bake for 30 minutes in an oven preheated to 160'c. Leave for 5 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack. Cool and cut into 18 small squares of 2pp each.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

A bit of a squash in here!

I haven't made any soup other than the obligatory chicken for ages. After a winter of having it for lunch every single day, enough was enough!

But now that yom tov is on the horizon, it's time to get a bit more adventurous with my soup flavours - there are only so many nights in a row you can eat chicken soup with kneidlach without turning into a giblet...

Butternut squash has already come up once in this blog and it'll probably come up again before too long - it's such a versatile veggie, I can't really get enough of it! I have to confess I am lazy though - after a bad experience trying to peel and chop an entire squash, I now buy them ready prepared. It's one of those things I like to pass off as a 'necessary expense'.

When I put this soup on my Rosh Hashanah menu I planned to prepare it as a straightforward Butternut Squash Soup - but when I took out my saucepan this morning I was overcome with the urge to zing it up a bit. The result was surprisingly different and delicious!

GINGER AND ORANGE BNS SOUP

Ingredients

1kg chopped and peeled BNS cubes
1 large onion, roughly chopped
2 sticks of celery, sliced  
5 cups of water
3 teaspoons chicken stock
0.5 teaspoons dried ginger
2 garlic cloves, crushed
3 dessert spoons freshly squeezed orange juice
2 cubes frozen coriander
Salt and pepper to taste
Spring onion to garnish

Put all the ingredients in a pan and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 30 minutes until all the vegetables are soft. Blend and add more water if it's too thick for your tastes. Serve garnished with spring onions and some onion and garlic croutons.

This soup serves 6 and works out as 0pp a bowl (though it may come to 1pp for more than a bowlful!)

Freezes well.