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This is what week 2 of my delicious diet looked like:

Recipes:

Cabbage with garlic, ginger, and coriander

Roast cauliflower with beluga lentils and tahini dressing

Middle Eastern Chopped Salad

Roast chicken – the best way I have found so far

Slaw of Cabbage, Mango, Red Pepper and Chilli

Roast Cauliflower*

Gremolata

Chicken, Mango, and Gremolata Salad

Grilled peppers with anchovy and capers

Carpaccio of fennel and orange

Spiced red cabbage slaw with lemon and pomegranate

*Yes, I know that's two roast  cauliflowers, but it's the stuff of life and what's two recipes if you might wither and die if you don't have it enough.  

Day 8

The thing I didn’t say yesterday, was whether I had lost any weight.

I have, but only a pound, whereas I would have expected to lose two.  I don’t know if this is because of overindulgence wine-and-cheese-wise on days 2 and 5 (likely), or because there is some subtle difference happening from when I used the recipes very successfully to lose weight under Weight Watchers (possible).  I have locked overindulgence in a sturdy cupboard, and will see what happens in the next few days.

For breakfast I ate olive-oil scrambled eggs (2 eggs, 1 teaspoon of oil) and a little salad of tomato (STILL no turnips), pepper, onion, kumquat, avocado, and fresh coriander, with a teaspoon of olive oil. The avocado doesn’t quite fit into the low-calorie-dense club, so I usually have a small amount.

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For lunch, out came the salmon again, along with the roast cauliflower with burnt aubergine and tomato salsa – which had lost none of its deliciousness.

For supper I had another go at the orange, caper, garlic, and anchovy idea – this time with a good slug of balsamic and not burning it (yes, it was an improvement) – and cooked a breast of chicken in it.  

I enjoyed it, and you might like to try it – put capers (perhaps a tablespoon), a couple of crushed cloves of garlic, a chopped anchovy, and some slices of orange (chopped into quarters) in a bowl and mix them up a bit; then heat a couple of teaspoons of oil in a pan and add the mixture; sauté for a few minutes; turn the heat up, add the chicken and brown on both sides, then slosh in some balsamic and cook till the chicken is cooked and it looks a bit black marmaladey – but I don’t think it quite merits a recipe. If you make it, let me know what you think.

The cabbage I ate with it is anther matter: I sometimes wonder why I eat anything else – and I am not alone: one eight-year-old of my acquaintance announced after her fourth helping that she was coming to live with me so she could eat it every day.  I don’t know who felt prouder, me or the cabbage. There is a story behind it, but I shall add that when I do a separate post. This is the recipe:

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Cabbage with garlic, ginger, and coriander

• 1 cabbage, finely sliced
• 2 cloves of chopped garlic
• Half an inch of fresh ginger, grated
• Half a teaspoon of coriander seeds, crushed
• 10g butter (2 teaspoons), or more if you prefer
• Salt and pepper
  

1. Sauté the garlic and spices in the butter in a saucepan.
2. Wash the cabbage and put in the saucepan with the sautéed spices. Add salt and pepper and cook with the lid on for about five minutes.
3. Take the lid off and boil rapidly until most of the liquid has gone

If you are vegan or want to avoid dairy, use olive oil.

Day 9

This morning the scales moved in the right direction: after a few days of not quaffing buckets of Mersault, I have now lost 2 lbs.

So it was the wine, not the recipes that affected the amount of weight I was losing, which is a great relief.  And also tragic.  

Although if I think about it, not as tragic as it first appears: despite having two White Burgundy episodes – and eating masses of delicious food, I still managed to lose one pound. Which if I kept up for a year would mean losing well over 3 ½ stone. I shall not throw my corkscrew away just yet.

And talking about the weight-loss aspect of this challenge, there was a piece in the Times by David Aaronovitch about his experience taking Ozempic – Semaglutide – the new dieting wonder drug.

Now, like practically every fat person on the planet, the idea of having a weekly shot in the arm that will magic away my surplus lard with no further effort on my part is not an unattractive proposition, so I fell upon his words with the enthusiasm of a ravening wolf.  And to start with it all sounded rather brilliant, what with him not have to try and exercise willpower because he never felt hungry and the weight just falling off.  But then he went on to say he went out to dinner and didn’t want to eat anything… and he made this sound like a good thing.

