Bee Rawlinson - Neris and Indias Idiot-Proof Diet Cookbook

ALSO BY NERIS THOMAS AND INDIA KNIGHT Neris and Indias Idiot-Proof Diet ABOUT THE AUTHORS India Knight is the author of My Life on a Plate, Dont You Want Me, and The Shops. She is columnist for the Sunday Times and is a mother of three. Neris Thomas is a film producer and artist; she lives in London and is married with one daughter. Bee Rawlinson is a mother of four from Devon who came to Neris and Indias attention through her delicious recipes on the Pig2Twig forum, the Diets website.

Bee Rawlinson,
India Knight & Neris Thomas PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL , England Penguin Group (USA), Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore, 0632, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL , England www.penguin.com First published by Fig Tree 2008 Published in Penguin Books 2009 Copyright Bee Rawlinson, Neris Thomas and India Knight, 2008 Illustrations copyright Neris Thomas, 2008 All rights reserved The moral right of the author has been asserted Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser This diet is not suitable for pregnant or nursing women, children, diabetics or people with kidney disease. It is not entirely impossible to follow if you are vegetarian, but it is not by any means vegetarian-friendly.

Always consult your doctor before embarking on a new eating plan. If you are diabetic, we very highly recommend Dr Richard K. BernsteinsThe Diabetes Diet ISBN: 978-0-14-190881-6 CHAPTER ONE

Hello, and thank you for buying this book. It came about in a very pleasing way, which we shall now share with you. When Neris and Indias Idiot-Proof Diet was first published, we thought wed start a blog to go with it. We imagined wed get about fifty regulars, and that it would be cosy and nice, and that wed chat among ourselves about green leafy veg and the best, least stodgy sausages.

Instead, as the book crept up the bestseller chart, we very quickly started getting tens of thousands of hits a day so many that we ditched the blog, which had become unmanageable, and turned it into a forum (which is still going strong, and which you can find at www.pig2twig.co.uk). And one day, on this forum, there appeared a woman called Bee (cue halo of light and choirs of angels), who said she was a keen cook and had been playing about with recipes. Did we mind if she posted some of them? Of course not, we said post away. Now, we all know that low-carb diets work, and we also all know that low-carb cooking is a bit of a faff: you have to be unusually creative to make it exciting, more creative than most of us are capable of being when it comes to cookery. So, to be perfectly frank, we expected Bees recipes to be variants of meat in a cream sauce with a side of more meat. Thats what most low-carb cookbooks are about, after all; theyre effective, but they hardly get you drooling with anticipation.

Quite the opposite, actually; weve read a fair few, and we sometimes put them down feeling slightly nauseous (especially if they involve ingenious new uses for pork scratchings. Sorry, but gag). Bee quietly started posting recipes. They werent just good, or just appetizing: they completely blew our socks off. They werent sad little approximations of normal recipes. They were, well, amazing.

They were so good that their low-carb aspect became irrelevant: they are simply recipes for absolutely delicious food that anyone would be delighted to eat, regardless of whether they are following our low-carb eating plan a fact which was brought home to me (India) when I made my first ever batch of Bees Onion bhajias, only to have my teenage sons demolish the whole lot and beg me to make them again the next day. Also, well onion bhajias. Its hardly deprivation, is it? The recipes kept coming, and they kept being brilliant. The thousands of women on our forum found them brilliant too. We printed them all out and kept them by the cooker; sometimes they were all we cooked for days on end. It made sense to share the goodness, and so here we are today: what you are holding is a handful of our own recipes, and all of Bees.

Ours are nice. Hers are stunning and I (India) write as someone who is really devoted to cookery books, to the point of reading them in bed, so when I say these recipes can hold their own in the most exalted company, I mean it. Bee is the Nigella of low-carb. Shes a genius. And her recipes work beautifully, rather like Delias: they just dont go wrong, and they taste unbelievably good. Now, some random points.

We wanted this book to be as user-friendly as possible. We know, for instance, that lots of people find breakfast a bit of a challenge when theyre low-carbing the combination of being in a hurry in the mornings and not necessarily having the stomach for yet more eggs and bacon can be problematic, especially when we consider breakfast to be the most important meal of the day. Its not a problem any more: we defy anyone not to find the recipes in these pages majorly appetizing. All cookbooks cater to families, and this one does too. But it deviates from the norm in that it also caters to single people, or just knackered ones, who dont have the time or energy to make themselves a supper that involves forty-five minutes work and three different pans. If you live alone and this rings a bell, youre going to be very happy: there are tons of recipes in here that you can throw together in minutes and that involve very little washing up.

Conversely, if there are lots of you and you dont fancy cooking yourself a different supper from your familys rejoice Like we were saying above, this is just good food. Theres no reason why you shouldnt serve it up as a family meal. If you have ravenous teenagers in the house, just make them a side of mash or rice or whatever. But it may not be necessary: our recipes are not only yummy, but generously portioned and pretty filling. Now, a word of warning. Weve written an entire diet book, and we strongly advise you to buy it.

Next page