Results tagged “winter” from Mostly Eating

Spring is in the air, which might seem an odd time to be writing about Winter, but what better time is there to reflect over what we have been eating over the last months? More and more evidence is gathering to support the Mediterranean diet for health and longevity, but there’s something in the mere mention of Mediterranean food that evokes images of sun-loving plants and al fresco eating. Is this a diet we can keep up through the Winter, or should those of us in colder parts be switching to a Nordic style diet? 

This pavlova is a serious pudding, not a health food.  The meringue is fudgy with brown sugar.  The fruit topping is vanilla and honey scented and textured with fig seeds.  The cream layer is a blend of whipped cream and greek yogurt. It’s really good though, so I thought you wouldn’t mind the brief deviation from all that nutritiousness.

The pavlova was supposed to be the caramel apple pavlova from the Riverford Farm cookbook.  We had friends coming to dinner and I promised myself that I’d stick to the recipe, just this once.  And then when I made the meringue the night before the dinner I figured swapping in a little bit of muscovado sugar couldn’t hurt, but that I’d stick to the plan with the caramel apple topping. And then our friends had to cancel because of the heavy snow we’ve had...

Inspired among other recipes by Stonesoup’s version of Maggie Beer’s fig pavlova I made a winter fruit compote with plums and dried figs, spiced with vanilla, cinnamon, star anise and honey.  A compote based on dried and (gasp!) canned fruit neatly skirts round the problem of the lacklustre fruit available in the UK at this time of year and gives the whole dish a decidedly seasonal feel.  You can use fresh fruit by all means but just think about it; nutritionally you’re not really missing out, it is environmentally sound at this time of year and you won’t be infuriated by fruit that doesn’t ripen in time for your guests.  Mixing whipped cream with a helping of lower-in-fat greek yogurt is a worthwhile twist that gives a contrasting sour note in the middle of all that sweetness. 

This week has seen something of a glut parsnips in our house, having bought a few in the shops and then been sent a few more by Abel and Cole who kindly sent me one of their fruit and veg boxes to try.  Parsnips have been popping up in the expected places such as soups and a few less expected like the tiny cubes dotted through a winter frittata along with leeks and smoked cheddar.  And then finally there was this lunchtime salad using raw parsnip, chickpeas and goats cheese coated in a honey mustard dressing.

Raw parsnip seems like a different vegetable from a soft, caramelised roasted parsnip.  A far feistier entity indeed; crunchy and unexpectedly peppery. I had some doubts about sharing this recipe; I’m not big on wacky ingredients, even when they are nutritious, and I’m definitely not a raw food diet advocate.  But then I saw Sally Schneider had used raw parsnip in her book The Improvisational Cook, in a Celery Root, Parnsip and Beet Slaw recipe.  Sally is a former chef, regular contributor to The Splendid Table foodie podcast and all round culinary genius, ergo it must be OK. 

This combination of juicy fresh fruit, sweet dried fruit and a hint of spice was my food flask breakfast for a very early train journey a few weeks back, inspired by a leftover bowl of quinoa.  Porridge (possibly more commonly known as oatmeal?) is my regular nutritious winter breakfast in many, many different guises, but quinoa makes a very pleasant change from oats.  Quinoa, it turns out, is also a much more forgiving grain to prepare in the morning rush.  Povided that you cook a little extra earlier in the week, this essentially just entails reheating; there’s no need to wait for that magic moment when those "oats floating in milk" magically elasticise into real, gooey porridge. Plus like porridge, this breakfast is really, really filling stuff, most likely because of the low glycaemic index of the grain which means that it keeps your blood glucose levels on an even keel well into the morning.

The mix of fresh and dried fruit covers water-soluble vitamins (particularly vitamin C), minerals and fibre all in one.  Porridge and quinoa are nutritionally similar in many ways; both are wholegrains and both low GI provided that you choose the right sort of oats.  Quinoa has a GI of 51 (classified as low), old-fashioned rolled oats 42 (also low) while instant porridge is 82 (high GI). Other nutritional aspects are more of a trade-off; porridge has its cholesterol-busting soluble fibre, while quinoa is higher in protein.

