3 Little Words

A year in – a summary

2009-01-06T10:41:00.002Z

Well, it's pretty much a year to the day since I started this blog, so I guess it's time to ask what I've achieved – and what I could have done better.

Let's start with the weight – at the very best this year, I hit 82.9 kilos, down 12 kilos on the start of the year. I've put on just under a kilo and a half over Christmas – I'm now up to 84.3 kilos, but that's not the end of the world.

I've dropped around a couple of dress sizes, from a large 18 to a standard 16. And I'm much, much fitter than I was a year ago, when I couldn't even run for the bus without getting out of puff, never mind contemplating five kilometres.

On the down side, though, I kind of lost the plot after a cracking start to the weight loss. The challenge for this year will be to pick up where I left off and drop at least another 10 kilos (preferably closer to 15) by this time next year. One article I read recently that really made me think was about portion control, and that's something I'm really going to work on in the coming weeks.

And I'll keep posting stuff to this blog – so keep an eye out for some interesting recipes in the coming weeks and months.

The Christmas goose is getting fat...

2008-12-30T11:19:00.003Z

...Sadly, though, it's not just the Christmas goose that's put on weight. Although I was down to 82.9 kilos three weeks ago, I'm now up to 84.8 kilos. It's my fault, really – I've spent the past fortnight in an orgy of cooking, eating and indolence (highlights have included a fantastic fore-rib of beef, served with spuds roasted in goose fat and pillowy yorkshire puds, and a slow-roast shoulder of lamb that just fell apart at the prod of a fork).

I'm hoping, though, that the weight that's gone on so fast will come off again equally quickly. My knee is also on the mend and, over the past few days, I've been running again. It's amazing how quickly you can lose condition thought – I did two miles (3.5 km) the other day and nearly died in the attempt. Five ks looks almost as unachievable as it did a month or so ago... Still, one step back and two steps forward is the order of the day, so I'm about to go for the third run of the week. If I don't kill myself out there, I'll be back in the next day or two with some updates.

James's advice on injury and exercise

2008-12-22T14:47:00.004Z

As a rather annoying coincidence, just as you're feeling good and starting to reap the benefits of exercise and a healthier lifestyle, something happens that sets you back... Darn it!

As is often the case, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to your injury. There will almost certainly be no warning – it just seems that at a certain point in your training, bits start hurting and not working as well as they had earlier on.

Fear not... it happens to the best of us. I can remember training really hard for a run I wanted to take part in. I was working intensely – so much so that, come the end of most days, I found it hard to walk. It turned out that the problem was more in the nature than a cry for help from my muscles than anything too serious.

If you think about it logically, the reason for the discomfort is quite clear. Any change in your routine is going to have an effect. When trying to lose weight, we strive for a ‘negative energy balance’ – we aim to eat less but do more. This equation also applies to our bodies when you step up the pace, whether it’s your joints, your muscles, your energy level or anything else.

In a weight-loss programme, levels of intensity and strain increase rapidly to begin with (due to the lack of activity previously), so strict attention to form is essential as you don't want to pick up any bad habits that will stay with you.

Often a joint or other area of your body will start to experience discomfort when you begin your exercise regime or when you increase the demands on your body. This discomfort is usually due to you not having used your body in this way before. You are challenging it and it’s letting you know about it.

My advice is to stay with it, while bearing in mind that an initial rest period if you experience a minor injury is no bad thing. In fact I think it is quite good to shock your body with a change of routine on a regular basis, so turning off the heat then turning it back on again may well work in your favour.

Remember, though, that it’s important to listen to what your body is saying. You may need to seek advice from someone with an X-ray machine if the pain continues. Although 75% of our ‘niggles’ turn out to be something quite harmless, 25% can be symptoms of something more serious.

No excuses – well, maybe just a couple

2008-12-22T13:21:00.005Z

I'm sorry, I've been totally crap about posting anything on this blog for a while. I could put it down to the end-of-year rush at work, or I could lay the blame at the door of my computer – it's been getting slower and slower for a while and I eventually took it into the workshop to have the hard drive cloned and then doubled in size. That's when I was told I'd nearly knackered it by only having four gigs of hard drive space free. Anyway, the new drive was re-installed with no problem, but getting some extra RAM into the thing proved challenging – it was on order for days before it finally came through, and I was computer-less for over a week, something I'm not used to and which makes me feel distinctly uncomfortable...

Added to which, I had an exercise triumph – I managed to plough my way through five kilometres, although it took me nearly 40 minutes to do it – quickly followed by another exercise nadir. When I woke up the day after my five-k run, I could barely stand. I'd done some damage to my knee that left me limping. It's taken me almost a fortnight to be able to walk on it without getting a twinge, and it turns out that I'm not the only person to suffer a similar setback just at the point when everything seems to be coming together on the exercise front. The next posting on this blog will come from James, who has a theory as to why this might be...

Things are finally moving in the right direction

2008-11-05T07:37:00.002Z

It's taken ages, for one reason or another, but I've finally moved off my plateau. This morning I weighed in at 83.7 kilos... Hurrah!

Another milestone, quite literally...

2008-11-03T08:22:00.002Z

I managed to push on through my 2-mile barrier yesterday. I planned a new route for my run and just went for it. True, by the end my legs felt like jelly, but I just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other and I made it. I've found there's a bit of a psychological trick to it too. I divide the run into segments and push myself until I get to the end of each segment – then I tell myself I should get through at least one more segment. Sooner or later, you end up so close to the finishing line that it seems like a shame to give up...

Happy as a...

2008-11-01T17:59:00.002Z

I went out the other night to the 'soft launch' of a friend's new restaurant – a bit like a dress rehearsal. The idea is that you give the restaurant kitchens and the front of house staff a chance to test out their abilities before they get let loose on paying punters. The place – Terroir, 5 William IV Street, WC2 – is just behind Charing Cross tube station and, once they've got over a few teething problems, I think it'll be a truly pleasant place for an evening out (and I'm not just saying that because it's a mate's restaurant). Mark and I tried a few of the dishes, including a steak tartare and salad of smoked duck breast with green beans and walnuts, but for me the standout dish was one of clams with ham, garlic and chilli.

I liked it so much, in fact, that I decided I wanted to try my own take on the dish, which I did last night. In fact, we liked it so much – and I got so carried away – that I forgot to take a picture of the finished dish (hence the generic picture of clams, top). Here's the recipe (Mark said it was even better than the original, but he could just be biased...)

Clams with ham, garlic, parsley and chilli for two

150g smoked bacon, preferably cut into thick slices, then cut into lardons
a skerrick of olive oil
a smear of butter
2 shallots, finely chopped
1-2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 red chilli, finely chopped
150ml white wine
150ml fish stock
600-700g clams
a large bunch flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oil and butter (use as little as possible – it's just to lubricate things until the bacon fat starts rendering) in a heavy-bottomed casserole dish or saucepan, then add the lardons. Fry until the lardons are beginning to brown.

Turn the heat down low and add the chopped shallots. Fry gently until translucent and soft. Add the garlic and chilli and fry for another half a minute.

Stir in the wine and the stock and bring to a fierce boil until the liquid has reduced by at least a third.

Lower the heat to a medium flame. Tip the clams into the pan, along with the parsley and the pepper. Stir thoroughly then place the lid on the saucepan. Cook for another few minutes, until the clams have all opened. Serve in a bowl, along with a slice or two of bread for your non-dieting beloved...

Another simple dinner

2008-11-01T17:43:00.000Z

It may not look all that great in the picture (no wonder food stylists get paid a good rate), but this dinner of plaice with a side of couscous and veg tasted pretty scrummy.

The plaice itself was well seasoned and then simply grilled, but it was the couscous and veg that made it special. I cut a couple of courgettes into chunks (quartering the courgettes lengthwise, then chopping them into 1cm-thick bits) and sauteed them in a sparing drizzle of olive oil.

While I was doing that, I also toasted some pine nuts in a dry frying pan (they've got some oil all of their own, so don't need any extra fat) and poured some boiling water over a small bowl of couscous then put a lid over it to let it swell up in the steam (with a stick of cinnamon in along with the couscous to add a bit more flavour).

I then got four or five pickled lemons (an ingredient traditionally used in Moroccan cookery and available in most supermarkets), sliced them into quarters lengthways, removed the pulp and roughly chopped the skins into large dice.

Once the couscous had absorbed the water and was completely tender, I stirred in the sauteed courgettes, the pine nuts, the pickled lemons and a good handful of chopped fresh coriander and a twist of black pepper. Very simple, but very good indeed.

Patron of the yartz...

2008-10-26T16:31:00.004Z

When Mark and I had our post-wedding party last month, we wondered for a while about what kind of wedding present we should ask for. We knew we didn't need pots and pans or towels and bed linen and all the usual kind of stuff newlyweds get landed with. We certainly had more than enough toasters and kettles between us, having merged our two households a couple of years ago.

So we hit on the idea of asking our friends for a contribution towards the purchase of a painting. Today, with the grand total burning a hole in our pockets, we went to the Affordable Art Fair in Bettersea Park – and fell in love with the Lady with the Candelabra (left) shortly after we arrived (I think she was on the sixth booth we visited). Inevitably, she was more expensive than our budget had allowed for, but she was so beautiful that she stayed with us as we trailed round the rest of the fair (the picture doesn't do justice to the glowing colours of the paint or the intricate texture on the canvas). Mark and I saw some wonderful pieces, and we could easily have spent our money four times over, but we kept coming back to her.

Luckily, after a bit of haggling, we arrived at a mutually agreeable price that didn't compromise the art dealer's commercial instincts or our ability to pay. So the lady with the candelabra came home with us. I still think she's beautiful – and I'll carry on believing it for the rest of my life.

A big thank you to all those who helped us buy her...

I'm dreading this 5k run

2008-10-25T18:00:00.003+01:00

I've tried and I've tried and I've tried, but I can't seem to break through the 3k barrier. With only six weeks (at the most) to go before I have to do this 5k run that James has put me up for, I can't see how I'm going to make it.

I spent the last couple of days in Geneva, on a commission to write up some restaurants in a deluxe hotel there (I'll post about the trip in full soon, and, yes, I know, tough job...) and spent some time in the gym while I was there. In theory, running on a treadmill should be easier than running on the street or in the park, but I still can't crack my 3k limit.

I'm rather beginning to dread this particular challenge...

Locked out!

2008-10-24T17:54:00.002+01:00

So there I was on Monday morning, pootling round the house, getting ready for my session with James, when the rubbish men came. After emptying out the wheelie bin, the rubbish men left it out on the street. So I thought I'd do my civic duty and bring it in to the front garden. My trainers were upstairs, so I slipped on Mark's slippers – a pair of plastic flip-flops – and, latching the door (or so I thought), stepped outside to get the bin. It was a windy morning, as some of you may remember, and the wind caught the door and slammed it behind me. Had it actually been on the latch, as I was convinced it was, it wouldn't have been an issue – but it closed behind me with a bang. I was locked out.

Not a problem, I thought. Two of my neighbours have a key and, given that it wasn't quite 8.30, I thought one or the other must be in. In fact, the lights were on at Ann and Patrick's place next door and Anne's car was still parked out on the street. So I nipped through their gate and rang the bell. And rang the bell again. Nothing.

No worries, I'll thought, I'll try Rob and Jamie's. But the blinds were closed and I couldn't even hear the yapping of their neurotic little dog Connie.

It was at this point that James came cycling up the street, a broad smile on his face (no doubt in anticipation of whatever session of sadism he had in mind for the morning). Hating to disappoint him (not), I gave him the bad news – but I got no reprieve and found myself out in the park, doing step ups onto the bench and a series of boxing moves in Mark's slippers (how glam, not).

Lucky for me, it turned out that Ann was home after all – she'd just been in the shower at the point when I got locked out. Shame I didn't find out until after an hour's heavy exercise in my plastic flipflops. Next time I get locked out, I'll try and make sure I'm wearing my trainers...

Flash dinner on the go

2008-10-24T08:01:00.002+01:00

Have you ever found yourself having to cook dinner for guests at the end of a long day? If you have, you know how much of a pain it can be to faff around in the kitchen when all you really want to do is mong on the sofa (preferably with a nice glass of wine, but we don't even want to go there, do we?)...

So here's my guilt-free solution to dealing with dinner for four. It's a versatile dish of pot-roast chicken and veg that's based on a traditional French recipe. You can use a whole range of vegetables – I used squash, peppers and leeks, but you could also use celery, courgettes or onions (and that's just off the top of my head – I suggest you experiment for yourself if you like the basic dish). Don't worry about the quantity of garlic; you can leave it out if you want, but it adds a wonderful mellow perfume to the dish and doesn't dominate the flavours at all.

Pot-roast chicken with vegetables for four

4 chicken thighs and 4 chicken legs, skin removed
a drizzle of olive oil
1 butternut squash, deseeded and cut into large chunks
3 peppers (of whatever colour), deseeded and cut into large chunks
2 leeks, cleaned and cut into large chunks
1 head of garlic, separated into cloves
300ml chicken stock
150ml dry white wine
a couple of sprigs of thyme, stalks removed
2 bay leaves
a good handful of flat leaf parsley, chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Brown the chicken, a few pieces at a time, in the hot oil in a heavy oven-proof casserole.

Pile the chicken back into the casserole dish, along with the veg, the garlic, the stock, the wine and the thyme and bay leaves. Season well.

Put the lid on the casserole (it must fit fairly tightly) and place the casserole in the oven.

Cook for about an hour (you can check after 45 minutes).

Serve (with mashed potatoes for those who can eat them – you should leave well alone, of course) and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

A threatening email

2008-10-15T16:38:00.001+01:00

I've just received the following email from James, the trainer I work with most of the time.

'Just been on Google and our run this morning was 0.9725 miles. 3 miles by the end of the year is not a problem. Anyway you've done it with me before. This time though, we'll take out the walk parts of the ratio.....

Have fun'

Now that's what I call a threatening email...

Things get steamy

2008-10-14T07:51:00.002+01:00

A few months ago, I was walking past my local cookshop and, in the window, I saw a marvellous, shiny piece of kit that I just had to have... It was a big stainless-steel wok, with a huge steamer and a see-through lid. The reason it caught my eye was that I'd recently tried to cook a dish that had worked perfectly well in the past when I'd been cooking for one, before Mark and I moved in together, but which had proved logistically impossible as dinner for two. The dish in question was steamed chicken with mushrooms. A small plate for one person fitted neatly into my bamboo steamer, but when I tried to make enough for both of us the bamboo steamer just wasn't up to the job. So the big wok, with its vast steamer, was just what I needed.

So far, I'd just used it as a wok, but the other night I decided to cook the dish that had inspired the purchase. Fate was clearly working against me. I wanted to use shitake mushrooms, because I like their meaty texture and full flavour, but there weren't any in the shops, so I had to use other mushrooms instead. No matter. The finished meal was pretty tasty anyway, in a soothing kind of way.

Steamed chicken and mushrooms for two

2 skinned chicken breasts, cut into thin slices
1 punnet mushrooms, preferably shitake, but oyster mushrooms or other 'exotic' Asian mushrooms will do, sliced
1 can straw mushrooms, drained (if you can't find straw mushrooms, either in your local supermarket or in an Asian supermarket, you can use another punnet of mushrooms – I'd suggest using a different type from the first punnet, just to add texture and flavour)
1 bunch spring onions, trimmed and sliced
a thumb of fresh ginger, peeled and cut into matchsticks
100mls chicken stock
1-2 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp rice wine
1 bunch fresh coriander, chopped

Place the chicken, mushrooms, spring onions and ginger in a shallow heatproof dish, then mix everything together.

Pour the liquids into the dish and give it all another stir.

Meanwhile, get some water boiling in the bottom bit of your steamer, then reduce heat so that the water is boiling steadily but not too fiercely.

Place the dish with the chicken and mushrooms in the top part of the steamer and place it all on the steamer base. Cover with a lid.

Steaming is a remarkably quick, efficient way of cooking, so depending on how much steam there is, the thickness of your heatproof dish and a number of other variables, start checking on the dish about 10 minutes after you've put it on to steam. It's done when the chicken is cooked through, which shouldn't take more than quarter of an hour.

Sprinkle with coriander and serve with a small helping of brown rice or stir-fried egg noodles.

Steaming cooks

What I did with my weekend...

2008-10-13T08:27:00.004+01:00

For one reason or another, time seems tight at the moment (isn't it funny how, given that time is an elastic concept, it can be tight or stretched, but never seems to be loose or slack?) We're at the peak of tasting season (I'm meant to be going to eight tastings this week, and could easily add another five or six), I'm travelling at the end of next week (to Geneva for a couple of days) and the beginning of the week after (to Bordeaux for a day and a half), have three articles to write this week and have eight people coming for lunch on Sunday (to give up my social life would be to admit defeat, I feel).

And so it was that I realised that unless I tasted all the wines I needed to taste for the article I have to write this week over the weekend, it wouldn't happen and there would be an almighty car crash of a missed deadline. So on Saturday afternoon I spent an hour unpacking the cardboard boxes that cluttered the hall (merely stripping off all the packaging tape, getting rid of the foam sleeves or pebbles that cushion the bottles, labelling the wines with the names of the company that sent them to me – it's amazing how many people send in bottles with no information, as if you'd recognise who they came from amid the dozens of other bottles you're dealing with – and deconstructing the cardboard boxes so that they can be put out with the rest of the recycling is an exhausting job in itself). I squeezed close on to 30 bottles of white wine in the fridge so that they could chill overnight and lined up the reds (see picture above).

The next morning, after a breakfast of two scrambled eggs, a slice of multigrain toast and some smoked salmon – yum – I made a start on the whites. I was done by lunchtime and was hoping to plough on with the reds in the early part of the afternoon, but Mark then reminded me that we'd been planning on going to see the Rothko exhibition at Tate Modern. When I suggested it might be better for me to finish my work, he sulked, so for the sake of marital harmony, I went to the gallery. I'm glad I did, it was a splendid exhibition. The only flaw was that the galleries were chock-full of people and I feel that Rothko's canvases are probably best appreciated in silence, in a place where you've got the time and space to meditate on them in peace. No matter, they were still awe inspiring.

