What does Nigella suggest for dinner?

Happy happy joy joy, today was the first day in about a week that I’ve actually had a proper low-fat day! The past week or so has seen a barrage of reasons (or excuses) to abandon my so-called period of restraint – my weekly allotted full-fat meal plus pudding; the need to use up the leftovers of said full-fat meal; going out too much; my inordinate passion for biscuits; an encounter with a platter of deep-fried cheese at a party (now really, that’s just cruel); a hangover or two; and… er… women’s troubles.

But today there was none of that – just an ordinary day full of delicious, light and nourishing food. Here’s what I ate today! (With apologies for coming over all Bridget Jones…)

Soy and linseed toast with vegemite and pear jam, 1 glass low-fat soy milk
1 skinny latté
1 Falafel salad roll
1 skinny latté, 1 banana
Dinner (see below)
Black tea with Seville orange juice, 1 apple

93. Sugar-Spiced Salmon with Chinese Hot Mustard
94. Vegetables with Ginger and Garlic


Sugar-Spiced Salmon with Chinese Hot Mustard and Vegetables

Both these recipes are suggestions from the beginning of the Low Fat chapter. The salmon comes from an American book called Pacifica Blue Plates by Neil Stuart, and gives an unusual taste and texture to a rather common fish. The salmon fillets are dredged in a mixture of spices (ginger, cinnamon, cumin, cayenne, mustard powder), sugar and salt, and grilled. The spice mixture forms a lovely crusty coating on the fish, and is sweet, salty and hot all at the same time. The “Chinese Hot Mustard” sauce is water, mustard powder and sugar. It tastes nice, and complements the salmon well, but I prefer the mustard sauce which accompanies the salmon in Nigella Bites’ Templefood chapter. (That one is mustard powder, water, ginger and soy sauce – and it’s lovely).

For the vegetables, it’s more the method than the exact ingredients that are important here. Nigella’s fat-free method of cooking vegetables is a mixture of stir-frying and steaming – heat some stock, ginger, garlic and spring onions in a wok before adding vegetables and stirring until cooked. Ransacking my fridge, I used carrots, broccoli (no bugs in it this time!), red capsicum, and sugar snap peas. This is a really fantastic, flavourful way to cook vegetables, retaining their nutrients, texture and colour. I highly recommend that you try it.