Weekly Blog #2

After the success of last week, I went into this week with the knowledge that I have a mere 4 1/2 stones to lose to get to my goal weight.  EASY.  This week has been rather easier as I haven't had much in the way of social plans - no meals out and having a friend over for lunch on Saturday meant that I could feed her food that worked for me (Jamie's butternut squash, prosciutto and pecorino salad again...except I forgot that pregnant people can't eat prosciutto.  Whoops.)

 

This is what I've been eating this week:

 

A noodle soup made from the delicious stock from last week's roast chicken.  I managed to get the stock tasting like BoneDaddies' tonkotsu stock (a feat in itself, given that it comes from an entirely different animal) and promptly ruined it by adding WAY too much chilli.  I love chilli, but I managed to blow my head off .

 

The noodle soup was pretty low in points and I needed to save as many as possible to test drive my new crepe maker which I bought for my Pancake Day party next Tuesday.  Pancakes, it transpires, are not too bad on the old diet, so long as you don't use a lot of oil.  Happiness. 

 

 

I found some orzo in a jar on my shelves - I'd totally forgotten that I'd bought it.  I had it cold for lunch with some sugar snap peas, leftover chicken and a sauce made from a little bit of pesto and some light philadelphia - scuzzy as hell, but I like it.  In fact, I like it so much I had it 3 times this week, the other two times the sugar snaps were replaced by mushrooms which was actually far nicer.  Perfect stodgy comfort food.

 

 

Dim sum at home - I got these from Ocado.  Not nearly as good as the real thing, I grant you, but pretty tasty nonetheless and insanely low in points.  All these dumplings came to 9 points.

Thursday night was the low point of my week.  I'd taken a steak out of the freezer in the morning which was still rock-solid when I got home.  I was in a bit of a crappy mood anyway (it's been a bad week for me, mood-wise) and my instinct was to throw in the towel and get a takeaway until I remembered that I had to spend a minimum of £10 to get them to deliver.  There was just no way that I could order a relatively healthy takeaway for £10, I'd have had to order extra food that I didn't need...so I gave myself a good talking to and made boiled eggs.  They patently were not steak.  However, it meant that I got to have the steak the following night after my first crochet lesson.  I didn't get home until 9.30, hence the slightly strange but quick accompaniment of orzo with chilli, garlic and olive oil.  It was DELICIOUS.

Another roast on Sunday and a new discovery - white pepper!  It's DISGUSTING.  I discovered that it both smells and tastes of farmyards after I'd liberally applied it to my mashed potato (I'd run out of black peppercorns) which rendered it fairly inedible, so I saved a good few points there. 

My final meal of the week was a far tastier noodle soup than the one that had started the week.  I didn't add any chilli or coriander and I chucked a couple of eggs in instead which were the best bits.

My real breakthrough this week was coming to the realisation that the stress and anxiety of thinking about what the hell I could buy to eat if I didn't take my own lunch into work actually outweighs the hassle factor of making lunch the night before.  It's entirely possible to make lunch in 10 minutes flat, including cooking noodles or pasta (so long as you choose the right shape e.g. orzo or soup pasta or giant couscous), chopping vegetables up into tiny, crunchy and appealing pieces AND making a sauce of sorts. It's true.  I did it in 8 minutes on Thursday night and that included washing up as I went along.  Step over Nigella, I am the true domestic goddess.

Anyway, I lost just shy of 3lbs this week which means I've lost a grand total of 11.2lbs in 5 weeks.  I'm pretty pleased with that.  I just wish my clothes would start feeling a bit looser and my face would get a bit thinner.  HURRY UP.

 

 

 

 

Weekly Blog #1

I decided, in the depths of my misery last week (I'd put on 3lbs), that if I am to have any chance of losing weight, I need to be accountable to someone or something.  Yes, I know that I should be doing this for myself - and I am - but it turns out that I'm very good at cheating on myself.  I've become very good at turning a blind eye to my bad behaviour and it just leads to greater destruction.  I need to 'fess up when I've done something bad so that I register the fact that I am ultimately the only one that can make me better.

 

Going forward, I'll be doing a round-up every Tuesday, my weigh in day, of the preceding week - a summary of the things that I ate, what I did well and should be repeated and what I didn't do so well at. 

