A few years ago I received bad news from the doctor. I was overweight, my heart was in trouble, I had high blood pressure and — worst of all — I had gout. Gleefully, the general practitioner closed my file and uttered: “You have the diseases of the aristocracy.”
Well, now I can happily report that, after changing my eating patterns, embarking on a low-sodium diet and hitting the gym, I have stopped suffering the historical maladies of the rich. At the same time I have discovered that blood pressure-related complications, like strokes, are big time in Africa, where the poorest subsist on cheap takeaway foods, like deep-fried chips.
In the course of a lifestyle reform I took to the kitchen with the gusto of a television chef — to prove to those who sit at my table that I could institute change and still be on top. In some respects it’s easy to succeed, but in the course of trying one owes much to the literature one reads. Here I am indebted to the delightfully simple recipes in the healthy-eating publications of Struik.
Michelle Hayward’s Fat Free Cooking in South Africa teaches one how to do a wide range of standards, leaving out the oil. With fish she substitutes fat-free yoghurt, soy sauce and vegetable stock. She manages to achieve a healthy richness in dishes like Thai fish cakes and Chinese fish kebabs with ingredients like toasted sesame seeds, grated lime zest and fresh lemon grass. For chicken she substitutes the greasy stuff for honey, dry white wine and, of course, soy sauce.
Lauren Oostingh’s Low Fat Goes Luscious takes a certain liberty with oil — but she stresses that oil should be added after, rather than during, cooking and that the oils should be cold-pressed.
Both Hayward and Oostingh present recipes that will take you through your day — with Hayward making some attempt to offer alternatives to the sadly unmatched greasy breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast. They both do smoothies and open sandwiches and in the salad department Oostingh goes for a daring low-fat garlic mayonnaise.
Healthy eating, though, is not only about kicking the fats, it’s also about tossing out the bad sugars found in over-processed carbohydrates. Spiritually, it also helps if you can turn your back on the dead stuff.
Sarina Jacobs’s Fields of Flavour presents an alternative to meat with the use of high-protein tofu. In an entire chapter she goes through a fusion of ingredients that takes tofu from Italy to Asia in some creative roasts, steams and bakes. Here she presents her ambitious cultural collision: vegan bobotie made with dehydrated soya mince, with the traditional custard topping made of fresh tofu and not eggs and milk.
Lynn Bedford Hall’s Pick of the Bunch is not so much concerned with leaving out the fats and sugars as leaving out the meat. To indicate — her deluxe pesto makes one cup and contains half a cup of oil!
Like many, Bedford Hall has turned to Asia and the Mediterranean for alternatives. But, where others have gone “lite” she stays big on timeless comfort foods — those heavy, oily pastas with what she calls “a robust tomato sauce”.
There are some inventive curries in Pick of the Bunch — notably a chickpea curry with mango and a mint raita and a creamy chickpea, mushroom and apple curry. Pick of the Bunch, with its emphasis on the whole and hearty, will serve one well in the cold winter months ahead.