 |
| Just after Toronto Half Marathon |
I’ve lately been buying a lot of fitness
magazines – it’s research for one of my latest assignments, and they’re not a
bad read. Indeed, given that I have been trying to lose a little weight over
the last few weeks, some of them are very enticing. Like, for instance, the one
with the following front cover announcement:
DROP
A DRESS SIZE FAST! Slim down in just 10 days
Now
I’m not going to name and shame (though it is a November issue so you could
take a look on the magazine shelves if you are at all interested) but I thought
it would be interesting to share this article with you. Briefly. I don’t want
to infringe copyright after all.
The article consists of a series of fun
exercises that you need to perform for one minute each, repeating the whole
routine four times. The six exercises are nicely presented with full colour
photographs, the girl in the photos is smiling and you feel like you could
perform them to music quite happily. The first one has the added interest of
the name Burpies – not sure why, it’s
linked to a small element of the Sun Salutation that I perform and it doesn’t
normally make me burp! That aside, it all looks great and of course I only have
to do this for ten days by which time I will have dropped a dress size. I think
I can hold my concentration for so long.
And
then I read the small-print.
Perform the routine every day for two weeks combined with a
30-minute run and a calorie controlled diet, to drop a dress size in ten days.
Ah – so that’s
where I’ve been going wrong.
Speaking of diet –
here’s a lovely fish recipe that shouldn’t weigh in too highly on the calorie stakes!
Recipe:
Crispy skin fish with oven roasted new potatoes and
shallots
Inspired
By: Years of cooking, cookery books and fish.
Ingredients:
Whole fish, scaled and gutted (one per
person – I think this was Bream)
New Potatoes
Garlic (3 or 4 cloves per person)
Samphire (it lends a lovely, salty, seaside
atmosphere to all fish dishes)
Shallots or pickling onions (4 or 5 per
person, peeled)
Lardons (or chopped streaky bacon, or
pancetta cubes)
Garden peas (frozen or fresh)
Madeira (or similar)
Brown sugar (optional)
Really good quality sea salt
Olive oil
Here’s
what I do:
First get your
potatoes ready. Halve them if large and put into an oven proof dish. Drizzle generously with oil and salt
them if desired. Put the cloves of garlic in between the potatoes (no need to
peel) and then roast till tender (probably about an hour); the garlic will go
all sweet – serve a few cloves on each plate, if you squash them with the back
of your knife they spread well on the potatoes.
Slice into the fish
on both sides (not too deeply) and rub all over with olive oil and then salt. When
there is about twenty-five minutes of cooking time left, get a frying pan (or
cast iron oven dish) very hot on the hob, adding a little bit of oil, and sear
the fish on both sides (this makes the skin really crispy). Now transfer to the
oven and roast for the rest of the time (but don’t let them overcook).
Meanwhile brown
the lardons in a saucepan – cooking until crispy. Remove from the pan and add a
good glug of olive oil, fry the shallots until nicely golden – at this point
you can add a shake of brown sugar to help to caramelise them, frying them for a little longer. Add the lardons
back to the pan and a good splash of Madeira, turn the heat to very low and pop
on a lid, leaving them to simmer/steam until tender. Boil the peas and boil or
steam the samphire.
Finally plate it
all up and enjoy.
No comments:
Post a Comment