Recipe corner: tuna and apple mousse

This is not really a recipe so much as telling you a list of ingredients to bung in a food processor and blitz to an inauspicious looking paste.  It is very tasty though.  We served it as a dip prior to Easter Sunday lunch, with strips of toasted pitta bread and crudites, but it is also lovely on toast with some crisp slices of cucumber.  The amount listed below will yield enough to fill two large ramekins. The original recipe (which I have tweaked ever so slightly) comes from "Chocolate and Zucchini" by Clotilde Dusoulier.

Ingredients

1 large can of tuna in brine or spring water, drained
1 shallot, quartered
1/2 crisp green apple (a Granny Smith is ideal), cored and quatered
Juice of half a lemon
Small handful of fresh coriander leaves
60g ricotta
1/2 tsp chilli powder
25ml olive oil

Serves 4 (generously), 3 pro points per portion

Er, place ingredients in food processor.  Season.  Blitz.

Ca, c'est tout.

Recipe corner: Steamed buns a la Momofuku

I so wanted to call this post something along the lines of "My lovely buns".  Because I really do have the sense of humour of a prurient twelve year old boy. 

 

I also wanted to give it a gorgeous photo that would be an adequate reflection of quite how tasty these little beauties were.  But you know the score with regards my food photography skills by now.  So here are my steamed buns with prawn cakes:

 

 

Sexy, huh?  But then, the originals were not renowned for their great beauty:

 

 

I must admit, I was really, really happy with the way these turned out; taste and texture wise they were dead ringers for the ones we ate in Momofuku.  And OK they were David Chang's recipe but still, we've all seen that round on Masterchef where the contestants all get given exactly the same recipe and still manage to produce entirely different, often substandard, plates of food. 

 

If you haven't experienced these buns before they are quite hard to describe - they have a dense, damp texture and a slight sweetness to them and they are incredibly delicious and even more incredibly moreish.  I think that they are most commonly served with pork. On Saturday, we wrapped them round peppery little prawn cakes that D made by whizzing up raw king prawns, flour and plenty of seasoning.  The following day we went a bit off piste and had them with halloumi and sweet chilli sauce which may have been fusion gone mad but turned out to be seriously yummy.

 

They dry out fairly quickly once steamed but are easily revived - just brush them with water, put on a plate loosely covered with cling film and microwave on medium for about a minute. 

 

Ingredients

 

240ml warm water (I used a ratio of 1 part boiling to 2 parts cold tap)

1/2 tsp active dry yeast

3 tbsp plus 1 pinch sugar

2 tbsp skimmed milk powder

420g plain flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Tbsp sunflower oil

 

Makes 16, 3 pro points per bun

 

Stir together 60ml of the water with the yeast (make sure that this is brought to room temperature first if you have kept it in the fridge) and a pinch of sugar.  Leave this to stand for 5-10 minutes until it starts to foam.  If it doesn't foam it means the yeast hasn't woken up - this could be to do with the temperature of the water (check it is not too hot) or the age of the yeast itself.  I watch Bake Off and therefore know these things.

 

While you are waiting, stir together the flour and the rest of the sugar in a large mixing bowl. 

 

To the foamy mixture add the rest of the water, and the skimmed milk powder and give a quick whisk to combine.

 

Gently stir the liquid into the flour.  The original recipe suggested using a fork, I used my Kitchen Aid on a low setting.  Keep going until the dough begins to form - it was soft to the touch but by no means sticky - and make sure that all the flour becomes incorporated.  Now turn out the ball onto a floured surface and knead for about five minutes (you could use a dough hook for this stage, but kneading is fun! It's like Play Dough for grown ups!)  You'll know that you're getting there when the dough takes on a pliant, elastic feel. 

 

Oil a large bowl and place the dough in there, turning it to ensure an even coating in the oil.  Cover with cling film and place in a warm spot for 2 hours, during which time it should roughly double in size.

 

Once this is done you need to give it a good pummelling which will make it deflate a little.  Transfer it to a lightly floured surface, flatten it out and sprinkle with the baking powder, then gather it up into a ball with the powder in the middle.  You now need to knead for another five minutes or so to ensure the baking powder is incorporated - again, you could use the dough hook attachment of a stand mixer to do this.  Recover the dough and leave to stand for another half an hour.

 

We're nearly there, campers!  Now it is time to shape and steam the buns.

