Brown shrimps: a 5:2 diet treat

Fellow 5:2 dieters will almost certainly have discovered prawns are a great fast day food. What you might not know is that brown shrimps even tastier.

Not that they’re cheap - a 90g packet will cost you about £3.40-something in Waitrose although they’re currently on offer in Sainsbury’s at £6 for two packs - but because they’re so small it looks like you’re getting far more than that weight suggests (great psychology).

The other advantage is of course that unlike potted shrimps they’re not coated in calorific butter which makes them only 87 calories per 100g - or 39 calories for half a pack.

I’ve scattered them over the top of a finely sliced fennel salad (with chilli, mint and lemon juice) and also added them to celery to jazz up a piece of baked fish. Incidentally celery is another wonder ingredient that contains practically no calories at all, if you can face it. Try it this way.

Baked cod with celery and brown shrimps
Serves 2 at 189 calories per portion

1/4-1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes
1/2 tsp coarse salt
300g cod (300 cals)
125ml veg stock made with 1/2 tsp bouillon powder (6 cals)
10 sprays oil (10 cals)
50g brown shrimps (44 cals)
110g celery stalks and leaves (10 cals)
1 tsp fish sauce (3 cals)
white pepper
A wedge of lemon (5 cals, if that)

Heat the oven to 190°C. Grind together the chilli and salt. Season the fish on both sides with the chilli mixture and pepper.

Spray half the oil over a baking dish, place the fish in the dish and spray with the remaining oil. Bake for about 10-12 minutes until just cooked. Set aside in a warm place to rest.

Wash, de-string* and slice the celery. Put in a pan with the veg stock and fish sauce, bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and add the shrimps.

Serve the cod on warm plates with the celery and prawns and a wedge of lemon.

De-stringing celery really helps makes it more digestible. just snap it in half and pull away the strings away from the stalk. Simple

5:2 How I learned to love (or at least like) cottage cheese

Sooner or later everyone on a diet turns to cottage cheese. Everyone except me, up to now. I’ve always loathed the stuff.

But with ordinary cheese ruled out, on fast days at least, and feeling equally lukewarm about tofu it struck me that it must be possible to make it taste good.

It is.

I’ve had it three ways recently - twice for breakfast and once, just now, for lunch. And it’s tasted good every time.

The key, of course, is to make it not taste like cottage cheese - unless you’re a cottage cheese fanatic in which case you probably won’t have got beyond the first paragraph. And that is by adding low fat yoghurt which zips it up and gives it a much better texture. About half as much yoghurt as cottage cheese does the trick.

Breakfast idea no. 1 was to serve it (or rather my yoghurt/cottage cheese combo) Turkish style (above) with cucumber, tomato and a seeded flatbread with a sprinkle of za'atar (a middle-eastern blend of dried, sesame seeds and sumac) sprinkled over the top. The second time I had it with blueberries and grated lemon rind (below). I really liked this.

And the picture at the top of the post is today’s salad which is slightly more calorific than it need have been due to the sprinkle of seeds. You could leave them out or pass on the Ryvita Thin I ate with it. Or both.

Cottage cheese, spring onion + beet salad (157 calories)

60g cottage cheese (44 cals)
35g 0% Greek yoghurt or other low fat yoghurt (20 cals)
1 spring onion, trimmed and very finely sliced or a heaped tbsp of chopped chives (2 cals)
100g cooked beetroot, drained and cubed (48 cals)
1 tsp balsamic vinegar (optional - 7 cals)
25g spinach and watercress salad (6.5 cals)
1 tsp (5g) seed sprinkle (optional - 29 cals)

Weigh out and mix the cottage cheese with the yoghurt and finely sliced spring onion. Add a little water if you’re using a very thick yoghurt like Total.  Drain and cube the beetroot and mix with balsamic vinegar if you fancy it - though if you’ve deliberately bought it because it wasn’t in vinegar that might not appeal.

Place a handful of salad on a plate, top with the cottage cheese mixture, scatter over the beetroot then sprinkle with the seeds if using. Or za'atar, a pinch of cumin or more chives or spring onion.

As I said, I added a 37 calorie Ryvita thin which brought the calorie total to 193.5. And doesn't leave me much for the rest of the day. But this was pretty filling.

Are you a cottage cheese lover or loather? And if the former, how do you eat it?