The quinoa can be soaked in the milk overnight but don’t worry about that too much - this dish still works fine made just before eating.  If you're wondering why I'm suggesting adding honey to something that already contains naturally sweet dried fruit and clementines, the reality is that quinoa often has a very distinctive earthy note to it (the kind of flavour a wine buff would describe as a tad vegetal).  A little drizzle of honey among all of these other healthy ingredients is not going to cause any lasting damage but if you use a sweetened milk like certain soy milks then you might not need it.

Last week was all about those ingredients that sound like they are going to be wholegrains but turn out not to be.  This week is a little of the opposite - I have been cooking with cous cous.  Now those clever foodie types amongst you will know that cous cous isn’t really a grain at all, despite it’s teeny tiny appearance, but that it is actually little tiny pieces of pasta.  But surprisingly perhaps, you can get still get wholegrain cous cous; simply cous cous made from wholewheat flour.

The cous cous, sumac, pepper and date salad featured here is a very simple recipe.  Everybody makes a salad like this every now and then - perfect as a side dish or as a packed lunch to take to work.  Every time I make it this salad it is slightly different, however the ideas behind it are always the same.  I have five broad categories of ingredient in mind to make sure that my salad provides a good range of nutrients:

A wholegrain – choose from quinoa, brown rice, buckwheat, wholegrain spelt, wholewheat cous cous and millet or whatever else you fancy.  Wholegrains are higher in vitamins and minerals than their refined equivalents and full of fibre.  People often find that wholegrains are more filling than refined carbohydrates, so a wholegrain salad is perfect for keeping you energetic and wide awake well into the afternoon.

Fresh vegetables – any chopped fresh or lightly blanched vegetables such as peppers, green beans, radish, tomato, grated carrot, courgette, spring onion, red onion, cucumber or sweetcorn.  All of these will count towards your five a day as well as providing vitamins, potassium and fibre.  I like to include something that I know will give me a decent amount of vitamin C – usually red or yellow peppers.  You can of course use leftover roasted vegetables, in which case how about complementing them with some chopped fresh fruit so that you still get plenty of Vitamin C?

Dried fruit – dates, apricots, figs, sour cherries etc will all add an appealing sweet note to your salad.  Most dried fruits are very high in fibre and usually rich in minerals (particularly iron and sometimes also calcium).

Nuts or seeds – these provide healthy fats, more fibre and a little bit of protein. Most importantly they add bags of texture and flavour.

Flavour enhancers – a little something to boost the flavour.  I used sumac, which adds a lovely tart note against the sweet dried dates (not to mention an exotic pink hue!).  But pretty much anything goes; lemon juice, black pepper, fresh or dried herbs, chilli sauce, spices, seasoning mixes. The idea is to boost the flavour of your lunch without needing to add large amounts of calories or salt.

Last week while I was busy not blogging I got predictably excited about an idea on Culinate for a breakfast salad.  The said salad can be prepared the evening before, kicking the day off to a great start with two portions of veg taken care of before even leaving the house

But the real world doesn't always pan out like that and this weekend has been one of those weekends.  Suddenly it's four o'clock on Sunday afternoon and my total fruit and veg consumption for the day has been a handful of dried fruit at breakfast (one portion down, at least four to go).

Big salads are the perfect cure to a day of vegetable dodging and have an endearing way of combining the best of all culinary worlds: raw and cooked, spicy and sweet, hot and cold.  This roast squash and chickpea salad is delicious and the perfect catch-up job; four portions of veg in one dish.  Definitely make the full quantities of the roast squash and marinated chickpeas even if you aren't feeding four people and you will magically find yourself the owner of a ready made lunch to take to work the next day.

The recipe does have a few stages to it but there's no rush; this is one of those good-natured recipes that will fit in happily around whatever else you might be up to.  I made the dressing and put the chickpeas in to marinade at about 3pm and then went off to sort out some paperwork.  I peeled and diced the squash and sliced the onion late afternoon before settling down to a bit of light blogging, finally roasting the squash and slow cooking the onions just before we wanted to eat.  With all of the prep done the actual cooking part seemed pretty trivial.

Nobody is more surprised than me by my current emotion (well OK, maybe my Mum will be a bit more surprised than I am if she’s reading this).  I’m upset because …. march is the end of the brussels sprout season!

