As is usual when confronted with an unusual vegetable, I hit the Internet looking for inspiration. Sadly, I found none. Nigel Slater, my favorite source of inspiration, detests the poor vegetable. Other offerings were almost universally unsuitable for a woman on a diet, involving baking the slices in cream or grating them and dousing with mayonnaise. So I turned back to my first idea: cumin and kohlrabi. I decided they needed a substantial background and so I opted for quinoa as a base and also threw in a red pepper that was lingering in the back of the vegetable drawer. And finally, I decided to add a generous helping of mushrooms. We recently got the barbecue working again for the season and so I opted to simply grill the mushrooms. The result was deeply satisfying, with the spicy flavors of cumin and cayenne pepper, meatiness of the grilled mushrooms, sweet red peppers and kohlrabi with its delicate brassica note. It stood up well to the other flavors but didn't fight them - a perfect hearty summer salad.

If you are interested in the less diet conscious classic kohlrabi recipes, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a fan of the kohlrabi and included three recipes I'd like to try in last Saturday's Guardian.

250 g quinoa
700 ml stock
1 onion
1 small kohrabi (around 350 g)
30 medium mushrooms
1 red pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt (or considerably less if using commercial stock)
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

In making the salad, I opted for simplicity and cooked the onion, kohlrabi and quinoa all at once in the stock. As it turned out, the timing was perfect, with the kohlrabi becoming tender just as the little quinoa seeds were popping into perfectly cooked curlicues. If you are nervous about this method, you could easily steam the kohlrabi separately and add it once the quinoa is nearly done. In this case, I would replace some of the stock with the water from steaming kohlrabi so as to preserve all the vitamins.

Bring the stock to a low boil and add the quinoa. Slice the onion in fine half-moons and add to the pot. Wash the kohlrabi and slice in thin bite-sized tiles. Most recipes call for peeling kohlrabi, but mine was young and such a pretty glossy purple that I opted to simply peel away the few rough patches and and cut it up with the skin. Add the kohlrabi and spices to the stock and quinoa, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the quinoa is swollen and open and the kohlrabi is tender. It should take about 20-25 minutes.

In the meantime, wash and trim the mushrooms. Slice the larger ones in half and leave the small ones intact. Fire up the barbecue and grill the mushrooms until slightly shriveled and browned - about five minutes. Turn them over and cook the other side until nicely browned. Remove to a plate. If you don't have a barbecue, you can simply roast them in a hot oven, shaking the pan from time to time to cook on all sides.

Wash, cut in two and deseed the pepper. Place it in the hottest part of the grill, skin side down. Grill until soft and blackened on the skin side. Place in a bag in the refrigerator to cool. Again, this can be done in a hot oven if you don't have a barbecue.

Taste the quinoa for spices. With home-made stock, it may need a little more salt or cayenne or cumin if your spices are a little old. Peel the pepper and slice in strips. Toss all the ingredients together with the quinoa and kohlrabi mixture. Eat warm or cold. It would be a perfect picnic dish with a cold beer!

* This dressing, by the way, bears only the vaguest of resemblance to the commercial dressing of the same name. Both are green. Both have garlic. And both - heaven help me - are beloved by yours truly. Actually, I haven't tasted the commercial version in a few decades so that last one may no longer be true. But when I was a young lass, I used to drown my salads in it and would have happily eaten it straight from the bottle if my mother let me!

In the interest of Truth and Full Disclosure, I do have to admit that this dressing does have one teensy drawback. Neither raw garlic nor anchovies benefit from being stored once they have been put in a dish or sauce. The garlic will go from being pleasantly sharp to overpowering and the lovely anchovy flavor will just seem fishy. So I would not recommend storing it in the refrigerator more than 24 hours, and even then I would highly recommend adding another teaspoon or two of lemon juice to refresh the flavors and tone down the garlic. Taste and use at your own risk! Better still, do like I did and use it all up in one go. After all, the entire dose is 1.5 Weight Watchers point (.5 per serving if you divide it in four generous portions)!

