Amma's Kitchen: Varutha Meen (Keralite Fried Fish)

Ed was winding me up non-stop the other day. Rather than ranting and raving at him, I finally and calmly asked him how he was going to make up for his behaviour. He said: 'I'll buy you fish!'. Although he got berated for being tight northerner etc, he knew exactly what I needed. A nice piece of fish makes me very happy. Whilst back home, my mum's way of showering love was to fry me lots of fish, keralite style. I've never quite been able to recreate her style of fried fish, partly due to lack of availability of the right fish and partly because of how fish is filleted here. My mum ( a.k.a. Amma) has very kindly shared her recipe here as part of a new twist to the food section, Amma's Kitchen.  In case you were wondering, varutha meen is Malayalam for fried fish. Here is how Amma makes it.

Ingredients:
6 pieces of fish (I'd use mackerel or pomfret although I'm sure it works with most fish)
2 tsp chilli powder
Salt, to taste
1 tsp ginger and garlic paste
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1 lemon
1 onion
2 cups semolina for dipping the fish
1 cup oil for frying



Method:

Sprinkle the fish with the juice of half a lemon, add salt, chilli, ginger and garlic  and set aside to marinate. After about 30 mins of marinating, roll the fish in semolina and deep fry until nicely browned on both sides. The trick is to make sure the fish is nicely fried without getting overcooked and disintegrating. Serve with lemon and onion slices. 

I'm yet to perfect Amma's varutha meen but I'll keep practising. Let me know how you get on with this recipe. Ann x

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Can you get healthy fish and chips?

By Juliette Kellow

It’s not the obvious event for a dietitian to attend, but on Tuesday I went to The National Fish & Chip Awards 2015. Living by the seaside and being a firm supporter of the fishing industry (as well as working as a nutrition consultant for Seafish, who organised the event), I wanted to fly the flag.

How can I defend this? Fish and chips is loaded with calories and fat – a disaster for our waistline and heart with a typical portion of cod in batter and side of chips containing around 880kcal and 44g fat. Then we smother it with salt that’s just waiting to push up our blood pressure! And we add more salt and sugar when we dollop on ketchup – and extra calories and fat if we dip our chips in mayo.

With about 10,500 takeaway fish and chip shops in the UK, collectively serving around 380 million meals each year, that’s a huge contribution to our national intakes of the bad stuff. Indeed, a typical cod and chip supper provides 44% of daily calorie needs and 63% of a day’s needs for fat. But before we write off this classic combo, there’s plenty of good stuff to consider.

The good nutrition

• Providing you skip the salt pot, a typical portion of cod and chips contains no more than 0.4g salt. As we should have less than 6g a day, that makes it a good choice for a main meal. 
• It’s loaded with protein, which improves satiety – a serving provides three-quarters of our daily needs. 
• It’s not just protein that provides the filling factor – one portion also has almost a third of our daily needs for fibre – and that’s without mushy peas. 
• It’s the vitamins and minerals that really shine through. Most dietitians recommend that a main meal provides around 30% of our daily needs for calories and nutrients. This meal is a real winner, containing at least 30% of our daily needs for magnesium, copper and vitamins B1, B2, B3 and B6.
• Better still, a typical portion provides 63% of our daily needs for folate; 72% phosphorus and selenium; almost one and half times more vitamin B12; and over twice the amount of potassium and iodine!

A worthy award
All in all, it appears to be a dietitian’s dream plate of food! But the calories and fat still worry me, especially as obesity is headline news and heart disease remains the number one killer in the UK. So I was particularly pleased to see one of the awards was for Healthy Eating Fish and Chips. There were three nominations, including Fishcity in Ballynahinch, County Down, and Harbourside Fish & Chips in Plymouth (pictured, above). I’d actually been to the latter after a family outing to Plymouth Aquarium (oh the irony)! And we all agreed it was the best fish and chips we’d ever eaten.

In fact, the award went to Towngate Fisheries in Bradford. This chippie offers lighter options, including a mini haddock and small chips plate for 499kcal and 28g fat (or 571kcal with the addition of peas). They also offer alternatives to traditional battered fish, including poached haddock – perfect for anyone counting calories or who needs to avoid gluten or wheat. Plus, LoSalt – an alternative to salt that replaces around two-thirds of the sodium in salt with potassium – is offered as well as the regular white stuff. In fact, LoSalt (who sponsored this award) are working with hundreds of fish and chip shops to help fans reduce the amount of sodium – the blood-pressure-raising component of salt – in their diet.

As for the menu at the event! Well, naturally, I was expecting fish and chips. But even I can see how that could leave hotel chefs sinking rather than swimming – 650 portions of fish and chips for, well, 650 experts on this dish! Instead, we had delicious smoked cod with curly kale, rösti potato, baby leeks, baby onion and a champagne sauce.