 

Week 1 (29 January to 4 February)

 

This week I have eaten bibimbap (twice!  Once with champagne with @ShedLikesFood who kindly brought with her some fabulous Ginger Pig fillet steak, and again the following day, just because it was so damn tasty.)  At 17 points it's not the lowest point thing that I could eat but it's BIG (which always makes me happy), spicy, tasty, sizzlingly hot, filling and takes ages to eat.  Brilliant stuff.

Next up was Jamie Oliver's butternut squash, prosciutto and pecorino salad which I make with significantly less fat and cheese than he does.  This salad is a freaking lifesaver.  I'd wanted to go under my points on a number of days this week following the 3lb increase last week and because I was going out for dinner for Shed's birthday on Friday...this is certainly one way to do it.  The entire salad, which includes a whole packet of prosciutto and a large butternut squash, only counts as 11 points, and 4 of those are from olive oil.  Butternut squash is FREE.  Nil points.  I reiterate: LIFESAVER.

While I was roasting my squash, I made a peanut noodle salad (recipe below) for Friday's lunch.  I was pretty excited about it and pretty sad the following day when I left it at home by mistake.  So sad that I stropped out completely and just didn't bother eating at all.  I had it for lunch on Saturday instead and it was still really good, although I strongly recommend taking it out of the fridge a good couple of hours before you want to eat it to bring it up to room temperature.  Freezing cold noodles aren't especially lovely.

 

 

I ate dim sum, duck and salt & pepper squid for Shed's birthday.  Although a bit naughty, I had so many points left after not eating lunch that I think it was OK.  I also managed not to drink very much either which is both unusual and welcome.

I keep forgetting how great fish is on Weight Watchers because it's so low in points.  I've really gone off fish over the last year or so and there are now several fishes that I find actively unpleasant: cooked salmon and trout, plaice, mussels and I'm starting to dislike oysters too.   I do still like cod loin though so I made this cod parcel which is ridiculously quick and easy to make and has the added benefit of generating virtually no washing up.  This photo is of it in its raw state as the cooked version was a mess.

Sunday I roasted a chicken, mainly because I need the leftovers for lunchy salady things.  It nearly killed me, but I managed to remove the skin and throw it in the bin without eating it. 

The bones were used to make an incredible chicken stock which would have been made into Monday night's ramen-esque chicken noodle soup, but I went out for dinner with a friend instead (Silk Road in Camberwell - phenomenal) so I'm having them tonight.

And that was last week.  Not too bad - a couple of lows, namely Friday night's meal out and Saturday evening when I was SO HUNGRY (fish isn't filling) that I ate 3 bowls of crunchy nut cornflakes (I wanted to eat quavers and crumpets with nutella - CN cornflakes were my compromise as they're not actually very high in points) but generally, I think it was a decent week.  I was a bit worried that eating out on Monday night would affect my weigh in, but I've managed to lose 2 pounds this week, so I'm happy. 

 

Peanut butter noodle salad (serves 1)

 

Ingredients:

 

1 nest of medium egg noodles, cooked and rinsed in cold water

1 small carrot, peeled and cut into small, thin batons

About 5cm hunk of cucumber, cut into small thin batons

4 radishes, chopped into 8ths
6 sugar snap peas, sliced

75-100g protein - I used some fillet steak that was leftover from the bibimbap

Some sliced red chilli

Handful of chopped coriander

Sesame seeds to serve

 

For the sauce:

 

15g of peanut butter

2 teaspoons of dark soy sauce

Dash of sesame oil

Juice of 1/2 of a lime

 

Combine the sauce ingredients, adding a bit of water if it seems too thick.  Combine with the dry ingredients and smugly chuck it into a tupperware box, sprinkling over a few sesame seeds.

 

 

 

Granola and an epiphany

So it’s 2013 and it’s safe to say that the year didn’t start with a big bang. I spent New Year’s Eve alone watching truly atrocious telly and eating a thoroughly screwed up “celebration” meal that made me feel pretty sick.

The following week fared rather better. I was actively glad to be back at work, if only because it meant that I wasn’t in the MouseHouse™ for extended periods of time. I even filled up the entire weekend (friends will know that this is Very Unusual as Fran Doesn’t Do Sundays) with a trip to Medlar on Saturday and dim sum at Dragon Castle on Sunday.

And on Monday? That’s right folks, I re-started Weight Watchers.