Sprouts are a fabulous winter source of vitamin C and being so readily available locally meant that this winter just seemed like the time to put previous prejudice aside and give them another try.  I’ve always hated brussels sprouts, but a couple of factors have won me round.  First and foremost, sprouts are just tastier than they used to be – growers have been working hard to come up with sweeter tasting varieties (if you don’t believe me, well then that's all the more reason to give them another try).  Secondly, the blogosphere has sprouted some amazing recipes over the last couple of winters. If you look closely at the recipes they all have one quality in common; the sprouts are at no time be cooked using water. Therein lies the top tip - if you want to learn to love sprouts in all their glory then you need to start by steering well clear of anything boiled or microwaved.  

Heidi’s golden crusted spouts recipe dusted with cheese was the deal clincher for me, after which I have progressed swiftly through cheesy pasta sauces and on to virtually undisguised sprouts in healthy stir fries.  Still to come is the ultimate pinnacle of sprout acceptance, the raw sprout (roll on the first frost of winter 2008).

Five recipes to make you love brussels sprouts
Start with Heidi's golden crusted sprouts and work your way through.  Not a recipe but useful for those who have been willfully avoiding sprouts is Vegan Yum Yum's article on How to Buy and Prep Brussels Sprouts

• Golden-Crusted Brussels Sprouts Recipe Heidi at 101 cookbook
  
• Pasta with Hashed Brussels Sprouts and Pine Nuts Molly at orangette
  
• Brussels sprouts with spiced breadcrumbs recipe by Tom Norrington-Davies (channel 4)
• Roasted Brussels Sprouts Recipe with Balsamic, Parmesan, and Pine Nuts by Kalyn at Kalyn's Kitchen
  
• Caramelized strips of tofu served over sauteed shredded brussels sprouts Heidi at 101 cookbooks
• Brussels sprouts and tofu by Yotam Ottolenghin and ably tested by Wendy

Back in the olden days, the only fresh veggies available to eat in the long dark Scottish winter were potatoes and when the potato crop failed there was scurvy.  Scurvy (overt vitamin C deficiency) is thankfully [virtually] unheard of in the modern age, but the urban legend of the student who ate nothing but porridge got me wondering.  Are those of us trying to eat locally through the winter eating a wide enough range of fruit and vegetables to get all of the nutrients that we need? Don’t worry, I’m not suggesting that we are all about to get scurvy, but I don’t think there is any harm in putting a bit of attention into making sure that you fit a couple of good sources of vitamin C into every day, especially if you have slipped comfortably into a routine of roasted root veggies for dinner.

There’s still no evidence that lots of vitamin C will stop you getting a cold, unless you are living life on the edge in extremes of cold or physical stress (soldiers, marathon runners - it might help you guys out), but you do need a top-up of it every day for a whole host of important bodily functions. Vitamin C makes collagen for you, the connective network of tissues in your skin and bones, as well as carnitine, without which you feel would be feeling very tired and weak.  It is also one of those antioxidant nutrients, working hard in combination with other antioxidants to stop the kind of damage to individual cells and arteries that can lead to cancer and heart disease over time. Last but not least, vitamin C gets to work every time you eat a vegetarian iron-rich food making sure that you absorb as much of the iron as possible.



There are a whole host of good and relatively sustainable sources of vitamin C for the winter months:

Juicy fruit
There are lots of fine fruity sources of vitamin C (raspberries, kiwi fruit, citrus, pomegranate) and sadly none of them are growing anywhere near here in the middle of winter. In Britain importing fruit in Winter is a centuries old practice and meeting your five-a-day is difficult without it come February/March/April (the hungry gap) when even the British apples have run out. Delicate fresh strawberries and raspberries are lovely and full of vitamin C but to my mind they are going to taste all the better for the wait next Summer. A workable compromise position is to buy fruit that is sturdy enough to ship and which comes from the same continent (so this week Spanish clementines are in). 

Finding out how your fruit has arrived in the shops can be tricky – hassle your regular supplier for more information if their labelling isn’t very helpful.  Certain suppliers and certification schemes will do this for you - the Soil Association is looking at excluding air freighted produce from its certification programme and many organic box schemes only provide shipped imported produce, no airfreight.

There are always raw food enthusiasts around telling you that a diet exclusive of food cooked using heat is the way to eternal life but in reality the answer (as is nearly always the case in nutrition) lies in variety. As much as some nutrients are diminished by the water and heat that they encounter during cooking, there are a whole host of others that only become user friendly with a touch of heat and a drizzle of oil. The Japanese are probably the best at this balancing act with their talent for mixing raw and cooked vegetables within a single dish, providing bags of texture and nutrients.

