Get all your five-a-day in one dish!

By Harry Eastwood

This salad is a deconstructed version of ratatouille, which makes for a delicious, fresh and full-flavoured alternative to the traditional vegetable stew. It can be made ahead – and, in fact, tastes even better. It ticks plenty of health boxes as it’s high in fibre and low in calories, fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt. Most people can enjoy it, as it’s vegetarian, gluten-free and dairy-free. And the best thing about it? One serving counts as a full five portions of your five-a-day.

Ratatouille salad with anchovies and lemon

Serves 4

1 large aubergine, cut into small cubes

2 medium courgettes, topped, tailed and cut into very small cubes

4tbsp olive oil

1 large Spanish onion, peeled and finely diced

1 medium yellow pepper, cored and chopped into small cubes

1 medium orange pepper, cored and chopped into small cubes

2 garlic cloves, crushed to a paste

3 anchovies, very finely chopped

10 medium ripe tomatoes on the vine

Freshly squeezed juice of ½ lemon

Handful of basil leaves, torn from the stem

1. Heat a large frying pan until very hot.

2. Toss the aubergine and courgette cubes in the olive oil until evenly coated. Add them to the hot frying pan and cook over a high heat for 5 min, until the edges have turned a golden colour. You may find that you need to do this stage in two batches.

3. Tip the hot vegetables into a large bowl with the onion, peppers, garlic and anchovies. Season generously with pepper, then cover with clingfilm. Set aside for 10 min, while you prepare the tomatoes.

4. Chop the tomatoes in half and scoop out the seeds and centre with the help of a spoon. Finely chop the flesh, then add to the bowl with the rest of the ingredients.

5. Finally, squeeze the lemon juice over the salad. Set aside (wrapped in clingfilm) for 1 hr in the ambient temperature of your kitchen to let the flavours mingle and develop. Scatter the basil leaves over just before serving and add more pepper if needed. Serve with crusty bread, if you like.

SWAP IN/SWAP OUT

I love the savoury flavour the anchovies bring, but you don’t have to add them – this ratatouille is delicious without. You could include pine nuts if you want the salad to be a little more hearty and reduced-fat feta or mozzarella chunks are lovely thrown in at the last minute, too.

Per serving: 210kcal, 6g protein, 12.8g fat, 2g saturates, 19.2g carbs, 17.1g sugar, 9g fibre, 0.3g salt, 77mg calcium, 2.7mg iron

 

Harry’s supporting our mission to Fight the Fads – Make Every Meal Healthier. To find out why she’s rallying against the fad diet industry, pick up our October issue.

For more substantial salad recipes, check out Harry Eastwood’s A Salad For All Seasons (Bantam Press, £20).

Get ahead for breakfast

By Melanie Leyshon

You’re either a morning person or you’re not. I’m a late riser. For me, 7.30am is early – if I’m up before 6am it’s because I’m off to the airport.

This leaves me no time for breakfast prep in the morning, which is why I’m so enthusiastic about my simple oats discovery: Bircher muesli. It’s not new, of course – Swiss physician Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benner invented it as a nutritional pick-me-up for his sanatorium patients in the 1900s. You can buy a ready-made pot of Bircher muesli from Pret A Manger or Eat, but a quick calculation of cost + time + effort shows making your own batch at home is a no-brainer. 

Oats are wholegrains so make up an important part of a healthy diet; they’re a great source of soluble fibre and are effective in lowering cholesterol. But instead of stirring oats and milk together in a pan in the morning to make porridge, simply leave them to soak overnight. Then when you get up in the morning, it’s a quick assembly job that can be done with your eyes shut – and that suits me perfectly. 

I'm using a basic recipe from cereal company Rude Health. You soak 100g oats in 150–200ml brown rice milk overnight, which serves 2 hungry people. The next day, stir 150ml natural yogurt into the oaty base, then add your choice of toppings. When I first started making this recipe, I added a sprinkling of cinnamon and 1tbsp grated apple per serving. Now I'm experimenting with berries, bananas, rhubarb purée – you can see where I’m going with this – working my way around the fruit bowl and allotment and using up whatever’s in season. But you don’t have to stop at fruit – a sprinkling of chopped nuts or seeds, or a spoonful of Manuka honey go down a treat, too.

HFG nutrition consultant Juliette Kellow worked out the nutrition count per portion of my apple and cinnamon version: 320kcal, 10g protein, 5.1g fibre, 330mg calcium and 2.2mg iron. It's 5 min prep and 20 min longer in bed, which adds up to a nice and easy, wholesome start to the day.

Rude Health’s new range of dairy-free organic drinks are available in oat, brown rice and almond flavours, which are nicely sweet but with no added sugar. Buy them at Waitrose from 24 June.