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.

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.