Lex Culinaria

Home made

My husband has often remarked that John Seymour missed out in not marrying me. Leaving aside the obvious generational problem, I'd mostly agree. I have this very odd drive to make "homemade" everything. I make ricotta, yogurt, cheese, sausage, soap, and I'm sure I'd give bacon and a clay brick oven a try if I had the time. I certainly have the inclination it would seem. I've always been fascinated with making my own "stuff". I go through phases where I do a lot of DIY things and then I run out of energy, but I always seem to come back to it. Lately I've been making a lot of ricotta, soap and yogurt. Not necessarily together or in that order.

There's something very satisfying about making your own basic things. I'm a firm believer that these things taste, smell and perform better than store-bought stuff. Plus there's the whole romantic, faux-pioneer thing to it.

I do especially love good heavy, creamy homemade yogurt. You're not going to find this stuff in any store. You could add some crushed pureed fruit or homemade jam to make a fruit yogurt, but I really love this just the way it is over granola or with a bit of brown sugar and a few nuts over the top of it.

I don't use a yogurt maker. I've never seen the need. In fact I abhor single purpose appliances. There's not much you can't do with just a blender, a food processor and a KitchenAid. Oh, and a few towels. I usually set my yogurt, wrapped in towels near our living room heat vent. That keeps it at a toasty temperature and keeps the little bacteria fellows happy.

makes 1 litre

• 1 litre whole milk
• 1/3 cup instant skim milk powder
• 1 vanilla bean, sliced lengthwise and cut in half, seeds loosened with a sharp knife
• zest of 1 lemon
• 1/4 to 1/3 cup brown sugar, loosely packed
• 1 sachet acidophilus, casei, bifidus yogurt culture (can be found in most health food stores) or 250 ml (1 cup) yogurt with active bacterial cultures (store bought or home made)

• special equipment: dairy thermometer, 1.5 litre (or larger) glass container with tight fitting lid, several towels.

Whisk milk and milk powder together in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Stir in sugar, vanilla and lemon zest. Allow milk to boil briefly and then cool to to the temperature stated on your culture package (if you are using previously made yogurt to re-culture let milk cool to 80F.)

Whisk in culture and pour mixture into a sterilized glass container. wrap with towels and place in a warm, enclosed space (like inside a linen cupboard with a small heated wheat bag) or near a heat vent for 12 to 15 hours, or until yogurt is firmed up. Refrigerate to stop the process.

Missing Melbourne

When we left Melbourne at the end of October things were just beginning to heat up over there and cool down over here. Sadly, springtime in Melbourne is a distant memory now. It doesn't help that winter descended on Edmonton overnight with a great big whumpf of snow and a 17 degree drop in temperature. Right now in Melbourne it's a mere 13c. Mind you, it's early morning there. Sigh.

Aside from the weather, there's always something for me to miss about Melbourne. More often than not, it's food-related. Good coffee. A favourite restaurant (or two).

Mainly what I miss is really, really good food just about anywhere you go. Sadly, in Edmonton mediocrity is all the rage and truly good meals are few and far between.  I think I'd kind of forgotten that after 2 years away from Melbourne.

For a meal to be truly great, it doesn't have to be avant garde science geek food "inspired" by El Bulli or the French Laundry (which is now so ubiquitous as to be boring - if I never hear another person bill their food as "Inspired" by something it will be too soon!).

Really good food does have to fulfil its potential. If it's a scone, it must be a great scone. A scone that makes me go "wow!".

And honestly most restaurants in Edmonton aren't even half way there. Some are good. Most are mediocre. A few are downright shocking. People here seem to rave about restaurants that hover somewhere around good to mediocre. A sad testament to what is available on tables across the city.

For me, the perfect illustration of the disparity that exists between Melbourne and Edmonton is summed up in one word: Risotto. I have never had a good risotto in Edmonton. Even in a pricey restaurant. Most risottos here are mushy or soupy. And flavourless and uninteresting. I ate several amazing risottos in Melbourne. Not in fancy places for outrageous prices, but in run of the mill local pubs for around $14. My love for good risotto re-ignited, I couldn't wait to try to reproduce my favourite as soon as we got back.

