Tummyrumble

Yoghurt and frozen banana smoothie surprise

Last week Ocado sent us an item we didn't order. Mistake, marketing treat, random act of kindness, I have no idea but since it was a tub of  yoghurt, which we order a lot of, I guess it could be either of those things.

Named "Lindahl's Turkish 10% Yoghurt" I got a bit excited. Is it Swedish (I sometimes dream of Swedish yoghurt and sour milk, or "filmjölk", something I really miss)? Why is it then labelled "Turkish"? 10%, awesome! Finding tasty, creamy full fat yoghurt without heaps of sugar in it is not easy, in my opinion.

Looking at the details, it sounded quite promising. With only 5 grams of carbs per 100 grams, and added cream, it sounds like a dairy eating low carbers dream.

Since the Swedish sounding name intrigued me, I did a quick google and yes, it's produced by a company from Sweden. Apparently, the man on the packaging has sued them for using his face without his permission. And he isn't Turkish at all, he is Greek! So... A "Turkish" yoghurt, made by a Swedish company, manufactured in Germany, marketed with a Greek face. We live in a multi cultural globalized world, no doubt about it!

Anyway. This morning we used it for Wendy's "Yoghurt and frozen banana smoothie surprise", and as it turns out this is indeed a very creamy yoghurt! Really tasty, silky and rich.

Ingredients, serves 2

3 frozen bananas
1 cup yoghurt (about as much as banana)
Choice of surprise

Tip: Make sure the bananas ripen properly before you freeze them. The more ripe they are, the sweeter they will be. We always keep a bunch of bananas in the freezer to use for treats like smoothies or banana bread (oooh, really naughty).

As for surprise, add what you feel like. Wendy always adds a shot of espresso. But you can use peanut butter (my favourite), honey, blueberries, strawberries, or do combos: "Yoghurt and frozen banana peanut butter espresso blueberry smoothie"! What can ever go wrong?

Method

Put the bananas and yoghurt in a stick blender beaker, and mix together using the blender. Add your surprise, mix some more until smooth and creamy. Done.

While not necessarily very strict low carb, it is a really tasty treat for those days where you want something sweet-ish with creamy richness.

Lastly, thank you very much Ocado for sending us this random pot of globetrotter yoghurt!

Low-carb experiments: fake couscous

Cauliflower is so versatile, and the low-carb cooks best friend. Usually we use it to make a cauliflower mash (the cheese makes it really creamy), to go as a side for steaks and lamb, but with a few different additions it can be more like couscous, or like rice.

This recipe for cauliflower "couscous" salad is from the Rocket & Squash blog, but for sakes of speed (and using all of the cauliflower) rather than going with raw cauliflower I violated the recipe and steamed and crushed it instead.

The dressing is delicious, slightly sweet, and went so well with our lamb. Would probably make a perfect match with duck breast.

Next time I'll also add some toasted pine nuts for crunch and energy, and pomegranate seeds which I think will go superbly with the tangerine dressing!

Ingredients (serves 4)

1 large cauliflower
2 red chillis, finely chopped
1/2 cucumber, deseeded and diced
1 large handful parsley, finely chopped

Dressing:

2 tbsp maple syrup
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp water
Juice from 1 tangerine (or 1/2 orange...)
Juice from 1/2-1 lemon
Salt and pepper 

Method

 Cut up the cauliflower in florets, halved if they are large, and steam for 10 minutes. When done, remove the cauliflower from the steamer and leave it to cool and dry for a bit.

While the cauliflower is cooling, chop the chilli and parsley, deseed the cucumber and cut it first in strips lengthwise and then small cubes. Place it all in a bowl.

Put the steamed cauliflower in a pot and crush with for example a potato masher. When completely crushed, mix with the other salad ingredients in the bowl.

For the dressing, just whisk all the ingredients together in a small bowl and season with salt and pepper to taste. If you want the dressing more tangy, add some more lemon juice.

Pour the dressing over the salad, mix well. The original recipe calls for then leaving the salad to soak in the dressing for 30 minutes. I'm not sure why, but then taste it and if needed add some more seasoning.