1/2 a pot of low fat plain yogurt
1 large handful of fresh basil leaves
1 clove of garlic
4 small spring onions
1/2 a small tin of anchovies (If you are an anchovy lover and use the remainder to garnish your salad it will only add one point - or use a couple of them to garnish the sauce if you are making a crudités dip. I like to warn guests about the presence of anchovies in this way when we have people over for dinner or drinks!)
2 teaspoons lemon juice

Rinse the anchovies and add them, along with the rest of the ingredients, to a mini-blender or mini-food processor. Whizz on high until smooth. Taste for seasoning: it may need a little more lemon juice or a dash of pepper. It probably won't need salt. It will need to be consumed immediately. Enjoy!

Note: to make a dipping sauce, as mentioned, put the yogurt in cheesecloth and suspend above a bowl for an hour or two before continuing with the rest of the ingredients in the blender. This would be lovely on carrot sticks, lightly blanched cauliflower or broccoli, cucumber, peppers, just about anything!

When I next saw the farmer's wife (who is actually the wife of the head of the local agricultural college if you want to be exact) she asked what I had done with it. And I had done as I always do: stewed it with sugar until it made a glossy red compote and spread it thickly on my morning toast every day for a week. (As an aside, rhubarb stewed with sugar is only half a Weightwatchers point for 75 g, which is plenty for a piece of toast.) She thought this sounded disgusting. Which is funny to me, because my first (and last, as far as I am concerned) experience of an English rhubarb tart truly was disgusting. It managed to be simultaneously slimy and woody - and so sour that I am puckering again just remembering it. There are some aspects of English cooking I will never understand.

I thought of this when I began planning a big barbecue combining a housewarming (which we never held when we moved) and a birthday party (because my 40th was spent nursing a newborn every two hours in a post-birth hormonal haze). I would make a rhubarb dessert that would show this woman exactly how amazing rhubarb could be when stewed with sugar. And I would have shown her too, if she had shown up.

Actually, the dessert was a huge hit. Even the Critic, who, because of experiences with the aforementioned English Rhubarb Tart, has always maintained that he doesn't like rhubarb - loved it. The mousse came out a bit sweeter than I would normally make it, but this complimented the strawberries perfectly. Topped with unsweetened whipped cream, the parfait was creamy and sweet but with a bite of ever so slightly sour strawberry. It really was a perfect early summer dessert. Or pudding, as they say over here.

Making the mousse for this parfait was, I'll admit, a bit of a job. However, the result is so good that I'll be making it again - and often. It makes a very classy dessert for a dinner party and can be made up the day before and assembled in five minutes when you are ready to serve. If I were to compete on Masterchef Goes Large, this would be my dessert.

4 cups chopped rhubarb
2 1/4 c sugar (450g)
1 tsp gelatin or 1 sheet
2 cups heavy cream, divided
1 quart/500g strawberries

Cook the rhubarb with 1/4 cup of water and the sugar in a saucepan until soft. Strain, reserving the liquid. Purée the rhubarb in a food mill or food processor while you reduce the liquid to 1/2 a cup or until your patience runs out, whichever comes first. (The recipe I adapted from my Fannie Farmer cookbook called for cooking it down to half a cup but my patience ran out somewhere around the cup and a quarter mark.) Soften the gelatin in two tablespoons of cold water and then stir it into half a cup of the hot syrup. (Note to self and any other birdbrains out there: do NOT lick the spoon you have been using to stir boiling syrup without letting it cool first. It will hurt.) Stir the gelatin mixture into the rhubarb. Whip 1 cup of the whipped cream until stiff. Fold into the rhubarb gently. Spoon into wine glasses or martini glasses and refrigerate at least six hours.

Before serving, wash the strawberries and cut them in bite-sized chunks. Whip the cream. Sprinkle the berries over the mousse and top with whipped cream. Enjoy.

Note: the parfait looked very pretty in a champagne flute, but I think that next time I'll probably use martini glasses. You really want to have a bit of cream, a strawberry and mousse in every bite and this is easier to achieve with a wider brim on the glass.

