Slim-ish recipe inspiration

There's something so wonderful about getting a new cookbook. I love the first lazy look, the second thorough pore and the third detailed scour with pen and shopping list at the ready.

My latest is Skinny Weeks and Weekend Feasts by the lovely Gizzi Erskine. The concept is based around slightly lighter, fresher, lower calorie food during the week with blowout menus for the weekend (a sort of epicurean version of 5:2). I stumbled across it first in delicious magazine, in which a few of the recipes were previewed. One in particular, satay chicken Thai curry, was so easy and delicious I made it twice within a week!

Gizzi's pork and chorizo meatballs

My next obsession was pork and chorizo meatballs with spelt spaghetti. Admittedly chorizo is quite hard to squish into a meatball and yes, I had a slightly bigger than stated portion but it was surprisingly delicious and didn't feel at all stodgy.

The best bit of this was actually the tomato sauce - easy, cheap and flavoursome. Soften some chopped onions; add crushed fennel seeds, garlic and chilli; throw in chopped tomatoes, sugar and red wine vinegar; leave it all to become lovely and mushy for 15 minutes or so.

So, what to do if you have all the ingredients except for the pork mince - key bulk of a meatball? Simple - make the sauce anyway, add in a few slices of chorizo towards the end and enjoy an even skinnier version. I discovered it by accident this evening when I was just about to cop out and stir tinned pesto lazily into some flabby fusilli. What a save, eh?