Serve with for example lamb loins, as below, or with fried duck breast. Delicious. The chilli is subtle, but adds a nice kick to the salad.

Low-carb experiments: LCHF bread, and making eggplant mozzarella sandwiches

Not satisfied with finding a method to make low-carb crisp that works, I today also made my first attempt at baking a low carb high fat bread. This is a recipe I found at a blog called Free The Animal, where after several attempts a bread replacement has been perfected.

Not sure I agree, after my first attempt, but it certainly is a very good start!

What I am after isn't something that necessarily tastes and feels like bread (I think that's impossible), but something that has exactly the opposite texture of crisps: spongy, porous and supple, and can act like a healthy vehicle for mopping up sauce! And I do miss a fluffy carrier of sandwich fillings. Lettuce leaves just don't cut it...

Look at this, it certainly looks the part:

I definitely need to practice though, as the bread I made came out a bit underbaked, and icnredibly oily.

Not surprising, given that there's 250ml of coconut butter in there, but the picture at Free the Animal looks so much better than my result!

Where his bread has risen and seems to stay that way, mine collapsed completely after cooling. Rather than a nice convex bread shape, it went limply concave which didn't look too appetizing...

Next time I will add some more lemon juice, reduce the amount of coconut butter (perhaps with as much as half just to see what happens), add another egg and up the nut content. Adding some coconut or almond flour like in this low carb waffles recipe, or some protein flour could be another way to make it more bready.

Flavour wise it is very neutral, perhaps with a hint of eggy savouriness. Replacement for bread it aint, but it is certainly porous enough to soak up sauce!

And here's the recipe for eggplant mozzarella LCHF sandwiches:

Ingredients

Tasty bread, LCHF bread if you don't want the carbs
Pesto
Mozzarella
Tomatoes
Cooked or smoked ham
Eggplant 
Salt and pepper 

Method

Start with slicing eggplant, one large slice for each sandwich. Brush lightly with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Bake in your oven at 220C grill, 4-5 minutes on each side or until they start going light brown.

Meanwhile, slice the tomatoes and mozzarella.

When the eggplant is done, assemble the sandwiches placing first a layer of ham on the bread, then the eggplant, add some mozzarella, drizzle with a teaspoon of pesto, and finish with the sliced tomatoes.

This went incredibly well on top of the LCHF bread, resulting in a really rich, tasty, satisfying sandwich. Very much a calorie bomb though, and packed with healthy fats, so keep in mind not to eat as much of this as you would if it were actual bread. Fat has twice the calorie content of carbohydrate, remember?

Low-carb experiments: LCHF crisps

Anyone who has tried going low carb will be familiar with a craving for crunchy, carby textures... Potato crisps aren't exactly on the menu when eating LCHF.

There are ways to still those cravings though. Before, we have roasted kale with some oil, salt and pepper to get really crispy leaves. Here is an even better tip though.

Check these crispy, savoury slices of eggplant out:

How do you like them babies? As easy to make as they are delicious.

Inspired by the Cooking Caveman, we tried a few different options. Here's what worked best.

• Slice the eggplant in 3-5 mm thick slices. We first tried going super thin, but found the result better when staying just under 5 mm.
• Brush very lightly with oil (the eggplant absorbs oil like a sponge, so don't overdo it), and season with salt and pepper. As the Cooking Caveman suggests, here you can use whatever spices you like, and we will keep experimenting with different flavours.
• Bake them on baking paper (not directly on the baking tray, or al foil, as the chips will stick and break when you try to get them off) 10 minutes each side at 220C or until dark brown and crisped up.

Delicious! With crisps like these, no need to cheat. The only issue is that we can't make very many in one batch as the size of our oven seriously limits how much you can fit on a baking tray... Maybe a good thing!

While on the topic of crisps, as I was trying to find recieps I also came across another variety involving eggplant. This is more like making low-carb crisp bread and definitely something I intend to try: almond crackers to go with your hoummus or eggplant dip.