I know risottos are very "Naked Chef", but there's something so cozy yet elegant about them that I can't help but still love them even if they are about 5 years out of style. Besides, there must be a skill to them. Seems a lot of chefs out here have trouble with them.

I promise this one won't disappoint. I had something similar at the Fringe cafe at the Acland Street Junction in St. Kilda.

Pumpkin, Spinach & Goat Cheese Risotto

Serves 6

• 1 medium acorn squash or small, sweet pumpkin (plus olive oil to coat)
• 2 chopped medium onions
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 Tablespoon olive oil
• 1.5 litres chicken stock
• 2 cups arborio or carnaroli rice
• ½ cup dry white wine
• butter
• ¼ cup grated Parmesan
• 4 cups fresh spinach leaves
• 300 grams goats cheese
• Sea salt
• Fresh pepper

Cut the squash in half, scoop out the seeds, peel and cut into 2cm cubes. Toss cubes in olive oil and roast on a baking tray at 350F for 35 minutes.

10 minutes before the squash is finished baking, sauté the onion & garlic in a large saucepan over medium heat for a 3-4 minutes until they begin softening. Add the rice and cook, stirring for several minutes until the rice is glossy and absorbs the oil.

Stir through the wine until it is all absorbed into the rice and the alcohol has cooked off.
After the wine is absorbed, start adding the stock a cupful at a time, stirring constantly until the rice has absorbed each cupful before adding the next.

This whole process should take between 15 to 30 minutes to absorb all the stock. Keep tasting the rice to make sure it is cooked and soft but with a bit of bite.

With the last cupful of stock add the pumpkin cubes, spinach, butter and Parmesan.
season with salt and pepper. Stir gently to allow the remaining stock to be absorbed and to break up the pumpkin a little bit.

When the risotto is done, it should be slightly saucy, but should still mound nicely, not run.

Ladle piles of the risotto into bowls and top with crumbled goats cheese.

Fresh ricotta, proscuitto and pea pappardelle

This light and intensely flavourful pasta is a great light springtime lunch or supper. We loved it so much I made a second batch the next day! It totally pays to take the time to make your own ricotta. It's totally easy and so much more delicate in taste and texture than the rubbery stuff you buy in the store. Trust me.

• 2 litres whole milk
• 500 ml buttermilk
• pappardelle pasta (enough for 4 servings - about half a large packet)
• 300 grams prosciutto
• juice of 1 lemon
• 1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil.
• 400 grams (about 1 + 3/4 cup) fresh green peas
• 2 cups roughly chopped watercress
• 1/3 cup coarse grated parmegiano reggiano
• salt, pepper

Combine milk and buttermilk in a large, heavy bottomed steel pot. Set over medium heat - no higher than 5. Allow to come to heat to about 100F. When it starts getting hot, watch it closely. It should look like it's rising, foaming and curdling a bit. Use a table knife to separate the foamy, curdly top. If you can see a watery yellowish fluid below and nice white curds at the top, you're done - depending on how fast your stove is and how cold your milk was, this could take from 10 to 25 minutes. Remove from the heat and use a large spoon to lade the curds into either a ricotta basket or a fine sieve. Allow this to drain and cool for at least an hour.

Meanwhile, boil your pasta in plenty of salted water.

Chop the prosciutto roughly and fry over medium high heat in a large frying pan. When it becomes crispy and very fragrant, add the peas. Cook and stir for 3 to 4 minutes, until the peas are bright green and cooked. Turn off the heat and add the oil, lemon juice and watercress.

Drain the pasta.

Add the ricotta to the frying pan and toss the drained pasta in too. Salt and pepper to taste. Toss with tongs and serve with Parmesan on top.

2 Litres of Buttermilk

It all started with my desire to make a buttermilk ice cream. The first home made ice cream of the season!

The only size carton that was available when we went shopping was the 2-litre. I wasn't sure what I would do with all of it, but I bought it anyway with vague promises to my husband of buttermilk scones and pancakes for breakfast.