On our return home, I went through the 36 or so bottles of red I had waiting for me. I was so exhausted at the end that I could barely uncork the last bottles (another reason to vote for screwcaps). My teeth were stained black from the tannins (never a good look, particularly because advice suggests you wait at least an hour after you've finished your tasting before you brush your teeth as the wine acids soften your tooth enamel and you're in danger of brushing it away if you clean your teeth too soon) and I've never been so grateful to sink into a warm bath (perfumed by Ren's brilliant rose bath oil, an affordable luxury for this recessionary world).

Thank goodness the weekend's over. I don't think I could stand the pace for much longer...

Last night's dinner was delish

2008-10-08T15:25:00.004+01:00

After going to two tastings yesterday (one appallingly organised balls-up held on a smelly, badly lit barge docked at St Katherine's Wharf, in the shadow of Tower Bridge, the other a slick professional operation organised by one of the UK's major supermarkets), I was absolutely knackered. Quite frankly, I would have liked to opt for a take-away curry or a pizza from a supermarket, but I know that's verboten at the moment. I also needed a good, solid protein fix after spending much of the past few days in Italy, where everything seemed to come with pasta.

The solution was spice-crusted salmon, which we ate with a puree made of roast aubergines (about 50 minutes in the oven, until the skins blacken and the flesh turns soft and mushy) mixed with some 0% fat Greek yoghurt and reheated gently. We also had a stir-fry of veggies (they come in a pack in the supermarket), spiked with some lime juice to liven them up.

Spice-crusted salmon for two

2 salmon fillets (mine weighed just under 150g, Mark's was closer to 200g)
1 tbsp coriander seeds
half a dozen dried curry leaves (weird, but there actually is a plant called the curry plant)
1 mild dried Kashmiri chilli (any mild dried chilli will do – if you can't find any, use hotter chillies sparingly, this isn't really meant to be a spicy dish)
1 tbsp sesame seeds
sea salt
a smear of cooking oil (groundnut or vegetable would be best)

Make sure the salmon has been scaled and deboned. Rinse clean.

Heat a small frying pan on the stove, then, when it's smoking hot, add the coriander, curry leaves, chilli and sesame seeds. Cook until the spices begin to release their aromas. Place in a mortar and pestle with some salt and grind to a fairly fine powder.

Coat the salmon on both sides with the spices.

Heat a frying pan with a little bit of cooking oil, place the salmon in the pan and cook on a fairly gentle heat until the salmon is cooked as you like it (I like mine fairly rare).

Hampered by a friend

2008-10-07T08:57:00.004+01:00

I have a friend who I love dearly but who, it has to be faced, is a bit of a flake. I've known him ever since I was a teenager – so for an embarrassingly long time – and in all those years, he's committed one social gaffe after another. This social ineptitude doesn't stem from any lack of intelligence – he's one of the brightest people I know – but he just can't seem to 'read' people and therefore has little sense of what is or isn't socially appropriate.

It was only a few months ago that he turned up for a Sunday lunch (for which I had planned, shopped and cooked to feed precisely ten people) with his two teenage sons. All well and good, apart from the fact that he'd neglected to tell me he was bringing them along. As a result, we didn't have enough chairs to seat everyone at the table and, worse yet, there wasn't quite enough food to go round.

In the run up to the post-wedding party, Mark and I had sent out 'save the date' emails in early March, to ensure that the people we most wanted to celebrate with would be free on the evening in question. Then, in late June, just before we sent the invitations out, we emailed everyone to get their correct addresses. Then the invitations went out in July. I even had a long conversation with this old friend of mine (let's call him Bob to preserve the blushes of the not-so-innocent) in mid-July where he explained that he'd nearly forgotten to tell his wife about the invitation, but had remembered in the nick of time.

You could say that we'd given people adequate warning. So I was hugely pissed off when, eight days before the party, I got an email from Bob to say that he hoped I wouldn't mind that his wife couldn't make it. Why? Because she'd got the dates wrong and was going to spend the weekend with a friend of hers in Stockholm instead. So, not a happy bunny.

Injury was then added to insult when, to make amends, a Fortnum's hamper arrived. It was a wedding present from Bob and his wife. Now I love a Fortnum's hamper as much as the next girl (in fact probably more than the next girl), but this one was stuffed full of tea-time stuff like biscuits and jams. Absolutely delicious. But possibly not the best thing to give a dieting bride...

Hitting the comfort zone

2008-10-07T08:32:00.005+01:00

As I think I might have mentioned in my last posting, my honeymoon in Sicily was blighted by a bad attack of gastroenteritis. For the first time in living memory, I lost my appetite. No, actually, to tell the truth, the reality was far more cruel – I didn't lose my appetite, but my stomach griped and gripped and complained in all kinds of unpleasant ways if I ate anything for the best (or should that be worst?) part of eight days.

The only thing, over the course of the entire week, that I managed to eat with equanimity was a bean soup, so when I came back I had a go at recreating what I came to think of as the ultimate comfort food. Truth to tell, I couldn't resist embellishing the basic recipe, but this is just the kind of dish I find myself craving when I'm feeling a tad below par – especially as autumn draws on.

Italian bean soup for at least eight

500g dried cannellini beans, soaked overnight with a sprinkling of bicarbonate of soda (this helps prevent the skins from splitting as you cook the beans, or so I've been told)
250g dried chickpeas, also soaked overnight with some bicarb
olive oil
200g pancetta (or thick-cut bacon if you can't find pancetta), cut into lardons
2 medium onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
5-6 medium carrots, cut into half-moon slices
5 sticks celery, sliced
300ml chicken stock
2 bay leaves
250ml tomato passata
1/2 savoy cabbage or a good bunch of cavollo nero, sliced
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cook the cannellini beans and chickpeas (separately) according to the instructions on the packet (I brought the beans to the boil, then drained them, then simmered them in fresh water for about an hour and a half, while the chickpeas only needed simmering for 45 minutes until tender after the initial boiling and draining). Don't forget to skim away any mucky-looking scum that rises to the surface.

Meanwhile, heat a dribble of olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan and fry the lardons until lightly browned. Remove with a slotted spoon, lower the heat and fry the onions gently until soft and translucent.

Add the garlic and stir for a further half a minute or so, then tip in the carrots and celery and cook until just beginning to soften. At this point, add the chicken stock and turn the heat up.

While the chicken stock is coming to the boil, take half the beans and half the chickpeas and process in a blender with a little bit of the cooking water until a thick paste is formed. Stir this into the saucepan – you have to stir fairly thoroughly, preferably with a fork or a stiff whisk, in order to get the lumps of bean puree to break up.

Add the remaining beans, the bay leaves and the passata and cook for a further half hour or so, until all the flavours are melded together. If necessary, add a bit more chicken stock or water to thin the soup out. About ten minutes before serving, stir in the cabbage and season to taste.

Those who aren't dieting might appreciate a dribble of olive oil in their soup bowl, as well as a hunk of crusty bread to dip in the soup.

Every girl's dream...

2008-09-26T09:43:00.002+01:00

I've just returned from my honeymoon in Sicily with an extra-special gift – an attack of gastro-enteritis that has laid me low for much of the past week. Really, this is the gift that keeps on giving...

No – I'm not going to go into gory details. I'm sure you've all succumbed to something similar at one stage or another. But the fact that I've been off my food for the best part of a week (not to mention the other, more indelicate effects of the bug) has meant that despite the over-indulgence of the week of the wedding party and the fact that I ate (ahem) a few pastries and ice-creams while I was in Sicily, I haven't put on a gram.

And a quick chat with some of my girlfriends has revealed that, for most women, the upside to having any kind of lurgy is the fact that weight comes off with remarkable ease when you're not well. They do say that clouds have silver linings...

I'm feeling guilty...

2008-09-12T16:43:00.003+01:00

No, not about my weight... I'm feeling bad because I haven't had any time in the past ten days or so to make any postings on this blog. You may feel slightly less angry with me if I tell you that, for the past couple of weeks I've had to write a couple of thousand words a day (as an average).

What – weekends as well? I hear you ask. Ah, well, last Saturday was the date of Mark and my post-wedding party, where we got to say our vows in front of many of our friendss, rather than just our mums, who were the only people present the first time round. Sunday? Well, Sunday, as you might expect was a recovery day, then my nose was firmly back to the grindstone from Monday on.

Why am I working so hard? Because Mark and I are off to Sicily on our belated honeymoon tomorrow, and we won't be back until the end of the month (potential burglars should be aware that Laszlo the guard dog will be staying, as will some friends). I promise that when I get back I'll return fired up with enthusiasm, ready to post some fab new recipes, courtesy of some inspirational sunshine. Until then, have a good September.

I owe Gemma an apology

2008-09-02T08:24:00.004+01:00

Gemma came and put me through my paces again the other day and, as she walked through the door, I realised I'd made a mistake in my last posting about her. She's not as small as I thought she was – she's about as tall as me, and I'm just short of 5'6". But she is teeny-tiny, and she still looks like a good puff of wind would blow her away...

Out for a duck

2008-09-02T07:58:00.006+01:00

I love duck: I love Peking duck, with its crisp skin and melting flesh; I love the pink meat of a medium-rare magret de canard, especially when it's served with a little cake of creamy Dauphinoise potatoes and I love the way my mum cooks roast duck, with its skin rubbed in a mixture of honey and soy sauce. I even love my low-fat duck (left), which I marinated in a dry spice rub for a few hours before cooking it on a scorching-hot griddle and serving it with a couscous-based salad.

Spice-rubbed duck for two

2 duck breasts
2 tsp Chinese five-spice powder
2 tsp Szechuan peppercorns, crushed
a small piece of ginger, peeled and grated

Remove the skin from the duck breasts (sorry about this – yes, I know the skin crisps up wonderfully and tastes delicious, but it's also pretty fatty) and score the flesh several times, both on the top and bottom of each breast.

Mix the spices together and smear all over the meat. Leave to marinate for anywhere between two hours and most of the day.

Smear the griddle with the barest minimum of olive oil and heat until it's smoking, then cook the duck breasts until they're done as you like them. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper as you cook them. Serve with the salad, below.

Couscous salad for two

1/2 small butternut squash, cut into chunks
olive oil
a large double handful of couscous (I used barley couscous but wheat couscous is just fine)
1/2 a red onion, sliced thinly
lots of chopped fresh coriander and mint
up to one small glass of orange juice
juice of a lime

Heat the oven to 200ºC, then roast the squash with a drizzle of olive oil until its cooked through and has caramelised a bit round the edges. The time this will take rather depends on how big your chunks are, but start looking in the oven at around 25 minutes. Place in a bowl and allow to cool.

Follow the instructions on the couscous packet about cooking – this usually involves placing the dry grains in a bowl and pouring boiling water over them, covering with a lid, and allowing the couscous to plump up. Season thoroughly with salt and freshly ground black pepper as couscous can be very bland, and allow to cool.

When both the couscous and the squash are at room temperature, mix in the red onion and the herbs.

Make a simple dressing with a little bit of olive oil, the orange juice and the lime juice and pour over the couscous. Mix thoroughly and serve.

Ow!

2008-08-26T09:27:00.004+01:00

This is Gemma (right), who came and gave me my training session last week because James was away in Canada at one of the eight (!) weddings he's going to this year and Phil couldn't make it.

So, Gemma drew the short straw and rocked up here on Friday morning (Laszlo went ballistic as she wheeled her bike into the hall, but she didn't seem to mind and even earned brownie points by saying he was 'lush'). Anyway, she's a teeny-tiny girl – not much over five foot, I'd guess, and she looks like she'd blow away with one good puff of wind.

I can't quite put my finger on why, but training with her felt slightly different from doing a session with one of the guys. It might have something to do with the fact that she's very softly spoken, and her dictats seemed to be phrased as suggestions rather than commands (not that James bullies me – it's just that when he asks for 10 squats or a jog round the park, refusal is very clearly not an option). And, attention seeker that I am, I got off on the fact that Gemma praised everything I did. It was great – I felt like I was some kind of super-athlete rather than a panting, tubby forty-something bird.

But somehow, despite the feeling that this was a low-key session, I ended up aching like a bastard all weekend. I'm sure it wasn't the fast-paced jog that kicked off the session and left me out of breath right from the get-go. It can't have been the boxing – Gemma looked like she'd fall over if I'd punched any harder. The lunges? Well, there were only a few of them, interleavened by some sprints and walks. The press-ups were fairly tough, but I only did two dozen, and two dozen of the triceps dips off the front of the bench. Oh – and then there were the pelvic raises with one leg off the floor – they were hard going, but were they really hard enough to leave me walking bandy-legged as a cowboy in some two-bit Western?

Nope, I can't quite put my finger on why, but somehow an easy session with Gemma turns out to be a bit like spending an hour in boot camp.

Szechuan prawns

2008-08-26T08:48:00.004+01:00

I was watching Ching-He Huang's Chinese Food Made Easy on the Beeb the other night. Not intentionally, you understand – watching food TV is an exercise in total masochism at the moment, as far as I'm concerned. But it caught my eye as I was channel flicking because she was discussing Szechuan food, which I love and which we hardly see over here – most of our Chinese restaurant menus are based on Cantonese cooking, and it's only fairly recently that we've started exploring China's regional cuisines. I love Szechuan food for its warmth and spice – I bought a copy of Fuchsia Dunlop's Sichuan Cookery a few years ago, when it first came out, and was entranced by both her writing and the recipes.

Anyway, while I thought that Ching-He Huang's programme was slightly dumbed down (a case of 'don't scare the viewers', I suspect), her dish of chilli tiger prawns whet my appetite and made me want to experiment around the dish she'd created. The recipe below is my version of the dish. With the amount of chilli it contains, this is not a dish for the faint-hearted – but it's nowhere near as unmanageable as you might expect.

Szechuan prawns for two

1 tbsp groundnut or vegetable oil
1 small fresh chilli, green or red, thinly sliced
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
2-3 large, mild dried chillies (I used some Kashmiri chillies)
1 tsp Szechuan pepper
250g raw, shelled tiger prawns (large prawns are better than small prawns for this dish), deveined
4-5 spring onions, cleaned and trimmed, then cut into three large, chunky bits
1 tbsp Shaoxhing cooking wine or Fino/Manzanilla sherry
1 tbsp light soy sauce
150g thin green beans, topped and tailed
juice of 1 lime
a good handful of coriander leaves, chopped

Heat the oil in a wok until it starts smoking, then throw in the chillies, garlic and pepper and stir for about 15 seconds.

Chuck the prawns in and, when they start to turn pink, add the spring onions and cook for another minute. Stir in the cooking wine and soy sauce.

Add the beans and cook for another 2-3 minutes, until the beans start to cook through.

Add the lime juice to taste, stir through, then stir in the coriander leaves.

Remove from the heat and serve (you can have a small helping of brown rice if you want).

The good news continues – slowly

2008-08-13T09:04:00.002+01:00

This week's weigh-in sees me hit 84.1 kilos. This has been a really stubborn one to shift, but I hope that by this time next week I'll be under the 84 kilo barrier.

The other bit of good news this week is that I went into Jigsaw yesterday and found that I could easily fit into their size 16 trousers (at the start of this diet I was struggling to fit into an M&S size 18 – and their sizing is generous).

Variation on a theme

2008-08-13T08:54:00.005+01:00

Ras-el-Hanout, a Moroccan spice mixture, has been my discovery of the summer. I started using it in a marinade for quail, but I've quickly become addicted to its finger-lickingly exotic blend of rose petals, cumin, chilli and who knows what else (defining it isn't helped by the fact that everyone's Ras blend is different from everyone else's).

Anyway, just to ring the changes, I mixed some Ras with another Middle Eastern spice, sumac, which has a lemony kind of twang to it, and used a smidgen of olive oil to work it into a paste, along with a bit of squashed garlic and an extra teaspoonful of cumin.

I skinned some chicken quarters and made some deep slashes into the meat, then rubbed the spice paste all over the chicken. I did this late morning, so that by the time I cooked the meat that evening the spices had had a chance to really flavour it.

I served it with a salad of boiled beetroot, cut into chunks. I then stirred in some 0% fat Greek yoghurt, a squeeze of lemon juice, some thinly sliced red onion and a good handful of chopped dill.

The other salad is something I'm working on but haven't fine-tuned enough to post a recipe on this blog, so watch this space...

If you happen to be fishing for compliments...

2008-08-08T13:47:00.004+01:00

With all the hot weather we've been having recently, I've become incredibly keen on eating fish at dinnertime. Somehow it just feels lighter and easier on the stomach than a big hunk of red meat.

The last time I went to my local fishmonger's (I'm really lucky in that I have a really good fishmonger within a couple of miles, so I don't have to rely on the rather tired-looking selection at the supermarket - what do they do to those poor fish before laying them out on the slab? The only thing that could explain them looking that knackered is hard-core training for the London marathon...) Anyway, yes, the fishmonger's... They had some brilliant sea bass and they were selling it at reasonable prices, so I bought two small fish and took them home in triumph.

As you can see from the picture, I served them with slow-roasted cherry tomatoes, still on the vine (cooked for around an hour at about 120ºC, by which time they should go a little bit soft without getting burned - you can cook them for around half an hour at about 200ºC, but you have to keep an eye on them as they can go quite black rather quickly). We also had a good green salad.

As for the fish, I sliced a lemon thinly and stuffed two or three slices in each fish's body cavity. I laid each fish out on some tin foil, rubbed a little smear of olive oil over it, along with a good twist of black pepper and some salt, then folded the foil over to create two small parcels, which I baked for about 20 minutes in an oven preheated to 200ºC.

Just before the fish was ready to serve, I squeezed the juice of about three-quarters of a lemon into a saucepan and heated that up with a couple of tablespoons of pastis (any kind of aniseed-flavoured tipple will do), boiling it so that the alcohol burned off and the liquid reduced by about half. I then whisked in about 35 grams of butter, cut into small chunks, chunk by chunk, to emulsify the sauce a bit, then finally tossed in some shredded basil leaves and chopped tarragon. (These quantities made enough sauce for both of us, so even though the butter's a bit indulgent, it wasn't really OTT - and Mark got the lion's share of the sauce.) I poured the sauce over the fish once I'd plated it up.

I have to say it was utterly delicious. Definitely a keeper – and something to trot out if you've got guests coming round for dinner because it looks so pretty on the plate and it doesn't really feel like you're dieting, even though it's not too high in calories.