When I first arrived in Europe, I was determined to immerse myself in the local culture and turned my back on American food. In Bavarian beer gardens, I ate steckerlfisch and and consumed vast quantities of Edelstof and schnapps. In Paris, I happily explored the 365 cheeses and ate, well, everything in sight: snails, frog legs, steack-frites, moules-frites, crêpes and pastries. I turned into the ultimate Francophile snob, informing visitors how superior a croque-monsieur was to an American grilled cheese sandwich, how they would never find a baguette in American to compare with a Parisian one. (Though I did loftily admit that a friend of mine had told me of a bakery in the Seattle Pike Place market which had bread that was was made by a Frenchman, in a French stove, with French flour - which was "not bad".) But over time, I found more and more food items sneaking into my suitcase when I returned from visits to the US. Smoked oysters and Triscuits. Concentrated cranberry juice. Baking powder and yeast. Reese's peanut butter cups. And I came to realize that although French food might be vastly superior to American food in general (and I do say might: the Critic would disagree completely) in your heart of hearts, nothing can replace the food you grew up with.

Now that I am the mother of two boys with American and British passports, another truth has become apparent. Not only do we crave the food of our childhood, but we yearn to pass it along to our children. While I am delighted that my boys will have happy memories of Cadbury's chocolate and the fish and chips van that comes to the village every Tuesday, I also want them to remember fresh picked Illinois sweet corn and trick or treating on a cold October evening. In short, like every parent, I want it all for my kids. And while I can't change the fact that "pudding" will forever mean "dessert" in their little half-British minds, I can at least ensure they know and appreciate what an American means by "chocolate pudding" . Chocolate pudding may not come in a little cardboard box here (one of my earliest cooking triumphs was making Jello brand chocolate pudding) but it's almost as easy to make with ingredients in your cupboard. Well, in my cupboard anyway.

Although I generally try to remember to weigh my dry ingredients in metric measures for European readers, on this occasion I completely forgot. However, the proportions are not set in stone and the amount of sugar will depend on your tastes and your chocolate.

1/2 cup sugar
3 Tbs cornflour (Maizena in France)
dash of salt
1/3 cup cocoa powder
3 oz. / 85 g of baker's chocolate (I used Williams and Sonoma fondue chocolate buttons that someone gave me for a Christmas some time ago)
2 cups semi-skimmed milk
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract (optional - I just love the flavor of vanilla and almond combined with chocolate)

Thoroughly mix the dry ingredients in the bottom of a saucepan until no crumbs or clumps remain. Drizzle a tiny amount of milk and stir into a paste. Keep gradually adding the milk, being careful not to allow clumps of dry paste to form. Once all the milk is incorporated, add the vanilla and the almond extract. Place over a medium heat and bring gently to a boil, stirring consistently. Do not turn your back on it for two minutes to look after a needy two year old as it will undoubtedly start to boil the second you do. Once the mixture is boiling, turn the heat down and continue to cook for another minute; the pudding should already be thickening nicely. Beware of the splatters of hot pudding which can erupt from the boiling mass as they will be very hot. (Big Brother, who was helping me, was banished from the stove at this point, much to his irritation. "I t'an't SEE!" he complained.) Remove from the heat and stir in the chocolate. Continue stirring until it is completely melted and incorporated in the pudding. Pour into six parfait glasses and either serve warm or put in the refrigerator for at least half an hour to finish setting. Consume with great relish.

Weight Watchers note: this recipes makes six servings of four points each, not bad for a very chocolate-y delicious dessert!

Like about a million other enthusiastic cooks and Paris fans out there, I read David's blog avidly. I have followed his adventures with the French, commiserated knowledgeably with his trials confronting French bureaucracy, bookmarked his recipes and enjoyed keeping up with a friend who is witty, warm and observant. So I knew his book would be good. What I didn't expect (and forgive me, David) was that it would be great. There are books that I read, enjoy, and pass on to others to enjoy. And then there are books that I read, enjoy, and put on my bookshelf so that I can read them again later. David's book falls in this category. If any of my friends or family receive a copy of The Sweet Life in Paris, it will be because I have ordered them their own, new, copy.

So how is this book different from the blog? Well, it has some of the same stories, it's true. But the virtue of a blog is its immediacy and rough edges. I enjoy reading blogs - no one more - but I don't expect them to have such good writing that I'd like to curl up in front of a fire and consume them slowly. I expect them to have a good story, possibly a good recipe, a lot of fun. Blogs, for me, are like newspapers - to be consumed with relish and then you move on. A book should be enjoyed in comfort, away from the lure of emails and news stories. And although the book follows many of the same themes and stories as his blog, David's book is a coherent whole, standing on its own.

