A Moveable Feast

Unusually for London (unless you’re an Arab prince) our mutual friends, John and Anna Maria, have a cinema in their basement. Sunday nights there are a matter of watching a quirky old movie from the comfort of ancient sofas before moving upstairs to eat, drink and talk about the film (and a whole lot else) far too late into the night.

Last week we saw ‘Morgan, a Suitable Case for Treatment’. It was my turn to supply the food, and, as I wasn’t sure how many people might turn up, I brought a pot of my favourite lamb tagine. All I had to do was heat it up and served it with some precooked wholegrain cous cous. For afters we had chocolate sorbet with freshly sliced oranges.

Low Fat Lamb Tagine

Lamb, beef, kid, game or chicken, any meat will do for this fragrant North African stew, just so long as the pieces are allowed to simmer slowly into a melting tenderness.

For a lamb version, the most important thing is to chop out as much fat as possible before you begin cooking. Too many recipes suggest using boned shoulder meat, but removing the fat from that cut is time consuming and can reduce quantity by a quarter or more! Far better to look for diced lamb pieces from which it’s easy to cut the odd bit of fat, or neck fillets which are already very lean. Also, I can never have too many vegetables in my stews, so I always ra

id the vege box and add any stray bits I find there.

1 kg lean lamb.

1 tbsp olive oil

1 onion

8 carrots.

3 parsnips

5 sticks celery

½ tsp ground saffron

½ tsp cayenne pepper

1tsp ground tumeric

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tbsp honey

1 tbsp tomato puree

2 cinnamon sticks

2 tsp orange flower water

12 dried apricots

8 pitted dates

A handful of chopped parsley

Remove as much fat as possible and cut the lamb into 4cm chunks. Peel the carrots & parsnips, and cut into thick lengths. Chop the celery into large bits and peel & slice the onion. Heat the oil in a large, thick bottomed pan and cook the onions & celery over a low heat for about 5 minutes. Stir in the lamb, remaining vegetables and spices and add just enough water to cover the lamb. Bring to the boil and stir in the tomato puree. Reduce the heat and simmer very gently, with the lid half on, for about 1 hour (or longer if the meat is still

a bit chewy). When the meat is tender, add the apricots with the honey, orange flower water and a little seasoning. Simmer, uncovered, for about 20 minutes until the gravy looks like a thick soup. Add the dates and simmer a few minutes more. Scatter with chopped parsley and serve with wholegrain cous cous or brown basmati rice - cooked in stock if possible- to which (if none of your guests are nut allergic) you might add a crunch of chopped and toasted almonds.

Chocolate Sorbet

Forget dairy and eggs, the witchy thing about the smooth finish of this sorbet is you might really think you're eating ice cream. Something to do with the high chocolate content, I suppose, and the trick of boiling the syrup really hard before adding it to the chocolate.

30g white sugar

650ml water

250g best dark chocolate (min 70% cocoa solids)

1 heaped tbsp cocoa powder

1 tbsp liqueur (optional)

Dissolve the sugar & water over a low heat. Bring to the boil and bubble for about 5 minutes until the syrup looks like glossy satin.

Break the chocolate into a large, heatproof bowl with the cocoa. Gradually pour in the hot syrup, stirring until the chocolate has mixed to a smooth gloop. Leave to cool. When the mixture is completely cold, churn in your ice cream maker until thick and fudgy (my machine takes about 40 minutes, but check your maker’s instructions). Transfer to a freezer container and - if you want to – stir in your favourite liqueur (I used Cointreau to go with a side dish of sliced oranges) remembering that the alcohol will effect a softer, less frozen consistency. Store in the freezer and serve with seasonal fruit or crispy biscuits or both.

Note: this sorbet melts very quickly, so keep it frozen until the very last minute.

Keeping meat-eaters happy without too much fat

I may have been a caterpillar in a former life - I'm always happiest when chomping my way through something green and leafy. Unlike Aisling, who is a cheerful carnivore and a brilliant meat-cook, I wouldn't really mind if I didn't eat meat at all. But I know that for anyone who loves meat, a low-fat diet can be a real penance - and if you have that person in your life, the trick is to find ways to make them feel they've had the full caveman experience without consuming too much, either in fat content or in overall quantity.

Now you may think it's odd to nominate pork, if you're looking for a lowish fat content, but it's all about the cuts you choose. Pigs are bred much leaner now, and if you look for a farm pig that has had a happy life and run about a good deal, and you go for the tenderloin, the fat content is just about the same as skinless chicken - miles lower than the fat content of the good cuts of beef. Yes, tenderloin is pricey, but you don't need very much of it, and no one is better at making small quantities go a long way than the Chinese.

This Chinese pork is light, delicious and very satisfying. You can eat it with any sort of noodles, of course, or with rice, but it's also delicious as a starter or main served piping hot on a cold lettuce leaf (I told you I was a caterpillar) or a bed of warm rich shredded cabbage. (One word of warning, though - almost all Chinese food is very high in salt, so if that is a consideration, don't use this recipe.)

One tenderloin fillet (usually around 400g) will serve six for a starter, four for main. You will need:

400 g pork tenderloin fillet, trimmed and chopped as finely as you can
2 tbsps oil, probably corn oil or nut oil
200g dried porcini or other mushrooms, well soaked
2 cms ginger, finely sliced
2 garlic cloves
2 tsps sugar
2 tbsps each of soy sauce, oyster sauce, hoisin sauce
large handful of fresh rocket, roughly chopped
chopped spring onions
a little sesame oil

Pour boiling water over the dried mushrooms and let them stand for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, in a wok or other wide pan fry the garlic and ginger in the oil, just for about half a minute, then add the pork. It should be chopped very small; in a hot pan it will only take a few minutes to cook. Then add the drained and chopped mushrooms, the sugar, the three sauces (don't use any other salt as there's already plenty in the soy sauce) and cook for another few minutes, adding a little of the mushroom water if the mixture is too dry. (To be more authentic, at this point you could stir in some cornflour as a thickener, but personally I don't like that slightly slimy effect so I don't.)

When the pork and the mushrooms are cooked, turn off the heat and chuck in the chopped rocket; stir it in loosely - it doesn't need to cook, just to wilt in the heat of the mixture. If you like, you can drizzle a little sesame oil and scatter chopped spring onions over the top, and serve as I suggested above - on leaves for a very lean effect, with noodles, or with rice.