I used it all up in record time though, so he never did get his pancakes.

But that's okay.

Because what he did get was:

• 1 litre buttermilk, orange and cardamom ice cream
• 1 litre dark chocolate and cinnamon ice cream
• 300 grams gorgeous soft ricotta (which got made into some amazing pasta)
• and a big ole bowl of crispy proscuitto, green pea and dill potato salad....

And that, my friends, is how you use up 2 litres of buttermilk in one afternoon.

recipes to follow shortly...

PS - if, like me, you can totally justify buying and using a kilo of proscuitto, check out the Italian Centre Shop on the South side. They have a little meat ends section where you can buy approximately 1-kilo pieces of proscuitto (unsliced) for $9.98/kilo! I just keep mine in the freezer and shave slices off with my super sharp Global knife whenever I need some, which is practically daily in my house. It's way easier to slice thinly if it's mostly frozen. I also sometimes buy their meat ends packs. For about 5 bucks you get enough random Italian deli meats to chop up for 3 amazing, meaty pizzas! Yum.

Roasted Squash and Cumin Soup

If my idea of a perfect winter weekend revolves around the kitchen, this last weekend was beyond perfect. The house was full from Saturday morning to Sunday night with all sorts of great, steamy, toasty smells. It could be minus 40 degrees (thankfully, it's not) but it just doesn't seem as cold outside when the house is filled with the smell of slow-cooking soup and fresh bread.

We headed out to the market on Saturday morning and came away with a few of life's necessities: fresh dill, baby cukes, farm fresh eggs, rosy apples and a gorgeous, sweet golden delicious squash. It was the first time in a long while that I had enough free time to visit the Strathcona Farmer's market. And that's saying something as the market is a quick 2 blocks walk from my house!

By the end of the weekend we had 4 jars of garlicky, spicy tomato sauce, 4 jars of red wine garlic dills, two batches of homemade crackers, a soup pot full of golden orange squash and cumin soup and a bowl full of garlic and cheese croutons to eat with the soup. Enough to keep both of us warm through the week.

Roasted Squash and Cumin Soup - makes 8 servings

• 1 - 5 pound sweet orange squash ( I used golden delicious) peeled and cut into chunks
• Spray on olive oil
• 1 Tablespoon butter
• 2 medium onions
• 2 Teaspoons ground ginger
• 1.5 Tablespoons ground cumin
• 5 cloves garlic
• 3 cups chicken stock
• black pepper
• water to cover

Coat squash chunks with olive oil and roast in a 350F oven for approximately 30-45 minutes until chunks are nicely browned and soft. While the squash is roasting, melt butter in the bottom of a large soup pot and, over medium heat, gently brown onions and garlic. When the onions are softened and golden, add in cumin and ginger. Cook, stirring for 1 more minute. Add stock, black pepper and simmer. When squash chunks are roasted, add them to the pot, add enough water to increase the liquid just enough so it comes to the top of the squash chunks, increase the heat to medium high and simmer for 30 minutes. Use an immersion blender to puree the soup.

Serve with croutons, Parmesan cheese, chopped chives, or chopped parsley - or all of the above. I fried large multi grain bread chunks in garlic butter and topped them with sharp cheddar, before plonking a few into each bowl of soup. It made a very warming and filling Winter weekend lunch.

Smokey Barbeque Beans

I've always wanted to make my own baked beans. Ever since I was a kid and my mom brought home a copy of the "Cowboy's Cookbook" from her school library. It was written by a guy who went around interviewing little old men who used to be the chuckwagon cooks on the cattle drives in the wild west. That book, with its ugly yellow 1970's cover, did a great job of conjuring up images of smokey late-night campfires and pots of boiling coffee and beans. Here I am some 20 years later, finally making my own baked beans.

And just in time for the Summer Barbeque Challenge too. Lucky me.