Could it be...?

2008-08-06T10:48:00.003+01:00

I don't want to go jumping the gun here, but for the past two days I've stepped on the scales and got a reading of 84.3 kilos. After a long plateau period, it may be that my weight's on the way down again (alternatively, the pessimist in me suggests that a couple of glasses of water may see it bounce right back up again - let's hope it stays off).

The 10 (weight loss) commandments

2008-08-06T09:11:00.005+01:00

According to James, there are 10 commandments you should bear in mind when trying to lose weight. In no particular order, these are:

1. Forget the idea that crunches will get rid of your belly fat

You can't pick and choose areas where you'd like to burn fat. In order to burn fat, you need to create a workout that includes both cardiovascular and strength training elements. This will decrease your overall body fat content.

2. Forget the idea that stretching before exercise is crucial

Some studies have suggested that stretching actually increases muscles' susceptibility to injury. They claim that by stretching, our muscle fibres are lengthened and destabilised, making them less prepared for the strain placed upon them by exercise. You might want to warm-up and stretch before a run, but if you are lifting weights wait until after the workout to stretch the muscles.

3. You should eat before you exercise

Fuel, which you get from food and fluids, is required to provide the energy for your muscles to work efficiently, even if you are doing an early morning workout. Consider eating a small meal or snack one to three hours prior to exercise. Breakfast on fruit, yoghurt or wholewheat toast.

4. Lifting weights doesn't make you bulk up

Most women's bodies do not produce nearly enough testosterone to become as bulky as a body builders. If you do find yourself getting bigger then you should simply use less weight and up the number of repetitions you do.

5. Fat is not always bad for you

Contrary to popular belief, there are plenty of good fats out there that are essential to promoting good health and aid in disease prevention. These fats occur naturally in foods like avocados, nuts and fish, as opposed to the fats present in manufactured foods. By including small amounts of these foods at mealtimes, you'll feel full longer and therefore eat less overall.

6. Restricting calories is not the best way to lose weight

True, cutting back on calories and moving more will help you to lose weight and maintain the lean muscle mass needed to boost metabolism. However, people usually think they need to take drastic measures to lose weight (for example, by eating fewer than 1,200 calories a day), but this does not usually provide adequate fuel for the body and may slow your metabolism in the long run, leading to a vicious circle of never-ending dieting. Drastic measures rarely equal lasting results. Instead, aim to eliminate 100-300 calories consistently from your daily diet.

7. You can't eat as much as you want, even if the food is 'healthy'

A calorie, is a calorie. Although porridge is healthy, if you have two large bowlfuls of the stuff every day, the calories add up. You must be aware of portion sizes because you need to limit your caloric intake in order to lose weight. However, understanding how to balance your calorie intake throughout the day can help you avoid feelings of deprivation, hunger and despair.

8. Exercise doesn't turn fat into muscle

Fat and muscle tissue are composed of two entirely different types of cells. While you can lose one and replace it with another, the two never convert into different forms. Fat will never turn into muscle.

9. Eating late at night won't make you gain weight

There are no magic hours. We associate late night eating with weight gain because we usually consume more calories at night, and we tend to do this because we often deprive our bodies of adequate calories the first half of the day. Start the day with breakfast and eat every 3-4 hours. Keep lunch the same size as dinner, and you will be less likely to over-indulge at night. If you do this, you can enjoy a small late-night snack without the fear of it sticking to your middle.

10. You don't have to sweat to be exercising efficiently

Sweating is not necessarily an indicator of exertion – it's your body's way of cooling itself. It is possible to burn a significant number of calories without breaking a sweat: try taking a walk, doing some light weight training or working out in a swimming pool.

A tale of two Sundays

2008-08-03T21:17:00.005+01:00

This picture, on the right, is of Mark and Laszlo basking in the afterglow of a very pleasant picnic last weekend. When we woke up that morning, it was clear that it was going to be another beautifully sunny day – much the same as the rest of the week. Because so much of this summer has been patchy, we hadn't yet had a picnic – and picnics have become a regular fixture on our annual calendar. There's something a bit lacking, I feel, if we haven't picnicked by August – se we cut it fairly fine this year.

The first year Mark and I were together, he was co-opted onto a jury at the Old Bailey. It was absolute hell (he was involved in a murder trial, and I don't think it can have been very pleasant listening to the gory details day in and day out) – but the silver lining to the cloud was that he occasionally got an afternoon off. We'd head out for Hampstead Heath (often with my sister's dog, Baloo, in tow), having stopped off at Ottolenghi on the way to buy the food. (I don't know if you've ever been to Ottolenghi, but I can't recommend it highly enough – there are now four branches in London, selling the best ready-prepared salads, cold dishes, breads and patisserie I've found since I left Sydney. It ain't cheap, but it's worth it as a once-in-a-blue-moon treat. The recently published cookbook is pretty ace, too.)

I had to check the latest branch of Ottolenghi out for the foodie guide I'm working on, so it seemed clear that the fates wanted us to have our first (possibly only, if the weather doesn't get any better) picnic of the year. Once we had our food, we headed for Battersea Park, spread out a sheet under the shady branches of a tree, and tucked in. I was fairly good – I avoided the temptations of the patisserie and stuck to salads, including aubergine dressed in yoghurt and pomegranate seeds; chickpeas and fregola pasta; grilled aubergine with a herby dressing and a mixture of crunchy radishes, celery and cucumber. Yum. We washed it all down with a bottle of fizzy water, which I'd infused with some green tea leaves, fresh mint leaves and a squeeze of lime – really refreshing.

Once we'd enjoyed our meal – and Laszlo had run himself ragged playing with a small black dog – we sat and read the Sunday papers for another hour or so. I can hardly imagine a more perfect Sunday afternoon.

This Sunday could hardly have been more different. We awoke to overcast skies, which threatened rain – but held off until I'd been for a run (I'm very thankful for small mercies).

Mark has been feeling rather poorly for much of the week, so I thought the best thing for it would be a bowl of soup – another variation on the Asian chicken soup theme. Even though the rain began falling shortly before we tucked in, it did make the day feel a little bit happier – and I like to think it made Mark feel a little bit better.

Another Asian chicken soup for two

800 mls Asian chicken stock
a small thumb of galangal, peeled and sliced into discs
2 stalks of lemongrass, trimmed and bashed about a bit with the flat of a knife
a few dried kaffir lime leaves
1 small red chilli, sliced thinly
juice of 1 lime
2 tbsp fish sauce
50g wide rice noodles
150g shitake mushrooms, bottom end of the stalk trimmed, then slice the caps and remaining bit of stalk
a bunch of asparagus, sliced into 5-cm lengths (discard the tough, fibrous bit at the bottom)
2 chicken breasts, skinned and sliced thinly
4 spring onions, sliced
lots of chopped fresh coriander, with rather less mint and basil (if you can get Thai basil, so much the better)

Put the stock in a saucepan over a medium heat and stir in the galangal, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, chilli, lime and fish sauce. Bring to the boil, then allow it to simmer gently for 10 minutes, in order to allow the flavours to infuse into the stock.

Meanwhile, prepare the rice noodles according to the instructions on the packet (I had to pour boiling water over mine and allow it to stand for a few minutes before draining).

Stir the mushrooms into the stock. After a couple of minutes, stir in the asparagus. Once the asparagus is starting to get tender, stir in the chicken and cook until opaque.

Spoon into large bowls, then stir in the spring onions and herbs.

Damage limitation

2008-07-29T07:39:00.004+01:00

I'm still not getting much change out of about 85 kilos, but then it is review season (as I might have mentioned already). Some magazines pay for your meal, allowing you to dine incognito, but the one I work for prefers to accept complimentary meals from PRs, which means the restaurant knows you're coming.

Now I'd rather eat anonymously when I'm reviewing, of course, but I do truly believe that the people in a kitchen can either cook or they can't – and if they can't they can't disguise the fact when the reviewer pitches up. Sure, it means that I sometimes get fawned over by the waiting staff, but it's very easy to take note of how the other diners in a restaurant are being treated and how happy they look. So, although the situation isn't ideal, I don't feel that my critics morals are being compromised quite as severely as it might appear.

The main downside, as far as I'm concerned this year, is that if a restaurant knows you're coming some of them tend to throw their best possible dishes at you – sometimes several courses of their best dishes – often with great wines to match. Under the circumstances, it's very difficult to turn anything down. I'm trying my best not to finish everything on my plate, but several recent meals have challenged me in that respect – in fact I was hard pushed not to pick the plate up and lick it clean at Lindsay House, Richard Corrigan's Soho restaurant. Another place I've been really enthusiastic about is Nahm, a Michelin-starred Thai restaurant that serves stupendously exciting food and offers an equally exciting wine list. The only downside to the place is the stultifyingly dull décor.

Anyway, I'm getting away from the main issue, which is that I've got to face up to the fact that if I'm eating out three times a week between now and the start of September, the diet isn't going to progress very fast, if at all. There's no point in beating myself up about it – I've just got to accept the reality of the situation and deal with it.

I'm balancing things out by sticking to the diet at home and doing a fair bit of exercise. With James' encouragement, I made it all the way round Clapham Common the other day – albeit by running for 10 minutes, then walking for five before picking the pace up again. It took 35 minutes in total, I felt like I was going to die – or melt, whichever happened first – but I made it...

Chicken with an Australian accent

2008-07-17T12:50:00.006+01:00

It often feels like chicken dinner is what happens when you're stuck for inspiration while trawling the supermarket aisles, but the very fact that chicken tends to be a bit bland also makes it a great blank canvas upon which you can experiment with all kinds of flavours.

Last night's dinner (left) was inspired by a meal at what used to be one of my favourite restaurants when I lived in Sydney, the Bayswater Brasserie, as well as a jar of chilli jam from the South Devon Chilli Farm that Mark and I bought while we were getting rained on in Devon the other weekend. The other inspiration was the fact that I didn't have time to go out to the shops, so dinner was cobbled together from bits and pieces I had in the store cupboard and fridge.

For all that it was a scrape-together job, it tasted so good that I had to stop myself from licking the plate clean (a really disgusting habit you can only indulge in when in the presence of those who love you – and, more to the point, can't get rid of you when you do something totally gross).

Chicken with chilli jam for two

2 chicken hindquarters (legs and thighs) or 4 chicken thighs
100g bulghur wheat
a pinch of saffron
1 onion, cut in half and sliced into thin rings
olive oil
1/2 jar of piquillo peppers, cut into thick strips (if you can't find these, you can make do with a couple of grilled red peppers, but there's a wonderful sweetness to the piquillo variety)
a handful of pine nuts
a bunch of fresh coriander, chopped
50mls chicken stock (optional, but it adds something to the finished dish)
2 dstsp chilli jam
2 tsp chipotle chillies in adobo (from the Cool Chile Company)
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200ºC.

Place the chicken in a roasting dish and season liberally. Roast for about 40 minutes, or until done.

Meanwhile, place the bulghur wheat in a saucepan with about half a litre of salted water and the saffron. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer until cooked, about 15 minutes.

Fry the onion slowly in the merest smear of olive oil until soft and translucent. Put to one side.

Toast the pine nuts in a dry frying pan and remove from the heat when they start to turn golden (they carry on cooking for a while once you've taken them off the heat, so be careful not to overdo them). Put to one side.

Heat the stock through.

Once the chicken is cooked, remove from the oven and allow it to rest while you pull everything else together.

Stir the onions, peppers, pine nuts and coriander through the bulghur wheat. Put a pile on each plate (as ever, Mark got the large helping – you should go easy on it too, you need it for bulk but you don't want to overdo it).

Add the chicken and spoon over the warm stock. Put a dollop of chilli jam and another of chipotle in adobo on the side of the plate and enjoy.

Ow, that hurt!

2008-07-17T08:27:00.002+01:00

I should be punching the air in triumph. Yesterday morning, I managed to run a mile and a half. I know it was a mile and a half (almost to the yard) because James had showed me a great website (http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/) that allows you to plot a route of your choice and it then works out the distances involved.

So, yes, as I was saying. A mile and a half. It took me around 20 minutes (I could have probably walked the distance in 25, so I wasn't exactly moving fast). My calves and feet were aching by the time I rounded the corner for home – and boy have they ached ever since. So much so that I think it would be foolhardy to go for another bout today (or at least that's the excuse I'm giving myself).

Anyway, I think I've reached a consolidation point. Over the next week or two I'm going to focus on that distance until I can do it comfortably. I'm off for a nice, relaxing warm bath now...

Why I hate summer

2008-07-14T10:39:00.003+01:00

I'm exaggerating, of course. Like any normal English person, I crave the sunshine – partly because we seem to get so little of it.

But I hate the sunshine when I'm exercising. When I'm exercising alone, I try and make sure I get my run in the early morning, before the heat really kicks in. Before 9 is my ideal, but life seldom works like that. To begin with, I find it hard to resist dealing with emails while I'm having my morning cuppa, and things tend to spiral from there... Before we got Laszlo, it wasn't unknown for me to be sitting at my desk at three in the afternoon, still wearing my dressing gown, with a stone-cold mug of half-drunk tea at my elbow. These days, I'm compelled to give Lasz a walk, preferable by lunch-time, so I'm no longer the dressing gown devotee I once was, but I still manage to find plenty to do before I get myself out the door in my running shoes.

This morning, for instance, I didn't get out until nearly 10, by which time the sun had cranked up a considerable amount of heat. It didn't stop me from getting round the park's perimeter twice (a distance of just over a mile and a quarter, as measured by my car's odometer on Saturday - big yay!), but it would have been easier to do had the temperature been somewhat cooler. Bring on the drizzle, that's what I say.

In case we get any more summer...

2008-07-11T18:06:00.008+01:00

I think I might have mentioned how much I love a barbecue. We haven't had much in the way of barbecue weather of late, but the other night we had just enough balmy weather to make it worth pulling the cover off the Weber. While Mark took care of the meaty stuff (see left, with a large slice of steak), I threw a couple of salads together. Laszlo scampered around, getting underfoot, desperately excited by the smell of cooking meat, then collapsed, panting, in the shade under the table. Note to self: get Laszlo a haircut before he overheats.

The greenery (below) came courtesy of the fact that I'd found some great wild fennel at Borough Market, as well as some samphire, so tender that I didn't even need to cook it. I chopped the fennel into 5-cm lengths, tossed the samphire into it, along with some chopped mint, then drizzled the salad with a slick of extra virgin olive oil and a squeeze of lemon.

We also had one of my favourite warm weather salads: cubes of watermelon (de-seeded), mixed with chunks of feta cheese, black olives, thinly sliced rings of red onion and more of that lovely fresh chopped mint. Once again, a simple dressing of olive oil and lemon juice did the trick.

We're hoping for more barbecue weather this weekend, but I suspect we may be out of luck. At least Laszlo will be able to cope without another visit to the pet parlour....

Turning Japanese

2008-07-11T17:27:00.004+01:00

Mark and I were pretty tired the other night, so I wanted to cook something quick and uncomplicated. I had a pouch of white miso that had been sitting on the top shelf of the fridge for a while, so I took that as my starting point for a Japanese-inspired meal.

We slashed a couple of chicken breasts and marinaded them in a mixture of soy sauce and sherry (I'd have used sake if I'd had any to hand, but all I found was a bottle of Manzanilla sherry – for cooking purposes, Manzanilla or Fino make pretty good substitutes for sake. For what it's worth, if you're not dieting, a glass of dry sherry usually makes a good match for many Chinese and Japanese dishes). I added a dash of sesame oil, a couple of pieces of star anise and some grated ginger and left the chicken in the marinade for a couple of hours before I cooked it under the grill. I also stir-fried some mustard greens with some julienned ginger. But, as far as I was concerned, the centre of the meal was the miso-grilled aubergine – I just love aubergine for its depth of flavour and its versatility. It's a much under-appreciated vegetable and if it's not on your shopping list I urge you to buy (and try) some soon – you'll soon be as hooked on these beautiful, sleek purple vegetables as I am.

Aubergines and miso for two

2 small- to medium-sized aubergines
3 tbsp miso paste
2 tbsp dry sherry or sake
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp sesame seeds

Heat the oven to 200ºC. Cut the aubergines in half lengthwise, then score the flesh in a criss-cross pattern. Push a metal skewer through each aubergine half (to help conduct the heat through the vegetable) and place in the oven for about 40 minutes, or until cooked through.

Meanwhile, stir the miso paste, the sherry and the sugar together in a small saucepan over a low heat until silky smooth and put aside.

Toast the sesame seeds in a small frying pan until golden and put aside.

Pre-heat the grill.

Once the aubergines are cooked through, remove them from the oven and brush with the fleshy side with the miso mixture. Place under the grill and cook until brown. Sprinkle the aubergines with the toasted sesame seeds and serve.

The long, dark teatime of the soul

2008-07-10T10:36:00.004+01:00

I've always loved this title, which I've nicked from a Douglas Adams book (see left); it seems to capture the feeling of limitless gloom that comes with any internal struggle. I've been doing a fair bit of internal struggling over the past few days. Mark and I went away to Devon for our birthday weekend (conveniently enough, his birthday is on the 5th of July and mine is on the 6th) and I don't know whether I was suffering from birthday-itis (it's my birthday and I'll darn well celebrate any way I want to, even if it means coming off the diet); having reached the fuck-it zone (the weight's not coming off, so what the hell) or a bout of self-sabotage (you've lost 10 kilos, you're doing just fine, why struggle any more), but I tucked into ice-creams, a delicious apple and raisin cake, plaice in a buttery sauce, pork with crackling... You get the picture.

Having lost control of myself, though, I found myself waking up in the middle of the night and fretting about it. I am committed to losing the weight – even though it's tough going at the moment – apart from anything else, I don't want to lose face in such a public way, but my progress is slow at the moment. Has been for a while.

So I've returned to London fully committed to the notion of getting to grips with my inner demons. My diet has been at its most successful early in the year, partly because the diet shocked my system into losing weight and partly because I was in control of what I ate and when I ate it in a way that I'm not during restaurant review season. Given that it's going to be hard to stick to a diet (I can try, but I have to compensate for potential slip-ups) until September, and that I've decided that my goal is to lose 4.5 kilos to take me down to 80 kilos by the time of my post-wedding party on September the 6th, ramping up the exercise seems to be the logical way to go.

