Damage limitation

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

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!

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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.