This is a collection of recipes from Elaine's recipe books (and a couple of mine) and other sources. There's more to a recipe than a list of ingredients so if you want to actually cook any of these you'll need to buy the book it's in. (There are footnotes so you know which book). Click on the headings to see the list of ingredients and the nutrition analysis. You can then change some ingredients for others and re-analyse to see how it changes.
Everybody has their own recipe or doesn't even think of it as a recipe. Sainsbury's website has a recipe that says six rashers of bacon. Are they mad? This one's from the BBC food web site. It looks reasonable to me. Some people add hash browns but they're not in our database. A fried slice is though.
I can no longer find the recipe above so here's what BBC Food does have: Stress-free full english breakfast. The reference above will take you there (at least for now).
This example illustrates the problem of recipe quantities. Sometimes Elaine complains about this when she's cooking one. "2 medium carrots","2 slender leeks". How much is that in grams?
The "Hairy Dieters" is an interesting recipe book here because they had a nutritionist calculate the calories in their recipes and we can compare our result with theirs. They have this cottage pie at 322 Calories per portion if serving 6. I'm sure if I tweaked the weight of the leek and carrots I could make it match exactly.
This is one of Delia's. I've cooked a lot from this 35-year-old book and I like it. You still have to weigh the onion though.
I'm very fond of boeuf bourguignonne and I like to compare versions (and spellings). Ainsley's is simpler than Delia's and takes less time to cook. It's quite a lot fewer calories too.
Elaine is giving me a list of recipes to add which she says she uses a lot. This is the first and I recognize it too. This may not always be true as her way of using recipes often means using them as inspiration.
"Braised with lemony potatoes and Bay leaves".
Not every recipe comes in a book. Each delivery of a Riverford veg box comes with a newsletter that includes recipes. Elaine likes cooking these and this one caught her eye. Naturally, these recipes are also available on the Riverford web site so you don't have to buy a book to cook it. If you compare this with the recipe on the web site you'll see I left out the oil. The recipe tells you to fry the courgettes in the oil so including fried courgettes covers the case (though the database has us frying them in corn oil). See the instructions on dealing with choosing food from the data base.
In his Beef Rendang recipe Jamie says you can make your own chapatis; this is his recipe. To compare them with the chapatis in the database click here. We might wonder what makes the difference.
We love cauliflower cheese but not everyone in the family does so we started using broccolli instead of cauliflower. How much difference does that make? You'd expect it to be nothing but it's easy to check here Also, the database has an entry for "Cauliflower cheese, retail". Let's compare it. And there's an entry for home-made cauliflower cheese too. The database has no information on the recipes used for these two.
This is one of those recipe cards you get in Waitrose. Elaine always gets one or two when we go there. This means you can get the whole recipe on the web. Just click on the reference link. It asks for Hoisin sauce but the database hasn't got it. See below.
Here's what you do when the database doesn't contain the ingredient you want to use. Get a recipe for it. A recipe is more than a list of ingredients and on this occasion we can supply the "method" too: put ingredients in blender. Blend.
This is my own recipe. There is an entry in the database for "Corned beef hash, home-made". Clearly they used a different recipe to me. You can compare the two by checking theirs here
Jamie again supplies us with nutrient values for a typical serving. They are dramatically different to the ones you'll get here. Probably because he specifies 1kg of meat and we used 1.6kg. It's trivial to adjust the value in the recipe and recalculate. Try it! Much closer.
Another recipe from Save With Jamie. You may notice that our analysis gives the answer of 618 Calories while Jamie's book says 619. "How close!" you exclaim that his recipe is for 6 servings and mine is for 15. Now I know he says he expects left-overs but that much? The text of the book says you can buy a 1kg piece of brisket from a supermarket but you're better off getting 2kg from your butcher. Maybe the calculated calories are for 1kg not 2kg? Nope. You still have to set it for 10 or 11 servings.
Then again perhaps the calories quoted are for the cooked beef only. So we could leave out all the vegetables. And choose the 'brisket, lean' option. And make it for 8 people. Sunday Roast - no vegetables. Bingo! Ah well.
Maybe it should be "Coronation Chicken". It's a quick substitute for coronation chicken using mango chutney.
Another of those recipes that seems to taste of more than its ingredients.
I'm starting a curry project. All the recipes I use - or look at - will appear here.
This Curry Club recipe is not that complicated. Compare it with the Hairy Biker's version which comes next.
The Hairy Bikers offer this as a low-fat version of chicken korma. At the click of a mouse (or the tap of a screen) you can see if they're right. they do say, though, "296 calories per portion". Not sure why there's such a difference. Most of the calories are in the chicken and the cream. I tried removing the cooking oil and putting "fried chicken breast" instead but there wasn't much difference. Still, 13gm of fat against 59gm for the Curry Club recipe - mostly because of the almonds I think.