The Sweet Life is divided into thematic chapters, recounting David's move to Paris and his first steps growing to love and adopt his new city. Without being coy or cutesy (David is never cloying) he manages to convey a deep love and appreciation of its quirks and beauties, while keeping a firm lock on the absurdities of your average Parisian. I have read many, many books about Paris over the years. (For some reason, living in a place like Paris makes people think you need to know more about it and they send you books and articles galore. Especially if they are my mother.) The best of them had me nodding my head sagely a few times in agreement. Many made me think "this writer has no clue what makes a Parisian tick!" And many of them were simply badly written stories by people who (understandably) love the maddening city of Paris. What makes David's stories different from all of these is that he has a way of delving into the "why" of the behavior he observes. Instead of just collecting a group of humorous stories about living in Paris, he has tried to understand his subjects. When he first arrived in Paris, like every other visiting American he was appalled with how "rude" shopkeepers could be. But unlike most of them, he took the time to observe and figure out that there is a different set of rules: in Paris, the cheese monger or store clerk you meet has a sense of métier, or profession, and considers it a gross insult if you don't greet him politely ("Bonjour Monsieur, Bonjour Madame") on entering the shop. Rudeness, begets rudeness, and the American client gets pointedly ignored when asking for help. And then, in addition to the funny and insightful stories, there are the recipes. If you own any of his cookbooks you know that the man knows how to construct a foolproof recipe. However, like his blog, the book does not confine itself to sweet recipes but also shows his flair for fascinating savory dishes. The only problem for me is deciding whether to put his book on my cookbook shelf or with the rest of my books. It's a dilemma.

Only once before have I bought a book that so closely resembled the blog of the author. Sadly, in that case I was left feeling like the book simply existed so that those who were new to the blog wouldn't have the bother of paging through her archives. The stories seemed to have been lifted straight from the web, with editing and little or no expansion. It was a nice book and I'll pass it along to a friend one of these days. And I'll keep reading her blog, because I do think she's a wise and witty woman.

But David - needs to write another book so that I can buy it and put it on the shelf next to this one. If you love David, buy it. If you love Paris, buy it. If you are unsure, check it out from the library: you'll undoubtedly end up buying it afterwards.

Living the Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City
David will be signing copies of the books at W.H. Smith's on Tuesday, the 19th of May 2009 at 19:30. For more details on other signins, check the Schedule section of David's blog.

Plaice seems to be a fairly uncommon fish in North America, judging by the number of people who thought I'd made a typo when I mentioned it in my Facebook status line. Here in the UK, it's very popular - both in the ubiquitous fish and chip shops and also in restaurants, where it's often cooked similarly to sole. It's a very versatile fish in that way. And its tender flesh and subtle flavor shine when paired with sweet orange juice and creamy (low-fat) yogurt. A touch of tarragon brings the elements together and you end up with one delicious diet dish.

I served the fish with a small helping of mixed wild and long grain rice (110 g for two) which brought the total Weight Watchers points up to 5.5.

2 place fillets of about 175 g each
1/2 a large orange plus 2-3 Tbs orange juice (I reserved the heel of the orange when slicing it for the fish and squeezed that for the juice)
1 tsp sunflower oil
1/2 a small pot of low fat yogurt (I made mine in my new yogurt maker with semi-skimmed milk; use 0% fat yogurt if you want to keep the points this low)
1/2 tsp tarragon (to taste really, but I find that a little tarragon goes a long way)
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 180c/350f. Spread the oil in the bottom of a baking pan large enough to hold both the fillets and lay them in it. Sprinkle the tarragon over the fish and lay the orange slices over the fillets. Bake for about 15 minutes or until the flesh is opaque and flaky. In the meantime, combine the orange juice and yogurt in a small pan and warm through. Add a dash of salt and pepper and reserve it. When the fish is done, serve over a small helping of mixed rice (5 points total for 110 g). Add a tablespoon or two of the fish juices from the baking pan to the orange yogurt sauce and taste for seasoning: it may need a bit of tarragon or a little more pepper to bring out the flavors. Drizzle over the fish and rice and consume immediately - fish cools quickly!

These are lovely served on a bed of lettuce with sliced tomatoes, thinly sliced red onions and a tablespoon of yogurt mixed with grated cucumber. The tzatziki - whether commercial or homemade - will cost you a half a point on the Weight Watchers regime, but it does add a lovely fresh flavor to the burgers and adds some needed moisture.