I had a word with James about it, and we've decided that my initial tactic (to go for two runs a day) isn't a realistic proposition. He thinks I'll just become bored very quickly and that it will prove to be a retrograde step. Instead, I'm going to up the intensity of what I'm doing when I work out by myself. James set me a running challenge (at least once round the outside of the park, then interval training for a second lap), which I'm already on to. He's also going to provide me with a skipping rope (it seemed so easy when I was a kid, but at the age of 44 it doesn't seem quite so much fun any more) and a couple of kettle bells. I'd never heard of kettle bells (right) before, but James explained what they were and said that they produce results pdq. I'm pretty sure that using them is going to feel like torture, but if they get me to where I want to go, I'm up for it.

Simple pleasures

2008-07-01T08:43:00.003+01:00

I find that when the temperature rises, my appetite slips away. The only things I want to eat are light dishes with fresh flavours. In practice, this mainly means salads – by which I don't mean a few limp leaves of lettuce and a couple of slices of watery tomatoes. I'm talking, instead, about punchy, zesty ingredients, like those of the feta and pea salad (right) Mark and I enjoyed at the weekend.

Feta and pea salad for two

250-300g pea pods, shelled to give about 100-125g peas
100g feta cheese
50g walnuts
a double handful of tasty salad leaves
fresh mint, chopped
walnut oil
tarragon vinegar
dijon mustard

Plunge the peas in salted boiling water until tender, then run them under a cold tap until they're thoroughly cooled.

Dice the feta, chop the walnuts and place in a bowl with the cooked peas and the mint.

Make a simple dressing with the walnut oil, vinegar and mustard – go easy on all the ingredients for a couple of reasons: one being that oil of any kind is high in calories, the other being that you just want to freshen up the flavours of the salad, not drown them.
Pour over the salad and serve, preferably while sitting in a sunny spot in the garden or the park.

There is no alternative

2008-07-01T08:26:00.003+01:00

I think I may have mentioned that five weeks off the exercise programme has had a serious impact on my fitness levels. I had been planning a half-hour run for the day after the exercise (in fact I'd gone into the park that day to limber up), and was doing two laps of the park with ease, but on my return from Greece I found myself hard-pushed to make it once round the park.

I've only had three sessions with James, but he's been pushing me hard – instead of exercising at a constant intensity, he's been working me in full-on bursts of activity. He says this will get me back to where I was a bit quicker, but I'm not exactly sure of the rationale behind this (he promises me he's going to write a few words for this blog explaining the whole thing).

In any case, I made it round the park – just – on a couple of occasions last week.

However, my scales are stuck at somewhere between 84.7 kilos and 85.1 kilos (they seem to fluctuate). And, horror of horrors, I'm now about to launch into an intense period of restaurant reviews that will last right up until my (very) post-wedding party (Mark and I are having a belated celebration with a group of friends at the beginning of September). I'm due to eat out at least twice a week at some of London's best restaurants every week until then. I'm going to have to try and exercise some willpower, of course, but I suspect that's not going to be enough if I want to be down around 80 kilos on the day (after all, I'm going to have to look at the pictures for the rest of my life).

So the only alternative is to crank up the exercise. On a near-daily basis – daily if I can make myself do it. This morning I gritted my teeth and made it twice round the park. The last 40 metres were hell – it felt like I was running through treacle – but tomorrow's run may be a bit easier.

It's mickle time...

2008-06-27T08:50:00.003+01:00

They say that many a mickle maks a muckle (a Scots proverb to the effect that lots of little things add up to one big thing). This week's mickle is the loss of 100 grams, bringing my weight in at 84.7 kilos. Not all that much to get excited about, but still moving in the right direction. I'm due another session with James later today, so that might shave off another few grams...

Thai soup for two

2008-06-26T10:47:00.003+01:00

My family is Jewish, so I've grown up believing in the almost mystical powers of chicken soup. My earliest experiences of chicken soup involved classic clear broth with golden slices of carrot, shreds of chicken and matzoh balls (dumplings made of matzoh meal and a mixture of flavourings). These days, I'm much more likely to tuck into a bowlful of my version of a Thai soup called Tom Khar Gai, which I love for its sharp citrus flavours, its chilli heat and the soothing sweetness of the coconut milk.

I realise the photo, left, doesn't do my Tom Khar Gai soup much justice, but believe me when I tell you that it tastes far better than it looks.

You start off the day before you need the soup by making an Asian chicken stock. Although it sounds like a lot of faff, all you need to do is tip the ingredients into a stockpot and let them simmer for a few hours. It's worth doing because it makes all the difference – this is one instance when shop-bought stock, even if it's fresh stock, just won't do.

Chicken stock

chicken carcasses (or chicken wings if you can't get hold of whole carcasses)
a brown onion, halved and peeled
lemongrass stems, bruised with the back of a knife
a thumb of galangal, peeled and cut into chunks (if you can't find galangal, fresh ginger will do)
kaffir lime leaves (although it's difficult to find these fresh, you can now find them dried and sold in the spice section of many supermarkets)
small red chillies (the hot ones), sliced
star anise (go easy on the quantities, this spice has a very pervasive flavour)
fish sauce (again, you can find this in most supermarkets - if you can't, light soy sauce will do)

I've deliberately left the quantities for this recipe vague as you can make as much or as little chicken stock as you need (and your stockpot will allow). If you end up with more than you need, stock freezes very well once it has been thoroughly cooled.

Cover the chicken carcasses or wings with water, then add the remaining ingredients.

Bring to the boil, skimming the brownish scum that forms on the liquid. Reduce to a simmer – it's important to get the heat as low as you possibly can, so that only the occasional bubble breaks the surface. That way the stock should remain fairly clear once you're finished.

Carry on simmering for at least a couple of hours (I sometimes leave my stockpot on the stove for up to four hours).

Strain the chicken bones and spices, reserving the liquid. Now's the time to taste the stock. If it still needs to be more concentrated, put it back on the stove and boil until it's reduced to the appropriate concentration.

Allow to cool and (preferably) place the stock in the fridge overnight. You should find that any fat will float to the surface and harden to a solid, which will allow you to remove it easily. Your stock is now ready to use or freeze.

Once you have your stock ready, you can move on to making the Tom Khar Gai, which is a) an absolute doddle to make and b) one of those recipes that takes you from go to whoa (as the Aussies say) in a very short space of time, making this a handy dish for a mid-week meal.

Tom Khar Gai soup for two

700mls Asian chicken stock
2 stems lemongrass, bruised with the back of a knife and cut into 10-cm lengths
a thumb of galangal (or ginger, see above), peeled and cut into discs
1-2 small red chillies, sliced
kaffir lime leaves
3 tbsp fish sauce (or soy sauce, see above)
150-200g shitake mushrooms, sliced
2 chicken breasts, skinned and sliced thinly
400ml can reduced-fat coconut milk
1 lime
4 spring onions, trimmed and sliced
2-3 tbsp chopped fresh coriander

Tip the stock into a saucepan and add the flavourings, from lemongrass to fish sauce. Bring to boiling point, then reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes or so in order to let the flavours infuse. (I'd start off by using one chilli – you can always add more later on, but you can't remove chilli heat if you add too much at the start, a lesson I've learned from bitter experience.)

Add the mushrooms and cook until tender (a matter of five minutes or so, depending on how thick you've sliced them).

Stir in the chicken and cook through.

Stir in the coconut milk. It's important not to let the soup boil from this point on, otherwise the coconut milk sometimes separates out.

Squeeze the lime's juice into the soup.

Ladle the soup into bowls and garnish with the spring onions and the coriander.

Taste for seasoning and adjust if necessary.

Something else to do with your asparagus

2008-06-24T12:35:00.004+01:00

I think I may have mentioned how much I love asparagus when it's in season. One of my favourite things to do with the stuff (apart from smother it in molten butter, which is a no-no at the moment) is to make a pancetta and asparagus salad (a tip I picked up from Harry at Borough Market's Wild Mushroom Company, aka Tony Booth's).

You need to use fairly slender asparagus to make this recipe work, otherwise the spears won't cook through. Sprue asparagus is ideal, if you can find it, if not rather weedy spears will do nicely.

Pancetta and asparagus salad for two
3-4 thick slices of pancetta, cut into lardons (regular bacon will do, but it doesn't ever reach the heights of a salad made with proper pancetta) a bundle of thin-speared asparagus, cut into five-centimetre lengths a juicy lemon
half a red onion, cut into thin rings

Fry the pancetta gently until it begins to turn brown. Don't bother putting any oil in the pan as the pancetta generates a certain amount of fat, especially if you cook it fairly gently. (Don't worry - there's not a huge amount of fat and what there is goes to make the dressing of the salad.)

Once the pancetta starts to colour, add the asparagus and stir through. I usually put a lid over the frying pan at this point and allow the asparagus to steam through for 2-3 minutes.

Once the asparagus has softened, squeeze the lemon juice into the pan and stir through. You'll find the pancetta fat and lemon combine to make a wonderful dressing with a slightly syrupy texture.

Tip the whole lot into a bowl in which you've already placed the onion rings. If you've sliced them thinly enough, they'll wilt in the heat of the asparagus and pancetta. You could, if you wanted, stir through some chopped tarragon. And, if I wasn't dieting, I'd say that this dish is screaming out for a glass of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc

Two very pleasant surprises - and one unpleasant one

2008-06-18T16:09:00.003+01:00

I've just got back from eight days in Greece – following on from 10 days in France, with only two days at home in between trips to recuperate (I know I have the best job in the world, but sometimes it's nice to come back home and stay there for a while – when I found out that I don't have to go to Burgundy at the end of the month, as I had expected, I nearly opened a bottle of Champagne in celebration).

The Greeks are incredibly generous hosts, and as a result every meal was a belt-buster. We were up in the mountains, as well, so this was all country food: wild boar stews cooked in red wine and served with noodles, beef fillet with wild mushrooms and veal meatballs served in a creamy egg and lemon sauce. Few of the meals we enjoyed (endured?) featured fewer than four courses, all rounded off with desserts so sweet my teeth ache just thinking about them. There was wine, of course, plenty of it. And there were two meals like this a day. In the end, the relentlessness of it all was a godsend because I lost my appetite entirely by the third day of the trip and just ended up picking at things.

As a result, although I was dreading stepping on the scales this morning, I was delighted to see them read 84.8kg. So things are, once again, moving in the right direction.

It's obviously not just water loss, either, as I'm currently wearing a pair of size 16 Gap jeans I had to give up on two years ago because the waistband was too tight for comfort. True, I've got a bit of a muffin top, but the jeans are pretty comfortable.

The bad news is that I went for a run yesterday and barely made it once round the park. I've got a session with James on Friday – I hope I can do a bit better by then.

A quick update

2008-06-06T22:14:00.000+01:00

I took my first bit of exercise since the accident today. My knee is still slightly stiff, and I can't kneel without a twinge of discomfort, but I decided that it was time to bite the bullet.

A few weeks of enforced rest have taken the edge off what little stamina I had – once round the park was OK, but twice would have been pushing it. Instead my second lap consisted of quick sideways jogs, a few sprints and some step-ups onto the park benches.

I'm off to Greece at some obscenely early hour tomorrow and will probably be off-line until I get back on Saturday week. The good news for anyone out there logging in on a regular basis (my apologies for the patchy blogging over the past couple of weeks) is that once I'm back I won't have any trips longer than two or three days at a time for quite a while. So normal service should be resumed shortly.

Predictable, I suppose

2008-06-05T10:30:00.003+01:00

I've just got back from 10 lovely (if rainy) days in France – Mark, Laszlo and I took a much-needed holiday in the Loire and Burgundy. The trouble is that, between my healing knee and the good food, I've put on nearly a kilo. The scales this morning read 86kg.

To make matters worse, I'm off to Greece on Saturday for an eight-day work trip. I'll just have to gird my loins and learn to resist temptation once again.

Three cheers for the start of the English asparagus season!

2008-05-23T07:31:00.003+01:00

When I was a kid I can remember my father looking forward to the asparagus season all year. When it arrived, he'd tuck into a plateful of steamed asparagus (usually served with melted butter) every day for about six weeks, before the asparagus disappeared from the greengrocer's shelves for another year.

We've forgotten about seasonality in recent years, thanks to our ability to ship produce around the world whatever the season, but to my mind nothing tastes quite as good as local produce that's allowed to ripen properly. So I, too, yearn for the English asparagus season (I rarely cheat, although I sometimes succumb to the odd bunch of European asparagus in spring).

Once it arrives, I eat it as often as possible, although not every day – and I don't think I could eat it steamed with butter every time either (diet aside, I'd get bored).

The picture above is another idea of something to do with asparagus, inspired by a dish Mark ate at Chez Bruce when we went there for my mother's birthday dinner. He'd had delicate morilles with his asparagus and poached duck egg, but I got seduced into buying some chicken of the woods mushrooms instead – a mistake, I think: next time I'll try the morilles instead. The chicken of the woods took ages to cook and didn't really have that earthy flavour that I was looking for.

I also substituted scrambled eggs for the poached eggs, partly because my poached eggs always look a bit weird and scraggy, and partly because I really like scrambled eggs. It's not as easy as you might think to make good scrambled eggs, but these were delicious, so I'm including the method below. Please excuse me if I'm teaching granny to suck (duck) eggs.

Scrambled duck egg for three (Mark's mum has been staying with us):

4 duck eggs (one each is just too few, two each is a pretty large portion unless scrambled egg is all you're having)
50ml semi-skimmed milk
2 tbsp half-fat crème fraiche
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
salt and freshly ground black pepper
a small knob of butter

Break the eggs into a bowl and add all the other ingredients apart from the butter. Beat with an egg, but not so thoroughly that you end up with a homogenous yellow liquid.

I think it's important to use a good, heavy non-stick pan for this as you're not using much fat to cook with. Melt the butter in the pan over a medium-low heat, and tip in the egg mixture.

Stir it around, and keep scraping round the edges and at the bottom of the pan as this is where the egg tends to set first.

When the eggs are nearly set, turn off the pan as they keep cooking for a little while. You're looking to end up with a texture that hasn't quite set firm – there should be a little wobble in your scramble when you tip it onto the plate.

Serve with asparagus (steamed) and mushrooms, as I did, or with a slice of wholegrain toast.

More good news

2008-05-21T07:37:00.003+01:00

When I went to the doctor to get my stitches taken out on Monday morning, I got some good news. Early in January, James measured my blood pressure and it was on the high side of normal. According to Monday's readings, however, I'm right back in the mid-range. This exercise lark must really have some benefits...

You never know who's watching you in cyberspace

2008-05-21T07:24:00.003+01:00

I spent all day yesterday at the London Wine Fair in Docklands – absolutely fascinating stuff, but hell on the old damaged leg, which is still in fairly poor nick.

No matter. What really got me glowing was that I ran into an acquaintance on one of the stands – someone I've met several times over the years in a professional capacity, yet not someone I know well enough to have told her about the blog. Anyway, not only had she tracked the blog down off her own bat, she was enthusing about the recipes on it. It turns out she's cooked her way through a food few of my postings and has loved everything she's tried. I was incandescent with delight.

I have to admit I did ask her why she never posted anything on the blog to say she'd enjoyed one or other of the recipes, and she just said that she wasnt that kind of a girl. It's heartening to know that although I don't get that many postings on the blog that there may well be a whole group of readers out there enjoying what I've got to say without necessarily making themselves known. Whoever you are, thank you!

Summer soups

2008-05-19T08:42:00.006+01:00

People always say that shopping at Borough Market is expensive, and it can be – especially if you go crazy in one of the cheese or charcuterie shops. But I find that there are benefits, apart from getting my hands on some of the best produce in London. If you get to know the stallholders, you'll often get the price of your purchase rounded down or something extra chucked into your bag. You also get a heads up on the best produce and inspiration on new ways to cook it.

I love gazpacho with a passion, so when Harry at the Wild Mushroom company told me last Saturday that he had some nice ripe tomatoes in, I knew just what I wanted to do with them. It's true that I did make the stuff in rather vast quantities, but I'm happy to have bowl after bowl of it – and a glassful makes a nice mid-afternoon snack.

Vast quantities of gazpacho

a dozen ripe mid-sized plum tomatoes (or the equivalent if you find other kinds of tomatoes in the right stage of ripeness – around a kilo and a half is my best guess)
1 slightly stale ciabatta or other open-textured loaf, cut into chunks
1 cucumber, de-seeded and cut into chunks
1 Spanish onion, peeled and cut into chunks
3 peppers, cored, de-seeded and cut into chunks
1-2 chillies
2-3 cloves garlic
1.5 litres tomato juice (preferably not from concentrate)
2 tsp ground cumin
2-3 tbsp sherry vinegar
good-quality olive oil
1 tray of ice cubes
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Peel the tomatoes by cutting a cross in their bases and allowing them to lie in a bowl of just-boiled water until the skin starts to split (anywhere between a few seconds and a minute or so, depending on how ripe the tomatoes are). It should then be easy to peel off the skin.

Once they're peeled, remove the hard core near the stem and rinse out the seeds under a running tap.

Tear the bread into chunks and place in a bowl to soak in cold water.

Put the tomatoes, the cucumber, the onion and the peppers into your food processor and blitz. You probably won't get everything into the bowl of your food processor all together, but it doesn't much matter as you can mix everything up in a large bowl.

Squeeze the excess water out of the bread and add that to the contents of the processor, along with the chilli, the garlic and some of the tomato juice.

Tip everything into a large bowl and stir together with the remaining tomato juice, the cumin and vinegar (which should give the soup a zesty lift without making it taste at all vinegary). Sprinkle with olive oil, season and then drop the ice cubes in.

Leave in the fridge for at least an hour or two for the flavours to meld together before serving.

I sometimes garnish mine with fried croutons, but as those are currently out of the question, a quarter of a ripe avocado, sliced, makes a pleasant addition.

I digress...

2008-05-19T08:34:00.002+01:00

This has got absolutely nothing to do with dieting, but I thought this was such a cute picture I wanted to post it anyway.

It's Laszlo, of course, with one of his favourite toys, Turkey Lurkey. The 'friends' that gave it to him just before Christmas did so knowing full well that Lurkey had the squeak from hell. Luckily Laszlo punctured Lurkey by January, thus killing the squeak.

