Dieting is all about using some clever mind tricks
Chef Tom Kerridge speaks to LAUREN TAYLOR about losing weight the delicious way
DIET food has a bad rep. It conjures up images of chewing on cardboardlike rice cakes and low-fat packet soups packed with preservatives, while you dream of a comforting bowl of pasta and battle cravings for anything that so much as resembles dessert.
Enter Tom Kerridge. He not only runs the UK’s only pub with two Michelin stars (The Hand And Flowers in Marlow), but he knows a thing or two about weight loss – having shed a staggering 12 stone himself.
Now back with a second diet book, Lose Weight For Good, and accompanying BBC programme, he’s determined to demonstrate that calorie-controlled meals can be delicious and easy to whip up at home.
And who better to create a weight-loss plan that you actually want to stick to, than someone who really loves food?
“I looked at lower-calorie recipes and I found them incredibly depressing, boring and flavourless,” Wiltshire-born Tom, 44, explains. “I thought, ‘Well no wonder so many people yo-yo on diets, they’re not enjoying what they’re eating’.”
He describes his new book as a “celebration of great-tasting food”, with an emphasis on recipes that use everyday ingredients and come in portions big enough to fill you up.
It’s full of nutritious but hearty recipes, and some that might surprise you, like spicy lamb burgers, pizza with parma ham and mozzarella, and coffee and chocolate custard pots.
One of the challenges for anyone trying to start a diet is finding the time to prepare healthy meals, and the inclination to learn new dishes.
“It’s all well and good everybody saying they’re a great cook, but sometimes you’re a great cook at the weekends when you enjoy doing it, when you’ve got three or four hours to potter about making things and enjoying the process of cooking. But you eat every day,” says Tom.
So the recipes in Lose Weight For Good really are meant to fit into busy lives – the steps are clear and simple, and you don’t need a long list of ingredients.
“If you come home from work at 7 o’clock in the evening, you want to rustle something up in under 20 minutes and you want to know how to do it,” Tom adds. “It’s aimed at being accessible, even for the most amateur of cooks to have a go at making something taste good.”
While changing your diet does involve some self-control, it doesn’t have to mean missing out on all ‘treats’, or enjoying food less. For instance, you can still get your pasty fix with Tom’s chicken and mushroom filo crunch, your late-night takeaway hit with his healthy lamb doner alternative, or southern-style chicken with potato salad.
“I think when people are on diets, what they miss the most is desserts and things they feel like they shouldn’t be able to eat,” he says. Although the desserts in the book don’t have the same amount of butter or sugar, and therefore calories, as traditional pudding recipes, they’re still proper puddings.
“There are some fantastic sugar alternatives, fantastic cream alternatives, things that are lower in calories that can help you still produce things that feel a bit more ‘treaty’, that shouldn’t feel like you’re on a diet, but you are,” he says (yes, this includes cheesecake!).
It’s all about using some clever tricks. Some of the recipes include veg-masquerading-ascarb alternatives, like jerk chicken with cauliflower rice ‘n’ peas, chicken with peas and mushrooms and celeriac mash, and turkey ragu with white cabbage linguine.
“They make you feel like you’re not missing out on anything,” Tom says. “They hold flavour, they taste nice, they’re mind tricks.”
LOSE Weight For Good: Full-Flavour Cooking For A Low-Calorie Diet by Tom Kerridge is published by Absolute, priced £22. The accompanying six-part series continues on BBC2 on Wednesdays.