Els's mess

There is a traditional English dessert called Eton Mess, which consists of crumbled meringue whipped cream and strawberries.  Very easy and actually rather good. This variation on the Eton Mess was done by a new friend who I met whilst staying with a friend on my quick trip to England.  We were having a small dinner party one night and Els offered to make her signature dessert. She did not have a name for it, but due to it's resemblance to Eton Mess we called it Els's Mess.

Very quick and simple but it really needs to be put together at the last minute or the meringue will go soggy. Hard for me to give quantities here as really you can make as little or as much as you want depending on the number of people for dinner, but here are the basic ingredients with proportions.

Pre made or bought meringue (about one nest per person)
Greek yogurt (If you use 0% this is actually quite a light dessert)
Lightly whipped cream (equal quantity to yogurt)
Lemon juice (juice of one lemon to about a cup of yogurt)
Frozen raspberries and blueberries (about a 1/4 cup per person)


Earlier in the day crumble half the meringue in to the bottom of the individual serving dishes we used cut glass tumblers.

Mix the yogurt and cream together and add the lemon juice.  I think I would add some lemon zest as well to punch up the flavour even more.  Keep the yogurt/cream mixture in the fridge until ready to assemble.  I think you could make this with just yogurt as long as you had a good quality Greek yogurt, then it would be almost a diet dessert!

Chicken breast with yogurt and potatoes

It is January, and that means only one thing new years resolutions.  I, like the vast majority of the western world, every year resolves to get in to shape and lose weight.  This year I have an added resolve to lose 17lbs by June 27 when I retire, I want to look good at my retirement party and I want to be in good shape to enjoy a long healthy retirement.  I publicly declaring this to make me accountable. So the first thing to do is start tracking everything you eat, stepping up the activity and cooking lighter.

Boneless skinless chicken breasts are one of the best choices when cooking light, but they can be so dry and tasteless, so my challenge is find ways to make them moist and tasty with out adding too much fat.  For Christmas this year my Father bought me a mandolin, something I have been wanting for a while and this was the first time using this to slice my potatoes, and it was great, quick and easy to clean up.

I sliced them fairly thin so that they would cook quicker.

Feeds two

2 medium to small potatoes sliced fairly thin
1/2 tablespoon of olive oil
2 chicken breast
1/2 cup of low fat plain Greek yogurt
1 clove of garlic grated or put through a garlic press
1/4 cup of grated parmesan cheese

Toss the potato slices in the olive oil and salt and pepper and place in the bottom of small roasting tin.

Grilled chicken marinated in yogurt

Marinating chicken breasts in yogurt helps keep them moist, and when you are cooking with skinless boneless chicken breasts you have to take all the help you can get to keep them from being dry. Since my husband is away for a week back east, I was cooking for myself and was trying to keep it lean, and so I bought two free range chicken breasts and had one for dinner and put the other in the freezer in the marinade for later.

I wanted to add some flavour as well as moistness so I used some garlic and herbs de provance.

For two chicken breasts.

2 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons of herb de provence (or any other herbs you have on hand)
1 teaspoon of course salt
1/2 cup of plain yogurt
2 chicken breasts.

Combine the garlic, herbs and salt in a pestle and mortar or mini chopper.

Grind up to create a flavour paste.

Gooseberry fool

On Sunday my Father and I went out to Hopcotts market to pick up an organic chicken and see what was in season.  Much to my delight they had gooseberries.

gooseberries

This is a taste of my childhood, gooseberries were only in season for a short time and my Mother would make gooseberry fool a couple of times each season, it truly was my favourite dessert growing up as I really did not like chocolate that much (that has changed with age I fear) and have never liked really sweet things, and gooseberries like rhubarb is naturally quite tart. In fact you can make rhubarb fool exactly the same way.

I have cheated a little, basically fools are just stewed fruit mixed half and half with whipped cream, but frankly the cream in Canada really does not hold a candle to the cream in England so I decided to use Liberty full fat Mediterranean plain yogurt.

To stew gooseberries you have to top and tail them, take off the hard bits on each end with a small sharp knife.

Gooseberries that have been topped and tailed

Place in a sauce pan with enough water to not quite cover them and add some honey or sugar to taste for this many gooseberries I added about 1/4 of honey.

ready to stew