 

First cut out squares of parchment paper approximately 3 inch square.  The buns will sit on these in the steamer, so you need one for each bun.  Roll the dough into a log shape about 16 inches long and then divide into 16 equal pieces.  Take each piece between your two hands, and use your palms to flatten it into an oval shape, then use a lightly floured rolling pin to roll the oval out so that it is about 6 inches long and 3 wide.  Now, using a pastry brush, brush one half with sunflower oil and fold it in half so it is the shape of a capital D - but do not pinch the edges together.  As each bun is shaped, cover loosely in cling film.  Allow them to stand for another 30 minutes or so, in which time they will rise very slightly.

 

The buns are now ready for steaming.  Sit some form of rack over boiling water, place the buns (sitting on their parchment paper) over the steam and cover for about five minutes, during which time they will puff up a little but not alarmingly so.  You may well have to do this in batches, unless you have the world's largest steamer.  Wrap the steamed buns in a clean tea towel until they are all done.  They do not need to be eaten straightaway (see above for revival tip) and can be frozen at this stage for future use.

 

Feel incredibly clever and incredibly smug.



The skinny on...Warburtons sandwich thins

The older I get, the less likely you are to find ostensibly diet products in my kitchen. One of the lessons that I have learned over my years of Weight Watching, of which I still need to remind myself on a regular basis is, I never need as much food as I think I do (i.e. I am fundamentally greedy) and another is that quality is almost always better than quantity. It is for this reason that I have stopped buying low fat plastic spreads – I eat real butter, just in a measured way. And, much as I am a fan of their eating plan, I very seldom purchase Weight Watchers branded products. I just don’t like them that much.

Of course there are exceptions. While my aim is that the recipes and products that I talk about on this blog are healthy-living friendly rather than expressly designed for us slaves to the calorie counting, I do sometimes have to bend my own rules, especially when it comes to dairy. Take the asparagus cream pasta I made last week for example – I used Elmlea, a cream alternative, which, the website tells me, is made of buttermilk and vegetable oils. I sometimes choose reduced fat cheese for cooking with and I almost always eat reduced fat yoghurts rather than the real deal. You pick your battles, depending on your taste.  And I don't think that there is anything wrong with a bit of compromise.

The actual point of this post was to enthuse about a new product I have stumbled across, after years of reading about them on American food and dieting blogs – sandwich thins ( and I should add at this point that I pretty sure that no one in the Warburtons marketing department knows I exist, particularly as that last line sounds a bit like marketeer speak.)

As far as I can see it, the point of the sandwich thin, which is basically…a square, flattish, slimmish bread roll type thing but without a crust (er, am I selling it yet?  See, definitely not in the employ of Warburtons!) is that it minimises the points (calories, grams of carb etc. etc.) that you spend on the receptacle which you are using to convey your sandwich filling to your mouth. Don’t get me wrong. I am a massive fan of bread – proper, yummy, warm, crusty bread. But when I eat a sandwich, I’m more bothered about what is in the middle of the bread. Otherwise I’d just be eating the bread on its own. Well, thickly smeared with butter anyway.

The thins are 3 pro points each and, I think, around 100 calories. And, as I discovered at breakfast time on Sunday, they are just about the right size to accommodate a fried egg (done in just the merest teaspoon of oil). Hurrah.

Recipe Corner - Lemony white bean purée

I was going to start the post by suggesting that this bean purée is a delicious alternative to mashed potato. But I just couldn't do it to my beloved mash. It felt too much like betrayal.

I mean, really, who wants an alternative to mash? There are few sights that will gladden a foodie's heart more than a golden slump of buttery mashed potato on the side of the plate.

But we are coming into spring now and it is just conceivable that we might want something a little zingier to wake up our palates. And here it is. This recipe is as bright eyed and zippy as all those bonny young spring lambs out there. And it just so happens it is the perfect accompaniment to a juicy piece of lamb, as seen above. But it would work equally well with steak or, come to think of it, a nice big chunk of tuna.  It's not really a recipe, so much as a bung all the ingredients together and blitz. 

Ingredients

Tin of cannellini beans, drained (reserve a couple of tablespoons of the liquid)
2 fat cloves of garlic
Juice of half a lemon
Fresh herbs and seasoning to taste

Serves 2, 3 pro points per person

Wrap the garlic cloves, still in their skins, up in a piece of foil and roast in a hot oven for about half an hour.

Meanwhile put the beans, the reserved liquid, the lemon juice and any fresh herbs into a blitzer.  We've done this with both basil and parsley and both worked beautifully.  I'd recommend something leafy and green rather than the headier end of the herb spectrum - the aim here is fresh.

Watch the seasoning at this point - remember the bean water will be salted, so don't go overboard on the additional salt.  Plenty of black pepper is good though.

Add the garlic and blitz to a coarse paste.  Place in a small saucepan to warm through while you cook your meat accompaniment.