Now, I lost 3 stone in 4 months on Weight Watchers several years ago, so I know that I can actually do this diet if I set my mind to it. The problem being that I haven’t managed to set my mind to it even once in the last 4 years. And therein lies the rub…I have to confess that even whilst sticking to the diet to the letter last week, if I was really honest about it, I fully expected to fail again, just as I’ve failed on everything else I’ve tried over the last few years. Looking a year ahead into the future, I still saw myself as an unhappy plus-size porker.

And then I had my epiphany. I’m trying not to go out much at the moment – my finances can’t take it and it’s far easier to eat sensibly if I’m at home in the evening – so I was sitting on my sofa, bored out of my tiny mind and trying to distract myself from thinking every little sound was another mouse and I decided to explore the Weight Watchers app.

The main function of the app is to track what I eat every day but one of the other features is called “Success Stories” and shows a number of people wearing godawful clothes who have lost substantial amounts of weight. Person 1: lost 3st 2lbs. PFFT – easy*. Person 2: lost 2st. WHATEVER. Hang on…Person 3: lost 5st 5lbs which is not dissimilar to what I hope to lose and they did it in 10 months. 10 months…that’s half a stone a month…just over 1.5lbs a week. That’s good, steady weight loss.

I suddenly realised that If I lost half a stone a month, which is totally achievable (and is the rate of loss that my doctor wants me to aim for), I could theoretically be thin by the end of 2013. Like the big girl's blouse that I am, I burst into tears in a good way. For the first time in years, I have realised that I can actually do this if I am determined. By the end of this year, I can (will!) be in nice clothes that come from normal shops. I won’t feel disgusting and fret that my sizeable arse is going to knock things off tables as I squeeze past.

And so to my latest discovery that is helping me reduce that sizeable arse: granola! I have always liked the idea of granola but there is one fundamental problem with it: dried fruit. So I’ve made my own, adapted from the recipe my sister wrote in her last Weight Watchers cookbook. And by adapted, I mean that I read 3 teaspoons of honey as 3 tablespoons…whoops. I've ditched the dried fruit to even it out. It's all good.

Granola (approx. 9 servings at 4 points per serving)




Ingredients:

300g porridge oats
25g sunflower seeds
25g pumpkin seeds
25g flaked almonds
3 tablespoons clear honey (or 2 tbsp maple syrup and 1 tbsp of golden syrup is delicious)

Heat the honey/syrup in a small saucepan until it is very thin and runny.

Mix all the dry ingredients together and pour in the honey/syrup in a slow trickle, mixing all the time so that all the oats are coated and the mixture clumps together a bit. It won’t really clump a lot as this is still quite a small amount of honey for a lot of oats, but go with it.

Line a baking tray with some of that non-stick baking parchment stuff and spread the mixture onto it evenly.



Pop the tray into the oven which has been preheated to 170c (fan) and cook for 6 minutes.

After 6 minutes, the oats on top and at the edges will have gone brown so mix it all up and cook for another 6 minutes when it should be done.




Let it cool and it will then be nice and crunchy and a little bit sweet.

Serve 40g of the granola with 75g of low or zero fat greek yoghurt (1 point) and some fruit – blueberries or bananas are good.




I’ve eaten this every day and I’m not getting tired of it at all and it keeps me full for hours. I never normally eat breakfast but I find myself looking forward to this. Even better is that it's dirt cheap to make and stays crunchy for at least 10 days in a Tupperware container.

*I know it's not easy. Shhhhh.

2012

What has 2012 given me?  It’s been a bit of a mixed bag of a year. 

In January I joined weight watchers.  That was extremely short-lived albeit successful during that brief period.  January also gave me food poisoning and a fear of oysters which lasted for most of the rest of the year.

In February I waved goodbye to my sister and her children who moved to Australia, permanently.  A low point for me, a huge adventure and a potential for amazing lives for them.  February also found me getting very drunk in Quo Vadis with my friend Andrew and spotting Gary Barlow.  He’s very handsome...and very short.  I also visited friends in Broadstairs and wished momentarily that I could leave London for a better kind of life.

March saw me drunkenly kiss a friend’s flatmate.  That was a mistake.

April saw me head off to Australia for three weeks – good and bad times there but I was happy to find that I could understand why my sister needs to live in Melbourne even if she is so far away from the rest of us.  I also got to see Little Penguins parade out of the sea, over the beach and up to their sand-dune beds.  Pretty magical.  I was also able to visit my oldest friend and my godson who I haven’t seen for years and meet her (at that point) latest addition to her family.  I haven’t been lucky enough to meet her actual latest addition who was born a couple of months later.

