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Low-fat recipes: waist not, want not
Gone are the days when eating healthily meant eating worthily – Delia's low-fat favourites, each with a complete nutritional analysis of calories, fat etc, shift the emphasis from waist to taste, proving that you can have your cake and eat it!
Grilled Venison Steaks with Red Onion, Grape and Raisin Confit
Venison steaks are very lean and tender and, so, perfect for a low-fat supper dish. A confit to serve with them is, I think, far nicer than a sauce containing lots of cream and butter.
Sea Bass with Puy Lentil Salsa
This is an extremely fast supper dish for two people that is full of colour and flavour. Some small new potatoes would make a good accompaniment, but for serious waist watchers, I don't think it really needs it.
Slow-cooked Root Vegetable Soup
Something happens to vegetables when they're cooked very slowly for a long time: their flavour becomes mellow but at the same time more intense, and your kitchen is filled with aromas of goodness. This soup is also completely fat-free.
Chinese Steamed Trout with Ginger and Spring Onions
As with salmon, trout is slightly higher in fat, but still very low compared with meat. The fat in both trout and salmon is the good kind we all need to include in our diets.
Bloody Mary Soup
More of a Virgin Mary really, but there's nothing to stop you adding a shot of vodka if you have the mind to. Honestly, though, it won't need it because it has a lovely spicy kick of its own, and the very best news is it must easily be the fastest soup on record, although it tastes as though it took hours!
Almost Mayonnaise
This is adapted from Eliza Acton's recipe for English Salad Sauce, written in the 1840s. While hers used double cream, the recipe below uses eight per cent fat fromage frais. The vote from the team when we were testing this is that it's every bit as good as the original.
Squidgy Chocolate Cakes with Prunes in Marsala
When I had dinner with a friend from New York recently, he gave me a challenge: 'If you can come up with a low-fat, low-sugar chocolate dessert that tastes really good, you'll have broken new ground.' So, here follows what I hope will be a ground-breaking recipe!
Marinated Chicken Brochettes with Green Couscous
Buttermilk makes a superb marinade – so much so you'll wonder why you ever needed oil. The chicken will be luscious and tender and, with all the other wonderful flavours, you'll forget this is in any way a diet recipe.
Thai Crab Salad with Mango
This is a low-fat variation of Thai Grilled-Beef Salad with Grapes. In Thailand they serve it with pomelo, which is very similar to grapefruit. When they're not available I use mango, but you could ring the changes with grapes or small segments of pink grapefruit.
Teriyaki Grilled Marinated Salmon with Marinated Cucumber and Sesame Salad
This has a slightly higher fat content than my other Waist Watchers recipes because I'm using salmon, which works best, but it can be made with other fish, such as cod or haddock fillet, too.
Pasta with Pepper Relish
The great thing about this is that, because the flavour of the peppers and garlic is so intense, the pasta honestly doesn't need any cheese.
Oriental Chicken
It's hard to believe something so simple and easy can, firstly, be low-fat and secondly, taste so very good. I guarantee that once you've made this once, you'll go on making it for ever.
Slimmers’ Wild Mushroom Risotto
This is an oven-baked risotto with the deep, fragrant flavour of mushrooms. It's extremely creamy and luscious but – can you believe it? – it contains no cream, no butter and, what's more, no cheese.
