The Food Confessional

Posted by Sylvia

Cliff’s mum was asking about the diet and how we were losing weight etc. I explained about our weekday plan and she was surprised to hear that we were managing to stay under 1,200 calories a day during the week. I admitted that it’s pretty time intensive because of all the weighing and calorie counting and totalling up but that by putting the time in, we were having a lot of really nice meals. Also, as time goes by, I’m getting a lot better at it!

I also told her about the Food Confessional and posting the totals there for each day. She pointed out that if I was weighing every ingredient and writing it all down, I really should be making a collection of recipes for 500 calorie meals as I was already doing most of the hard work.

So, for this month, I think I’m going to put a bit more effort into getting photographs (yay) and writing down details for the recipes that turned out nicely. I know it will eat up more time but in the long run, it will save a lot of time as I’ll be able to use my recipes to quickly make a low cal meal. While I was away, I collected a whole set of new recipes to try and it can be hard to keep track of which ones we liked, so this will hopefully keep me more organised and be fun!

Chicken and Noodles with Miso

This dish is based on a recipe from an advert for Cauldron Tofu. I am not a big fan of tofu and the stuff I can buy locally is DIRE but the photograph on the advertisement was so appetising, I couldn’t resist trying to make something similar. The original recipe is called Japan Miso Soup.

Paola, I don’t know if you eat seafood at all? I suppose if not, you could skip the Miso paste – but if you like tofu I think the original version of this recipe would make for a great vegetarian meal!

It took me about an hour to prep but I was moving slowly (happy to be back in my own kitchen) and spent some time in the garden (the vegetables are starting to appear!) and taking photos. I think I could have done it all in about 30 minutes, especially if I’d been more organised (chopping the veg while the soup was cooking) but their estimate of “10 minutes prep” is presumably based on a magical world where vegetables come pre-chopped! I don’t think I would have even attempted it if I didn’t have a mandolin.

I brought the vegetable broth to a boil, added the chicken breast, then turned off the heat and put a lid on the pot. After 20 minutes, I removed the breast and, once it had cooled, cut it into bite-sized cubes. I tossed the meat in two tablespoons of soy sauce and sprinkled a touch of chile powder and let it rest.

I brought the vegetable broth to a boil again, added the garlic, ginger and a sliced thai chile and allowed it to simmer for 5 minutes.

Then I added the egg noodles and simmered for 4 minutes. I added the chicken with the soy sauce and simmered for about a minute.

I just want to pause there to show you this gorgeous courgette from my garden…

Sadly, most of the fruit seems to be rotting – it’s been a wet spring so I suppose they’ve suffered. There are a couple more that are growing nicely though and this one was just perfect. I used less than half of it for the soup. The onion tops also came our garden, the onions are just ready for harvesting but I’m only digging them out as I need them at this point as they are still growing.

Anyway, I added the remaining vegetables and brought the whole thing to a boil again. Then I removed the soup from heat and slowly stirred in the miso paste to ensure there were no clumps.

I should have served immediately but instead I took a photograph :)

We both really enjoyed it. I made it fairly spicy – the broth seemed quite firey when I tried a small spoonful before adding the noodles and other ingredients but the end result was just right.

Cliff was suspicious of the total of 280 calories – he felt it seemed like a lot more. I think this is partially because soups like this just seem more filling and also because the thinly sliced vegetables make it feel like you are getting a lot more noodles than you are.

This is definitely going onto my “must keep” list.