200 g skinless uncooked turkey breast
90 g cooked spinach, well drained
50 g feta cheese
1 slice of bread
1 medium egg
1 clove garlic
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried basil

Place all the ingredients in a food processor and turn it on until the mixture starts to form a ball in the bowl of the machine. You may need to add a little more bread, depending on how moist it is and the size of your egg. It will still be squishy, but stick together well enough to make a ball. Flatten and cook over a very hot grill/griddle pan or in a well-seasoned cast iron pan. If the pan is nice and hot before the burgers go in, they will sear pretty quickly and should not stick. Cook for five to seven minutes on one side and then turn over and cook another five on the other side. The burgers should be firm to the touch and cooked through when you remove them from the pan. Serve with lettuce and tzatziki and tomatoes if you have them (our CSA box had one tomato, indicating, I think, that the local organic farm has a greenhouse!). If you are not on a diet, you could toss them into hamburger buns for added weight - but it really isn't necessary. The salty feta and spinach have a subtle flavor that will stand out beautifully on their own.

But although I do try to eat seasonal foods and ones that are grown locally, there are a few specialty items that I can't imagine living without and so do buy in small quantities even if they do come from another climate. Lemons, ginger, the occasional bunch of bananas. I try to shop sensibly but at the same time I don't want my children to grow up without these flavors.

So when I noticed a couple of small heads of bok choi nestled between the carrots and rubbery turnips, I thought of another bright, light flavor sitting in my fruit bowl: beautiful firm yellow lemons from Spain. The resulting dish isn't really oriental or Spanish or any specific ethnic variety. But it is bright and light and full of tang and most definitely a fitting spring supper. And for those following my Weight Watchers quest, it's a mere 3.5 points (plus another 2.5 if you are serving it over wild rice, as I did).

I recently rid our kitchen of the old Teflon pans that the Critic bought before we were together and replaced them with a couple of cast iron pans. They came pre-seasoned and worked beautifully at searing the chicken breasts with a minimum of oil. I am regretting that I didn't make this move years ago, as they are so worth the slight extra effort in hand washing them!

2 chicken breasts
1 tsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic
2 carrots
2 small heads of bok choi (spinach or Belgian endives would work equally well)
8-10 fresh basil leaves, reserving 2 for garnish
1 small red chili pepper
100 g frozen peas
1 cup chicken stock
juice of half a lemon

Brush two skinned chicken breasts with the olive oil. Smash two garlic cloves with a mallet. Heat up a nonstick frying pan with high sides on a medium high flame. Place the garlic cloves - without skins - in the centre of the pan and place a chicken breast on top of each. Sear the meat for a few minutes and then turn over. In the meantime, wash and chop the carrots, bok choi, basil leaves and pepper (finely for the latter two). Turn down the heat on the chicken breasts (they don't need to be cooked through), scatter the carrots, basil and peppers in the pan and add about a cup of chicken broth and the lemon juice. Cover and simmer for 10-12 minutes or until the chicken has cooked through and the carrots are tender. Add the bok choi or spinach and frozen peas. Cover and cook another 2-3 minutes, until the greens have wilted and the peas are tender. Taste for salt; if you have used home made chicken stock, it will need a generous pinch. Garnish with the remaining basil and server over a mixture of wild and long grain rice.

When I started visiting the UK with the Critic a decade ago and more, I was frequently taken in by the lure of Caesar's salad. It's not a dish that shows up frequently on French menus and it's one of my favorite dishes of all time. When it's done right. But pretty much universally - and especially in theoretically "American" restaurants - it's criminally awful in British restaurants. Anchovies rarely figure in the salad or the dressing. The tomatoes are woody and flavorless. It actually tastes like someone has taken salad cream (i.e. watered down sweet mayonnaise) and added a teaspoon of grated industrial Parmesan per cup of sauce, plopped on some wilted lettuce, added a few dried out bits of bread and the aforementioned tomatoes and - ta-da! - served something that tastes almost but not quite entirely unlike Caesar's salad.

It makes me very, very angry. Or it did until I learned better and swore off ordering Caesar's salad in the UK.