That would be like meeting the love of your life, leaping into bed, and deciding you’d rather read a book.  And if food is one of your chief sources of pleasure (yes), what would you do instead to feel happy three times a day?

And instead of feasting on delicious things, with the occasional bout of White Burgundy, he was achieving his weight-loss by semi-starvation.  And when he got specific about the amount of weight he’d lost, it turned out to be less per week than I achieved when I was under the influence and thinking my diet wasn’t working…

So back to my specifics, today I started as usual with a couple of eggs – on the last of the butter beans, but this time with the addition of a tomato, pepper, and onion salad, with a sprinkling of gremolata on top. It was even better than the last time.

The rest of the day I had my nose to the typeface, finishing a draft to send to my agent, so no time to cook.  I ate fruit all afternoon, and then leftovers for supper. They were good leftovers, involving salmon, cauliflower and lentils with lots of tahini dressing, but you don’t want to cook the mouldering contents of my fridge for your supper, so here is a recipe for a dish that is quite similar: Roast cauliflower with beluga lentils and tahini dressing

Recently, I met a friend at the market when I was piling cauliflowers into my basket.

What are you going to do with them, she said? Roast them, I replied.

How do you do that? she said.

I nearly called the emergency services.

How had she got through life with no roast cauliflower – I can barely manage a week without it.

And in case there are others suffering from this terrible deprivation, this is how you roast a cauliflower. I will not waste time with an ingredient list (cauliflower, olive oil, salt and pepper) anymore than an ambulance stops at red lights.

Roast Cauliflower

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Serves 4 – 6

1. Preheat oven to 200º / fan 180º / gas mark 6
2. Take a cauliflower, cut it in half, and break or cut it into smallish florets.
3. Put it into a big bowl and add a good few grindings of salt and pepper; drizzle over 4 teaspoons of olive oil.  
4. Mix well with your hands to make sure that the cauliflower is well coated with the oil and salt and pepper.
5. Lay florets on a baking tray and roast for about 40 minutes – turning them over half way – until cauliflower is tender and golden.  

Roast cauliflower with beluga lentils and tahini dressing

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• 200g  Beluga lentils
• 1 roast cauliflower
• A pinch of black peppercorns
• A teaspoon each of cardamom and coriander seeds
• 1 roast cauliflower
• 2 – 3 teaspoons olive oil
• Salt and pepper

For the dressing

• 1 tablespoon tahini
• 1 tablespoon yogurt
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• 3 teaspoons olive oil
• Water – about 50 – 80ml
• Salt and pepper

To serve

• Parsley – optional
• Pomegranate seeds – optional

1. Cook the lentils in plenty of water with the whole spices until they are just done – about 20 minutes; add salt at the end.  
2. Drain well, and put in a bowl to add the olive oil and more salt if necessary.
3. Whisk together the tahini, yogurt, and balsamic vinegar until smooth; add water until it is the consistency of single cream; season with salt and pepper.
4. Transfer the lentils to a shallow dish or platter.
5. Arrange the roast cauliflower on top, and drizzle the tahini dressing over it.
6. Sprinkle over a handful of pomegranate seeds and some chopped parsley if you feel like it.
7. Serve hot, warm, or room temperature.

Serve with a green salad and perhaps some roast red peppers. .

Diva Notes

Lentils

It is very important that the lentils are small – If you can't find Beluga, use Le Puy, Castelluccio, or any other small ones you can find.

I always cook lentils with whole spices – they provide little taste bombs when you bite into them, which is very delightful.

Yogurt

The dressing is nicest if you use rich, creamy Greek yogurt.   This is not the ultra-downsizing choice – that would be fat-free yogurt.  But that is currently being tried at The Hague for crimes against taste buds. A compromise would be full-fat, but not full-fat Greek.

Roasting Cauliflowers

Cauliflowers shrink when you cook them; what looks a lot on the chopping board can look a bit paltry on the serving dish, so cook more than you think you need.

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Day 10

Yesterday, I was very pleased to read that the lovely Anna Jones (One Pot, Pan, Planet) uses lemons almost as often as salt and pepper. I do the same, although I use the zest or peel more than the juice, so my fridge is always full of bald lemons – and it’s a complete waste to throw them away.  Until they are mouldy, and then I throw them away.

