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Eat to Slim
A diet other than denial diet...
A handful of weeks ago, to trim a few kilos of extra baggage, my flatmate went on a regime diet. She shoved aside all creams and oils and cheeses (the essence of good food), and started eating roasted and parched vegetables, pasta with blanched vegetables, salads that would suit a rabbit, and flat porridge for breakfast. I told her about my diet of hearty soups accompanied by flavour-packed dips and finger food: it's good, and she could eat her heart out.
"I want immediate results," she mumbled, perhaps unconvinced or perhaps too driven by the grim determination she had mustered.
I said: "Let's see how long your regime diet will last?"
If you only need to shed a few kilos you can adopt my diet and eat well - with a bit of imagination and planning. The results are immediate, too. Give it a month.
There were phases in my life when I suffered from chronic chubbiness. I went on starvation diets, skipping meals, but these always backfired because of the inherent psychological trap. To skip meals, you have to focus your concentration to suspend the natural clock that prepares the mind and body for food. So you end up thinking about food and, as the mouth produces saliva in anticipation, it becomes a struggle to stay away from the fridge. The more you think about food, the more you crave it - the more you put it off, the more you become obsessed by it. This intensifies until one evening, caught slightly unaware, you open the fridge and stuff yourself in a spasm of greed.
Other times, I did what my flatmate did, dropping fatty foodstuffs from my meals. I started eating tasteless grub. Perhaps if you use imagination in cooking with, say, pulses for healthy and flavourful meals, a regime diet would work, but you need time to plan and create. You need patience and to concoct dishes with tender love. But love for food is the last thing someone on a regime diet nurses. Disgust is a more likely feeling, the emotional predisposition necessary to banish fatty foodstuffs with contempt. So the result may be pasta without cream and parmesan, a half-finished taste with flat flavours. Or roasted chicken with baked potatoes and grilled vegetables, a dry assortment of foodstuffs without that creamy sauce to lift and bind the tastes. Or raw salads minus that oily, pickled dressing, not to mention the missing accompanying chop, marinated and pan-fried and baked.
You get the picture. Regime diets don't last: the moment your determination slacks, fatty foodstuffs stealthily creep back into your dishes. I remember catching my flatmate with a heaped plate of creamy pasta.
"Forgotten your diet?"
She dismissed my question with a wave of hand, her face in her plate.
For a diet to survive beyond the initial heady two weeks, it has to fill the stomach and satisfy the taste buds. I stumbled on such a diet. Think soups. Think dips. Think finger food. And all the three combined. Soup to fill you up like water filling a balloon, crusty bread smeared in a dip to add an extra layer of taste, followed by a few pieces of finger food with strong, explosive tastes to intoxicate those taste buds into satisfied sloth.
Although they have the appearance and muck of baby food, soups can be varied and good. You can do quick soups such as cauliflower or carrot or spinach soup, frying the base ingredients (including onion), simmered with chicken stock, then blended, creamed, and sprinkled with parmesan. Or you can opt for tastier, full-bodied soups. Minestrone is an all time favourite. Bean soup with concentrated pistou (pesto-like concentrate) and elbow pasta is a variation. So is thick lentil and bacon soup with cloves for an exquisite taste. For different textures and flavours, think potato and leek soup with sour cream and milk. Or chicken and corn soup, with its cleaner, gingery taste. The trick is to vary the taste and texture. Take another example, an Indian soup with a fried base of seeds (mustard, coriander, cumin seeds), then chopped carrots, tomatoes and potatoes, with ginger, ground curry spices - all simmered, then drizzled with lemon juice and vinegar, plus chopped coriander.
Soups are inherently dietary partly because of their water content, and partly because they omit chunky chops of fatty meats, especially red meats. But soups, no matter how substantial, only offer one-dimensional tastes. You need accompaniments that introduce contrasting tastes from a wide spectrum of flavours. Think bruschetta, or focaccia smeared with a blend of anchovies, butter, olive oil, garlic, parsley, basil, Parmesan, and grilled. Most times, however, nothing beats dips scooped with baked pitta bread or vegetables crudities.
I go for dips that have a strong Mediterranean taste, almost always adding a dash of chilli. Hummus is probably the most popular dip, but one of my favourites combines baked aubergines blended with tahini, garlic, basil, olive oil and lemon juice. Another blends black olives with garlic, basil, olive oil, chilli and mayonnaise. Or anchovies with garlic, chilli, olive oil and egg yolks. And how about mashed feta cheese mixed with chopped onion and cucumber, yoghurt, mint and olive oil?
To finish off a meal, I also like to have some piece of finger food with delicacy ingredients - for that deep taste that explodes and matures on the palette long after you have scooped your plate clean. One of the easiest things to do is jacket potatoes with a filling added on the plate; it could be as simple as cream, caviar and smoked salmon, or as elaborate as fried bacon and onion in melted cheddar, cream and chilli. Another exciting delicacy is mushrooms baked and stuffed with a sauce of fried onion and garlic, then bound by tomatoes, anchovies and herbs. Spiced, herbed potato wedges are easy, quick, and piquant with garlic, chilli and parmesan. So are slices of aubergine brushed with olive oil, grilled, smeared with olive paste, and topped with basil, tomato and mozzarella slices. Or, ever tried a fish samosa?
If you take on this combined diet based on soups a couple of times a week, you can still make allowance for substantial main courses. Along these lines nothing beats fish cooked simply, basked with a marinate of olive oil, vinegar, garlic, lemon juice, and baked - or grilled plainly on a bed of salt. Other dishes need no introduction, pasta and meat-based dishes.
You see, a diet doesn't have to mean eating badly. If you despise what's on your plate, what chances of that diet lasting beyond the initial momentum of grim determination? The preparation of food and eating is a celebratory ritual - dinner has the thanksgiving symbolism of the closure of one day and the beginning of the rite of passage to the next day. If you talk yourself into disdain for fatty foodstuffs, eating will become a chore, like commuting to work. In self-denial, dinner will take the nature of a furtive guilt trip. But you can't fool your body: instead of metabolising the food smoothly and discarding leftovers, the body will hoard every glob of fat in preparation for the imminence of self-imposed starvation.
Want a diet? First, have fun with food. Make the ritual of creating a meal more elaborate, and experiment with dishes. Cooking is art, so relax, be creative. Only then will a diet - of soups, accompaniments, delicacy finger food, or your other variations - work, because it is creative and civilised. And don't forget that glass of wine, that most civilised of rituals.
© Victor Paul Borg
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