This winter I have been studiously avoiding imported salad vegetables as far as possible but I miss the crunchy stuff, and there are only so many kettle chips a girl can reasonably eat to fulfill this particular craving. Enter the winter coleslaw – fantastically crunchy and very nutritious.

Friday is Burns night, a celebration of all things Scottish and first proper foodie celebration of the new-year for many. By all means serve your haggis in the traditional way with neeps and tatties (mashed swede and potato for the uninitiated) but make sure that you shop generously and have some leftovers to play with. Warm haggis served with soft floury tortilla wraps and creamy tzatziki is an unexpected match made in heaven!

Wonderful Scottish food champion and cookbook author Sue Lawrence talked about this idea on Great Food Live last year and it was one of those combinations that made perfect intuitive sense. Haggis spice blends are closely guarded secrets but the spices at the core are also staples of Greek cookery (pepper, cloves and nutmeg), making haggis a natural match for tzatziki. I couldn’t bear to wait until January to try this out and hitting the shops to buy a haggis (veggie in this case) in mid-November I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to find one. This version of Sue’s dish is made with vegetarian haggis and a winter tzatziki, a fancy way of saying that it is tzatziki made with dried mint, thus neatly avoiding the need to buy air-freighted herbs from the supermarket.

Soup is the perfect food for this time of year; suitably healthy if you ate a few too many mince pies but comforting enough to pacify those of you stuck with snow blizzards or malingering colds. This recipe is for my new favourite, a soup made with roast parsnips, chestnuts and finished off with fresh orange juice and a dollop of zesty, spiced yogurt.

Full bodied is the most fitting description I can conjure for this soup. My other half (the triathlete) raved about it for its deep, near meaty flavour and for myself, well I can’t resist a roast parsnip and the nutmeg, orange zest and yogurt topping adds that bit of freshness that I can’t help looking around for now that autumnal roasts and stews are starting to seem “so last year”.

Chestnuts are a funny old thing aren’t they? Delicious, but very different from your average nut and I couldn’t help but be intrigued about their composition. Chestnuts don’t have the typical nut benefits of high protein and heart healthy monounsaturated fat, but they do have plenty of fibre, and with hardly any fat (good or bad) they have massively less calories than your conventional nut. Pretty good for you, but strangely much closer in make-up to a parsnip than an almond.

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I hope you all have a lovely time over the Christmas break. We will be off up North in a couple of days to see both of our families and before that I'm planning a leisurely couple of days wrapping presents and drinking mulled wine. For alongside this I have already made a batch of my favourite Christmas baking treat; sticky golden syrup flapjacks warmed up with a seasonal dollop of mincemeat and a snifter of rum. This recipe is as easy as baking gets and but will still fill your house with a satisfying dose of spicy, fruity Christmas scent.

I tried nutritionify-ing this recipe by leaving out a bit of the butter and golden syrup, but it told me in no uncertain terms that this was not what Christmas cookery was all about by promptly falling apart. I present here the full fat, full sugar, full syrup version to enjoy (normal service will be resumed in January!).

Everybody has their favourite way of making porridge. Purists will tell you that porridge has to be cooked long and slow to develop the correct consistency, stirred with the attention usually only reserved for a good risotto. There's no way I'm standing around doing that first thing in the morning, so to the microwave it is. Mind you, there is a way get some of that traditional creaminess into a microwave porridge and that trick is to soak the oats in the milk before you cook it.

Here's how it works in our house: fall out of bed, stumble down stairs, pour oats and milk into a bowl while making obligatory cup of tea, put bowl into microwave out of way of the cats, go back upstairs and get washed and dressed, come back down, cook porridge, eat. If you are feeling crazily organised you can do the soaking stage the night before and leave the porridge mixture soaking in the fridge where it will become even creamier (I have even been known to eat this mixture cold without cooking it, on the train. Funny looks? Yes!).