I feel much the same about pomegranate seeds. I give myself stern talkings to about not putting them in absolutely every thing, and then take no notice, because they bring such fresh bursts of sweetness and flavour, and do their absolute best to make us feel better about not being able to eat cake four times a day.

The day began with eggs (scrambled) – yes, I do know there are other things you can eat for breakfast instead … but why? – and a tomatoey salad with avocado in it; also pepper and kumquat, and a very small amount of onion.

I probably should admit that mostly for breakfast I just have chopped up tomatoes with a bit of salt and pepper.  And all the breakfast salads I have talked about come out of my love for the Middle Eastern chopped salads – Israeli, Arabieh, Shirazi, which are eaten daily, at all meals including breakfast.   This is my version.  Still no turnip, but Theresa Coffey’s working on it.

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Middle Eastern Chopped Salad

Serves 4 – 6

• 4 handfuls of cherry tomatoes  
• 2 small cucumbers
• A red or yellow pepper  
• Half a red onion
• Pomegranate seeds  
• 1 fresh chilli (optional),  
• Parsley, mint, or basil  
• Half a lemon.  
• Olive oil
• Salt

1. Finely dice all the vegetables, including the lemon.
2. Finely chop the herbs, if using.
3. Put it all in a bowl. Add salt, pepper and olive oil, and mix really well.

Diva Notes

You can make it in a food processor using the pulse button. It is slightly more like a salsa, but it is MUCH quicker and very good.

Lemon  

You can zest the lemon with a microplane grater and juice the lemon, but I rather like the slightly rougher texture you get if you dice the whole thing, and it somehow makes the lemon juice less overpoweringly acidic.

I got some lovely scallops at Borough Market and for supper, I seared them on both sides and put them in a delicious salad with some crispy smoked streaky bacon. I say, delicious salad, but nearly delicious would be nearer the mark, because I added some slices of tarocco orange, which didn’t work – the zest was too bitter with the scallops, and the orange a bit louche and acidic.  So although there is orange in the picture, make the salad with raspberries or mango, both of which work well. And don’t chop up the crispy bacon too small – you want the pieces large enough to find and spear with your fork to eat with a bit of scallop. I made enough for two, but then ate most of it myself.

Apart from the villainous oranges, I shaved some fennel and red pepper into green salad leaves, added some pomegranate seeds, salt and pepper, and then balsamic and a couple of teaspoons of olive oil; the scallops and bacon were added at the end.

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I ate it with some beluga lentils (my favourite), to which I added chilli, garlic, pomegranate seeds and a bit of chopped parsley, and tahini dressing.  

For the dressing, I mixed one tablespoon of tahini with one of balsamic and two teaspoons of olive oil, a bit of water to thin it, and plenty of salt and pepper.

Day 11

I have now established that I can easily live on low-calorie-dense food and lose weight without counting calories, but I don’t have time to do a recipe every time.

But I always have time to make things taste good and make them using the downsizing  principles that underpin all the recipes:

• Take lots of fruit, veg, or pulses – or any combination of the three.  
• Use not more than 1 – 2 teaspoons of oil or butter per person.
• Ditto honey or sugar.
• Make them taste delicious using any herbs, spices, balsamic, soy sauce etc.  … and PLENTY of salt.

Olivia Potts (barrister-turned-food-writer and author of A Half Baked Idea) was on Radio 4 this morning, and she was asked if there was anything in cooking that people find hard to get their head around.

‘Yes, salt. People don’t understand how much salt they need to make their food taste as good as it can’.

Yes, I yelled, with an enthusiasm that put my windows in peril. My windows are in a parlous state (frames on the edge of disintegration; thin, elderly glass), but they don’t usually look quite so alarmed.

But I had reason: not salting your cooking properly is like leaving out bits of a chord, but the number of people who say that they use very little salt – or even none – and say it as if this is something to be pleased about is, a national calamity.

And if you are waving government health warnings at me, put them down a minute.  

