Saturday 11 May 2013

Before Le Big Mac

Before Le Big Mac, the French have always known how to eat well, and most of it is Low Carb High Fat, very rich food, nevertheless the slim, chic, French ladies have been the envy of many ladies of other descent, struggling with their weight!

For a sensible, healthy eating plan, one could do a lot worse than google "The Gascon Paradox"

Gratin Dauphinois, this dish is a favourite amongst slim elegant French ladies, and it is definitely a dish that anyone who is on a Low Carb High Fat diet and is looking to maintain their weight with a few carbs can have. Anyone who is still looking to lose weight can have this dish, dependant upon what else they may be eating that day.

 
                              Only 25g total carbohydrate, that's not going to break the bank!

Gratin Dauphinois
There are some fiddly recipes for this dish, this is my adapted recipe which is very nice and quick and easy to make, total recipe for 2 servings;

Skin 4-6 garlic cloves, and finely slice,

Peel 220g of potato and finely slice,

Warm 250ml of Crème Fraiche so it will pour,

In a small gratin, dish layer the garlic and potato with a hint of seasoning in each layer, and cover each layer with cream, until the final layer of potato which is brushed with melted butter. Cook in a hot oven for an hour or so, until the potato is soft when pricked with a skewer. Serve with pan fried meat and green veg or just whatever you fancy.

Who said "No Potatoes" Not me.


Wednesday 8 May 2013

Real Men Will Do Real Quiche

                          Real Men cook Quiche too - Quiche Lorraine courtesy of Julia Child

                                        Just out of the oven, will it come out of the dish OK
                                                             Yes, it didn't break up.
                                                    Served with a mixed leaf tossed salad

                                   This is half the flan, an enormous portion, well I am 6' 2"
                        See only 62g of Carb and 178g of Fat most definitely Low Carb High Fat


Low Carb High Fat Diet, having returned to this with enthusiasm I had to look at some dishes I used to make when my diet was a little easier going. Quiche is a wonderful dish hot or cold with salad on a hot summer’s day. The only carbs here is the flour, a whole quiche will use 5oz and will serve 4, I can eat half a quiche 2.5oz of flour or 54.1g, Low Fat/Ketogenic balance allows me to have 50g/day. LCHF balance allows me to have 100g/day. This is do-able, especially when combined with nearly its own weight of butter, which lowers the glycaemic index.

When people say real men don’t do quiche, I cringe because obviously being a real man I didn’t do quiche, but since being influenced by Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” I did cook quiche and discovered real quiche, trust me, real men WILL do real quiche.

Pâte Brisée is the beginning of the secret of real quiche. Pâte Brisée is French short crust pastry, it is 5 parts flour to 4 parts butter, that amazing amount of butter results in a thin, tender, crunchy and buttery crust, wonderful. I’m not going into how it’s made, you can Google that, but it’s not easy to handle, you have to learn “Il faut mettre la main á la pate” the feel of the dough in your fingers, typical of the French, if you don't know the feel, how will you know when it's right?

The Pâte Brisée is moulded into an 8” to 9” quiche tin and blind baked. A basic filling for A Quiche Lorraine is 4oz of chopped, blanched bacon, 3 eggs, and 15 fl.oz of full fat crème fraîche and 1oz of butter to put in little dabs over the top of the filling and bake.

From there on, you are only limited by your imagination to what items you add to the egg and cream filling, to make your quiche. I’ve used tuna, crab and prawn, lobster and prawn, salmon and broccoli, ham and cheese. The addition of cheese is always an option to the basic filling, the French use gruyere. Strange thing, the French probably have more cheeses than any other country, yet only ever traditionally cook with three, gruyere, emmental and parmesan, all foreign!! to the French.