This salad is also, sadly, not a true Caesar's salad. But the difference - and the reason it is not a crime - is that it is true to the spirit of a Caesar's salad and sings with flavors. I just cut out ninety percent of the fat so that I can have it frequently for lunch and still lose weight. Feel free to increase the amount of olive oil and add some paper thin shavings of Parmesan if you are not on a diet; you will undoubtedly be glad. But if you are looking for a relatively low calorie version of this classic salad, this is the one for you.

2 medium Romaine heads
1-2 tomatoes (optional - they are not in season, so I omitted them)
1 slice of whole wheat bread
1 small tin of anchovies, rinsed
2 tsp olive oil
1 clove garlic
1 tsp mustard
1/2 Tbs grated fresh Parmesan
juice of half a lemon
2-3 Tbs water
salt, pepper

Toast the slice of bread. Cut the clove of garlic in half and rub it on the bread thoroughly. Reserve the clove. Measure the olive oil into a small food processing basin and brush a minimal amount of it on the bread with a basting brush. Sprinkle with salt, cut in squares and set aside.

Add the anchovies (minus one or two if you like whole ones in your salad) to the basin, as well as the Parmesan, garlic clove, mustard, lemon juice and anchovies. Add a tablespoon of water and process. If necessary, add a bit more water to get the consistency you prefer. Pepper generously.

Wash and cut or rip the salad and spin it dry. In a large bowl, toss it with the dressing to coat thoroughly. Dress the plate with salad, tomatoes (if any) and bread croutons. Oh and the reserved anchovies (if any). Don't let any of the flavor go to waste!

Note on the photo: a keen eye will notice that I did NOT toss the salad with the dressing but instead drizzled it on the lettuce and croûtons. It actually is much nicer when you take the time to toss the lettuce, but I was only making one salad and was loath to dirty another dish.

What I loved about this dish was the way the sweetness of the scallops played against the spiciness of the pepper. Add to that a colorful selection of crunchy vegetables and the whole mess sang with flavor and interesting textures. I have another package of frozen scallops in the fridge and the vegetable delivery is due today. I have my fingers crossed for the same boring old root vegetables as last time, because this dish turns them into stars. Oh and it's only 7.5 points per generous serving, including the rice. Heaven on a plate.

200 g frozen small scallops
2 small red chili peppers, minced
4-5 brown mushrooms, sliced
1/2 a small savoy cabbage, shredded
2 carrots, sliced in thin coins
1 leek, finely sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbs ginger, finely chopped
1 Tbs sunflower or vegetable oil
1 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp oyster sauce
2 Tbs mirin or sherry
Soy sauce to taste
2 large portions of cooked rice (225 g cooked, 90 g dry)

Heat the wok to a very high temperature and swish the oil in it. Add the carrots and cook for a few minutes. Add the cabbage and the mirin or sherry and cook for a few moments more. Add the peppers, leeks, garlic and ginger and cook for a few moments but not long enough to burn the garlic and ginger. Push all the vegetables up the sides of the wok (where it is cooler) and add the scallops. Sear them on each side very quickly. Add the rice and mix the vegetables and scallops with it thoroughly. Add soy sauce to taste - but do not go overboard. I added less than usual and the Critic, uncharacteristically for him, did not add any more to the finished dish. Remove from heat and stir in the oyster sauce and sesame oil. Taste again for seasoning and serve on large plates, with a big smile as you smell all the wonderful flavors wafting up from the plate.

Now that I am on a diet, though, I have decided to cut myself (and the family) a bit of slack on the fish issue, albeit temporarily. Seafood is remarkably low in calories and since it's become such a rare treat for us, it makes up for other sacrifices in my diet. (Which, oddly enough, include the only two fish dishes that are easily accessible to me without a fishmonger: kippers and fish and chips. Sigh.) I remember going through a similar phase when pregnant. Can't eat raw oysters? Fine, I'll have another square of chocolate. No wine with dinner? Hand me a pain aux raisins for breakfast, please. And yes, I'll have another tomorrow and in fact every day until this child breathes his first gulp of air.

So when I noticed that my online supermarket had fresh unfarmed tuna on offer, I jumped. Weight watchers points: 3 for a medium portion of tuna and healthy omega oils on the side. A treat no matter how you look at it.