Mark and I already have our revenge planned. The friends in question had a baby earlier this year and the only question is whether his first present will be a toy trumpet or a drum...

Another week, another weigh in

2008-05-16T15:52:00.005+01:00

85.2 kilos this week. I'm going to have to watch it, though, as I'm entering review season. For the next few months, as long as I'm in London, I'll be eating out several times a week in my role as section editor of a restaurant guide. Given that I can't exercise at the moment, keeping on track is going to be tough.

Outdoor eating (part one)

2008-05-16T15:30:00.004+01:00

I have to admit, I love a barbie. I'm a real sucker for eating outdoors (and so's Mark), so the minute the sun comes out, so does the Weber.

I often think dieting is easier when the weather's hot, too. For starters, I find I don't get terribly hungry once the thermometer hits the mid-20s C, but even when I am feeling peckish, simply cooked meat or fish and loads of veg and fruit tends to be the order of the day. All very healthy.

One of the first barbecues we had this year involved marinating some chicken in a spicy semi-liquid rub, then serving it up with some roast veg and a bean and tomato salad. Recipes below.

Marinade for spicy chicken:

20ml olive oil
1 tbsp chipotle in adobo (from www.coolchile.co.uk)
1 tsp ground cumin
juice from 1/2 lime
1 clove garlic, mashed
salt

Mix all the marinade ingredients together.

Skin two portions of chicken (I think a small leg and thigh is the best option rather than breast), then score the flesh almost through to the bone.

Rub the marinade into the chicken and leave for at least a couple of hours (and up to a whole day).

You can barbecue or grill the chicken. I served ours with a roast tomato, garlic and green bean salad; roast butternut squash and barbecued sweetcorn (the last is an indulgence, I admit).

Roast tomato, garlic and green bean salad:

250g cherry tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic, skins left on
1 tbsp olive oil
150-200g green beans, topped and tailed
50g pine nuts
a small amount of dressing made from extra virgin olive oil, sherry vinegar and a dollop of Dijon mustard, plus salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oven to 100C, then place the tomatoes and garlic in a roasting dish and sprinkle with olive oil.

Roast gently for up to four hours, by which time the tomatoes should have shrivelled and blackened a bit, and their taste will have intensified. The garlic should be soft and creamy. Allow to cool.

In the interim, blanch the beans and refresh them under cold water. Leave to one side until cooled.

Toast the pine nuts in a frying pan. Watch them carefully as they go from raw to burned very quickly.

Place the tomatoes, pine nuts and beans in a salad bowl. Squeeze the garlic cloves out of their skins and toss them into the veg. Dress with a small amount of dressing.

The damage

2008-05-13T08:33:00.003+01:00

As predicted, Mark came home last night, took one look at my knee and put the kibosh on the idea of going out for dinner.

As a result, I spent just over two hours in my local A&E department waiting to be dealt with. The triage nurse, who I saw after about half an hour's wait confirmed that I'd need stitches, so I sat in the busy, noisy waiting room and, well, I waited. I'd sent Mark home, because there was no point in both of us sitting there doing nothing – I thought he'd be best of getting some dinner – but then he came back with a book for me to read, but instead we sat there and cuddled. I was feeling rather weepy, which is fairly unlike me – I suppose it must have been delayed shock – and my knee was starting to stiffen up and become sore.

Eventually I was shown in to a cubicle, where I climbed up onto a leatherette bed and a nurse practitioner peeled back the bloody bandage wrapped round my leg. Apparently I was lucky to have missed severing the tendon by a matter of millimetres, but as it was I needed five stitches, three to the large gash at the top and another two below. My leg is now swathed in stitches, steristrips and a big gauze plaster.

I'm under strict instructions not to do any exercise for the next 10 days or so. On the principle that you miss most that which you cannot have, I find myself craving an early morning jog.

The first rule of jogging

2008-05-12T17:52:00.005+01:00

Today I learned something new. What I learned was that the first rule of jogging is that you must always, always look where you're going. As you can see from the picture above, I didn't.

I was out in the park with Laszlo, trying to loosen up my muscles after my last session with James had left me feeling a bit stiff (serves me right for not stretching right afterwards). James and I were due to go out on Clapham Common tomorrow morning to see just how far I could jog when I put my mind to it – the goal was half an hour.

So, there I was, being a good girl, pootling round the park, not really looking where I was going – in fact, actively looking over my shoulder because Lasz had stopped to play with a Jack Russell – when I tripped over a shallow hole in the path and went sprawling.

I've badly skinned the palm of my left hand, but that's nothing compared to my left knee – I've got a deep, deep gash just below my knee cap. It's really quite gory-looking in real life. I was meant to go out for a review dinner tonight, to Lindsay House. I was really looking forward to it, but I've got a sneaking suspicion Mark may come home in half an hour and insist I go to hospital and get my leg stitched up.

I'm also not convinced that I'm going to make the half-hour run tomorrow.

Drat, drat and double drat.

Still, if I ever wanted proof that journalism was the right career move for me, the fact that my first thought on getting home was that I'd better get a picture of the injury to post on the blog seems to provide ample confirmation.

Sweet and savoury

2008-05-08T09:40:00.006+01:00

One of the things I found myself yearning for during my week in Georgia (isn't it funny how some weeks seem to last a very long time?) was fish, so I went out and bought a couple of tuna steaks for dinner the other night. I marinated them for a few hours in some lime zest (if you use lime juice, it 'cooks' the fish), minced ginger and chilli, soy sauce and a dash of sesame oil.

Alongside, I served wilted pak choy with strips of stir-fried ginger and, a new discovery, Asian butternut squash mash.

Asian butternut squash mash for two

1 medium butternut squash
2 star anise
1/2 stick cinammon
1 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp maple syrup
1 tbsp light soy sauce
a splash of sesame oil
salt and freshly ground pepper

Peel the squash and cut it into cubes (the smaller the cubes, the quicker they'll boil). Place in a saucepan of cold water with the star anise and cinammon and bring to the boil. Simmer until the squash is tender (depending on the size of the cubes this could be anywhere between 10 minutes and half an hour).

Drain and remove the anise and cinammon. Return the squash to the saucepan and, over a medium heat, mash until smooth. The squash contains quite a lot of water, so keep stirring and mashing until the water has all boiled away, otherwise you'll end up with sloppy mash.

Once you're satisfied that the texture is right, add the mirin, maple syrup, soy and sesame. Don't add them all at once, but taste as you go instead as the amount you'll need depends on how much mash you've got in the pan. Season to taste and serve.

Something weird happened while I was away

2008-05-08T08:51:00.003+01:00

I never thought I'd say this, but while I was away, I got kind of fidgety from lack of exercise. I found that I was actually looking forward to going for a run on my return. I even found myself, on the second morning in Tbilisi, down in the gym (inappropriately attired in linen trousers, a singlet and a pair of Converse trainers, but there you go...) jogging on the treadmill.

Maybe they're right when they say you can get addicted to exercise. What a horrible thought...

A double celebration

2008-05-08T08:47:00.004+01:00

Much to my surprise, after my kachapuri and kebab fest, I've come back weighing somewhat less than I did when I went to Georgia. Maybe misery has a purpose after all...

85.4 kilos. Hurrah!

Plus I managed two laps of the park again yesterday morning. The fact that spring has sprung while I've been away, with a consequent rise in temperature, makes things a tad more difficult than they were when the weather is cool and overcast. It's not much fun jogging in the sunshine (I feel like someone whingeing about a half-full glass, but it's true). But if I can haul myself out of the house before about 10 in the morning, it's not too bad.

Kachapuri and kebabs

2008-05-07T12:01:00.003+01:00

So, I'm back from my travels. For a while, at least. Georgia was, er, interesting. Sometimes genuinely interesting, sometimes more in the nature of Chinese curse interesting.

We landed at Tbilisi airport at one in the morning and were whisked straight to the hotel, so I couldn't tell very much about where we were apart from the fact that everyone seemed to drive on whichever side of the road they felt like at any one time. The trip between airport and hotel seemed like a game of four-wheeled chicken.

After a few gentle hours of sight-seeing the next day, we were taken out for dinner to one of Tbilisi's best restaurants by the organisers of the wine competition I was there to judge. Dinner was delicious: lots of good, fresh, herby salads; a couple of kinds of cheeses – one similar to a slightly tough mozzarella, the other somewhat like feta; a dish of lamb stewed with herbs and sour plums and a minced lamb kebab enlivened with barberries and pomegranate seeds. Our host for the evening, a genial politician whose smile didn't quite reach his eyes, appointed himself tamada, or toastmaster, for the evening and raised his glass every eight minutes on average, with a new theme. We drank to Georgia, to women, to absent partners, to international co-operation, to marriage, to the success of the next few days' judging... to so many things, in fact, that I lost track of what I was toasting, despite the fact that I was only taking very small sips of the wine in my glass. Apparently we got off lightly: the true Georgian tradition is that you drain your glass at each toast.

After a press conference the next day (it would seem that a wine competition is big news in Georgia, meriting exposure in the national newspaper and the evening news on TV), we set off for Sighnagi, the village where the competition would actually be held. Sighnagi, it turns out, is a bit of Potemkin village, designed to attract tourist dollars to help shore up Georgia's rather feeble economy. The trouble with Sighnagi as a tourist destination (apart from the glossy Disneyland-esque quality of the village, which stands in complete contrast to the poverty of all the other villages I passed through) is that it only has one hotel and two restaurants.

The hotel was truly abysmal. I picked five dead flies off the synthetic carpet in my room (the very same carpet that sent out sparks of static electricity with every footfall) and flushed them down the loo. What I couldn't get rid of was the mouldy smell in my room – it was like sleeping in a corked bedroom. It was so bad that the only way I could fall asleep at night was by dousing myself in perfume to over-ride the damp aromas.

As for the restaurants, on the first night we visited Sighnagi's 'French' restaurant, where we were served by the place's one waitress, a bored teenager who was obviously pissed off that we (the only table of diners) had prevented her from bunking off early to hook up with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend may well have been the chef, whose sole function was to open cans and tip the contents onto a plate. Actually, I lie. He was also responsible for my 'pork chops with spinach', which turned out to be two meatless spare ribs doused in vinegar and a salt pan's worth of salt, accompanied by four burned balls of spinach that had been cooked hours earlier and left to go cold.

I have to admit to having had a bloody good cry that night after I got off the phone to Mark. So much for the glamour of my life as a wine writer...

Things got mildly better the next day. The competition helped to take my mind off my surroundings (we tasted 180 or so wines and 12 chachas – local grape brandy) and we discovered the town's other restaurant, which served authentic Georgian dishes. In practice, this meant a plate of herbs, spring onions and radishes, more of the salty, feta-like cheese, more kebabs and kachapuri, a kind of Georgian cheese pizza. While it wasn't haute cuisine, it was better than what was on offer at the French restaurant, so that's what we ate for lunch and dinner for the next three days.

I've never yearned for home more than I did last week. Mark, bless him, came to pick me up from the airport and proudly announced that he was cooking me dinner to welcome me home. He'd planned on making lamb burgers and salad, but I just couldn't face more minced lamb and salad. We went out for a Chinese meal instead.

Off on my travels again

2008-04-27T11:49:00.002+01:00

I might not be able to make any kind of posting for the next week or so because I'm about to fly out to Georgia (that's former Soviet Union Georgia rather than Georgia, USA) to help judge a wine competition. I'll be gone until next Saturday, and I'm not sure how easy it's going to be to get any kind of internet connection while I'm out there – or even if I'll be given any spare time to do so.

When I get back, I hope to be able to make an interesting posting about eating and drinking in the Wild East.

The joys of spring

2008-04-26T10:46:00.005+01:00

What could be better on a sunny spring day than a light lunch of English asparagus, dipped into the runny yolk of an egg? The answer has to be dipping the asparagus into a lightly boiled duck egg, rather than the more usual hen's egg. The added richness – and the larger size of the eggs – makes this an extra-special treat.

And now for the bad news...

2008-04-26T10:17:00.005+01:00

When I returned from Istanbul, my weight had dipped to 85.7 kilos, and I thought I was back on track. Now, 10 days later, I'm now back up to 86.3 kilos. I could kid myself that it's just a matter of water retention or something, but I have to acknowledge that I'm not being as rigorous with the diet as I was at the start of the year.

I've got plenty of excuses for relaxing my eating patterns: I've had a lot of work dinners, I've had friends round or been over to friends' places for dinner, and I've just started my annual restaurant reviewing rounds (I'm a section editor for one of the main restaurant guides). In other words, temptation's been placed in my path, and I've succumbed. Only slightly, but just enough to ensure that I'm not losing any weight. The time has come to reconsider my priorities, because I'm always going to have to face up to temptation. If I want to lose more weight, I'm going to have to stick a little closer to the rules. Darn.

Breaking news

2008-04-26T10:07:00.009+01:00

After I managed to make it all the way round my local park (see above) at the start of this month, James and I set a new challenge: to make it twice round the park. According to James, who's googled the info, twice round the park is somewhere just over a mile – a distance that would have seemed impossible a couple of months ago, when twice round the tennis court brought me out in a fit of wobbles.

So, after the triumph of one lap of the park, the new target was set, and James' reckoning was that I should get there in about six weeks' time, which would have taken us to the middle of May.

Last night, however, I had dinner with Jon, one of my oldest friends, who was telling me that he went out running last weekend for the first time in living memory and managed to keep up with some country friends of his, regular runners, for an hour – although he did say they were very kind with their pace-setting. I still don't know how he managed it; by my reckoning an hour's running, even at its most gentle, must cover about five miles, a distance that would give me a heart attack or heat stroke, whichever came first.

But Jon's account of his weekend run did make me feel challenged, so I prised myself out of bed (a challenge in itself, for some reason my bed seemed ultra-comfortable this morning) and went out to the park, determined to make it round at least a lap and a half. I did better than that, though – I made it round twice. I feel knackered, but I also feel really pleased with myself, and that's a good feeling.

South American steak, with all the trimmings

2008-04-25T18:34:00.009+01:00

I bought some lovely rump steak at Borough market the other week: it had been hung for 45 days, so it had loads of flavour and was really tender. I marinated it in some olive oil and crushed garlic for a few hours before slapping it onto the griddle.

I served it with some chimichurri sauce, an Argentine relish. I haven't given specific quantities, because it's the kind of thing that needs to be balanced according to your tastes, and it also depends on how many people you're feeding.

To make chimichurri sauce, mix together:

olive oil
lemon juice
fresh parsley, chopped
fresh coriander, chopped
hot red chillies, chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper

I served the steak and chimichurri with some corn on the cob (Mark got some butter mashed up with lime zest to spread on his). I also dished up a salad based on quinoa, a kind of nutty-flavoured grain. In my own mind (but possibly nowhere else), this creates a kind of South American flavour to the meal because I based this salad on something I ate in a restaurant in Chile a few years ago. I've been making variations on the theme of nutty grains, herbs, tomatoes and chillies ever since.

Quinoa salad for 4:

a punnet of cherry tomatoes
olive oil
250g quinoa or pearl barley (I used quinoa this time round, but have used pearl barley with great success in the past)
1 chipotle chilli
1 red onion, halved and sliced finely
a big bunch of fresh coriander, chopped
1 ripe avocado, peeled and sliced
a couple of limes
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 100C. Tip the tomatoes into a roasting tray and sprinkle lightly with olive oil. Roast the tomatoes gently for at least a couple of hours, until they've completely softened and have started to caramelise. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Make up the quinoa or pearl barley acccording to the instructions on the packet and set aside to cool.

Soak the chilli in boiling water for half an hour or so, then chop finely.

Mix the quinoa/barley with the tomatoes, chilli, red onion, coriander and avocado. Drizzle with olive oil and the lime juice (start with the juice of one lime and taste before adding more juice). Season and serve.

A big challenge

2008-04-24T17:00:00.005+01:00

I've spent a couple of days over the last week or so helping to judge at the International Wine Challenge, one of the three big wine-tasting competitions to run each year here in the UK. The picture, left, gives you some idea of the vast number of wines entered in such competitions. They're big business: big business for the people who run them (who charge a fee for each entry) and big business for the lucky winners (who get to put a sticker on the neck of the winning bottles in the hope that this will help them sell more wine).

Each day for the past fortnight, 100 or so experienced tasters – journalists, wine makers, wine merchants and sommeliers for the most part – have rocked up at one of the Barbican's exhibition hall. We get split into groups of between four and six judges per table, under the guidance of a panel leader, and then the tasting begins. The first week's job was merely to sort wines into three categories: Out (you really don't want to put that in your mouth, do you?), Commended (it's drinkable, but far from exciting) and Medal-worthy. This is done by tasting your way through flight after flight of wine – a flight is made up of anywhere from a couple to a dozen bottles of wines of a similar style (for instance, German Riesling or Australian Shiraz) – and then deliberating over the various merits of the wines.

The second week, any potentially medal-winning wine is re-tasted in order to determine whether it's worthy of a Bronze (good, but not remarkable), Silver (batting well above average) or Gold (outstanding). Yesterday was a week two-day, and my judging colleagues and I tasted our way through 75 wines, awarding one Gold, about three or four Silvers, numerous Bronzes and kicking a number of wines back into Commended positions.

After a day spent tasting like this, my teeth were stained black with tannin (which makes you look like your dentist learned his skills back in the 17th century) and I have to remember not to smile politely at anyone on the bus on the way home.

Istanbul (not Constantinople)

2008-04-19T19:55:00.009+01:00

Last weekend, Mark and I took my mum to Istanbul for her 70th birthday present (she's probably going to kill me for revealing her age – she discovered this blog because she was googling me. How embarrassing!).

Because it was a special occasion, we stayed in style at the Empress Zoe hotel, a lovely little boutique Byzantine job in the middle of old Istanbul, just round the corner form key tourist venues like the Topkapi Palace, the Ayia Sophia mosque and (inevitably) the Grand Bazaar.

Shopping played a relatively large part of the weekend (something Mark bore with remarkable fortitude, standing patiently by the door of shop after shop, with an ever-growing pile of bags clustered at his feet). I was relatively restrained, and returned home with an embroidered coat and a pair of shoes made from an old piece of hand-embroidered material (Laszlo has already had a good gnaw on one of them, but only managed to damage the sole, luckily).

