Preparation Time: 5 mins
Cooking Time: 20 mins
Difficulty: 3/5
Weight Loss Score: 4/5

This was wonderful and a great way to get started with healthy, intensely flavoured food. To start my first FlavourSmash meal, I went to the local market and bought some interesting fresh vegetables…

Here’s the base ingredients, round courgettes (I’d never seen these before, but they were great. Just like normal courgettes but round. If you happen to be American, read zucchini) - you could use normal courgettes, they taste exactly the same. The other green vegetable in the picture is Choy Sum. This is a delicious Chinese vegetable (use any type of cabbage if you can’t get hold of this). I love Chinese vegetables, they’re great, everyone should eat them all the time, in fact they shouldn’t even be referred to as Chinese vegetables, they’re so damn good, everyone, worldwide, should eat them all the time and just call them vegetables. They’re light, crisp and take on flavour so well. They just feel so healthy, and when loaded with flavour you just know you’re doing yourself a load of good and enjoying it so much at the same time.

I also got hold of a lovely fresh cod fillet. This cost about £2.50 from the brilliant local fishmonger (www.arndalemarket.co.uk). Now, here’s where we start loading this with flavour. Remember the concept is to add intense and exciting tastes without adding calories. This how I did it’s done.

Firstly, I smeared the fish with a thick layer of wholegrain mustard, and prepared a plate with a generous layer of Thai 7 Spice. (This is a product that you can buy from most supermarkets… please see relevant link in the flavours pages)

Cover the mustard smeared cod with the Thai 7 Spice, the spice sticks really nicely to the mustard coated fish. Now we need to cook this massively flavour loaded chunk of fish.

We want low fat and tons of taste remember, so put a tiny amount of toasted sesame oil into a frying pan and put it on a low-medium heat. Once the pan is hot place the fish in the pan skin-side up. Give it 10mins then turn over. Another 10mins on the other side should do it. Meanwhile we need to create an intense bed of flavour based on the vegetables already purchased.

This is the spread of flavours I used in this dish, don’t be scared of adding loads of flavour. This is what FlavourSmash is all about. Many stongly flavoured condiments have hardly any calories in them. Chilli, Ginger, Garlic, Soy Sauce and Mustard are virtually calorie free, and they’re are used in such small quantities that their calorific content is pretty much negligible. Load up on these ingredients (Worcester Sauce, Chilli Sauce, Wholegrain Mustard, Thai 7 Spice, Garlic, and Soy), and watch out for more fatty or sugary flavours (Sweet Chilli, Flavoured Oils, etc…)

Prepare the vegetables as above, and heat a wok (high heat) with a touch of Sesame Oil again. Once hot, whack the vegetables in and splash your in your tasty flavours to the pan. The water content in the Soy, Worcester and Chilli Sauce will create steam, helping cook the food easily and rapidly.

It should only take around 8 mins to cook these vegetables. The fish will be ready about the same time, take that off the heat and let’s put it all together.

Place the the cooked, flavour loaded vegetables onto a plate, and gently rest the fish on top of them. The crust on the fish should have turned to a delicious crispy crust, absolutely packed with flavour with tender, moist flesh on the inside. The moisture in the intensely flavoured vegetables balances the crispy fish creating a truly satisfying and and filling plate, packed with vitamins, fibre, omega3 and hardly any fat, sugar or anything artificial.

The finished dish. Mine looks a bit burnt, but hey, I’m just starting and it tasted brilliant. Give it a go!

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