Firstly, salt is important for muscles, nerves, and fluid balance.  And apart from the many diets around the world which are considered healthy but  also contain lots of salt  – like the Mediterranean (imagine an Italian not putting salt in the pasta water), Tim Spector (Zoe app,) has looked into the matter for his book, Spoon Fed.  Apparently, reducing salt brings no reduction in strokes, heart attacks and death, but low salt diets lead to higher death rate among diabetics.

Although, whether this was from lack of salt, or the misery of having to exist on tasteless food, we will never know.  And in the interests of humanity, I hope they don’t repeat the experiment.  

Data from another large-scale (95,000) long-term (20-year) trial found that very high salt intake resulted in an increased risk, but not for intakes below 12.7g.  

This is what 12g of salt looks like:

And – this is where it gets really good – people who ate below 11g a day were at greater risk.

This is what 11g looks like:

The half-full salt cellar at the top contains 12g of salt.

So, for your life to be delicious and healthy, salt your food properly.

And talking of properly salted food, yesterday I started with egg, bacon and tomato, I ate leftover lentils and salad for lunch, and for supper I had a large kale salad with a small baked potato and some pan-fried monkfish cheeks. I never have great success with kale, but I am never sure whether it’s me or the kale. I don't mean it was bad, but it didn’t make me groan with delight.

I took a big handful of kale, stripped it off its stalk and chopped it up a bit. Then I sliced some fennel, carrot, and pepper with a mandolin, added kumquat and lemon kumquat (sliced with a knife) a few shavings of red onion, and a good sprinkling of pomegranate seeds. I added a pinch of salt and some tahini dressing, and mixed it all well with my hands.    

Day 12

I decided to do a roast chicken for Sunday lunch: I do it as often as possible – I would happily eat it every day*. It doesn’t qualify as LCD unless you only eat the breast and remove the skin, in which case there is no point in eating roast chicken.  

I started with one of my stalwarts, gin-cured salmon – another thing I could happily live on*, and served it with a carpaccio of fennel and orange – the fennel sliced very thin with a mandolin, the orange de-pithed and sliced as thin as possible with a knife; then a good grinding of salt, and a drizzle of olive oil.  

It was very fine, but would have been even better with something peppery – a little rocket or watercress.

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The succulent, crispy-skinned chicken needs mitigating  with lots of very LCD veg, so I made a big slaw of cabbage*, mango, red pepper and chilli, which is about as LCD as it gets –  all the juices mix themselves together and form a delicious dressing without the addition of olive oil – or any effort on my part – and it goes extremely well with the chicken.  I roasted some cauliflower* with a little cumin – there’s always a place on my table for roast cauliflower – and chargrilled some red peppers, which I served with capers and thin strips of anchovy.  I also boiled some potatoes and crushed them with plenty of salt and pepper and a good dollop of gremolata. They weren’t really needed but it feels a bit mean not to offer them.

*Things I could eat every day are a bit like my one luxury: there's an awful lot of them

I warned in advance that there would be no pudding – always a good idea: we are genetically programmed to want pudding (more of that another time), so it prepares people for the terrible disappointment and avoids tears.  

Roast chicken

There are many ways to roast a chicken, and this is currently my favourite. Doing it upside down for the first 35 minuteskeeps the breast very moist, and it self-bastes, so needs no extra butter or oil.

Serves 4

• 1.5 kg Chicken
• Half an unwaxed lemon
• A sprig of rosemary and thyme
• Salt and pepper

1. Preheat the oven to  200º / 180º / gas mark 6
2. Season the chicken all over with salt and pepper.
3. Put the lemon, rosemary, and thyme inside the chicken.
4. Put the chicken upside down in a roasting tin and roast for 20 minutes.
5. Turn the oven down to 180º / 160º / gas mark 4 for 15 minutes
6. Turn chicken right side up and roast for another 15 minutes.
7. Turn the heat back up to 200º / fan 180º / gas mark 6 for 15 – 20 minutes to crisp up the skin.
8. Check the juices run clear, and let it rest in a warm place, covered in foil.  

Diva Notes

Downsizing Realities

However much I might object to this tragic reality, if you want to increase downsizingability, eating the breast rather than all of the skin is a better option.