5:2 A 100 calorie lunch (near as . . .)

Although I find I can skip lunch more readily than I used to when I started the 5:2 diet there are days when the hunger pangs just won’t go away - particularly if I’ve eaten lightly the night before. This salad was in response to just such an emergency.

I’d been thinking if I had one egg instead of two that wouldn’t gobble up too many of the evening’s calories. I had a tomato and a spinach, watercress and rocket salad in the fridge but the ingredient that brought them all together and which turned out to have a welcome lack of calories was capers. They gave the salad punch and the liquid from the jar provided an instant, calorie-free dressing. Result!

Egg, tomato and caper salad (107 cals)

1 egg (78 cals)
1 tomato (115g) (21 cals)
2 tsp capers (10g) 1.4 cals + some liquid from the jar
a handful of watercress or watercress, spinach and rocket salad 25g (6.5 cals)
freshly ground black pepper

Hard boil the egg. Skin and slice the tomato. (Actually you don’t have to skin it but I think it tastes better). Arrange both on a small plate thus creating the illusion of greater quantity. Place a handful of watercress alongside. Spoon over the capers and trickle some of the liquid from the jar on the tomatoes and salad leaves. Grind over some black pepper. Voilà!

Confession: I also had a 34 calorie Peter’s Yard crispbread with it which brought the total to 141 calories. But that’s still not a lot.

Spiced root vegetable soup

I know I've been banging on a lot about 5:2 lately so here's a recipe which isn't part of the diet or that you could run up after a fast day on which you've made yesterday's dal.

The only ingredient you need if you've already bought a bag of mixed carrot and swede and have the spices in your store-cupboard is an onion. Which makes it super-cheap.

Serves 4

3 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, peeled and roughly chopped
400g mixed carrot and swede, cubed (see previous post)
1 tsp cumin seeds or ground cumin
1 tsp coriander seeds or ground coriander
1/4 tsp chilli flakes or a pinch of chilli powder
1/2 tsp salt if using whole spices
1/2 level tsp ground turmeric
750ml light vegetable stock made with 1 tbsp Marigold vegetable bouillon powder
chopped fresh coriander or parsley
salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a large frying pan or wok and stir in the onion and diced carrot and swede. Cook over a low heat until the vegetables start to soften*.

If you're using whole spices grind the cumin, coriander seeds and chilli flakes together with a pestle and mortar with 1/2 a teaspoon of salt then mix with the turmeric. Otherwise simply mix the ground spices then add salt and pepper to taste.

Add the spices to the vegetables, stir and continue to cook until they begin to colour. Stir in the stock and cook until the veg are completely soft.

Strain the vegetables over a bowl then place the cooked veg in a food processor or blender and whizz until smooth, adding as much of the reserved cooking liquid as you need to get a smooth purée. (You may need to do this in two batches.)

Tip the puréed vegetables back into the frying pan - or a clean saucepan if you don't mind the extra washing-up - and add back the remaining stock plus as much liquid as you need to make a smooth soup (I added another 150ml).  Reheat and adjust the seasoning.

Serve with a few chopped coriander or parsley leaves if you have some and a dash of hot sauce if you fancy it.

* You could also roast the veg if you wanted to. I did as the Aga is on all the time and it gives the soup a nice roasted flavour but it's not necessary.

5:2: Quick red lentil and carrot dal

After 24 hours of eating pure protein* I was gagging for something veggie tonight and hit on the notion of trying to make a low calorie version of my favourite dal. I found a couple of packs of pre-prepared veg in the local Tesco (don't hate me) and that clinched it.

I'll probably tweak it a bit. The carrot made it a little on the sweet side so you could cut it down or up the lentils slightly although that will obviously make it more calorific. On the other hand if you just chopped up a carrot and some swede it might clock up fewer calories - I found the bag I'd bought had some potato in it.

Normally I use a fair bit of oil to fry the onion and spices so they weren't quite as enticingly crispy as usual. But it's not bad. Not bad at all. Particularly for a cold February night.