In May, I did a lot of socialising.  I discovered Little Lamb on Shaftesbury Avenue for hot pot.  Go.  I worried about my finances.  I probably did that in every other month too.

June was a bad month.  It saw the worst depressive dip I have ever experienced.  I hunkered down, cancelled all my plans and did everything I could to keep my head above water and I got through it.  I was, however, lucky enough to meet two brand new babies for the first time in June, so even this terrible month had its moments.

I hate July.  It’s my birthday month.  I’ve never understood why people like their birthdays – I never have, even as a child.  At my age, all a birthday does is make me older and less likely to meet someone and have children before it’s too late.  I hate July.  Despite that, I went to Burgundy with my friend Andrew and it was great.  We saw the Tour de France fly past us in approximately 10 seconds, ate some terrible food (what is it with the French and their obsession with tinned vegetables?) and drank some pretty rough wine, but it was fun. 

August saw me crash a moped and injure myself and vow never to get on a bike ever again.

In September I went and drank alone in a crowded pub for the first time and found that I didn’t care what people thought of me.  In September I also realised that a particular friendship in my life was unhealthy and causing me unhappiness and huge amounts of stress.  I needed to limit it and I have. 

In October my mum visited twice.  My mum visiting is one of my most favourite things.  We did culture (Hedda Gabler at the Old Vic, Uncle Vanya, the bronzes at the Royal Academy) and did good food (Alyn Williams at the Westbury, Jose, Inside in Greenwich, dim sum).  In fact it was a good month for food as I also went to Duck & Waffle and Zoilo.  It was a fat month.

November saw me start Dukan in my desperation over how fat I had become.  I stuck it out for a mere three weeks...three horrible weeks.  I felt stressed, depressed and didn’t like myself very much. 

In December I gave up Dukan and accepted that I am going to see out 2012 significantly fatter than I saw it in.  I ceased caring about dieting for the rest of this year and ate and ate.  My parents left for a long visit to Australia and I had my first ever Christmas without my family around me.  The year has ended on a spectacular low where I feel unhappy and ill-at-ease in my previously much-loved flat since Ralphie brought a mouse into the sitting room and promptly lost it, but where I am at such a low ebb that I don’t want to see people at all.  I also discovered that some friends go above and beyond the call of duty and will literally pick you up when you are on your knees.  Those ones are definitely keepers. 

Overall, it hasn’t been the best year.  I’m not sure whether it’s been the worst either, but I don’t remember there being a lot of happiness in 2012.  Looking back at it, I feel empty.

And now we’re on the corner of 2013.  Ordinarily, I feel quite positive at New Year, feeling that the next year HAS to be better than the preceding year.  This year, I’m limiting my expectations.  I’m just going to hope that it isn't worse.  My resolutions:

• Deal with the mouse phobia (I’m already On This and have some NLP lined up)
• Be less self-destructive (I don’t have high hopes, but we can try...)
• Lose enough weight to not have another Fat Summer
• Stay at home more and learn to live alone contentedly
• Take lunch to work at least twice a week
• Look into evening courses – pottery? Wine?
• De-clutter the flat (fewer hiding places for mice)
• Paint stuff – doors, walls, windows
• Once ready (i.e. thinner!) consider trying internet dating again 
• Learn to meditate/relax (been on my list for years – I never manage this) 
• Spend less.  New buying mantra: do I need it? Can I live without it?

And those, folks, are my aims for 2013.  No “get happy”.  Nobody is happy 100% of the time.  No “lose 5 stone” – the huge figure is too overwhelming.  Just little changes, many of which I know already I won’t make.  I haven’t painted those doors for 6 ½ years – it’s not likely to happen in 2013.  But we can hope, right?

Mad, sad or bad?

I've thought hard about whether I should publish this blog post. The answer? Probably not, but fuck it.

I should start by saying that I know I don't have the worst life. Not by a long shot. Terrible things happen to good people: children die, people get ill, legs get blown off, people lose all their money and sink into a rotten mess.

