Off on my travels again

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

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...

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.