Slaw of Cabbage, Mango, Red Pepper and Chilli

Serves 4

• 1 green cabbage – preferably pointy  
• 1 red pepper
• 2 spring onions
• 1 mango
• Zest and juice of a lime
• 1 teaspoon honey
• A handful of chopped mint
• 1 green or red chilli  
• Salt

1. Thinly slice the cabbage, pepper, spring onions, and chilli.
2. Dice the mango
3. Chop the mint.
4. Put everything except the chilli and mint in a bowl.
5. Add the lime zest and juice, honey, and salt.
6. Mix everything together with your hands. Play with the seasoning until it tastes good.
7. Add the chilli and mint, and mix with a spoon.

You can make it in the food processor to turn it into a five-minute affair.

Roast Cauliflower

This is so easy and so delicious, I eat it all the time.

Serves 2 – 4

Preheat oven to 200º / fan 180º gas mark 6

Cut a cauliflower in half.

Cut and break it into not-too-big florets.

Put it in a bowl and sprinkle salt and drizzle 3 teaspoons olive oil over it. You can add spices if you like – cumin or coriander work very well – but it’s very good on its own.

Roast for about 30 – 40 minutes, turning over halfway through.

Gremolata – for the boiled potatoes

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• A handful of parsley
• The peel of one lemon  
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 – 2 teaspoons olive oil  
• Salt
  

1. Peel the lemon with a potato peeler.
2. Crush a clove of garlic  and wash the parsley.
3. Put the strips of lemon peel and crushed garlic on top of the parsley, and finely chop.
4. Add the salt and olive oil, and mix well.

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Day 13

Yesterday I was away from home so had to take food with me. I am not an organised person, and Mondays do not help. After a hurried breakfast – scrambled eggs, cured salmon and chargrilled peppers leftover from yesterday’s lunch; I cannot recommend chargrilled peppers with scrambled egg too highly – I flung the remains of the chilli and mango slaw from yesterday into a Tupperware and wrapped some slices of salmon in foil. It was not going to be a substantial lunch.  

Then I abseiled out of my window to insert myself into the traffic jams of London in a timely enough fashion to allow me to arrive at my destination in time to have coffee.

I arrived in good time – I feel I should write that in extra-large shouty capitals; it is not something that happens often and people might forget to clap – but there was no coffee.    Virtue was not its own reward. I needed coffee.  

Lunch was indeed not up to the rigours of the afternoon –   I went for a ride with my daughter – her on a horse and me on my feet; I had to trot to keep up.

N.b. Trotting is best done on a horse, or long, slender legs.

I got back to London in need of supper, and made this very quick, very delicious salad out of leftover roast chicken and the remains of the gremolata – with all the optional extras – and ate it with a great quantity of pointy cabbage with salt and olive oil.

Chicken, Mango, and Gremolata Salad

This a very simple salad, which is perfect for throwing together and putting in a container for an al desko lunch, but it is also good enough to take to Glyndebourne.

Bearing in mind that every extra ingredient adds extra time, and doesn’t necessarily taste better, only the first three ingredients are strictly necessary; add the rest if you have time, inclination, and can lay your hands on the ingredients without a nervous breakdown.  It would serve two, but I would almost certainly want to eat the lot myself – especially bearing in mind the mantra, eat loads or you will find yourself tucking into a doughnut. You can cook the chicken from scratch or use leftover roast chicken from Sunday lunch – and I don’t always just stick to the breast – I often strip the carcass.  It edges it beyond LCD, but it tastes better and avoids waste.

Serves 2

• 1 cooked chicken breast, cut into smallish cubes
• 1 mango cubed
• A tablespoon of gremolata (parsley, lemon zest, garlic, olive oil, salt)
• A couple of teaspoons of olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Optional extras:

• Salad or spring onion, finely sliced
• Chilli, finely sliced
• 6 mild black olives, roughly chopped

Mix it all together in a bowl and serve with a large green salad and a few lentils.

I didn’t have time to post the recipe for the chargrilled peppers with capers and anchovy. They hardly need one, but here it is.  I was introduced to the idea by a lovely Italian man called Leonardo Bedini, who by night ran a nightclub near Porto Santo Stefano, and by day rustled up very simple but exquisitely delicious meals for the twelve or so people staying in the house. No, me neither.  But it’s probably why he was the master of the simple and the quick.