Porridge is just made for experimentation and this fig and plum porridge is a joy (think christmas morning, every day). Dried figs are an excellent partner to porridge, keeping their texture better than most dried fruits because of all of those little tiny seeds (did you know that they also contain a surprisingly large amount of calcium and iron?). Allspice is this year's winter spice of choice for me, having the requisite warm, mulled wine fragrance but with a bit more punch than cinnamon. And nutritionally there are pretty much only good things to say about oats; if you would like to read more about these good things I highly recommend Canadian Dietitian Leslie Beck's Featured Food article on oats. Scratching around, the only thought close to a criticism I have ever managed to come up with is that oats are a little lower in insoluble fibre (the roughage sort) than some other cereals. The addition of fresh and dried fruit boosts this and I also throw in a teaspoon of flaxseeds at the soaking stage (these are also called golden flaxseed, flax and linseed). The finishing touch to the porridge is a decadent sprinkling of dark muscovado sugar crystals that melt into the top in an irrestibly fudgy way.

There’s one question that I need to get out of the way quickly before my lovely husband gets any ideas. Yes, these little cakes do have vegetable in them, but no, they don’t count as a portion of veg. I hope I haven’t upset anyone else with that revelation? A portion of veggies you see needs to be at least within shouting distance of 80g, and a slice of carrot cake or any of its culinary siblings come in nowhere near that, not even nutritionist Kathryn’s Chocolate and Beetroot cake or Heidi’s Special Zucchini Bread. These little squash bites are in the same boat – a meagre 12.5g of squash per cake. But don’t worry, it is not so much what you are putting in that is important here, it is what the squash lets you leave out. Here's the low down on why these are worth firing up the oven:

• Crystallised ginger and butternut squash are the perfect autumn flavour combo


• Roasted butternut squash provides plenty of moisture leaving the recipe to be naturally low fat


• Flour is OK (unless you have coeliac disease), especially wholemeal, but just doesn't do as much good stuff for you as oats. This recipe is loosely based on the kind of proportions you would use to make muffins but skips half of the flour in favour of low GI, cholesterol busting oats.


• There's no butter or marg in here, just two tablespoons of rapeseed oil to make twenty cakes. Rapeseed oil is the one also known as vegetable oil or canola and is predominantly monounsaturated like olive oil (indeed you could use a mild olive oil instead if you prefer).


• You won't miss the butter, I promise, because there are also a handful of buttery macadamia nuts in there.

These are an every day sorta cake. They aren’t particularly pretty or delicate (meaning that you can dunk them in your tea), but they are as nutritionally well balanced as you can expect a cake to be. Like most low fat cakes they don’t keep for too long but this works in their favour – I keep a batch in the freezer and when I fancy something sweet with my tea I take one of these out at breakfast and it is ready to eat by coffee break.

This is an entirely self-invented recipe and I'm not a baking expert by any means; feel free to tweak the recipe and report back on any improvements you come up with! I’m sure you can think of plenty of things to do with the rest of the butternut squash but if not pop it into the freezer for now (I have an easy savoury recipe to use the rest on its way).

My foray into vegetable-based baking coincides with a beta carotene theme for regular blogging event Sugar High Friday so I thought I would take the opportunity to join those guys for a change (the event is hosted this time around by Leslie at Definitely Not Martha). It sounds good so I will put a link to the round-up here when it appears.

I’m planning ahead a little here I know, but I reckon this warm sweet potato salad will really come into its own in dreary January and February. There is no way it can fail to bring a bit of cheer to the table with its sweet flavours and vibrant shades of purple, pinks and orange. Happily my plan should work; sweet potatoes, beetroot and red onion are all seasonally available now in the northern hemisphere and should be around for a quite a while yet.

This recipe has its roots in the moreish potato salad recipe in Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer book, made from baked potato, spring onion, olive oil and sumac. This autumnal version brings in sweet potatoes and beetroot and most importantly keeps the potato skins. Potato skins I love in all their chewy leathery-ness, and as your mother no doubt told you when you were growing up they are very good for you too (there you go, not every bit of advice in nutrition changes with the month!). Last but not least, for what is essentially an oven roasted vegetable dish this one requires surprisingly little oil.

Sweet potato has a lighter texture than a regular potato and has the advantage of being low GI to keep you fuller for longer. Orange and purple beetroots add an earthy note, more sweetness and a good helping of folate. The smattering of crushed sumac berries add a delicious tartness as well as more flecks of luminous pink, as if the beetroot and potato were not colourful enough already! Don’t worry too much if you don’t have sumac – the raw onion does a pretty good job on its own in providing a bit of contrast. If you are using a fresh orange for the juice (rather than a carton) you could chuck in a bit of finely grated orange zest in place of the sumac.