Eat chickpeas to lower cholesterol

They’re an HFG staple, and with the news today that eating a daily serving of chickpeas could reduce levels of bad cholesterol and, therefore, the risk of heart disease, now there’s even more reason to keep your storecupboard stocked with this versatile pulse.

Scientists in Toronto analysed 26 trials and found that eating a portion of beans or pulses each day cut bad cholesterol by around 5%. ‘This study supports what we know about the heart health benefits of a Mediterranean diet rich in beans and pulses,” says Victoria Taylor, senior dietitian at the British Heart Foundation.

But they’re not just good for your heart – chickpeas are naturally low in fat and salt, and they’re a good source of protein. Plus 3tbsp counts as one of your five-a-day. ‘We have a lot of room in our diets for increasing our pulse intake,’ says Dr Sievenpiper, who led the study. ‘As an added bonus, they’re inexpensive.’ To help you get your intake, we’ve looked back through the HFG archives to share with you five tasty ways with a tin of chickpeas…

1.     Pittas on the pulse

In a medium bowl, mix together watercress, drained chickpeas, pitted olives, halved cherry tomatoes and a little crumbled reduced-fat feta. Toss the salad with a drizzle of reduced-fat dressing, then use to fill wholemeal pitta breads.

2.     Quick hummus

Tip 1 tin drained chickpeas into a food processor with the zest and juice of 1 lemon 3tbsp tahini, 2 large garlic cloves and 100ml olive oil. Whiz until smooth, then season with ground black pepper. Top with chopped fresh coriander and a light drizzle of olive oil.

3.     Half-and-half curry

Heat a little spray oil in a non-stick frying pan, then gently fry 1 sliced onion until soft. Add 1 crushed garlic clove and 1tbsp harissa paste and cook for 2 min. Add 1 tin chopped tomatoes and 1tsp sugar and bring to a simmer, then tip in 1 tin drained chickpeas and simmer for 10 min. Stir through 200g ready-cooked and peeled prawns and cook for 3–4 min. Serve with brown rice.

4.     Garlicky mash

Preheat the oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Slice the top off one whole garlic bulb, wrap it in foil, then roast in a baking tray for 30 min. Meanwhile, heat a little spray oil in a medium pan, then add 1 sliced onion and gently cook for 5 min. Add 1 tin drained chickpeas and 300ml reduced-salt veg stock and simmer for 10 min, then drain, reserving a little of the stock. Remove the garlic from the foil and squeeze the flesh into the chickpeas, then mash together, adding a little of the reserved stock, if needed.

5.     Beany burgers

In a food processor, pulse 1 tin drained chickpeas until roughly chopped, then tip into a mixing bowl. Add 500g turkey mince, 2 ready-cooked and coarsely grated beetroots, 1 finely chopped onion, 2tsp fennel seeds, 1tbsp apple sauce and 3tbsp chopped fresh parsley, then stir to combine. Season, then shape the mixture into 8 burgers. Spray a non-stick frying pan with a little oil, then cook the burgers for 6–7 min on each side until cooked through. Serve in toasted buns with your choice of toppings.

For more ways with chickpeas, download the March 2013 issue of Healthy Food Guide from itunes

Super bakes!

By Laura Day

Childhood friends – now time-short, food-loving parents – Philippa Askham and Tanya Mitchell, launched nutritious baking brand Sweetpea Pantry last year. They won Richard Branson’s Foodpreneurs Award in 2014, and are on a mission to make nutritious food for kids easy

“We’ve always been passionate about children’s nutrition but we found it hard to find time to feed our kids well. Then we decided to create baking mixes that would save people time and energy but not compromise on great-tasting, healthy ingredients.

Tanya and Philippa, founders of Sweetpea Pantry

 “When developing our recipes, we worked with paediatric nutritionist Belinda Blake. Along the way, we spoke to a lot of people who love baking but don’t know how to make it nutritious. They’d heard of things like quinoa but felt it’s a bit ‘out there'. And they knew they should cut back on sugar and add wholegrains, but didn’t know how. We thought about what kids like to make and eat and added the nutritious angle without making it too complicated." Result? A range of good-for-you baking kits – everything from pizza dough (flax and chia, anyone) to pancakes – and not forgetting choccie biscuits and flapjacks (with ‘yes, we can use’ quinoa).

“Our kits are perfect for time-pressed parents who can’t cook from scratch all the time but want to give their children nutritious food.

“We didn’t realise our gluten-free products would be so big. Our flapjacks were re-launched this year to be gluten free. So many products are sugar-loaded that people were excited to find a health-conscious brand. We want to make our products flexible so they can be made dairy-free, too.

“We’d like to develop the Free From (gluten-free) and savoury angle, which is where we’ve seen our strengths. Long-term, we want to launch on-the-go snacks, which are natural, contain wholegrains, and have less sugar.”

For more information, visit sweetpeapantry.co.uk