Paris via Tokyo

As we can see from all my recent posts, my Low-Fat August hasn't been quite as low fat as I'd originally intended. But what I'm trying to take from the Low Fat chapter is not just the recipes, but also the principles for making quick, delicious, low calorie meals. This way I'll have a good repertoire of healthy dishes which I can turn to for quick midweek lunches and dinners, when I don't feel like tackling a brand-new recipe, and don't want anything too rich or fattening. Otherwise it'd be stuff like creamy pastas, fried fishcakes, and toasted cheese sandwiches every other night. Lovely, but deadly for the waistline!

For instance, last night I did the mushroom udon soup again, and slurped it up hungrily whilst at the computer. Much better than a take-away pizza!



I'm also in the process of making, again, the beef braised in beer, and this time in double quantities. We loved it so much! I think it could only be a good thing to have a hearty, tasty, low-fat stew, individually portioned, frozen, and ready to go. I've also got some vegetable curry in vegetable sauce in the freezer. (Actually, stay tuned for photos of my bulging freezer...)

Keeping in mind Nigella's principles of low fat eating, here's what I made for dinner tonight.

98. Braised Fennel
99. Poisson au Poivre

One of the tricks to sticking to low-fat eating, apparently, is to include lots of variety so you don't get bored. We don't eat, or even like fennel in the normal run of things, (you should have seen the look on my parents' faces when I told them what we were going to eat - and I'm not hot for it either), but this was divine! The fennel in this dish is sliced thinly, and cooked with a bit of stock in the oven. And it was great - the thin slicing and long cooking made it soft and tender, without that feral, strong aniseed flavour that undercooked or raw fennel has. Even the parentals were impressed with this!


Braised Fennel

The poisson au poivre is "a juicy piscine take on the bifteck bistro original". You can use any of the meatier fish varieties (tuna, swordfish, marlin, mahi-mahi etc), and then press crushed black pepper on the sides (which I crushed myself in a pestle and mortar), before grilling on a non-oiled griddle. I used swordfish, because tuna was strangely unavailable anywhere today.


Poisson au Poivre

As a side dish, I chose to do soba noodles (hence the "Paris via Tokyo" title of this post). Obviously, Nigella's Low Fat chapter is awash with soba, as is my general diet, whether or not I want to lose weight. I cooked them, tossed them through some bottled sukiyaki sauce, and sprinkled coriander over. This was basically the tasty beet greens with buckwheat noodles but without the feral beet greens to ruin the noodles. Again, having noodles tonight was about variety - we'd typically eat plain steamed rice as a side dish.


Soba noodles

This was a brilliant dinner. Bizzare cross-cultural mishmashes and connotations of tacky 80's fusion aside, the food was seriously good. The spicily hot fish contrasted well against the more subdued flavour of the noodles, as did the mildly-flavoured fennel. The meal overall was satisfyingly substantial, high in nutrients, low in fat and tasty. What more could you ask for?