As the tuna, being an oily fish, is higher in calories than most seafood, I wanted to find a really tasty low calorie way to dress it: a simple oil-free salsa verde made with frozen basil, anchovies and lemon juice. You could keep the points insanely low (as I did, after an indulgent breakfast and lunch) and serve it with a lot of freshly steamed broccoli. Or you could add some steamed new potatoes with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Or, if you are not counting calories you could make a nice lemon rice. No matter what else you put on the plate, the tuna will be a star: with a bit of crunchy spice from the peppercorns and zingy green sauce.

2 medium tuna steaks (around 140 g each)
1/2 teaspoon olive oil
crushed black peppercorns

For the sauce:

1 small tin of anchovies, drained and rinsed
4 heaping Tbs fresh or frozen chopped basil
1/8 tsp pepper
juice of 1/2 a lemon
2-3 Tbs water

Brush the tuna steaks with the olive oil and press crushed black peppercorns into the steaks. Heat a nonstick or cast-iron frying pan until very hot and add the steaks. Cook for 2-3 minutes until seared and then turn over.

In the meantime, throw all the ingredients for the sauce in a mini-blender and whiz them until smooth. Taste for salt and pepper and check that you like the consistency.

Check the tuna steaks; how long you cook them will ultimately depend on whether you like them fashionably red in the middle or - like the Critic - just barely cooked through. Serve each steak with half the sauce and your choice of accompaniment. Enjoy!

I have to say that endives (or chicory if you are here in the UK) have to be one of my favorite winter foods. They keep forever. (The pair I found had been in the vegetable drawer since well before our holiday in France and were still beautiful.) They are low in calorie and high in crunch factor when you put them in a salad. And when you braise them, they make the perfect light lunch. Savory with a hint of sweetness, extremely healthy and filling. And they take all of about 15 minutes to cook. The only frustrating part is waiting five minutes or so for them to cool down enough to eat.

I know I wrote up my recipe for braised endives a few years ago, but I thought it was worth directing you to the recipe again. Firstly because you might not have caught it the first time around. And secondly because I neglected to mention how low calorie this satisfying lunch is. If you cut the sugar to 1/2 tsp (which you can easily do if the endives aren't too old and bitter - and my 3 week old pair were not yet bitter at all) and limit the butter to 2 tsp in a non-stick pan, the whole dish is only 2.5 points. I generally increase the amount of stock to 250 ml and serve it in a bowl, so that after I've eaten the endives I have a lovely endive-flavored soup to finish.

So how do you like your endives? A crunchy salad with walnuts and blue cheese? Or covered in a creamy bechamel and baked with ham? Or simply braised with good quality stock? If you have any new ideas I'd love to hear them!

It really is the perfect food.

The bones from my roast pheasant yielded a lovely rich stock, but if you don't happen to have recently roasted a pheasant you could easily use a nice dark turkey stock with dark meat or even chicken. The main thing is that you want dark meat to stand up to the cabbage and barley. A good grinding of black pepper is essential here, spicing up the bland barley and challenging the cabbage and roasted meat. As the WW site does not have pheasant legs in its recipe builder, I used chicken drumsticks to calculate the points: a measly 1.5 points per bowl. At that rate, you could have seconds - or splurge on a nice piece of crusty bread with a dab of butter - and still be on target to lose weight.

If you are not on a diet, and want to impart maximum flavor to the soup, you might want to add a couple of tablespoons of butter to this dish and use it to sauté the onions before adding the stock. However, I didn't bother and the onions cooked just fine and I saved a few points. The soup was nevertheless delicious!

1.5 l stock (pheasant, turkey or chicken)
60g dried pearl barley
1/2 a small Napa cabbage
2 small onions
2 carrots
4 chestnut mushrooms
70g roast pheasant meat (drumsticks) or roasted turkey or chicken legs
1 sprig of thyme

Heat the stock until it reaches a low boil. In the meantime, prepare the vegetables. Peel the onions, cut them in half lengthwise and cut in very thin strips. Clean and peel (if necessary) the carrots and cut in thin coins. Wash the mushrooms and slice them. Add the barley, carrots, onion, meat and thyme to the stock and simmer for about 40 minutes. When the barley is tender, taste for salt and pepper - it will probably need a good grinding of each. Shred the cabbage in thin bite-sized pieces and add it to the soup. Cover and cook another five minutes or until the cabbage is wilted and bright green. Serve immediately; it will be delicious reheated the next day but it is even better when the cabbage is newly cooked and luminously green.