Our friends, Si and Dave, have three chicken korma recipes in their curry book. Elaine just made this one. Well, almost. This was the starting point shall we say. She used Patak's korma paste with some extra herbs. The recipe here is from the book.
The third Hairy Biker's korma recipe. Haven't tried it yet. Dead easy and they reckon you can make it in 10 minutes. We have to try this. In this recipe they specify "curry sauce". There are four curry sauces analysed in our database. They're mostly labelled 'home-made' so we really don't know what the recipe was.
Hairy Bikers' sauce to keep in the freezer. In the quantities given it makes four lots of four portions so enough for 16 people.
The problem of quantities is even more acute here. How much is a "thumb-sized piece of ginger"?. "Save with Jamie" also gives you the number of calories per serving. It says 563 calories so we're close.
There's no fish sauce and no lemongrass in the database so you'll see I've fudged it with chilli sauce and mustard leaves. Generally when you do this it will be with some item that makes little difference nutritionally though it may make a big difference to the flavour. Or you might choose just to leave them out. You can edit the recipe and do that.
This recipe has three ingredients that aren't in our database: lemon grass stalks, galangal and kaffir lime leaves. It's hard to know what to substitute for these though leaving them out probably won't make a huge difference to nutritional values. Compare this with Jamie's beef rendang.
A side-dish to go with your curry. From Si and Dave.
This recipe involves a lot of compromises. Blue Dragon Thai Massaman Sauce is not in the database so I added curry paste then coconut oil and sugar to bring the food values close to that of the commercial sauce (the nutritional values are on the Sainsbury website). Nor do we have cinnamon sticks, star anise or fish sauce; I substituted ground cinnamon - just a little - anise seeds and soy sauce. Is this at all valid? Well the only item likely to make a big difference is the curry paste and I tweaked it to get close to the figures for the actual sauce. I think it's close but the more tweaks you make the more cautious you have to be about the results. Basic values - calories, protein, fat and carbohydrate - are probably OK.
A slightly altered version of this recipe is on the Sainsbury website with some nutritional values which you can compare to ours. The big basics are pretty close.
A very spicy and tasty tomato soup. We've added it to our diet recipes because it packs a lot of taste into a few calories, though we spoil that a bit by adding croutons.
Just a beef curry made with Patak's Madras paste. Nothing special (except the taste).
Recipes from Elaine's own recipe book, our Mothers' and Grandmothers'. As these are our own recipes we can provide the cooking instructions too!
We last cooked this about forty years ago. Elaine found it in an old note book and decided to try it. Very indulgent. Here's the method:
Haricot beans are expensive. Why not replace them and the tomato ketchup with tinned baked beans in tomato sauce? Check out the difference! To get the full ingredients list click on the recipe link and then the 'Edit' button.
This is a recipe of my Mother's. The original contains no mention of cashew nuts except in the title so 250gm (8oz) is a guess. Regardless, here's the method:
This is one of Elaine's recipes from the year dot. The strange thing about it is that it tastes of something more than just its ingredients. It's delicious and is perfect for cold winter days. What the recipe actually says is, "2 big carrots, 3 medium potatoes, half a medium swede, a medium turnip, 1 parsnip and a medium onion". I converted these to grams for entry into the system. If you need greater precision weigh every item, edit the quantities in the recipe and re-analyse.
Here are the instructions:
You can see from the analysis that the big calorie contributor is the butter. You probably guessed that anyway. You could put less but it does need enough to bind the topping together.
A perrenial family favourite, made for long journeys. Instructions:
The analysis shows you what to expect from each cake.
Instructions:
Always a surprise that such a simple recipe produces such a delicious cake. As with the Jericho cakes, if you cut it into more slices just adjust the number of servings in the recipe and analyse again. Or put 'Serves 1' and get the analysis for the whole cake.
We got this from our friend Di some thirty or more years ago. It's amazingly simple and here are the instructions:
They should be crisp and a dark golden brown. And delicious. You could replace the margarine with butter. This will make a tiny difference to the analysis. Try it!
Essentially, we made this up after eating in Paris. We thought, "an omelette with potatoes in it" which it pretty much is. You make it like you would make an omelette!
At least one of us needs to lose weight. Collected recipes that might help
Bread substitute. The database doesn't have cream cheese so we used spreadable instead. Nor do we have nigella seeds; used coriander but the quantity is tiny.
Notice that each of the BBC recipes has a nutrition analysis included. Compare to see if we're close.
So Layne joined Noom. Seems sensible enough. These are the recipes she's collecting.
Very tasty! Nigella does a recipe for this but we don't use the pitta breads and topping. And we eat it with rice. I've no idea how you pronounce "Fatteh".