How to Eat (72 page)

2 quails, butterflied

2 teaspoons soy sauce

2 teaspoons pomegranate molasses

Preheat the oven to 450°F.

Line a small baking dish with foil, shiny side up, and put the quail in skin-side up. Put the soy sauce and pomegranate molasses in a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Let it bubble away for 30 seconds or so until thick and sticky and pour over the quail, using a pastry brush to dab it all over.

Roast the quail for about 15 minutes or until cooked through and crisp-skinned, then remove and eat with your fingers as soon as the quail have cooled down just enough for you to bear it. Serves 1–2.

JAPANESE-FLAVORED SOUR-SWEET CABBAGE

Sometimes I make myself a bowl of Japanese-flavored sour-sweet cabbage to eat after this. Shred about 8 ounces cabbage finely, then toss it in a hot nonstick pan in which you’ve already put ¼ teaspoon sesame oil. Keep turning and tossing the cabbage until it wilts impressively, then throw in a mixture made from 1 tablespoon each of soy sauce, mirin, and rice vinegar. Give this—still stirring and lifting up the cabbage frantically—another minute, then remove to a bowl and sprinkle over some Japanese seven-spice mixture, if you’ve any at hand.

Serves 1–2.

BEET GREENS AND BUCKWHEAT NOODLES

I began this tranche of recipes with noodles and I’ll end it with noodles. I love beet greens but am not mad about beets (with some exceptions, and they’re listed below, so don’t worry about what you’re going to do with the rejected roots now). I use Japanese soba noodles for this—often sold at the supermarket—and make a vast plateful; I want nothing else after.

In place of the soy sauce, mirin, and rice vinegar, you can use an equal quantity of sukiyaki sauce.

leaves and tender stalks from 2 pounds bunch beets, chopped

2 ounces soba noodles

1 tablespoon Japanese soy sauce, plus more, as needed

1 tablespoon mirin

1 teaspoon rice vinegar

salt

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Put a pot of water on for the noodles, adding salt when it boils. Put the beet leaves and stalks in a sink filled with cold water. Remove, drain, and cook in just the water clinging to the leaves and stalks, no more, in a heavy-bottomed or nonstick frying pan with the lid on to get the steam rising. Meanwhile, cook the noodles in the boiling water, drain them, and toss with the soy sauce, mirin, and rice vinegar.

Then, when the beet greens are all but ready, sprinkle with salt and throw in the noodles, adding more soy sauce as needed. Stir around in the pan until the buff-colored noodles take on a deep, bronzy pink. Remove to a large plate and cover with the parsley.

Serves 1.

The following two recipes are both for beets, but because they’re for the beets you’ve got left from the recipe above, I make no apology for the purplish onslaught. I had never eaten beets raw until I came across Stephanie Alexander’s recipe in her
Cook’s Companion
for grated beets with lemon juice and chopped herbs, arranged around a central dollop of yogurt. I cannot tell you what a revelation it is. Something spooky can happen to beets when they’re cooked (and I don’t mean because of the vinegar that is often added): it’s as if the sweetness has a slightly putrid edge. Raw, the sugariness has a spiky sharpness about it that stops it from cloying, even in large quantities.

SHREDDED BEET SALAD WITH YOGURT

I have adapted the recipe a bit and also substituted fat-free yogurt. And as it’s what I make to go with roast poussin when a friend comes for a low-key, low-fat supper, I give quantities for two naturally big eaters.

Peel the beets wearing rubber gloves if you don’t want to come over all Lady Macbeth later. Try changing the herbs, too. With chopped dill and dry-toasted mustard seeds, the salad’s magnificent with salmon, for example.

good handful coriander

good handful mint

2 large or 4 small beets, about 1½ pounds, peeled and cut in small chunks

juice of 1 lemon

2/3 cup fat-free yogurt

Put the coriander and mint leaves in the processor, chop, and remove. Using the grating disc, grate the beets by pushing them through the feed tube until you have a wonderful pile of dark crimson shreds. Toss these in a bowl with the herbs and lemon juice and then arrange them in a ring around the edge of a plate. Fill the hole in the center with the yogurt.

Serves 2 with leftovers.

BEET SOUP

It seems odd not to be convinced about beets but to be passionate about this because, in a way, this thick, velvety soup is the sweet, smooth essence of beet. It’s difficult to say how many it will feed, as I make a big quantity and just keep a pitcher of it in the fridge for a few days.

2 large or 4 small beets, about 1½ pounds

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

buttermilk or yogurt (optional)

Put the beets in a large pot, cover with cold water, bring to boil, and boil for 2 hours or until tender. Maybe 1¼ hours if they’re small. Beets take much longer to cook than anyone ever tells you (rather like chickpeas).

Remove the cooked beets (retaining the cooking liquid) with a slotted spoon and gingerly pull off their skins before putting in a processor or blender together with the mustard and balsamic vinegar. Purée, adding the cooking liquid till the texture is as you like it. Keep some of the cooking liquid, as well, as the soup will thicken as it sits in the fridge and you will need to thin it out later. But if you want just to freeze individual portions, you can add water as necessary when you reheat. This soup is wonderful with a slash of buttermilk or yogurt added as you eat it.

RESTRAINED MUSHROOM RISOTTO

A low-fat risotto might sound suspect, but this one works because of its intense, mushroomy depth of flavor. This is the sort of thing I’d make when I have a girlfriend over to dinner, cooking it while we’re talking. I have specified garlic-infused oil and porcini stock made from cubes (see pages 457 and 459) just because this makes it easier for a scrabbled-together after-work supper; you can, however, use chicken, veal, or vegetable stock, as you wish. Boost whatever stock you use with dried porcini and their soaking liquid, as directed.