We also spent a fair amount of time strolling through the Spice Bazaar. As a matter of fact, I think I preferred the Spice Bazaar to the Grand Bazaar: it smelled more interesting for starters, with its blend of sumac, cinnamon, thyme and rosewater. I almost bought a kilo's worth of mixed spice, and only managed to restrain myself in time (I've got all the spices I need at home in my kitchen), and mum couldn't resist buying bags and bags of almonds, dried fruit and loukoum – she said it was for presents, but I'm not convinced she wasn't intending to scoff half the goodies when she got home.

We ate well, too – although, as I discovered, a girl can have too many kebabs over the course of a long weekend. Our best meal, however, was the one we enjoyed at Körfez (left). Part of the treat was the drive through Istanbul's suburbs, from gritty inner-town concrete jungle to upmarket Hampstead-on-sea beachfront apartments, followed by the short boat ride across the Bosphorous to the restaurant. We sat down for dinner just before sunset, and as the starters arrived, the lights of the city started twinkling and soon all we could see of the opposite shore was a galaxy of lights and the vague outlines of the hills and buildings. The food was excellent, too, particularly the sea bass baked in a salt crust (although we suspect we were ripped off as they only served us half the fish but charged us for a whole one when the bill came).

Luckily, after an attempt to order a couple of glasses of wine on the first night, I wasn't too tempted afterwards. They were the worst wines I've tasted since I went to Cyprus on a work trip...

Ramping it up

2008-04-19T19:25:00.007+01:00

I once had a boyfriend who used to go for 50-km cycle rides on Sundays for fun. The relationship didn't last long because, quite frankly, I'm not that kind of girl. In short, I'm not one of life's natural exercisers.

But, three months in, I find I'm quite enjoying my sessions in the park, albeit in a strange, grudging kind of way. Sessions with James are always a bit of a challenge. There's plenty of variety: some days we focus on running; on other days, although the aerobic intensity is maintained, I'm made to alternate between what James refers to as shuttle runs (short bursts or jogging/running/walking), along with walking or running backwards (something I find very challenging) and my new 'favourite' (a pet hate, actually), skipping. James started things off quite easily, a few weeks ago, asking me to skip for 20 turns of the rope. Then he ramped it up to 50, and if I stumble or trip, the count is reset back to the nearest 10 and I start again. Now I'm being asked to skip for a minute at a time. A minute doesn't sound like a long time. If you're fit, a minute may not be a long time. But (as I found out when I used to be a junior producer at a TV station) a minute can be a very long time when you're trying to fill it.

Things got even worse the other day when James stretched an elastic band out, about six inches off the ground, and asked me to jump across it sideways, both feet together. These inocuously named bunny jumps require an awful lot of muscle tension to power them. And landing is pretty hard on the calves, too.

And when we're not doing aerobic work, we're working on my muscle tone and balance. Boxing still plays as important a part in the routine as it ever did, and the moves are still the same – only now I'm asked to reach further, punch faster and a certain amount of choreography is now included in the routine, with jabs, crosses and upper-cuts interwoven with high knee-kicks.

Another old 'favourite' is step-ups onto a bench. James often gets me to start a session by getting me to jog (or walk backwards or sprint sideways) between benches, then step up a dozen or so times leading with my left foot, then moves me on to the next bench, where I repeat the exercise leading with my right.

Gradually, over time, the intensity of the exercises are being stepped up. And although I end up feeling wiped by the end of each session, I'm no more wiped now than I was at the start.

Simple and seasonal is good

2008-04-19T18:50:00.004+01:00

If you're not going to eat your bodyweight in indulgent goodies (I find myself yearning for a plate of really good chips – a bit of a surprise, I thought it would be chocolat I missed most) you might as well make sure that you eat well. By which I mean that it's becoming even more important to me than it ever was to cook with really good, fresh ingredients.

A few nights ago, Mark and I settled down to a beautifully simple supper (left) of grilled lemon sole, Jersey potatoes and a mixture of samphire and wild garlic.

Samphire, if you've never eaten it before, is a green vegetable that grows in marshy areas near the sea; there's a tangy saltiness to it that evokes the taste of the sea, which is what makes it particularly good as an accompaniment to fish.

Wild garlic leaves are in season now – for a few weeks only, so if you find some, snap it up! The leaves have a mild flavour – more of a gentle fragrance than a full-on blast of garlickiness.

Grilled lemon sole, Jersey royals, samphire and wild garlic for two

1 medium-large lemon sole (or Dover sole, if you really want to splash out)
some Jersey royals (be sensible about how many you put on your plate – I had four small spuds while Mark had about double the amount)
150g samphire
a good double handful of wild garlic leaves
1 tbsp olive oil
a small knob of butter
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Get your fishmonger to clean the fish for you. Place it on a grill tray, brush it lightly with olive oil, then season. Grill until cooked, then turn the fish over, oil lightly, season and grill until cooked through.

Meanwhile, cook the spuds in pan of salted water (bring to the boil, then simmer for 15-20 minutes, until done).

Cook the samphire in boiling water for about 4 minutes, the drain.

Heat the remaining oil in a frying pan over a medium flame and chuck in the wild garlic. Once it begins to wilt, toss in the samphire and heat through. Melt the butter into the greens.

Fillet the fish, divide into two portions and plate up with the spuds and greens.

At last

2008-04-10T21:31:00.004+01:00

For the past three weeks now, my weight has hovered around 87 kilos, up 100g one day, down the next, then back up. To tell the truth, I was getting a bit fed up. Not that I was ever going to give up on this diet – I've got too much invested in making a go of it. But there were some days when I did question what I was doing.

I haven't gone anywhere near the scales for a few days, because it was all getting a bit depressing, but this morning I climbed on board, and I'm now down to 86.6 kilos. I hope it's still down to 86.6 kilos tomorrow morning.

A quick lunch

2008-04-10T21:18:00.004+01:00

I was in the local supermarket the other day, lunchtime was on its way and I was starving. I really didn't want to succumb to the temptation of a sandwich (all that evil white bread, mayo and butter) – not that I'm usually tempted by those stale supermarket offerings in any case. Pasta is out, of course. And ready meals are right out, of course.

Making lunch from scratch seemed like too much of a faff – but then I realised that there was an old family favourite I could fall back on. This tuna salad is so simple that it stands or falls on the quality of the ingredients, so use the best fish you can find.

Tuna salad for one

1/2 small red onion, sliced thinly
1 tin of tuna in olive oil, drained and forked into flakes
1 small can kidney beans (or half a regular can), drained and rinsed
1 small red chilli
a handful of basil leaves, torn
extra-virgin olive oil
balsamic vinegar
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Mix the onion, tuna, kidney beans, chilli and basil leaves together in a bowl.

Moisten with a splash of olive oil and some balsamic vinegar. Season generously. Tuck in.

Last post for today

2008-04-06T19:12:00.006+01:00

I'm not sure whether I can see much difference between these pics and the last lot, but although I still can't do the zip up on the suede trousers in the middle, they seem to slip on a hell of a lot easier. The black trousers on the right, though, which fit me perfectly at the start of January, are now so big on me that I can get out of them without having to undo the zip and button.

A ray of sunshine

2008-04-06T17:58:00.004+01:00

Even though I feel guilty (see earlier post) about my lack of posting and my lack of weight loss, a couple of rays of sunshine have pierced my gloom.

The first is that, on Friday, I ran the whole park. By the time I got the whole way round, I felt like I couldn't quite get enough air in my lungs, but I made it. And, as James said, I was only four days behind schedule. My next challenge is to make it twice round the park – a distance of around a mile and a quarter. James reckons it's going to take me six weeks to do it. I'm determined to get there earlier if I possibly can, and aim to do as much running between sessions as possible in order to make it happen.

The other good thing that is starting to happen is that people who have no idea I'm on a diet are starting to remark on the fact that I've lost weight. Maybe things are starting to tighten up, despite the fact that the scales aren't showing any significant loss of poundage.

A long country walk

2008-04-06T17:31:00.006+01:00

Last Sunday, Mark and I drove out to Kent with Laszlo to meet up with a couple of friends for a long country walk. After a bit of initial confusion – Katrina missed her train, so we had to go and pick her up from Sevenoaks rather than start our walk at Knockholt as we'd planned, then the GPS system took us the long way round to Sevenoaks from Knockholt, where we'd been waiting – we set off from the car park at Knole House, a splendid Jacobean mansion that once belonged to Vita Sackville-West's family.

The house (small castle, really) is surrounded by a deer park, a fact we weren't initially aware of until Laszlo disappeared over the horizon in search of new friends (or possibly fresh venison – it's kind of hard to tell what's going on in his little furry mind sometimes). By the time we'd reclaimed him, we were already 1/4 of a mile into our walk.

We then tramped through some woods, down a length of road, then skirted the edge of a golf course for the best part of an hour. The highlight of the pre-lunch bit of the walk came as we passed along the fringe of one of the holes. Two young guys were teeing off several hundred metres away, and I don't think they'd played much golf before because one of them hit the ball off course. It banged into a tree just in front of us, then dropped to the ground like a stone. Laszlo was on it like greased canine lightning, and scooped it up. He was about to bugger off with his prize when I leaped on him and got him to drop the thing. We apologised to the golfers, who at least had a sense of humour about it and didn't seem too angry.

Lunch was a not-terribly-healthy salad in a pub in a small village. The prawn and avocado salad looked like the safest bet on the menu, but the prawns came covered in gloopy Marie Rose sauce. Still, it was a pleasant enough spot for a bite (and a pint for everyone else – I stuck to a spiced tomato juice).

Refreshed, we set off again, and ended up in some dense woodland. The paths were very muddy, not to mention steep, so we slithered uphill and back down for a while – I was feeling the effects on the backs of my thighs by this stage, and was discreetly trying to catch my breath at the top of each hill. Katrina, just back from a walking holiday in the Breacon Beacons was having no such problems, and was striding along, OS map in hand. Lasz (right, in the Easter snow), too, was in fine form, bouncing along, running from the front of the pack to the back to check we were all making it alright. Then, just as we came to the end of the woods, we stumbled across a house that had chickens pecking around loose in the front garden. Laszlo saw them before we did, and was off. Mark took off after him and, for a minute or two, we were entertained by the sight of Mark chasing after Lasz, who was in hot pursuit of a terrified hen. He wouldn't have known what to do with one had he caught it, so I wasn't too worried (nor was the owner, luckily) and eventually Mark grabbed him and put him on the lead.

By the time we got back to the car park, we'd walked about six strenuous miles. We all slept well that night, particularly Lasz, who twitched strenuously in his sleep. I'm not sure whether he was dreaming about chasing deer, golf balls or chooks.

More strong flavours

2008-04-06T16:27:00.004+01:00

I've always loved hot and sour soup, even the really naff versions you get in cheap Chinese restaurants - it's something to do with the hit of peppery heat allied to the refreshingly sharp twang of vinegar, which I find a very appealing combination. It's exactly the kind of dish I like to come home to on a cold, snowy April day (how unseasonal is this snow?) So I was thrilled to discover a recipe for the stuff in Fuchsia Dunlop's wonderful book, Sichuan Cookery. Over the years, I've adapted her recipe to suit my own tastes, so the version below is mine, not hers – including all the inaccuracies and inauthentic touches. You'll find some of the more exotic ingredients in your local Asian supermarket.

Enough Hot and Sour Soup for five main-meal portions

a good handful of dried wood-ear fungus
350-400g pork loin, cut into matchstick strips (marinaded with 2 tsp Shaoxing wine, 1/2 tsp salt, 3 tsp potato starch and 2 tbsp water)
250g tinned bamboo shoots, cut into thin strips
1 tbsp groundnut or vegetable oil
a thumb of fresh ginger, peeled and cut into matchstick strips
1 small green or red chilli, sliced finely
200g shitake mushrooms, sliced
2 litres chicken stock
400g fresh beancurd, cubed
150g peas (frozen will do fine)
2 tbsp Shaoxing wine
2 tsp light soy sauce
2 tsp dark soy sauce
6 tbsp potato flour mixed with 100 ml water
salt and lots of freshly ground black pepper
150g prawns (I use small frozen prawns, which I defrost before I use them – it's certainly not worth going to the expense of buying fresh prawns, or large ones)

To serve:
8 spring onions, sliced
2 eggs, whisked up with 2 tsp sesame oil
6-8 tbsp black Chinese vinegar

Soak the wood-ear fungus in enough boiling water to cover. Leave for half an hour or so, then cut into strips.

Stir the marinade ingredients together, then mix thoroughly with the pork strips.

Blanch the bamboo shoots in boiling water, then refresh under a cold tap.

Heat the groundnut oil, then stir fry the ginger and chilli together for a few seconds. Add the shitake mushrooms and fry over a lowish heat for a few minutes, until the mushrooms start to cook.

Add the chicken stock and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer, then stir in the beancurd, pork and peas. Add the Shaoxing wine, soy sauces and seasonings – use lots of black pepper to give the soup that peppery bite. Simmer for a few minutes, to let the flavours meld together.

Stir a spoonful of hot soup into the potato flour and water mixture, then tip the whole lot into the pot and stir. The soup should become thick and glossy, without becoming gluey.

Stir the prawns into the soup to heat them through (don't cook them too long, though, or they become rubbery and unappetising).

Meanwhile, divide the spring onions between the serving bowls.

At the last minute, use a fork to trace 'threads' of the egg and sesame oil mixture across the surface of the simmering soup (these will cook in the hot liquid).

Stir in just enough vinegar to give the soup the required twang, without making it overly sharp. Pour straight into the bowls without allowing the vinegar to cook (it seems to lose its sharpness if you do that) and serve.

'Tis the season to feel guilty

2008-04-06T16:12:00.003+01:00

I've long held the suspicion that guilt is a waste of emotion. That doesn't prevent me from feeling weighed down with guilt right now.

To begin with, I've been absolutely rubbish at posting over the past few days. In my defence, I should probably mention the fact that I've been away in France for three days and have had 8,000 words to write this week (split into five different articles rather than one massive piece). But I should have found the time – or even made the time – to log on more regularly.

Part of the reason I haven't, I suspect, has something to do with my other burden of guilt. My weight's not gone down much at all over the past three weeks. I weighed in at about 86.7 kilos when I got back from Bordeaux 10 days ago, then went up to about 87.3 a couple of days later, then lost about 300 grammes by the end of the week, and am now back up to 87.1 kilos. Now I could make all kinds of excuses for this, such as the fact that, due to the exercise I'm laying down muscle rather than fat (it weighs more), but I suspect the truth is that the weight came off so easily in the first few weeks that I got slack. I conned myself into believing that it would come off without too much effort from me, as long as I showed a modicum of self-restraint. I now think I will need to be a bit stricter about what I'm eating and when I'm eating it. In short, I have to go back to the principles I was sticking to religiously early on in the diet. This is going to be a tough recommendation to follow, especially given that it's my mum's 70th birthday dinner tomorrow night and I'm judging a food-and-Champagne-matching competition all day on Tuesday, but if I want to see some results, I'm going to have to put in a bit of effort. Nobody said this was going to be fun.

Another day, another salad

2008-03-24T17:47:00.003Z

I love my salads almost as much as I love my soup. So that's the first thing I thought of when a couple of friends came round for Sunday lunch a fortnight ago bearing a large smoked duck breast as a present (wine writers don't often give other wine writers bottles of wine when they're invited for lunch – for some reason culinary gifts are deemed to be far more acceptable).

The duck breast in question ended up in a fine salad that Mark and I enjoyed midweek – it's the kind of thing I like to rustle up when I'm busy and don't have much time for faffing in the kitchen (and at the moment I have very little time at all, what with trips to Burgundy and Bordeaux, plus all kinds of impossible deadlines – at least six before breakfast each morning...)

I bought some of those tender young salad leaves – nothing too bitter or peppery – sliced the duck, then extracted the seeds from a ripe pomegranate. I also added a little finely sliced red onion and some chopped walnuts, then dressed it all with a simple vinaigrette based on walnut oil (yes, walnut oil again – but I'm not sick of it yet), with a little pomegranate molasses (a sweet-sour syrup that I used as a substitute for balsamic vinegar – only a little, mind) and some red wine vinegar plus a dab of Dijon mustard.

We enjoyed it so much I went out and bought another duck breast at the weekend so we can have the same salad again some time soon – as long as our late winter gives way to a slightly warmer spring.

Redemption songs

2008-03-24T17:32:00.002Z

I'm feeling quite virtuous because, despite the bad weather, I've hauled my sorry carcass out for a run twice in the past three days. The last time, half an hour ago, I made it all the way round the park. OK, so I had to walk across the centre, splitting my figure-of-eight run in two, but I did it!

One of the things that helped was having some music to run to (I found that Prince's 'When the Doves Cry' got me going, but John Lee Hooker's blues weren't quite as helpful). What I need to do is create a playlist of get-up-and-go tunes that will, er, get me going.

Now I wonder whether I should tell James that I made it round the park or not?

Fiddly food

2008-03-22T17:45:00.011Z

I think I've already explained my theory that highly flavoured food is more satisfying when you're on a diet than bland food. I also tend to think that food that takes a while to eat because it's fiddly in some way (eg chicken wings, shell-on prawns, etc) also does the trick.

So this dish of Thai-spiced mussels (above) has to be the ideal combination of fiddly and flavoursome. We certainly enjoyed them this week.

Thai mussels for two

1kg mussels (I think smaller rope-grown black mussels are tastier than the big green ones from New Zealand)
1 tbsp grated ginger
1-2 small chillies, sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbsp vegetable or peanut oil
1/2 onion, sliced into thin rings
2-3 stalks of lemongrass, bashed about a bit
300 ml fish stock
300 ml low-calorie coconut milk
1-2 tbsp fish sauce (nam pla – if you don't have any, light soy sauce will do)
lots of chopped fresh coriander, Thai basil (use the regular stuff if you can't find it) and mint

Make sure the mussels are clean before you start cooking. This means getting rid of their beards and the worst of any dirt clinging to their shells.

Stir-fry the ginger, chillies and garlic in the oil in a big saucepan for about 30 seconds, until they start releasing some of their aromatics.

