I watched the Hairy bikers recently and was pleasantly surprised about the programme contents and delivery. They’ve been losing weight recently. I’ve always pondered that actually when considering chefs and the temptation for them to enjoy their own food. The Hairies looked like they enjoyed a wee sandwich or several and maybe the occasional pint of mans beer.
Of course a University Professor was involved to help them along the way. No going to the Docs and being berated about their diet, their drinking habits and if they smoked or not. No lectures about five a day and they should really only eat red meat once a week sort of dollop we have to put with.
Anyway, the way they went about things was to look for ways to make things they really liked have less calories in them. They thought about pies for a while. Pies are big in the North East from both a size and a popularity point of view. But how do you make a pie, which has a much-reduced calorie count? Well you ditch the pastry casing for a start, which is made with significant quantities of lard. They made a traditional sort of stew filling with vegetables and then used pizza dough to make the casing. The result was pretty impressive!
Next up they looked at carry out foods like Chinese and Indian. Again they stripped out the high calorie stuff and everyone that tasted the resulting food was very, very keen on it.
I may have to consider buying their latest cookbook which no doubt is their aim. It’s their bodies they are trying so slim down not their wallets!
Tedious Tantrums 