Boost energy and keep weight off without depriving yourself; if this sounds like myth from a far away universe, you’ve been looking in all the wrong places (namely, your pantry). From best-selling author of Cut the Carbs, Tori Haschka shows us the top ten ways to cut carbs and plan a meal that isn’t based on bread, potatoes, pasta and rice. Plus, she’s shared two of her most delicious recipes with your energy levels and waist line in mind.
Top 10 Ways to Cut Carbs
- Be canny – canned pulses are your ultimate convenience food (and have a much lower GI than pasta or rice). Keep a well stocked pantry and you’ll be set. Try tumbling rinsed borlotti beans and cannellini beans and chopped steamed green beans through some pesto for a quick alternative to pesto gnocchi.
- Move over mash– mashed potato and white rice don’t need to be on the bottom of your bowl. Try pureeing cauliflower, tinned butter beans or frozen peas to serve with red meats or chicken, or try cauliflower ‘cous cous’ with curries or tagines.
- Try a liquid lunch – make a pot of soup for Sunday dinner like a Peruvian aguadito chicken soup with quinoa, or chilled white bean cucumber, yoghurt and mint soup and take it for lunch – if it’s sturdy enough, you won’t find yourself searching for bread on the side.
- Make some new friends – experiment with protein rich seeds like quinoa and chia- try them in a new take on porridge or bircher muesli for breakfast, or use them in frittatas or fritters.
- Experiment with chickpea flour – Also known as besan it’s got a lower GI than white flour and carries much more protein. You can find it in the Indian section of the supermarket. Try crepes with it, or us it instead of white flour in a white sauce.
- Expand your snacking horizons – Try roasting almonds slicked with soy and Chinese five spice, or roast kale leaves with lemon zest and salt to have over drinks.
- Consider having a burger without the bun – It’s really the most boring bit. Bulking out your patty with some pulses or quinoa will help keep you full longer. Then swaddle your fillings in crisp lettuce leaves).
- You will make friends with salad – if you take some care. If you make sure you’ve got some slow burning carbs, protein and a good source of crunch, salads can be both festive and sustaining. Try reinventing a Caesar with shredded kale and crispy chickpeas for croutons, or black beans with chorizo, sweet potato and toasted coconut shards.
- Think ahead – if you cook a tub of quinoa at the beginning of the week you’ve got a head start for quick braises, dirty quinoa for pulled pork and the base of soups on Tuesday night. Similarly, make double the amount of white bean puree and then use the rest for a slow carb twist on Tuna Nicoise fish cakes.
- Cut yourself a break – or a piece of cake. Some days will still call for a celebration. Try using the natural sugars in fruit, by muddling a banana into your crumble topping. You can also look into baking with ground nuts or pureed pulses in place of white flour and treat yourself with a lighter take on chocolate cake with a chocolate, black bean and cherry loaf (the batter can be made in a blender in two minutes and it only takes 30 minutes to bake)
Peach Pulled Pork with Dirty Quinoa Recipe
Serves 4–6
Pulled pork should traditionally be eaten on a white roll so fluffy it could stand in for a duvet. What we need is something else to soak up the sticky juice and to act as a foil for the soft threads of meat. Dirty rice is one option. Cajun in origin, it traditionally melds the murk of chicken liver with rice. Here we can imitate its dark complexity with a few shades of quinoa, some lentils and a hit of spice (though if you fancy adding in some ground chicken livers, go ahead). With the tacky sweetness of the peaches, this is a dish that cries out for some sharp cut-through – a slaw of cabbage dressed in apple cider vinegar would be one way, as would a piquant hot sauce. What is not negotiable is a napkin. This isn’t clean eating, by any sense of the word.