Serves 2-3 (500 calories total so about 200-250 cals per portion)

1 large onion (150g) (47 cals)
200g mixed carrot and swede, cubed (82 cals)
80g red lentils (265 cals)
5g chunk of fresh ginger, grated (2 cals)
1/2 level tsp turmeric or a little more if you're into turmeric. It is very healthy (4 cals)
750ml light vegetable stock made with 2 tsp Marigold vegetable bouillon powder (24 cals)
50g sliced cabbage or raw spinach leaves (16 cals)
about 5g chopped fresh coriander (2 cals)
1 tsp cumin seeds (8 cals)
1 tsp coriander seeds (5 cals)
1/4 tsp chilli flakes
1/2 tsp coarse salt plus a little extra salt to taste
1 tsp oil (40 cals)
1 clove garlic, peeled and finely sliced (2 cals)

Halve the onion, chop half of it roughly and set the rest aside. Put the chopped onion, carrot and swede in a saucepan with the red lentils, ginger and turmeric. Pour over the stock, bring slowly to the boil, skim off any froth then simmer for 20-25 minutes until the vegetables are soft, adding a little extra water if you need it. Take off the heat and mash roughly, just to break the veg down a bit.

Blanch the cabbage briefly in boiling water. (If you're using spinach you don't need to do this.) Drain and add to the lentils along with most of the chopped coriander leaving a little for garnish.

Thinly slice the remaining onion. Grind together the cumin seeds, coriander seeds, chilli flakes and coarse salt with a pestle and mortar.

Heat the oil in a non stick frying pan and add the sliced garlic and onion. Cook over a moderate heat for 2-3 minutes then add the roughly ground spices. Continue to fry over a low heat for another couple of minutes taking care not to scorch the spices.

Serve the lentils and cabbage topped with the spicy onions and a few extra coriander leaves.

If you can't be bothered faffing around with whole spices you could always add some diluted curry paste to the dal as I did with the Spicy 5 Vegetable Stew I made recently.

*I was at a scallop dinner last night. Then ate scrambled eggs and smoked salmon for breakfast today.

5:2 diet: Cutting down portion sizes

It is, of course, not just what you eat on a fast day but how much you eat of it. 500 calories a day (or 600 if you’re a lucky male) is not a lot so every calorie counts.

Surprisingly one of the easiest ways to do that is to cut down on the recommended portion size on ready-made products. The manufacturers of big 600ml tubs of soup, for example, assume you’re going to divide the pot between you. In fact you can divide it into three - 200ml is quite enough for a bowlful, especially if you add a splash of water to thin it out. (Most ready-made soups, I find, are too thick and gloopy*)

40g of porridge oats clocks up 138 calories. Reduce that to 30g - and allow yourself a teaspoon of cinnamon sugar which at least makes it palatable - and you’ve only used up 123.

The recommended 75g helping of rice (190g cooked weight) amounts to a scary 260 calories. Weigh out 50g of cooked rice - enough to bulk out a meal - and it’s an affordable 56.

Of course it doesn’t work with everything. 20g of cheese - hardly worth having which is why I rarely bother with it on fast days - is still ridiculously calorific but you get the point . . .

*While on the subject of soup - watch out for the sugar content. Sugar in soup? Absolutely. I was perplexed as to why Waitrose own brand soups were so much more calorific than the Tideford soups that my local health food shop stocks. (Their tomato, red pepper and lentil soup, for example, is only 52 calories for 200g.) The answer seems to be that most contain sugar.

Katie Stewart's apricot teabread

I was particularly sad to hear of the death of cookery writer Katie Stewart the other day as her books were a bible as I was learning to cook. (No, please don't work out how old that makes me.) Other people on Twitter clearly felt that way too so we had a bit of a Katie Stewart love-in last weekend when we all cooked a favourite recipe.

Mine was a teabread, the sort of cake that's gone out of fashion but which was both delicious and economical because you could slice it so thinly. It's also incredibly easy to make - a bit like a boiled fruit cake.

At the time I used to follow recipes religiously, terrified that even the slightest deviation would result in disaster but emboldened by having written a few cookery books of my own I realise they're only a guideline. Revisiting the recipe I cut down the sugar and ground cloves and would certainly use mixed spice instead of the three different ground spices Katie recommends if I didn't already have them in my storecupboard.

The central ingredient, apricots, has also changed in that unsulphured apricots are much more widely available than when the recipe was written and also tend to be sold in a ready-to-eat version. That admittedly makes the teabread less colourful but improves the flavour. (They were also a £1 a pack cheaper in my local health food shop.) You do however need slightly less liquid than the original because you don't need to rehydrate the apricots - I've made that adjustment in my version below.