None of this has happened to me. I'm incredibly fortunate - many would consider me lucky. I own my own flat. I have a secure (I think!) job in a terrible job market. I have the most wonderful family. My friends are astonishing - I regularly wonder how the hell I've managed to meet them and keep them and have them care for me in the way that they do which, in the main, seems fairly unconditional...which is more than I expect from anyone and I fear is more than I can give. So yes, in many ways I'm lucky.

Yet on the flip side I suffer, and I mean SUFFER, from this horrible thing called depression. What the hell is depression? I think that most people think that depression is merely a bit of sadness – they'd possibly think that I'm just a bit down and blue…but that's not right. Unfortunately I think that most people don't understand depression at all. Lucky them, frankly.

Depression...mad, sad or bad? I'm inclined to think it's somewhere between the first two. My madness makes me sad. I become overwhelmed by this feeling of complete emptiness and loss of hope - it's physical, like the bottom of my stomach has fallen out and my heart literally aches. The world feels like a vile place, filled with happy people being happy who just make me so angry at everything. And the anger just makes me hate myself. It's so very destructive. I'm not bad though. I try hard not to be bad and, despite feeling like crap, I drag myself up and out to work every day. It's a matter of pride to me that I won’t let depression defeat me and ruin my professional life and leave me in a heap on the floor. I have a strangely strong and stubborn sense of self-preservation. In this sense, I am genuinely lucky – so far I’ve managed to beat that side of it. Others aren’t so lucky and can’t get up from the sofa and get themselves out and let themselves live. I hope that that doesn’t happen to me.

However, despite every concerted effort I make, the misery does filter through occasionally and, as a result, after being diagnosed nearly 5 years ago, last week I finally told my managing partner that I have depression. It's safe to say that he was pretty stunned. He had no idea and I'm kind of proud of that fact - that I have functioned for five years, never taking a single day off sick with my depression...I feel like I've done something pretty exceptional. He said that knowing it meant that he could make concessions where necessary - NO. That’s not what I want and that isn't why I told him. I told him only because I know that sometimes I retreat into myself, become hard to engage with and I know it affects others. Quiet is my way of getting through the day. I'm not especially unpleasant, I'm not shouty or demanding...I'm just quiet and unreceptive. And I felt that finally it needed to be explained.

When things are bad, which they are at the moment, I don't have any coping mechanisms. Everything becomes my personal Everest and I'm easily defeated. Tonight I received a letter which kind of floored me and has just reinforced how much my life disappoints me in every way. The flat, the job, the friends and family...they cease to mean anything because I'm just fundamentally unhappy. I don't really know what you do with that.

I wish I could make my depression go away but, try as I might - and I have - I can't. So instead I carry on and occasionally I'll be lucky enough to stumble across a book like Matthew Johnstone's “I Had a Black Dog" (buy it) which reminds me that I'm absolutely not alone in this and I'll suddenly feel quite normal again.

A day in the life of a Dukan sufferer

I'm now nearly 3 weeks into Dukan. I've reintroduced alcohol although I'm not drinking every day by any means. I've stuck to the diet to the letter but I'm finding it incredibly hard and I've had many moments of misery.

Days when I can eat vegetables (PV days) are great - I can roast up some butternut squash and pretend it's carbs, I can get some flavour from tomatoes and spring onions and make stir fries full of crunchy vegetables. Pure protein (PP days) aren't so much fun. They start with yogurt, which I've learnt to love and am just damn grateful that it's not more meat. Lunch is where I struggle. I don't have any cooking or heating facilities at work so I just have a horrible pile of protein with nothing else - you wouldn't believe how unpleasant it can be to just eat a pile of ham or dry chicken breast stripped from the carcass with, at a push, a spoonful of plain yogurt or low fat cottage cheese to make it a little more palatable. There just isn't any way to make things taste nice on a PP day. I tried taking into work an oat bran wrap that I'd made the night before but it just wasn't nice; cold, soggy and a bit stale tasting. I want sauce like mayo or pesto or something creamy and lovely to have with the crappy dry protein. Even a tomato sauce would be good but I can't have that on a PP day. I can't have nice sauce ever. It kills me.