Ingredients:
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 tsp chilli powder
½ tbsp sea salt
grated zest and juice of 1 small orange
1 kg well-marbled pork shoulder, cut into pieces the size of a matchbook
2 tbsp olive oil
4 ripe peaches, pitted and chopped, or 220 g drained tinned
peach halves
375 ml ginger ale (or water)
sea salt
Dirty quinoa
85 g white quinoa, rinsed
85 g red or black quinoa, rinsed
375 ml chicken stock
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 x 400-g tin of brown lentils, rinsed handful of fresh coriander, chopped
Method
Mix together the spices, ½ tbsp salt and the orange zest and tumble the pork pieces in it.Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-based saucepan or casserole dish over high heat and add half the meat.
Brown the meat all over, then remove it from the pan and do the same with the second half of the meat.
Return all the meat to the pan with the orange juice and peaches. Add just enough ginger ale to cover the meat (topping up with water if you need more liquid). Bring the liquid to a rolling boil, then reduce it to a simme and cook, uncovered, for 2 hours.
After 2 hours, check the meat. There should only be about a 5-mm depth of liquid left in the pan and the meat should easily shred with 2 forks. Depending on the amount of marbling in the meat, it might need a further 30 minutes or so.
About 20 minutes before serving, make the dirty quinoa. Put the quinoa, chicken stock and cumin in a saucepan and bring it to the boil, then reduce the heat. Simmer with the lid on for 15 minutes, or until most of the liquid has been absorbed. Fold through the drained lentils, season with salt and top with the coriander. When the pork is ready, shred it with 2 forks and toss it with the remaining juices.
Serve the pork with the dirty quinoa and some piquant hot sauce – and if you fancy, a slaw of shredded cabbage dressed with apple cider vinegar.
Rhubarb, Apple and Berry Slow Crumble
Serves 4
The boundaries between a crumble, a crisp, a buckle and a slump are blurry. All seem to involve poached or baked fruit and a topping usually melding sugar, butter and a grain. When it comes to my pudding I’m less interested in definitional purity and more intrigued by having something that tastes terrific. The golden thing about this crumble isn’t just the way that the tartness of the rhubarb is mellowed by segments of apple and oozing berries. Nor is it the wink of spice in the cinnamon or ginger, or the crunch from the flaked almonds and toasted oats. It’s the other bits that make you feel good: the ground flaxseed and the sneaky smashed banana. An over-ripe banana mushed into the topping helps pull down the quantity of raw sugar and contributes both a delicious caramel– sweetness and a rustic chew to the topping. This may be categorised as a ‘slow crumble’, but in our house, it never lasts long. Once again, while this is a delicious dessert, it’s also worth considering as a celebratory brunch or breakfast option, with Greek yoghurt instead of ice cream.
Ingredients
100 g unsalted butter, chilled and cubed, plus 30 g for the fruit
90 g rolled oats
50 g ground flaxseed/linseed
75 g flaked almonds
25 g muscovado sugar
1 ripe banana, mashed
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
5 sticks (250 g) of rhubarb, cut into 4-cm batons
4 Pink Lady apples, peeled, cored and cut into eighths
125 g blackberries Greek yoghurt, crème fraîche, double cream or ice cream to serve
Method
You will need a large, shallow baking dish, greased
Preheat the oven 180˚C/350˚F/Gas 4.
To make a crumble topping, put the 100 g butter, oats, flaxseed/linseed, almonds, sugar, banana, ginger and cinnamon in a bowl. Use your fingers to mash everything together into a rustic tumble. It should be rough and lumpy. Refrigerate the topping until ready to bake.
Put the rhubarb and apple and half the blackberries in a saucepan with the 30 g butter and cook over medium heat for 10–15 minutes until the rhubarb and apple have begun to soften.
Transfer the softened fruit to the prepared baking dish and dot with the remaining berries.
Scatter the crumble topping over the fruit, ensuring there are lots of craggy edges.
Bake the crumble in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until the top is bronzed and crisp. Serve hot with Greek yoghurt, crème fraîche, double cream or ice cream. Or enjoy cold, for breakfast