Spiced chilli hot chocolate is an idea as old as well, hot chocolate! The earliest traces of hot chocolate, found in Mayan tombs in Guatamala dating back to 460 A.D, had been made from a paste ground from cocoa seeds mixed with cornmeal and chillis. I like this spicy hot chocolate as an occasional mid afternoon pick me up when I am struggling to concentrate on something complicated – there’s definitely something in the research from Nottingham University showing that a cocoa rich drink can improve blood flow to the brain. Chilli is also well known for improving blood flow all over your body so this would be equally welcome to warm you up after a bracing winter walk outside.

Sadly chocolate is not the health food that some clever marketing people would like us to believe (or that we would like to believe perhaps?), but for an occasional sweet treat a mug of hot spicy drinking chocolate is not such a bad thing. Two tips to keep it on the healthy side; first, use good quality plain chocolate rather than a sweetened milk chocolate or chocolate powder and second, use semi-skimmed or skimmed milk to keep this on the low fat side. All chocolate is high in sugar and fat (dark chocolate just has a little bit less fat and a little bit more sugar) and so the health gain in choosing dark (plain chocolate) is not really about fat but is because dark chocolate contains more cocoa solids, usually around the 70%. It is the cocoa solids in chocolate that have been associated with having heart health benefits and that contain valuable anti-oxidants.

If you've ever heard nutritionists talking about sugary and sweet foods being empty calories they mean that these foods provide calories but bugger all else of nutritional usefulness. Happily this hot chocolate is well away from being empty calories with those 70% cocoa solids and a good helping of bone healthy calcium in the milk. If you don’t drink cows milk just go for whatever alternative you normally use but try to choose one that has been fortified with calcium.

And now to the all important third tip - for a super enjoyable, guilt-free beverage experience make your drink from tasty fairly traded dark chocolate! Rachel who makes and bakes many lovely things over at Rkhooks is gathering together all of our best chocolate recipes to promote the chocolate campaign from Stop the Traffik. The chocolate campaign is there to draw attention to the shocking practice of using trafficked child slave labour to harvest cocoa beans on the Cote D'Ivoire. The chocolate campaign web site has some information about where to buy your traffik-free chocolate from but essentially for a chocolate to be awarded Fairtrade status it must be guaranteed not to have involved any trafficked labour in its production so you can just look out for fairtrade chocolate.

Sam has challenged all of us English to stick up for our much-maligned national cuisine, which is a fine idea but leaves us all with a bit of quandary; do we showcase one of our traditional dishes or do we attempt to show “how much we have come on”?

One of the things I think we Brits/English do really well is this local eating and reducing food miles business. One of the advantages of living on such a small island is that when we try to eat local it really can mean local. Not for us a 100-mile radius like those Bay Area people I keep hearing about - no disrespect intended if any of you are reading :-) Nope, over here local is often very local indeed (100 miles is after all, a quarter of the length of England). From where I live at the edge of a reasonably large city (Oxford) I can get artisan cheeses, an impressive choice of organic veg, melt-in-the-mouth sustainably farmed lamb all within the 18 miles from my house.

An area of British produce that has seen a big surge in popularity in recent years with both health-conscious and ethically-concerned shoppers is venison. The main species of deer farmed for venison in England is the red deer, indigenous to Britain, which I think fits nicely with the theme of the event. I far prefer the idea of eating an animal that has been reared out and about in something close to its natural habitat (hence my thing about lamb recipes) and the increase in sales suggest that there are a lot of other peope who feel the same way. Deer for the most part are still reared on expansive parkland in England, though I understand that the same is not true of all countries.

Red meat has a bad reputation nutritionally-speaking. Some, but not all of these concerns are related to the saturated fat content of the meat, so if you do eat red meat occasionally then naturally low-in-fat venison is an excellent choice. It is much lower in fat (including saturated fat) than other red meats, while retaining the typical beneficial attributes such as high quality protein and easily-absorbed iron. The venison in my casserole contains 165 kcal in it per 100g, and 2.5g of fat, whereas my next choice, lean (trimmed) braising steak that would have contained 225 kcal and 9.7g of fat.

