Low Fat Experimental Cooking!

It doesn't sound great does it?

Sounds dodgy to me......and I did it!

It all started in 1997 when I caught proper 'flu'....boy was I ill.  I didn't eat for 6 days, I went to bed on the Thursday evening and re-emerged on Tuesday afternoon.  Shortly afterwards I began feeling uncomfortable under my right rib, thinking it was an old ulcer coming back to haunt me I drank some milk and pain-killers. 

What a mistake!!!!

It was a problem with my gallbladder!  Milk was a VERY bad option.

Anyway, it turns out that if you have a severe infection and don't eat, your gallbladder still fires off bile but because it's not being used it builds up to stones.

Well, one way and another, the stone thing resolved, but I was left with a dysfunctional gallbladder.  For this I just stick to a low fat diet.  I don't eat more than about 10-12grams of fat per meal interspersed with snacks of 4-5g to ensure my overall fat intake for the day is somewhere close to the daily recommended for women of around 70g. 

The restricted diet makes for interesting trips out eating very uninteresting food!

In this 'Foodie' world we live in, everything must be drizzled in olive oil, sauteed in butter, drowned in cream or sprinkled with cheese!  So I usually end up with salad (no dressing!) or grilled fish!

Trying to be a little more adventurous at home, I am trying to find ordinary recipes that are quite low fat like the Oaty Biscuits made by Lucy of Attic 24, Grandma Beths Rock cakes and the Steamed Seabass I made here.  This is not easy!

Recently in the UK, 2 of our TV chefs (known as The Hairy Bikers) have made a lifestyle change but not wanting to forfeit their usual food have tried to make it low fat.....and have succeeded by all accounts!

I took their Quiche recipe and substituted Bacon & Asparagus for Salmon and Broccoli Spears......very nice!

I thought I would take it one further and see if I could make a tasty Cheese & Onion Quiche......so here goes!

RECIPE:
1 pack of Filo Pastry
1 medium onion
1 medium sized potato
200ml of semi skimmed milk
2 eggs (beaten) (contains 12g of fat)
10g of cornflour
100 g of low fat cheese (I think Tescos own is the best flavour and texture...not too rubbery!) (contains 16g of fat)
Salt & Pepper
Tomatoes

I made mine Mini Quiches in 8 large Yorkshire pudding tins, but 1 8" flan dish would do about the same amount.

My tins are non stick , but I gave them the lightest wipe of Cookeen anyway.  I cut the standard sheet of Jus-Rol in half and then one of these squares into 4 smaller squares.  Use 3 or 4 layers to line each Yorkshire Pudding well, brushing in between with milk to get them to stick together.  Fold the corners in to the pie to make it round.

Peel and dice the potato and finely chop up the onion.  Pop then into boiling water and bring to the boil.  Simmer until both onion and potato are soft. Drain them and mash together.

In another pan mix the cornflour with about a quarter of the milk, keep stirring as it will thicken quickly.  Once thickened remover from the heat, stir in the rest of the milk to loosen it up a bit.  Add the 2 eggs, your potato & onion mash and half to three quarters of the cheese (leave enough to sprinkle some on the top of each quiche.) Season with Salt and Pepper.

Pour this mixture into your Filo cases, slice tomato and place on the top, I used cherry tomatoes on my small quiche, you could use these or large tomatoes on the 8" quiche.  Sprinkle with the cheese you left to one side and pop into the oven for about 30-40mins.

The quiche need to be set, so the cooking time depends on the depth of your filling.  It should also be nicely golden brown on top and the tomatoes cooked and maybe just starting to caramelise...yummy!

Here is mine.....

Ta-daAAAAH!...

Looks scrummy doesn't it?  It tasted delicious and each mini quiche contains less than 4g of fat in total.  It was hard to calculate as the milk content is tiny and the filo is such a small amount (you can get 2 x 8" quiches plus 8 x 4" mini quiches out of 1 pack of Filo) so I just added the cheese and eggs (28g), rounded up to 32g to take account of the milk and filo, divided by 8 comes out at 4g!

Next time I'm going to try adding some herb....but I don't know what.  I'm thinking something Italian to go with the tomatoes, cheese and onion....what do you think?

Back soon with a delicious low fat Victoria sandwich recipe...you'll like that!  Promise!

Until then, take really good care of yourself,
Love
Nora xx

P.S. Sorry about the lack of photos!  I got a bit carried away with the cooking!