Turn the heat down and, adding the onion, cook on a low heat until the onion is soft and translucent.

Add the lemongrass and cook for another few seconds.

Pour in the stock, coconut milk and fish sauce. Bring up to the boil then reduce to a simmer.

Tip the mussels into the pot, put the lid on and cook for just long enough for the shells to open (overcooked mussels go rubbery, those that are just cooked are tender and sweet). Shake the pot vigorously a couple of times to ensure the mussels cook evenly.

Serve in large bowls with a spoon so you can sup the sauce as if it were a soup.

We also had a small green salad with half a sliced avocado and some toasted sesame seeds, dressed with a simple mixture of lime juice, a bit of soy and a splash of sesame oil.

Letting myself down

2008-03-22T17:34:00.005Z

Most people find the early days of a diet the hardest, but I was so fired up with enthusiasm in the early weeks – and the results were so immediate – that I had no problem at all sticking to the regime.

Now I seem to have struck the doldrums. My weight isn't budging at all (cosmic payback for my excesses in Burgundy perhaps) and, far from being close to being able to jog right around the park (as James promised I would by the end of March), I'm struggling to make it halfway round – a point I reached almost a fortnight ago. I feel I've let him down as well as myself.

Add to that the fact that I've now lost just enough weight to start being able to wear clothes I enjoy wearing, and it's not surprising my willpower's wearing thin (even if I'm not wearing any thinner).

The only thing encouraging me to stick at it at the moment (at a time when all around me are eating chocolate Easter eggs) is Mark, who's started to refer to me as the 'slinky minx'. That and the fact that I'm so stubborn that I'll be damned if I'm going to be put off now.

The French have an expression: 'reculer pour mieux sauter', to take a step back in order to take a better leap fowards. I hope that's what's going on now.

Blow me down

2008-03-18T17:56:00.004Z

I don't deserve it after last week (see item below on why France is a bad idea), but this week's weigh in revealed a loss of 300 grammes. I'm down to 87.3 kg. Maybe it was all the walking I did from the wine producers' tables to the spitoons and back.

Going to France is a bad idea

2008-03-18T17:37:00.005Z

Hold on. Let me rephrase that. Going to France is a bad idea if you're on a diet. Any time you sit down at the table, the diet devil will be sitting at your left elbow, intent on tempting you to sin.

'A little slice of terrine de foie gras, perhaps?' asks the waiter. 'Or maybe Madame would prefer to start her meal with some snails.'

Snails by themselves would be just fine. But snails come swimming in molten butter flavoured with garlic and parsley, all of which screams to be mopped up with crusty white bread, strictly verboten and therefore thoroughly tempting.

Main courses come piled high with mounds of protein: poulet de Bresse or Charolais beef (the latter capped with a slice of foie gras – which was a bit of a recurring theme last week).

Desserts are orgies of cream and butter and sugar. Not to mention chocolate.

The only thing lacking in all this was fresh green vegetables. I spent all of last week, from first thing on Monday to Saturday evening, in Burgundy, normally one of my favourite places to be. I was there to taste my way through wines made from grapes grown from Chablis in the north to the Maconnais in the south. So far, so good. After all, spitting is considered to be the polite thing to do (even though about a glass' worth of alcohol for every 15-20 wines you taste).

The damage was done, in the main, at mealtimes. Apart from one memorable lunch, where we were treated to fresh seafood, cured salmon and a variety of salads, midday meals were thoroughly unhealthy affairs at which the only edible options were mini quiches, small bowls of creamy purées, gooey cheeses, foie gras sandwiches and, on one memorable occasion, what looked like a pizza covered in pink puke (I think it was some kind of dessert, but I wasn't about to find out for sure).

Dinners were even worse. Somewhat more edible, perhaps, but incredibly lavish. In addition, seating is assigned, so you end up being split up from your mates and placed at tables where you know no one. Sometimes you end up having a fun evening. Sometimes you get so bored your teeth ache from the tedium. One night I was put on a table with three local winemaking couples, who all knew each other. Even though my French is pretty good, I just didn't have the energy to make the effort, so I pretended I could only speak English and got whisked away to another, more convivial, table. Naughty me.

On evenings like this, the food keeps coming. It's not unusual to be served five, six or even seven courses. And none of it's designed for anyone counting calories. Wine is also merrily poured into your glass – but nobody minds if you tip it right back out again and try something else, so at least I can keep the alcohol levels down. As ever in these situations, I just try to aim for small portions.

Despite my best efforts, though, I ended up feeling like a Strasbourg goose the week before Christmas. I wasn't expecting much from my weekly weigh in, either.

Soup, glorious soup

2008-03-17T18:31:00.005Z

I've been feeling a tad guilty for not having put enough recipes on the blog recently, so over the next few days I plan to post a number of dishes that have helped to keep me going over the recent chilly weeks.

The first recipe I want to post is this gorgeous, tasty bowlful on the left. I love soup with a passion, and in my single days would sometimes cook a vat of the stuff and live on it from one end of the week to the next. This particular soup is fairly simple to make, yet I find it incredibly satisfying. Oh – and it's pretty healthy, too. But you do need one key ingredient to make it work, and that's home-cooked chicken stock. Store-bought stuff will do at a pinch, but you can forget about stock cubes. I've included a recipe for chicken stock below, just in case you've never made any at home – but don't worry, it's simplicity itself to make.

Soup with spicy pork balls and cabbage for two

300g minced pork
4 spring onions, trimmed and sliced
bunch of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
bunch of mint leaves, chopped
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 small fiery chilli, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
600 mls chicken stock (see recipe below)
1/2 savoy cabbage, cored and shredded
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Mix the pork, spring onions, herbs, soy sauce, chilli and garlic together in a bowl, then form into walnut-sized balls.

Heat the oil in a frying pan, then fry the pork balls, a few at a time, until they're nicely browned on all sides. Put the cooked meat to one side until everything's ready.

While you're frying the pork, bring the stock to a boil in a saucepan, then lower heat until it's simmering.

Heat the pork balls in the soup for a few minutes, until they're thoroughly cooked through.

Add the cabbage and cook for another minute or two. Season to taste and serve.

Chicken stock

chicken carcasses (or chicken wings if you can't get hold of whole carcasses)
olive oil
a brown onion, halved and peeled
3-4 celery sticks
a couple of carrots
tsp peppercorns
2-3 bayleaves
bunch parsley
salt

I've deliberately left the quantities for this recipe vague as you can make as much or as little chicken stock as you need (and your stockpot will allow). If you end up with more than you need, stock freezes very well once it has been thoroughly cooled.

Brown the chicken carcasses or wings with the oil in a saucepan. Cover with water, then add the remaining ingredients, apart from the salt.

Bring to the boil, skimming the brownish scum that forms on the liquid. Reduce to a simmer – it's important to get the heat as low as you possibly can, so that only the occasional bubble breaks the surface. That way the stock should remain fairly clear once you're finished.

Carry on simmering for at least a couple of hours (I sometimes leave my stockpot on the stove for up to four hours).

Strain the chicken bones and vegetables, reserving the liquid. Now's the time to taste the stock. If it still needs to be more concentrated, put it back on the stove and boil until it's reduced to the appropriate concentration. Then – and only then – should you add salt (it can get very salty if you add your salt before concentrating the stock).

Allow to cool and (preferably) place the stock in the fridge overnight. You should find that any fat will float to the surface and harden to a solid, which will allow you to remove it easily. Your stock is now ready to use or freeze.

Just a quick word

2008-03-09T19:06:00.002Z

There's so much I've been meaning to post about this past week – like the fact that I managed to jog halfway round the park across the road without passing out or dying, woohoo – but I've been flat to the boards with work. In the past 6 days, I've written one 1,500 word article (about rosé), another 1,500 worder (an account of a tasting I helped judge, which involved sampling 120 wines in the space of four hours – and then collapsing in a gibbering heap afterwards), 800 words on matching wines from Alsace with Asian cuisines, doing 8 interviews (for the rosé article), went to three tastings, written a précis of the minutes of the last committee meeting of the Circle of Wine Writers (I'm the group's Secretary) and then got up at 6 this morning to write 900 words on matching German wines and food. To cap it all, there were nine of us round the lunch table today – we had bolitto misto, a Northern Italian dish that involves boiled tongue, chicken and zampone (a pig's trotter sausage), home-made horseradish sauce and salsa verde. We also had a cheese platter and finished things off with a dessert I invented based on rosé wine, a bit of rosewater, some gelatine and some berries.

Are you exhausted reading all that? I certainly am. And the reason I'm mentioning it all now is that I'm off at the crack of dawn tomorrow to go to Burgundy tomorrow for the rest of the week. If I can find a computer while I'm there I'll post some more, but if you log on to cyber-radio silence, you'll know why. Until next time...

More kilos go

2008-03-05T20:38:00.005Z

I thought you might be getting bored with seeing the fireworks image every time I have a successful weigh in, so I thought I'd try a popping Champagne cork instead. Arguably, it's more appropriate in any case.

This week, the scales read 87.6 kilos. Only another 19 or 20 to go...

Did anyone hear a loud bump?

2008-03-05T18:52:00.004Z

If you did, that was me falling off the wagon last night. I'd been invited to the annual Caballeros dinner – one of those wine trade events where people get inducted into an association while wearing voluminous robes and funny hats (see left).

I didn't get to wear any robes myself (thank god, scarlet velvet has never really been my thing), but I was subjected to a four-hour-long onslaught of good food and Spanish wine. I've been working hard recently, and I'm tired, so my willpower wasn't quite what it should have been. So I sipped at my cava, swigged my glass of manzanilla, took a slug or two of the Sauvignon Blanc and the Albarinho that went with a starter of sea bass and rice with prawns, peas and ham, and drank slightly less of the two reds that went with the fillet of beef with wild mushrooms and foie gras (I managed to restrain myself and only had a small slice of the foie gras).

I hardly touched the Rioja that accompanied the cheese platter (although I did nibble at the dried fruit on the plate). It all fell apart, though, when I was poured a glass of PX sherry (a very sweet, almost treacly dessert sherry) and handed a plate with a sticky toffee and date pudding. In mitigation, I will say that it was a very small pudding, and I didn't eat the ice cream that went with it, nor did I finish my glass of PX. But I did get a bit of a sugar rush afterwards – and a lingering sense of guilt this morning.

Work smart, not hard

2008-03-05T18:41:00.005Z

Well, when I say smart rather than hard, what I really mean is no harder than you need to. According to James, a lot of people who want to lose weight tend to do masses of cardio exercise and neglect to do much in the way of resistance work. But while cardio is definitely good for you, the body repairs itself pdq. Resistance work, on the other hand, means that the body needs to repair itself overnight as it restructures the muscle, which means your metabolism carries on working harder for longer. Not only that, but the more muscle mass you have, the more active your metabolism becomes. So you end up burning more calories overall.

And doing more muscle work doesn't mean that you will look larger. If you work out in the right way for your body, you can make your muscles more efficient without adding any bulk.

The downside, if there is one, is that muscle weighs more than fat. So even though you may be firming up, you may not necessarily see huge results on the scales. Pay just as much attention to the way your clothes fit as to the readout on the bathroom scales.

Some you win...

2008-02-29T09:55:00.004Z

...but then again, some you don't. A couple of friends we hadn't seen for several months came over for dinner on Wednesday night. They walked in, admired our kitchen (which was installed with much fuss and mess over two months at the end of last year), then Tess looked at Mark and said: 'Gosh you've lost weight'.

He may well have lost the odd pound or two. But I've lost a whole stone, nobody had noticed – and I felt like chucking my toys out of the pram.

Well, wouldn't you be a tad hacked off?

Dishes that pack a punch (part two)

2008-02-26T16:45:00.009Z

It got quite cold last week, and I really fancied a nice, warming bowl of chilli con carne. A little bit of what you fancy does you good, even if you are dieting, and even though I know that chilli is a really retro 80s kind of a dish, and therefore a bit naff, I've always been fond of it. Besides, I'm addicted to Chipotle chillies (a Mexican chilli with a smoky flavour that I buy in bulk from The Cool Chile Company), and I use them to liven up both the chilli itself and the guacamole that accompanies it.

Needless to say, Mark's portion was about twice the size of mine – the portion sizes here apply to my portions, not his.

Chile con carne for 6

2 tbsp olive or vegetable oil
500g lean beef mince
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 large chipotle chilli, soaked in hot water for half an hour, then chopped
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1 can kidney beans, drained
200g canned chopped tomatoes
1 tsp chopped fresh oregano
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Warm a scant tablespoon of oil in a heavy-bottomed pan and brown the meat. Remove the browned mince from the pan with a slotted spoon and set aside in a bowl.

Fry the onion gently in the remaining oil until it is soft and translucent. Add the minced garlic and chopped chilli, plus the spices. Fry for a further minute.

Tip the meat back in the pan and add the kidney beans, tomatoes and oregano. There should be enough liquid in the pot to keep things moving relatively freely, if not add 100mls or so of chicken or beef stock.

Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for an hour or two. Season to taste. Serve with a dollop of guacamole (see recipe below) and a spoonful of half-fat crème fraiche.

Guacamole for two

2 tbsp grated red onion
1/2 chipotle chilli, chopped
2-3 tbsp chopped canned tomatoes
1 avocado
juice of 1 lime
fresh coriander, chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Mix the onion, chilli and tomatoes together in a small bowl. Add the avocado, then mush together with the back of a fork – it doesn't matter if everything's a bit lumpy. In fact, lumpiness is part of the beauty of a home-made guacamole – who wants that bland smooth mush that comes in tubs at the supermarket? Stir in the lime juice and coriander and season. Serve as soon as possible, otherwise the avocado has a tendency to turn brown (although that's mitigated somewhat by the lime juice).

An unexpected surprise

2008-02-26T16:40:00.004Z

After yesterday's blowout (and an epic Sunday lunch here with friends that involved bunny and pancetta cooked with verjuice, a cheese board and a blood orange and rosemary jelly for dessert) I didn't really expect to have lost much weight over the past week. So I was really pleased to step on the scales this morning and see that they read 88.3 kilos. That's down a thoroughly undeserved kilo on last week. I'm not quite sure what I'm doing right, but long may it last...

Excess all areas

2008-02-26T15:39:00.007Z

This modest collection of bottles should give you some idea of a regular working day (if there is such a thing) chez Hughes.

Some time late last year I hatched a plan with one of my colleagues, The Guardian's Victoria Moore, to spend a day finding the right kinds of food to match with German Riesling. Now Riesling is one of those grapes that wine buffs love but most people are uncertain about. Part of this unpopularity is due to the fact that people think all German wine is Liebraumilch, Piesporter, Blue Nun, Black Tower or generic Hock. Even if they don't bundle Riesling in with these wines (which often have little to do with the grape in any case), people think the wines are too sweet (in fact a good German wine, even though it might have some residual – ie unfermented – sugar in it, balances this sugar with crisp acidity) or, if they're not sweet, they're so acidic and mineral that they come across as being austere and unfriendly.

Anyway, Victoria's column is all about finding good food matches for good wines – and I write an occasional food and wine-matching column for www.wine-pages.com – so we decided to call in some wines and spend a day tasting them with different dishes (I know: it's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it).

The day kicked off at 11.30 with a tasting of 26 Rieslings. Once we'd worked our way through them all, rejecting the ones we didn't think were up to scratch for one reason or another, we began working on finding wines that matched some of the dishes I'd prepared. We started with quail marinated in ras-el-hanout (see 'Jen, Coz, Leo and some wonderful wines' for more info), then moved on to slices of smoked goose breast served with caramelised apple slices, a Keralan prawn and coconut curry I plan on adapting for dieters (watch this space for a full recipe some time soon), grilled lemon sole and a mushroom risotto.

Not exactly ideal diet fare, although I made sure I took small portions and swallowed very little of the wine I tasted. The conclusions of the day's experiment should be up on the Wine Pages site in the next few weeks – and you'll probably find Victoria's take in the pages of the Guardian's Saturday magazine within the next fortnight.

Bad timing

2008-02-23T17:51:00.002Z

Poor James. Yesterday morning he found out the hard way that I'm not much of a morning girl. It's not that I'm bad tempered or taciturn in the mornings, and I can certainly crank out an article in the early hours if under pressure of a deadline. But physical activity before about 9am doesn't seem to agree with me.

However, because James' schedule was packed, we were booked in for a session at 8 yesterday morning. I woke up early enough to have my morning muesli at the right time to provide fuel for my muscles (about an hour or so before exercise is the best time to eat complex carb-based breakfasts – if you're short of time fresh fruit will do just before exercising, at a push). But I was sluggish. Even worse, I whined more than a mosquito does on a hot summer's night when you're trying to get some shut eye.

Just how do those high-powered execs manage to work out at 6 in the morning before a big day of meetings?

A great spring salad

2008-02-20T11:04:00.004Z

I'm rather partial to a bit of beetroot, love walnuts and yearn for soft, tangy goat's cheese. So it isn't that surprising that one of my new favourite dishes (especially as the weather seems to be warming up slightly) is a salad that combines these three ingredients.

A couple of points worth noting: beetroot, delicious as it is, is also packed with sugars, so go easy on it. You can buy beetroot ready-cooked, but make sure it hasn't been preserved in vinegar. Alternatively, buy uncooked beetroot, the smaller and more tender the better. I like to cook mine in the oven at around 200C, wrapped in tin foil with a few drops of water sprinkled around the beetroot to stop it drying out. Depending on the size of your beetroot, it will take somewhere between 1 and 2 hours to cook through – if in doubt, take it out of the oven and poke a skewer through it. If it slips through easily, it's done. If you meet with resistance, the beetroot probably needs to go back into the oven a bit longer. Don't forget to peel it before slicing it up for the salad – the skin slips off fairly easily.

It's also worth paying good money for decent walnuts. I nearly fainted when I saw the price of Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Chilean walnuts (nearly four quid for a bag), but they're so moist and flavoursome in comparison to anything else I've found that I've decided I'd rather have slightly fewer, tastier walnuts than a larger quantity of dried-out nuts.

You can use any kind of goat's cheese, from the hard and tangy kind to soft goat's curd that needs to be spooned onto the salad. Feta, although it's a sheep's milk cheese, is another good alternative.