A different Hibiscus experience at The Cube

When I moved to London 7 years ago to start working in the restaurant industry, one of the first things I did was poll my esteemed colleagues for the best London restaurants. A name that showed up in several of the replies was Hibiscus. All these years later, I still haven't managed to go. So when I was invited for lunch at The Cube, the restaurant popup organised by Electrolux, I was first surprised, then very happy, and when I found out that Claude Bosi of Hibiscus would head up the kitchen I was really excited!

Anyone with an interest in restaurants have probably heard of The Cube by now. With previous runs in Milan and Brussels, this year sees the space ship like one room restaurant (check out these photos) descend on London. During four months a number of well renowned chefs from all over the UK take turns serving world class food paired with excellent wines while the diners enjoy a unique view of the London skyline.

Enough with the marketing spiel, let's just sum it up as being quite cool. Despite that, being in the middle of wrapping up my employment at Livebookings, I actually managed to forget the whole thing! Left for work in a scruffy t-shirt, so when I remembered where I was going for lunch I went shirt hunting on Lower Marsh. Found what I myself consider a rather stylish shirt, in the spirit of Paul Winch-Furness, the restaurant photographer with the coolest name.

After travelling to the sixth floor of Royal Festival Hall in the singing elevator (yes, there were people travelling up and down just to listen to the lift doing it's thing), I was guided to the balcony with a glorious view of the South Bank. As I turned the corner and saw the entrance to The Cube itself I almost felt like I was set to embark on a space flight. It looks like a set piece from 2001, A Space Odyssey. That 60s space opera "timeless" (at the time...) look married with clean Scandinavian simplicity. It looks great.

While we were plied with bubbly our friendly hosts talked about how the whole thing had been organised (they have been working on this since December last year...), and I met the lovely Celina Mann who blogs over at "Portsmouth Food Lovers" and May Chong of "Slow Food Kitchen".

We were then seated at the table and had the mandatory Electrolux marketing talk (and this was actually the only time during the entire four hours that Electrolux was mentioned) delivered by our excellent sommelier who's name I have rudely forgotten (hey, it's his own fault, pouring all that fantastic wine down my greedy gullet), and then the lunch started. 

And what a lunch. To a playlist put together by Claude Bosi, who apparently is big into his jazzy sounds, we were treated to seven courses with matching wines, all introduced by mr Bosi who happily answered questions and explained how the dishes were made.

Dining at The Cube is quite the spectacle. The Cube is just one room, with dining area and kitchen section just next to eachother, so guests are encouraged to walk over and watch what's going on and ask questions. 

For every course our sommelier presented a different wine, and why he had picked that particular one, the grapes, the maker and so on. And let's just say that servings were generous. I did no more work that day...

Normally, with such an extensive menu being served, by the end of it I have a favourite or two. This time I was really hard pressed to pick one, it was all splendid. Perhaps the very first dish stood out, confit asparagus cooked in butter infused with toasted hay. Served with a dark hollandaise made from said butter. Melt in mouth perfection, I don't think I have ever tasted asparagus that good.

While it isn't the cheapest meal in London (seats are priced at £175 per person for lunch and £215 for dinner), and to be clear, I didn't have to pay for my visit, I would say that the experience is incredibly impressive and I left feeling very satisfied. Unique, generous, world class, unrivalled, iconic, exciting, all the words used in the marketing of The Cube hold true.

More photos:

Plating up with tweezers... Daintiness factor: 100.

Result. Shrimp served with an onion and strawberry sauce. Worked amazingly well together.

Everything I love on a plate. Fish, mushroom, bacon. And ketchup! Mushroom ketchup, that is.

Chicken on a bed of peas and a sauce with ginger and pink grapefruit. Mr Bosi wanted to specifically point out that this was made from English chicken, as he feels it is not just as good as the French but also much cheaper. There you go.

We were treated to some delicious desserts. Here strawberry with a celeriac cream!

This is apparently a classic Hibiscus dish, but Claude will not say what it is. I won't ruin the surprise, just confirm that it is absolutely fantastic.

A nice little finishing touch. This is what Aero Bubbly Chocolate should taste like!