I had a bit of a meltdown yesterday. I lost a lot of weight in the first 6 days on Attack but, since then, I'd lost absolutely nothing. I went up and down around the weight I'd achieved at the end of Attack stage which, annoyingly, was bang on X stone (nooooooo, I'm not telling you how much I weigh!!) All I wanted was to lose a pound or half a pound to take me into a new stone bracket, to a smaller number. But the scales have defied and frustrated me and I've lost a lot of motivation and generally just feel hugely demoralised. Oh - except I got home from a night out last night, from eating many delicious skewers from Bincho Yakitori, drinking plenty of wine and sake and weighed myself...HELLO NEW STONE BRACKET!! Go figure.

So I'm thinking about ditching the PP days and making every day a PV day. In theory this should slow down my weight loss but I'm not losing any weight anyway, so why not try it? I think I'd find it easier and less stressful. And surely if I'm still eating protein and vegetables with virtually no fat and no carbs, that should work, shouldn't it? I'm desperate to lose weight and I am, at last, willing to do it and do it for the long haul, but I'm not sure it should make me quite this miserable. No other diet has made me this miserable.

Anyway, here's a day in the life of a happier Dukaner: a PV day.

Breakfast of scrambled Burford Brown eggs with fried mushrooms - so delicious and NOT MEAT! And not yogurt! An excellent change from the norm.




Lunch of an oat bran Dukan pancake with fried mushrooms and prosciutto.




To make one pancake, whisk together 2 tbsp oat bran, 1 tbsp wheat bran, 1 egg, a splash of skimmed milk and a pinch of salt. Heat up a very non-stick frying pan and wipe with a little oil and pour in the pancake. Reduce the heat so it's medium to low - these pancakes have to be cooked slowly so that they're cooked through and don't fall apart when you try to turn them. You may need a good 3-4 minutes before you can turn it and then let it cook for a couple of minutes on that side before serving.

These pancakes are genuinely delicious. They're great with eggs on or topped with some quark and ham and made into a wrap. Today's was the best though, spread with a touch of quark and topped with mushrooms and prosciutto. I had a very happy face after this.

Incidentally, you have to eat oat bran every day on Dukan to help keep you...ahem...regular. These pancakes are awesome and my favourite way of getting the oat bran into me. Trust me on this and make them.

Dinner was an Asian meatbally broth - this recipe was found by @supergolden on the BBC Food website (linky) but I adapted it a bit for a hungry Dukaner who didn't have all the right ingredients.

Ingredients:

250g minced beef
2 spring onions, sliced finely
A good chunk of ginger, grated
2/3 of a red chilli, chopped finely
Very finely sliced coriander stalks
1/2 teaspoon of cornflour
A shake of sesame oil
Salt and pepper




Mix these ingredients together and form into bite size balls. Wipe a hot non-stick frying pan with oil and brown the meatballs.

1 beef stock cube
1 chicken stock cube
500 ml boiling water
1 star anise
Chunk of ginger, sliced
Juice of half a lime
Green beans or other green vegetable
1/2 red chilli, sliced
2 spring onions, sliced on a slant
A shake of sesame oil

Make up the stock (I didn't have any fresh so decided to make a mixture of chicken and beef) and simmer with the star anise and ginger for a few minutes. Pop in the browned meatballs and simmer for 5 minutes. Add your green vegetable - I used some halved green beans - and the lime juice and simmer for another 5 minutes, adding the red chilli 30 seconds before the end. Stir in the shake of sesame oil and serve with the spring onions sprinkled over and some coriander leaves if you have them (I didn't) and a wedge of lime if it's really salty. DO NOT ADD SALT. Stock cubes are salty sods and you definitely won't need any extra unless you have some weird deficiency.




Pudding: another oat bran pancake (I didn't have any oat bran yesterday) made as above, but replacing the pinch of salt with a tsp of granulated sweetener. Top with lemon juice and granulated sweetener.




So it's been a good day. I feel healthy and happier than I have in a while on this diet. I think I just need to plan, plan, plan and make sure that I don't just resort to chunks of protein on their own. It gets tired very very quickly. Can I do this until I've lost my 5 stone?? That's the big question.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The One Where I Cured Some Fish

Did I mention that I'm on dukan?  That pretty much all I can eat is lean meat, fish, eggs and low/zero fat dairy?  That I can eat these foods in unlimited quantities?

 

Did I mention how butt-clenchingly expensive it is????

 

The thing with dukan is that you naturally gravitate towards meat and poultry because it feels like they will be the most substantial and filling things and you also feel like you get a bit more value for money.  The problem with eating meat all the time is that it makes you feel a bit sluggish and heavy because everything you're putting into your body is heavy and substantial.  Psychologically you crave lighter things like vegetables, eggs and fish.