Beetroot, walnut and goat's cheese salad for one

a good handful of salad leaves (I like the ones with aromatic herbs mixed in)
75g cooked beetroot, sliced
a handful of walnuts, roughly chopped
50g goat's cheese, crumbled

Dressing:
Walnut oil
Tarragon vinegar
Dijon mustard

Making this salad, once you've cooked your beetroot according to instructions, couldn't be simpler. Just chuck the beetroot, nuts and cheese on top of the leaves, dress and serve.

As you've probably noticed, I haven't given any quantities for the dressing – I'm crediting you with enough smarts to make a dressing all by yourself. Just go easy on the amount you use to keep the calories down.

A word from James...

2008-02-20T10:40:00.003Z

When I first met Natasha late last year, and she told me about her weight-loss plan, I was immediately interested. Here was someone who didn't want a quick fix and wasn't interested in following the latest fad diet. Instead this was someone who wanted to do it the only way I'd recommend. Slowly but surely.

When we actually started our sessions early this year, she didn't try and con me about her abilities. She was very honest and told me straight that she was hard pushed to run for a bus without collapsing or, at best, being very out of breath. Everyone has to start somewhere and Natasha's first and hardest step had already been taken: deciding to do something about the shape she was in.

The initial tests I asked her to do (steps and squats) proved hard work. In fact, half-way through the step test, Natasha had had enough. However, she persisted and managed to complete the three-minute routine.

Over the past few weeks, I've got her to increase her workload bit by bit, moving through basic exercises (lunges, high knees, split squats), upping the intensity in terms of frequency, time, speed and numbers of repetitions – and I'm pleased to say that, thus far, I haven't needed a resuscitation kit.

In terms of increasing Natasha's aerobic fitness, we first started with walking, then fast walking, then added short bursts of jogging. Once she'd become a dab hand at that, the ratio of jogging to walking increased. Walks became shorter, jogs longer and faster, with less rest before the next activity (bench steps, for example, that she now takes in her stride).

The important thing to remember when you're getting fit is progression. Often clients ask me: 'Shouldn't I be getting better at this by now?' If I'm doing my job as a trainer properly, adjusting each session, the answer is no. There are many tools that trainers use to gauge a client's progress and the fact that Natasha asked me this question the other day was a clear indication that not only was she getting fitter and stronger, she'd not noticed me turning up the heat on our sessions. (Well, not unless I really go for it – then she knows all about it!)

My aim (and it's a highly achievable one) is that by the end of March Natasha will be able to run a comfortable lap of the park where we train, just over half a mile.

At this rate, given the traffic levels on our streets, she'll be beating the bus home any day now!

Sorry, but I can't resist...

2008-02-19T10:56:00.003Z

For once, my lack of resistance has nothing to do with food. Nope – I'm succumbing to a strange urge to post one of the wedding piccies on this blog. From left to right, Brenda (my mother-in-law), my sister Lisa, my Mark (the one with the big smile on his face), Lisa's Mark, me (with the humungous great bouquet mum insisted on getting for me – it weighs a ton, but it smells delicious) and my mum, Caroline.

Oh – and some more good news. The scales this morning read 89.4 kilos. I'm pretty much back at last week's square one. Obviously yesterday's hike was either down to water retention or my subconscious trying to scare me back onto the diet.

Gloom, doom and disaster – and more than a handful of great meals

2008-02-18T09:50:00.009Z

I've put on weight. When I stepped on the scales this morning, my weight was back up to 89.8 kilos.

On the other hand, there's a very good reason for that. On Friday, Mark and I got married in a quiet ceremony at the Chelsea Registry Office. Our two mothers were our witnesses, and the entire thing lasted about 20 minutes from a small interview with the registrar to check that our details were correct, to the bit where Mark kissed his new bride. OK, I know I'm going to have to get used to it, but that bit still sounds weird to me (sorry Mark!)

We spent almost as much time getting photographed as we did getting married, and were joined by my sister Lisa and her husband (also, confusingly, called Mark). After the photos were finished, we went for a slap-up meal at the newly Michelin-starred Wild Honey restaurant, http://www.wildhoneyrestaurant.co.uk. Not only was the food delicious, one of the owners, Will Smith, sent over a bottle of Château de Boursault's Champagne on the house, which impressed my mum no end.

This wasn't a weekend for sticking to the diet, I decided, and tucked into a starter of smoked eel served with sweet-sour slices of turnip, then had wild duck with spaetzle (a kind of Austrian gnocchi) and pomegranate. Then I added the coup de grace with a pudding of chocolate soup (a bit like a molten chocolate mousse) and nougat ice-cream (I have to admit, that, being unused to the sugar rush, I did feel a tad sick on the way home, but not sick enough to really regret tucking in with such relish).

We had some lovely wines, too – one of Wild Honey's strength is that most of its wines are served in 250ml carafes as well as by the bottle. I particularly enjoyed a Blauer Zweigelt from Austrian producer Anton Bauer (which smelled of flowers and currants) and a eucalyptus-scented Pinot Noir (the same grape used to make red wine in Burgundy) from Shadowfax in Victoria.

Mark's mum was staying with us that night, and we didn't do much. In fact, I joked to Mark that we must be the only couple to spend their first night of married life beached on the couch in the living room while watching a movie we'd recorded at Christmas.

The next day, we drove Mark's mum (Brenda) back home to Gloucester, then headed towards the Cotswolds for our one night of honeymoon. We spent this at the Trout Inn, http://www.trout-inn.co.uk/, where we had a pretty little room and another humungous meal. They, too, comped us a glass of Champagne (Perrier-Jouët NV) when they found out we'd just got married, to which we added a bottle of Descendientes de Palacio's Petalos del Bierzo, a rich, velvety red wine with lots of earthy, peppery spice and dark fruit, between us. I've obviously lost my head for wine (not that I've ever been much good at drinking in quantity) and found myself getting all giggly after the first glass or two, but I still managed to find enough strength to wolf down some crab and vichysoisse, then a plate of fillet steak, horseradish mash and wild mushrooms. Oh, and did I mention the rosemary-scented creme brulee?

We did have a lovely long walk the next morning, through frost-covered fields that ran alongside the Thames towpath. Laszlo romped ahead of us, looping his way through the long grass and then back towards us, his whiskers all covered in frost (and his legs covered in burrs, as we later discovered). Even though the temperature was hovering around freezing point, the icy landscape was breathtakingly beautiful and the sun shone weakly in a bright blue sky. All in all, it was a glad-to-be-alive moment.

So, despite the walk, it's no wonder I've put on a bit of weight over the past week. With any luck, it'll come off just as quickly as it went on. I'll keep you posted.

The importance of doing something completely different

2008-02-12T17:20:00.000Z

I went to a tasting at the Tower of London today, and a colleague sidled up to me and said: 'You're clearly sticking to your diet – you've lost a lot of weight.'

This was kind of flattering, but then she went on to say that she, too, had been trying to lose weight, but couldn't budge an ounce, despite her four energetic sessions of ballroom dancing each week.

It made me think back to something James told me when I thought I'd hit a bit of a plateau. He said that, for most people, the first few weeks of any kind of diet or change in exercise regime are the most productive in terms of losing weight. After a while, though, your body adapts to whatever it is you're doing: the human metabolism is a very efficient machine. That's when you hit a plateau – and that's when most people give up on their diets.

The solution? Whatever you do, don't cut your calorie intake. Our systems have evolved to think of a drop in food consumption as being a sign of imminent famine. It adapts by learning to be more efficient with the calories it's getting. The proof of this is in the vicious circle many dieters have to deal with, the one that goes: crash diet, results, stop dieting, weight goes back on, leading to another crash diet, and so on for life.

You can tweak your diet, of course, but exercise is key. If your body has become used to exercising at a certain level or your muscles are used to performing certain movements, change the pattern. Two sessions a week with James were working for me. Then they started working less well, and I started adding a couple of sessions of my own, and now I do a bit of jog-walk-jog round my local park with Laszlo twice a week. It certainly seemed to help me bust through the plateau. Maybe my colleague should take up swimming twice a week to replace a couple of her dance sessions...

Weigh in number six

2008-02-11T19:43:00.000Z

There was a moment, a week or two ago, where I thought I was getting a bit stuck on a plateau. I only record my weight on this blog once a week, but I often step on the scales every couple of days to make sure I'm heading in the right direction.

For a few days there, it looked like I was hovering. My weight went down 400 grammes, then up 300 grammes, then back down again. I felt it was touch and go as to whether or not I'd record any loss at all next week (although I ended up 600 grammes down on the previous week).

All of a sudden, though, I've shifted another 800 grammes since last week, and am down to 89.5 kilos, bringing me at under 90 kilos for the first time in – oooh, let's just say a long time and leave it at that.

Jen, Coz, Leo and some wonderful wines

2008-02-11T19:07:00.001Z

Mark and I spent Sunday with our friends Coz and Jen, and their new baby, Leo. We hadn't met Leo before – he was born less than a month ago – so I took a bottle of Champagne with us to celebrate.

It was 'just' basic Bolly – one of my favourite of the big brand non-vintage Champagnes. I like its richness – I've never been a big fan of over-priced battery acid, which (to my mind) some Champagnes seem to taste like. I'd decided in advance to allow myself to have a glass (maybe even a glass and a half) of wine. After all, we were celebrating and even though I'm on a diet, there are certain occasions (like celebrating the birth of a baby) when it would just be wrong to stick to the rules too closely (the knack lies in recognising these occasions while not making excuses to indulge too often on some spurious pretext).

We arrived, wielding our bottle of Champagne, and I'd no sooner handed it over than Coz (who is incredibly generous with his wines) said: 'That'll keep – I was planning on opening a bottle I brought back from Champagne last year,' and popped the cork on a truly delicious bottle of Pierre Gimmonet Oenophile vintage fizz. Gimmonet, for anyone who hasn't heard of him, is a talented producer who makes his own wines in the Champagne region rather than selling his grapes to a big company like Moet, Bollinger or Mumm (which is what most growers do). These 'growers' Champagnes' are increasingly trendy in hard-core wine circles, and I think they're often really good wines sold at (relatively) reasonable prices.

So I sipped delicately at my half flute of Gimmonet, then had a mouthful or two of the Bolly. But I'd been quite cunning. Knowing how persuasive Coz can be when he starts opening interesting bottles of wine (and how I have a professional weakness for tasting them), I'd set myself up as the designated driver for our return journey. This certainly curbed my enthusiasm, and much as I'd have loved to hoe into the Champagnes (or any of the other wines that followed), I knew I couldn't – and so did everyone else.

I'd told Coz and Jen that I was going to cook them lunch – they hadn't had the time or energy to cook properly since Leo was born – and I'd come prepared. Or rather, my quails had been prepared, and all I needed to do was to shove them in the oven. They'd been marinating since the previous evening in a mixture of Ras el Hanout (a blend of Moroccan spices that includes cumin, coriander, cinnamon and rose petals) and some olive oil. I'd stirred about three tablespoons of spice into a couple of tablespoons of oil, then rubbed all that yummy spiciness into eight quail, crammed them into a tupperware container and put them in the fridge overnight. When I got to Coz and Jen's, I put them in a pre-heated oven at about 200C for around 40 minutes, then served them with a simple salad enhanced with a few chopped walnuts.

I happened to mention to Coz that I was thinking of using the recipe for a tasting I'm planning to do at the end of the month: an investigation into which kinds of dishes work best with German Riesling. Inevitably, Coz insisted on opening a bottle of Josmeyer's Les Pierrets Riesling from the 2001 vintage – a wine he'd bought on a trip we all took to Alsace two or three years ago. It was lovely with the quail – but I'm still interested to see how a slightly lighter, slightly sweeter German Riesling will work with the dish.

Dessert was even simpler than the main course: a salad of peeled, sliced blood oranges with some chopped dates, all sprinkled with a teaspoon of rosewater (go easy on the stuff – it's very fragrant). Coz opened another bottle to go with this, a Beaume de Venise from a co-operative in the Rhône. It was just right with the pudding: light, fresh and not too sweet.

Then, to round things off, he brought out another bottle of wine, a Schloss Gobelsberg Gruner Veltliner – just because we happened to be talking about Austria. If you've never tasted Gruner Veltliner before, I urge you to track down a bottle of this marvellous grape – it's one of the most food-friendly white wines in the world, and the hallmark grape of the Austrian vineyards, in the same way that Malbec has come to be associated with Argentina or Shiraz with South Australia.

The Schloss Gobelsberg wine was outstanding – but, as I did with the Riesling and the dessert wine, I did no more than sip at it to taste it. The same can't be said for Mark, who snored loudly all the way home...

The perfect dinner?

2008-02-11T18:36:00.000Z

In an ideal world, I'd rather not eat complex carbs at dinner (which I eat earlier than I usually would, around 7.30, to ensure I've finished digesting the meal before I go to bed). It can be tough, though, trying to find a recipe that really satisfies my hunger – and my appetite – without including some kind of stodge.

Last Friday, though, I made a great meal that hit the spot for me – and got a 'Wooh, yeah, baby' from Mark. It adds fuel to the theory that a bite of spice in a dish really helps to keep those hunger pangs at bay.

The recipe that follows should give you some idea of how to recreate the dish – but don't take my version as gospel. Like any salad, this Thai beef salad is open to artistic reinterpretation, as long as you keep the general principles in mind.

Thai beef salad for two

Baby spinach leaves – as many as you want
1/2 red onion, sliced thinly
1 small red or green chilli, chopped
1 medium carrot, grated coarsely
1/2 green (unripe) mango, peeled and cut into thin strips (if you can't find green mangoes, you can either use a green apple, which has a some of that sweet-sour thang going for it, or use a ripe mango, although the salad will be slightly different in character)
10-12 cherry tomatoes, halved
1-2 tbsp peanut or vegetable oil
a good handful of cashew nuts
300g steak (I used rump steak, but you can use sirloin or fillet if you want)
fresh coriander leaves, chopped (use as much or as little as you want)
fresh mint leaves, chopped (use as much or as little as you want)

Dressing:
4 tbsp nam pla (Thai fish sauce)
1 tbsp sesame oil
juice of 2 limes

Put the spinach leaves into a large bowl. Top with sliced onions, then sprinkle with the chopped chilli. Scatter the grated carrot and the green mango over the spinach, then throw in the tomato halves.

Heat a dash of peanut or vegetable oil in a frying pan and toast the cashews until golden (I find if I don't use the oil, the cashews seem to burn rather easily). Once toasted, chop coarsely and put aside.

Heat another tablespoon of oil in a frying pan (or smear over a griddle) and fry the steak. You can cook the steak as you like it, but I always think rare works best for this kind of salad). When it's cooked, take it off the heat, season, then slice. Place the slices on top of the salad, then scatter the nuts and herbs on top.

Mix the dressing ingredients together and taste for balance. You may find you need a bit more lime, a bit more nam pla or even a touch more oil.

Dress the salad and serve.

An interesting conversation

2008-02-08T21:24:00.000Z

I had an appointment with Tina, my hairdresser, today. Now Tina's a top chick - forthright, friendly and colours her bobbed hair a traffic-stopping shade of red. Like me, she's on the curvy side. Or rather, she has been every time I've been for a haircut in the past couple of years, and she's always been on some kind of diet or other ('It was the Atkins last year,' she said. 'I followed it for months, only lost three-quarters of a stone, and put it all back on again within a fortnight of starting to eat normally.')

This time, though, she'd lost weight. I noticed this and congratulated her, and she told me she's been on a diet since last October. During the course of the past four months, she said, she's lost almost two stone in weight.

'Wow,' I said, 'that's great.' Although secretly, I have to admit, I was thinking: 'Wow, it's taken you four months to lose just over twice the weight I've lost in five weeks.'

'What kind of diet are you doing?' I asked.

And that's when she told me that she'd been substituting breakfast and lunch with meal replacement shakes. For FOUR months. Now, she doesn't seem to mind – and I don't think she's much of a foodie, so maybe she doesn't. But four whole months with nothing but a small cup of liquid gunk to keep you going until dinner doesn't bear thinking about, as far as I'm concerned.

So, I'm eating more, I'm enjoying my food and I'm losing weight faster than Tina. In my book that's a positive result. So even though I've been jonesing for 'normal' food a bit this week, I'm feeling a whole lot better about what I'm doing and the way I'm doing it.

One of my next postings may well contain some theory about why I think I'm seeing such positive results with such little effort (well, little effort relative to the idea of replacing my meals with ersatz calorie-counted shakes).

An encounter with a sadist...

2008-02-05T16:08:00.000Z

It's probably quite mean of me to describe Phil as a sadist when he was really just doing his job with extreme prejudice. He turned up last Friday morning, a late replacement for James, who couldn't make our session. Where James is very tall, with movie-star looks (he used to be an actor), Phil was small and wiry, with a shaved head and a broad grin.

The grin got even broader when we got out into the park. We warmed up with a lap of the park, then went straight to the tennis courts. James usually gets me running round the court once or twice, then jogging along the short end and walking down the long side. Phil had me jogging round the whole court, walking along the short end, then running again, with a few squat and thrusts and the odd star jump or ten. Then he started to get me jogging in towards the centre of the court, then jogging backwards out again to the perimeter. At first I thought I was going to die of a heart attack. Then, when I realised I wasn't actually going to die (just sweat a lot), I thought I was going to fall over when I started running backwards. Eventually, I survived half an hour of this treatment.

Just when I thought I deserved a bit of a break as a reward for putting in the hard yards, Phil got me to sit on one of the park benches. Not for a rest, though. It seems that James must have told him my shoulder muscles are pretty weak, so Phil got me to perform a range of exercises to work those muscles, including pushing up against his hands, which were hovering just over my head. Instead of making it easier as I got tired, he pushed harder and harder against me. Once he'd worn my shoulder muscles out, he got me doing push-ups with my hands resting on the bench (when I say push-ups, that really should read half-arsed push-ups – they ain't going to take me as a marine any time soon, based on Friday's evidence). Then another of James' favourite exercises: getting me to step onto and back off the bench several times. Sounds easy. It isn't. Phil got me doing several reps of each exercise, then got me to do them all over again before letting me go home for a few crunches and stretches.

I shouldn't say this (in fact I'm pretty certain that when James reads this he'll just use it as a reason to crank up the volume on his sessions), but a session with Phil makes a workout with James look like a stroll in the park...