Ow!

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

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

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

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...

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...?

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

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

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.