So I was extremely pleased on a recent trip with the Critic to a farm shop to discover a butcher counter with a wonderful selection of game: guinea, pheasant, venison sausages. The Critic was delighted with the selection of pork sausages and less pleased with my choice of venison sausages and pheasant. But he manfully swallowed his criticism and confined himself to pursed lips and a dubious side look at the package. And for my part, I resolved to roast up some potatoes with my pheasant, because I know the way to the Critic's heart is through roast potatoes, bless him.

Pheasant is a tricky bird to roast if you have a doubtful spouse. Although all the books will tell you that the meat is fine - and in fact tastier - if it isn't too well done, I knew that my Critic would have none of that. Fowl is meant to be cooked through. Period. So a good thermometer is essential to catch the point when the bird is cooked through, but before it dries out. I love my thermometer. Another common device to keep a pheasant nice and moist is a few strips of bacon and I had a half a package lurking in the back of the fridge. You might think that this is inconsistent with a Weight watchers regime, but actually it was perfect: the bacon would no longer be there to tempt me into an illicit BLT sandwich and the fat from the bacon is drained away from the bird before serving. As I scanned the kitchen looking for inspiration, another solution to dryness jumped out at me: half an orange, left over from breakfast a few days before. During the roasting process, it gave a welcome moist center to the bird and with a heaping spoonful of mustard, its juice made the perfect gravy: savory and sweet and intense, a perfect match for the slight gamy edge of the pheasant.

1 medium pheasant
1/2 a medium orange
4-5 strips of bacon
2 cloves garlic, smashed but not peeled
2-3 sprigs of fresh thyme

Preheat the oven to 200C. Rinse the bird and pat it dry. Stuff the orange, garlic cloves and thyme in the cavity of the bird. Place in the oven and roast for 35-40 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 155C. (Sources vary on whether the ideal temperature is 150, 155 or 165C, so I opted for the middle range, correctly assuming that the temperature would rise further while the bird rested.) Remove the bird to a platter and cover. Drain all the liquid from the roasting pan to a cup that separates fat from lean. Pour the lean juices back in the pan and stir in a heaping teaspoon of sharp mustard. Reduce the sauce by about a third and taste for seasoning. In normal times, I would now recommend stirring in a nice big pat of butter - but we are trying to lose weight these days, not gain it. Sigh. Instead, I added about half of a cup of water from the carrots I cooked to accompany the roast and despite the lack of butter, the sauce was delicious. There wasn't a drop left on either of our plates when dinner was done and that is not because I'm starving myself on this diet, far from it. Weight Watchers points for one breast of pheasant, minus the bacon: 4 points. I calculated the sauce at half a point a serving, given the fact that there was a little orange juice and otherwise no points at all in the lean meat juices and mustard.

I roasted the potatoes separately and according to my points calculator, each small one is a whopping 1.5 points. If, like me, you are trying to lose weight, I would recommend boiled new potatoes. With such rich gravy, you won't miss the fat!

Note: if you make this recipe, please do NOT throw away the carcase or legs and DO read my next recipe for Pheasant and barley soup. It was almost better than the original dish!

275 g white (haricot) beans
2 carrots, cubed
half a small celeriac (about 250g) peeled and grated
800 ml chicken stock
2-3 sprigs of thyme
2 tsp mustard
1 tsp garlic purée (substitute with a couple of cloves of garlic for zero points if you have good quality garlic; mine was all sprouted and nasty)

If you are organised, you can soak the beans overnight before cooking them with the rest of the ingredients. However, one of the reasons I love my Crock Pot (slow cooker) is that I can throw a stew like this in the machine around lunch time and by dinner time it's fragrant and delicious. So either soak the beans, drain them and cook with the rest of the ingredients for two hours or until the beans are tender - or throw everything in a crock pot before lunch and have yourself a lovely dinner. You could also throw in some thinly sliced onions (zero points) for a bit more flavor. I meant to do so and forgot, but the result was nevertheless very tasty. And filling. Did I mention filling?

Weight watchers points: 3