Macaroni Cheese is one of those foods that many of us have placed on our mental ‘banned substance’ list because of the stonkingly high saturated fat content from all that cheese and butter and cream. But everybody loves it, including my other half who specifically requested macaroni cheese (and shepherds pie, but we haven't got round to that one yet). Thereby is tricky thing about cooking for somebody else regularly; if you love somebody do you feed them what they want to eat or what you hope will be good for them? Hopefully there’s room for a bit of both, which seems like a good theme for my Valentine’s day recipe; a grown-up but slightly more heart-friendly take on macaroni cheese to make for somebody you love.

This macaroni cheese contains wholegrain pasta and breadcrumbs, a mix of full fat and half fat dairy and a tasty leek. Reducing the saturated fat, including some wholegrain ingredients and a fresh vegetable are all great ways of modifying a recipe to make it more heart-healthy. But there is no need to dwell on these things (or even mention them at all); all that is really important is that this is a gooey and cheesy macaroni cheese with a contrasting, golden crunchy topping.

A few people I know turn their noses up at Quorn because it “doesn’t taste of anything”. To my mind they are missing the point; it is precisely this quality of Quorn that makes it useful. Yes, the plain imitation chicken fillets are decidedly uninspiring (and a little odd) but ignore those and go for the mince or the pieces; Quorn is at its best in something like a stew or a chili where it can absorb all of the other flavours like a sponge.

This vegetarian chili is not the most elegant dish around but the huge batch I have just made will be most welcome over the next few weeks when I am going to be very busy with limited time to cook and shop. It freezes beautifully and is very highly rated by the more carnivorous half of the household.

The important thing with this one is that you have to make this recipe the day before you want to eat it if you want it to taste good. I think there are two reasons why this is even more important for a quorn chili than a meat version. Firstly, because parts of the dish are relatively bland tasting, you need to allow longer for that magical merging of flavours that happens to make any stew type dish taste more than just the sum of the individual parts. Secondly, some of the lovely aromatic compounds in the spices will dissolve in the water component of the dish and others in the fat. Because this version is so low in fat compared with a meat dish again you need to give it a bit longer for all of the flavours to spread throughout. So, make it while you watch a movie on a rainy Saturday afternoon, wandering into the kitchen to give it a stir occasionally, and then it will be ready and waiting as a quick dinner on Sunday or Monday night. Bag or box the remaining portions and put them in the freezer from which they will emerge even tastier.

Friday was a big day for me, my last day after working in the same place for nearly nine and a half years! As is tradition when somebody arrives or leaves we had a big communal coffee morning, known locally as a Beano.

This isn't the place to describe the perfectly chosen flowers, photos and other gifts I was given, the lovely speech (though Stuart did you really need to bring up the rugby tackling incident?), or the sniffing on my part. But I would like to say a big Thank You again to everybody involved in giving me such a fantastic send off - you know who you are! Anyway, enough of the sentimental stuff now, if you are reading this blog you probably want me to shut up and get to the food part.

My offerings for the occasion were some Chocolate and Chili bites. These went very quickly and a few people asked for the recipe so I’m guessing they were a hit; you can find the original recipe for them on the Chocolate and Zucchini web site. These are very rich (more akin to a brownie rather than a muffin) and very tasty. I'd love to tell you all about how good for you they are with their antioxidant-rich dark chocolate but given their other major ingredients (lots and lots of butter and sugar) it would be terribly unethical of me to encourage their regular consumption on health grounds. What I will say is that these are suitably small so as not to make you feel too guilty, and that a little of what you fancy does you good.

Today was not a day to go out to buy something for lunch – the weather forecast said “damaging winds gusting 60 to 70mph” and it was not exaggerating. It was so bad that every so often the wind gusts through the roof and makes the hatch from the landing to the loft lift up and drop with a bang (boy did that scare the cat!).

Lunch was therefore something concocted from the remainders in the fridge. The last of the virtuous seasonal, organic and local parsnips fried in a little olive oil and thyme, with a dollop of cottage cheese on the side and finished off with a sprinkling of seeds. The whole thing was surprisingly good; the sourness of the cottage cheese complemented the sweet, caramelised parsnips and the seeds added a welcome crunch to the whole thing.