Makes 1 large loaf

225g dried apricots, preferably unsulphured
200-250ml water depending whether your apricots are read- to-eat or not (less if they are)
150g caster sugar (unrefined caster sugar for preference)
75g butter
1 egg, lightly beaten
225g (8oz) plain flour
1 level tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 level tsp salt
1/2 level tsp ground cinnamon, 1/4 level tsp ground cloves and a pinch of nutmeg or 1 tsp mixed spice

You will also need a lightly oiled 9 x 5 x 3 inch (2lb) non-stick loaf tin. If you haven't a non-stick tin, line it with baking paper

Snip the apricots in small pieces (easiest with kitchen scissors) and place in a large saucepan. Add the water, sugar and butter and place over a low heat. Stir to dissolve the sugar then bring up to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Draw the pan off the heat and allow to cool until the hand can be comfortably held against the side of the pan. Beat in the egg.

In the meantime preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C/Gas 4. Sift the flour with the bicarbonate of soda, salt, cinnamon, ground cloves and nutmeg (or mixed spice). Tip the sifted flour mixture into the apricots and beat thoroughly.

Transfer the mixture into the loaf tin and spread evenly. Place in the centre of the oven and bake for an hour until well risen and firm. Leave in the tin for 10 minutes then tip out of the tin and cool on a wire rack. Serve sliced with butter or on its own. It also freezes well.

The recipe came from a rather charming collection called Katie Stewart Cooks which accompanied an ITV series and cost all of 40p. You might also enjoy her The Times Cookery Book and the more recent Katie Stewart's Good Food.

5:2 Easy spicy 5 vegetable stew

Looking at the arctic scene out of the window this morning I must admit the last thing I wanted to do was fast but having worked out today was the only day I could fit in over the next 3 days I reckoned I'd survive provided everything I ate was hot.

I was thinking vegetable curry but it somehow morphed into a soupy stew. A rather more calorific one than I'd intended as I hadn't checked out the calories in parsnips or Jerusalem artichokes which have almost as much as potatoes. But it still came in well within the daily allowance especially as I only had just over a third of it.

Dieting or not it's a really good frugal recipe too as you can use whatever veg you have to hand - even a small potato wouldn't be a problem though I might skip the artichokes and use swede instead if I was in danger of exceeding my daily limit.

I don't think tomato would add much unless you had a couple of squishy tomatoes you needed to use up (skin and chop them first. Leave the seeds in - they're fine). Celery or fennel would be good as would a handful of shredded greens or spinach chucked in towards the end. If it wasn't a fast day you could add chickpeas or lentils or serve it with naan. Or tweak the seasoning and turn it into a couscous.

The most significant thing though was that I didn't use any oil. The veg are just boiled which keeps the calorie count down and speeds up the recipe to about 15-20 minutes. Probably 5 minutes in a pressure cooker, which I still have to master . . .

Spicy 5 vegetable stew (376 calories)
Serves 2-3 at 125 calories a bowlful

1 medium onion (100g) 31 calories
1 medium carrot (105g) 30 calories
1 medium parsnip (105g) 69 calories
1 medium to large turnip (150g) 47 calories
4 Jerusalem artichokes (145g) 105 calories
1 tbsp korma curry paste (25g) 55 calories
750ml hot vegetable stock made with 1tbsp Marigold vegetable bouillon powder - 36 calories
A handful of chopped coriander leaves (10g) 3 calories
Salt and pepper

Peel and cut up the veg into chunky pieces. (Do the artichokes last as they discolour.) Put them in a saucepan or casserole, cover them with the hot stock and bring to the boil. Turn the heat down and simmer until the veg are almost tender. Some will cook faster than others - it doesn't matter. You can mush them up to thicken the stew.

Weigh out the curry paste, mix it in a bowl with 2 tbsp of the stock you've cooked the veg in and add it back to the pan. Reheat and simmer until the veg are fully cooked (another few minutes). Add the chopped coriander and season to taste. That's it!

PS A less successful experiment was unsweetened porridge made entirely with water and a sprinkling of cinnamon. I know the Scots eat it that way (except for the cinnamon) but to me it tasted like soggy oat-flavoured cardboard. I think next time I'd have to include a teaspoon of sugar which would be only 16 calories. Not a disaster.