Comfort food - yes please

29^th September 2017

Truly, the greatest gift you hve to give is that of your own self-transformation. Laz Tzu

Absolutely loving the meetings this week, so much talk of food – it is my favourite subject after all, having not been able to get creative in the kitchen for a while, it’s been great to hear lots of new ideas, to be reminded of past deliciousness and to plan what I’m going to be eating in the weeks and months to come.  Autumn is after all a great time to feed, it’s a time when we’re starting to want to cosy up in front of the fire with a plate of comfort food and the joy of Weight Watchers means you can do exactly that.  Here are a couple of recipes that we’ve changed about, the bread pudding came on the back of what to do with spare bread as we were talking about taking out the middle of a crusty baguette to make a posh fish finger sarnie with roasted veg, mmm. 

My savoury bread pudding

Serves 1, 4sp

1 egg (2sp)
1 tsp wholegrain mustard
pinch of oregano

Few capers

Slice of torn up wafer thin ham (0sp)
13g Cathedral City Mature Lighter (1sp)
1 slice of WW brown bread (1sp)

Preheat the oven to 200°C, gas mark 6. Whisk together with a fork 1 egg, ham, mustard and oregano. Break bread into pieces and stir it into the mixture, top with cheese. Spoon into an individual sized ovenproof dish and bake for 20-25 minutes until golden and crunchy on the top.

DELICIOUS!

Here’s another of my bread pudding recipes which is also tasty;

 

Cheese and tomato bread pudding
This is a wonderful way to use up leftover bread and it's a cheap and filling family meal.

Serves 4, 10 Smart Points each. Takes 10 minutes to prepare, 35 minutes to cook

39 Smart Points total, No Count day = uses 4sp of yr weeklies, or 3sp if you use lighter cheese.

low fat cooking spray
400 g can chopped tomatoes
2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried thyme
100 g (3½oz) mature cheese (16sp), or us Cathedral City Mature Lighter grated (11sp) and save 1sp per serving

4 eggs (7sp)
400 ml (14 fl oz) skimmed milk (5sp)
150 g (5½oz) Weight Watchers calorie controlled brown bread (preferably stale) (11sp)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 4/180°C/fan oven 160°C. Lightly spray an ovenproof dish with the cooking spray.  Mix the tomatoes with half of the thyme, then spoon half of the tomatoes into the base of the dish and scatter with about a quarter of the cheese.  In a large bowl, beat the eggs with milk and seasoning. Dip the slices of bread in the eggy mixture, letting them soak in it briefly. Arrange the bread slices on top of the tomatoes and cheese, overlapping slightly.  

Spoon on the rest of the tomatoes and scatter with the remaining cheese and thyme. Pour the remaining egg mixture all over the dish. Cover with foil and bake for 20 minutes.  Remove the foil. Bake for a further 15 minutes until the mixture is puffed up and golden brown on top.

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Wednesday night I mentioned a Jamie Oliver recipe that is so much fun to make and tasty too, I’ve found it out, here it is;

Spinach pici pasta

Serves 4, Cooks In 50 minutes,

16sp per serving if you drizzle a tsp of oil over dish, 14sp if you leave that bit out.

Difficulty - Not too tricky

200g baby spinach

300g Tipo 00 pasta flour or plain flour  (30sp), plus extra for dusting

olive oil (2tbsp - 9sp)

4 cloves of garlic

½ teaspoon dried red chilli flakes

200g baby courgettes

320g ripe cherry tomatoes , on the vine

50g pine nuts (11sp)

½ a bunch of fresh basil, (15g)

50g Parmesan cheese (7sp)

extra virgin olive oil (1tsp per plate = 2sp per plate)

In a food processor, blitz the spinach and flour until a ball of dough forms, letting the machine do all the work. Touch the dough – it shouldn’t be sticky, you want a play dough consistency, so add a little more flour, if needed. To make the pici, simply tear off 2cm balls of dough and roll them out into long thin sausage shapes – think fine green beans – on a clean surface (the beauty is that they’re all different, so get little helpers involved, if you can). Cook the pici straight away, or leave them to dry out for a few hours, or even overnight.

Put a large pan of salted water on to boil. Put a large frying pan on a medium heat with 2 tablespoons of olive oil (9sp). Peel, finely slice and add the garlic, along with the chilli flakes. Finely slice and add the courgettes, then halve and add the tomatoes. Cook it all for 5 minutes, then stir in the pine nuts and add a ladleful of boiling water. Leave on the lowest heat while you cook the pasta.

Add the pici to your pan of boiling salted water. If it’s freshly rolled it will only need about 5 minutes, but if you’ve let it dry give it 8 to 10 minutes, checking on it to make sure you get lovely al dente pasta. Drain, reserving a mugful of cooking water, then toss through the veg. Reserving the baby basil leaves, finely slice the bigger ones and stir into the pan with most of the finely grated Parmesan, loosening with a little reserved water, if needed. Divide between your warm plates and serve with a few drips of extra virgin olive oil (if you do that's extra SP's, 1tsp is 2sp, with the remaining Parmesan and the baby basil leaves sprinkled over.

You’ve got to love a good plate of food and yesterday I had 3 of them, I’ll leave you with that thought, Weight Watchers really does work!

Stay BeYOUtiful. xx