1/3 ounce dried porcini

1 teaspoon butter

2 teaspoons garlic-infused oil

1 small onion, minced

8 ounces mixed cultivated and wild mushrooms, chopped or sliced, as size and shape recommend

2/3 cup arborio rice

¼ white wine or vermouth

1¼ cups stock made from porcini stock cubes, or chicken, veal, or vegetable stock, heated

2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan

3 tablespoons chopped parsley

Soak the porcini in warm water to cover until soft, about 20 minutes; drain and chop them. Reserve the mushrooms and their soaking liquid.

In a small frying pan or medium saucepan, heat the butter and oil. Sauté the onion gently until soft but not brown. Add the mixed mushrooms and cook for a few minutes. Stir in the rice and cook for 2 minutes. Pour in the wine and let it bubble away until it’s absorbed. Combine the reserved porcini and its liquid with the stock and add a ladleful of the mixture to the rice. Cook, stirring, until the stock has been absorbed. Carry on adding ladlefuls and then stirring over a low to medium heat until all the stock has been absorbed and the rice is creamy and just cooked, tender but still firm to the bite. In other words, until it tastes like risotto, which should take 18–20 minutes. Stir in the Parmesan and parsley.

Serves 2.

LINGUINE WITH CRAB

This is one of the few non-Asian low-fat recipes that you could cook for a dinner party, although I always find pasta panic-inducing in large quantities. Crabmeat is so intensely flavored that fat is not required to add depth. The recipe might seem to be masquerading as an Italian dish, but that is not the intention; really the flavors are borrowed from Thai and Korean crab cakes, but they make a wonderful, resonant pasta sauce.

1 garlic clove, minced

½ fresh red chili pepper, sliced finely, with seeds

3–4 tablespoons chopped coriander,
to taste

grated zest of 1 lime, plus a squirt of the juice

2–3 scallions (white and green parts), sliced finely

2 teaspoons olive oil

½ cup white wine

salt

6 ounces linguine

4 ounces lump crabmeat

2–3 tablespoons chopped parsley

Put water on for the pasta. When it’s almost boiling, start on the sauce. Sweat the garlic, chili, half the coriander, half the lime zest, and the scallions in olive oil until softened.

Add the white wine and simmer for 5–10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until it reduces and thickens to an almost sludgy texture.

The pasta water should be boiling now, so add salt, put in the linguine, and cook according to package directions. Just before the pasta needs draining, stir the crabmeat with the remaining coriander and lime zest into the white wine mixture. Add the squirt of lime juice. Just before draining the pasta, lower a measuring cup into it and fill it up with the pasta cooking water. When the pasta’s drained, add it to the sauce or, if you prefer, put it into a warmed bowl and stir the sauce into it. Add some drops of cooking water if the sauce needs help to coat the strands of pasta. Bear in mind, though, that this strong-tasting sauce is meant to cover elegantly and sparsely; in this sense only, perhaps, it is an Italian sauce. Sprinkle with the parsley and eat quickly; the thinner the pasta, the faster it clumps as it waits.

Serves 2.

SALAD DRESSINGS

It’s one of the fallacies of trying to lose weight that the easiest thing to eat is a salad. There is no such thing as a decent low-fat salad dressing. I have tried everything. So I have come up with dressings that don’t exactly duplicate vinaigrette but will coat leaves without making you wince.

MISO-MUSTARD DRESSING

½ teaspoon miso

½ teaspoon grainy mustard

¼ teaspoon strong, clear honey

juice of ½ orange

Mix everything together well and dress the salad. What else is there to say, except that you could add a splash of buttermilk as well.

DIJON MUSTARD DRESSING

Having said that low-fat dressing mustn’t ape proper dressing, I can see that this one does. But somehow it pulls it off.

½ teaspoon Dijon mustard

½ teaspoon balsamic vinegar

juice of ½ orange

drops of soy sauce, to taste

Put the mustard in a bowl and slowly stir in the vinegar and orange juice. Taste and add soy as wanted.

THICK MISO DRESSING FOR BEANS

The dressings above are runny and good for the robuster leaf salads—radicchio, frisée, or something with bite. This, though, is rich and thick and wonderful stirred into warm or cold beans.

1 heaping tablespoon miso

1 scant teaspoon balsamic vinegar or rice vinegar

drop or two sesame oil

In a little bowl, stir together the miso, balsamic or rice vinegar, and a tiny drop or two of sesame oil, and mix to the consistency of a thick dressing by adding a couple of tablespoons of water.

ROAST GARLIC AND LEMON DRESSING

This dressing takes rather longer to make, but you are not required to exert yourself while the garlic’s in the oven, so it’s still not the biggest deal.

1 head garlic

1 teaspoon vermouth

juice of ½ lemon, plus more, if needed

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Lop the top off the garlic, just so you see the cloves in cross section. Cut out a square of foil big enough to wrap the garlic in. Place the garlic in the center of the foil and bring up the sides, so that when you add the vermouth it doesn’t all dribble out. When the vermouth’s in, close the parcel by twisting the edges of the foil together and bake for 45 minutes–1 hour. Remove, let cool a bit, then squeeze the garlic into a bowl. Add the lemon juice slowly to the roast garlic purée, stirring as you do. If the dressing is as sharp as you want it to be before it’s as runny (though this is meant to be a thick dressing) as you want it to be, beat in a little water. Otherwise, add more juice.

THE STATUTORY COOK-AND-FREEZE-AHEAD SECTION

Freezing some low-fat food will get you in the right frame of mind while setting the stage with the necessary props.

VEGETABLE CURRY IN VEGETABLE SAUCE