Grilled peppers with anchovy and capers

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Serves 4 – 6

• 4 red peppers
• A teaspoon or two of capers
• 1 anchovy fillet
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• Salt

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1. Deseed the peppers and cut into 6 strips.  
2. Put in a bowl, add a pinch of salt and the olive oil, and mix well so that the peppers are completely coated in oil, and are well seasoned with the salt.
3. Put under the grill, skin-side up, and grill till the skins are blackened and the peppers cooked through. You can also cook them on a griddle pan. Allow to cool.
4. Cut the anchovy into very thin strips.
5. Remove the skin from the peppers and put the pepper fillets on a plate.
6. Drape the strips of anchovy over the peppers and dot over a few capers.

 And the carpaccio of fennel and orange is in even less need of a recipe, but jealousy amongst salads is well-known and you don't want your salads to turn nasty, especially if there's a mandolin involved.  

Carpaccio of fennel and orange

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Serves 2 – 4

• 1 large fennel
• 1 orange
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• Salt

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1. Very thinly slice a bulb of fenel – preferably with a mandolin.
2. Put it in a bowl, add salt and a teaspoon of olive oil, and mix well with your hands
3. Take the skin and pith off the orange – peel it with a knife as if you are peeling an apple.
4. Slice the orange as thin as possible with a knife.
5. Put the fennel on a plate and lay the orange on top.
6. Grind some salt and pepper over it and drizzle with olive oil.

Day 14

The day started with scrambled eggs, cured salmon, and chargrilled peppers. It’s a completely addictive combination: the charred, sweet, slightly bitter peppers mixed with the sweet saltiness of the anchovy and surprise of the capers are just fabulous with the eggs and salmon.    And it’s just as good for lunch, brunch or supper, so there is no need to be a breakfast-a-holic like me. I have to admit that I don’t always eat my breakfast at breakfast time, but if I don’t eat it at some point, I feel that I have lost a bit of my life that I will never get back.

Lunch was ridiculously al desko, wolfing down a leg of chicken from Sunday’s feast with a spicy red cabbage slaw with lemon, chilli and pomegranate. I was intending to make a slaw with beetroot and preserved lemons, until i realised I had no beetroot and the lemons looked as if they had been preserved a very long time ago.    

N.b eating a chicken leg with your fingers and typing is not recommended: my laptop is threatening me with the European Court of Human Rights.

Supper was out  – with my book club – which involved taking things, and that meant organisation and leak-free containers, both of which are in remarkably short supply in my house. Luckily I had made the cabbage salad and a carpaccio of fennel and orange already (I like to test my leaky containers to the limit),  and I took extra not-to-share chicken in case all the other food was both irresistible and ruinous for my downsizing: I find it much easier to resist temptation if I have plenty to eat.

I need not have worried: one of my friends had made my own recipe for roast aubergine with lemon, yogurt, and pomegranate, and it was delicious. It is always very delightful when people make my recipes and they taste wonderful ...

There was also a bean chilli, which is admirably LCD, and brownies for pudding – so I was able to demonstrate my iron will and staggering self-discipline by refusing. It's not an opportunity that comes my way very often, so I like to make the most of it. Although, for some reason they forgot to clap.

Spiced red cabbage slaw with lemon and pomegranate

I love red cabbage slaws and I particularly like the hints of cumin and coriander in this one – and the way the lime juice, honey, and chilli combine.

I like the cabbage shredded finely – with a mandolin or food-processor – but it’s also very good cut by hand and more chunky.

Serves 4

• Half a red cabbage
• 2 carrots
• ¼ red onion  
• ½ lemon or 2 lemon kumquats
• Pomegranate seeds
• Zest and juice of a lime
• 2 teaspoons of toasted sesame oil
• A pinch of crushed cumin and coriander seeds
• 1 chilli, finely sliced
• 2 teaspoons honey
• Salt and pepper

1. Finely slice the cabbage and red onion.
2. Peel and grate the carrots.
3. Deseed half a pomegranate.
4. Chop up the lemon or kumquats.
5. Crush the spices.
6. Put it all in a big bowl (plenty of room for mixing).
7. Add the honey, sesame oil, lime zest and juice, and plenty of salt and pepper, and mix really well with your hands.
8. Finely slice the chilli, and mix in with a spoon.
9. Adjust the seasoning until it tastes very good.

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