 

I like to have smoked salmon or smoked mackerel at lunchtimes because it just feels a bit more...correct.  To me, eating a huge lump of meat at lunchtime is like eating a curry at lunchtime - a bit weird and wrong.  The problem is that fish is expensive.  There isn't really such a thing as cheap fish in the sense of battery vs free range in the land of the chicken; it's just all expensive (unless it's crabsticks) and when I found myself woofing down a £4 pack of smoked salmon in just shy of 90 seconds (I have three siblings, if you didn't eat fast, you didn't eat... [name the American sitcom I nicked that from]) I realised that something had to give.

 

Quite by chance, @NatanyaAbrahams was talking on twitter about curing salmon and it occurred to me that maybe this was something I could do.  I scooted on over to Ocado and found that their wild Alaskan salmon was half price!  "It's fate!" I thought and popped a couple of large pieces in my basket along with an array of curing ingredients.

 

Now, what would ordinarily happen at this point is that my order would be delivered on the Friday evening with everything but the salmon.  I'm just not one of life's lucky people...but luck struck and my salmon arrived all orange and pretty on Friday night and I set about curing it.

 

I was already a little practised at this because, as well as not being one if life's lucky people, I'm also not one of life's serene and patient people. I want INSTANT gratification, therefore I'd bought a couple of regular tiny Tesco salmon fillets on the Thursday which I had started curing that night.

 

For the dry spice rub (for 2 small fillets):

A good handful or so of Maldon sea salt

1 tsp toasted coriander seeds

1 tsp fennel seeds

1 tsp cumin seeds

1/2 a star anise

1/2 tsp white peppercorns

 

Crush all the spices up into a powder and mix with the salt.

 

 

 

For the beetroot marinade (for around 800g of salmon fillets):

200g sea salt

2 raw beetroot, grated

A pack of dill, chopped

A slosh of gin

 

Mix all the ingredients together.

 

 

Lay the salmon fillets skin side down on a large piece of cling film and coat each fillet with just under half if the mixture, pressing down hard.

 

 

Turn one upside down onto the other so that the flesh sides are together with the marinade/rub in the middle. Try to match the thick end of one piece with the thin end of the other piece.

 

 

 

Pat any remaining mixture around the sides of the fillets.

 

Wrap the fillets up tightly in lots of cling film and place the parcel in a tray with another tray on top of the salmon weighted down with tins.

 

 

Pop it in the fridge and forget about it for a bit.  Do the washing up and revel in the murderiness of the water...mwahahahahahahaha

 

 

 

A day later, take the trays out of the fridge, turn the parcel over (pouring away any liquid that may have leaked out), reapply the weighted tin and pop it back in the fridge for another day when you'll give it another turn.

 

In total, you should let the salmon cure for at least 3 days - my beetroot had 3, the spice rubbed one had 4.

 

After the 3 days, take the salmon out of the wrap and brush off all if the marinade/rub, washing it if necessary.

 

 

The salmon should be ready to eat. Cut very thin slices on the diagonal and eat with a squeeze of lemon over it to cut through a bit of the saltiness. It's interesting how different in texture the two types of salmon were. The cheaper small salmon in the dry rub is far denser than the beetroot, which is softer and wetter and a bit scarier (raw fish still creeps me out a bit.  Yeah, I know.  Leave me alone.)  I prefer the cheap stuff, but then that's me all over.

 

 

Now. Confession time. I actually don't like the beetroot cured one all that much - it tastes muddy and unpleasant to me but I'm not the greatest fan of beetroot at the best of times whereas most people seem to love it.  This may seem spectacularly blonde (because it is) but I kind of just thought that the salmon would go purple and pretty without actually tasting of beetroot (and dill - I HATE dill; how did I forget that?!) which is why I made it.  The moral of this story: the salmon will actually taste of the things that you put on it.  Duh.

 

Despite not adoring the salmon that I made, I loved doing it and I think it's simply a matter of getting my marinade right and adding flavours that I like.  Next time I'm going to try salt, fresh coriander, garlic, ginger and chilli which is more up my street.  If you have any suggestions for marinades, bring them on. 

 

I've decided that curing salmon is going to be My Thing.  Spectacularly easy but really quite impressive.  Again, that's me all over.