These beans have a deep smokey sweet flavour that can only come with long (bloody long if you ask me!) cooking. They need a solid day to make. Don't worry about the beans going mushy, haricot beans simply don't do that very easily. After even 8 hours of solid simmering they are still perfectly shaped and a little al dente. If you really like your beans mushy, be prepared to cook them longer, or use smaller white beans such as great northern beans.

These were so yummy, this huge batch disappeared in a matter of minutes.

Lex's Smokey BBQ Beans

(serves a lot! close to 10 or 12 as a generous side dish)

• 700 grams (1.5 pounds) dried white haricot beans
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup italian parsley, finely chopped
• 1 small red capsicum (bell pepper), chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 x 796 ml (28 oz) can diced stewed tomatoes
• 1 x 156ml (5.5 oz) tin tomato paste
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 200 ml dark soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon dried hot chilli flakes
• 1 Tablespoon ground cumin
• 2 tablespoons hot English mustard
• 3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 450-500 grams smoked duck or goose wings (I used goose)
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 2 cups beef stock

Soak the beans overnight in plenty of cool water. Drain and rinse.

Chuck it all in a big ole pot (at least 8 litres/quarts!), bring it to the boil and let it simmer for 7 to 9 hours. Check on it periodically. If it looks like the liquid is getting thick, add an extra few cups of water. You'll probably have to do this a few times during the cooking process.

Towards the end, use tongs to fish out the smoked bird pieces. Strip the meat off the bones, dice the meat quite small and throw it back in the pot.

Simple fresh tomato, cheese and proscuitto pappardelle

I realise there has not been a lot of recipe posting on Lex Culinaria lately. I've been so busy at work that I really have not had time to do a bunch of cooking.

I've been feeling badly about the lack of cooking so I was pretty happy to get home in time tonight to make supper, even if it was just something basic like this pasta dish. Sometimes the simplest, most basic things are the best-tasting anyway...

If you're like me and you love very noodl-y tasing noodles, then you can't really beat pappardelle. They are so wide they are alomst a meaty noodle. Becuase I had managed to score soke fantastic tomatoes and fresh basil over the weekend and had also scored some great proscuitto, parmagiano reggiano and a packet or two of pappardelle at the Italian Centre Shop, I reckoned I had everything I needed for a great supper, and I was right. There's nothing I like better on a sunny spring night than to prepare a nice light and fresh meal and share it with my adrobale husband. Even better, he cleans the kitchen after I've cooked!

This is dead easy to whip up - easier even than spag bol, as you hardly cook anything - you can prepare all the topping ingredites in the time it takes to cook the pasta - about 10 minutes - and it tastes like summer!

Serves 2-3

• 200 gm dried Papardelle noodles
• 12 thin slices proscuitto
• 3 large ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
• 2 Tablespoons cabernet Sauvignon vinegar
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/3 cup loosely rolled fresh basil leaves
• 1/2 cup loosely packed fresh Italian parsley leaves
• 1/3 cup grated good parmesan (plus a bit for garnish)
• fresh ground black pepper

Cook the noodles in plenty of boiling, salted water according to the package directions.

Meanwhile, fry proscuitto slices in a single layer over high heat until well browned. You may have to do 2 or 3 batches depending on the size of your pan. Remove them to a plate and set aside.

Reduce heat under the frying pan to medium.  Saute the garlic briefly until it just barely starts to change to a golden colour, about 1 minute. Add roughly chopped tomatoes in a single layer. Stir and cook for 30 seconds and then remove from heat. Drizzle over the cabernet or balsamic vinegar. Tear proscuitto slices into pieces and add to the tomatoes. Chop up the basil and parsely very roughly. Stir the chopped herbs and the grated cheese through the hot tomatoes.

Drain pasta and toss into pan with tomato mixture. Combine well using tongs and serve with a dusting of fresh cracked black pepper a litte more parmesan sprinkled over.

Two-For-One Sausages

I don't know what the heck Otto Von Bismarck was on about when he lumped law and sausage into the same category of things you never want to see made. That's disrespectful of sausage. And now that I am an official sausage maker, complete with sausage making device and several thousand feet of hog intestine in my freezer, I take exception to his most famous statement. Sausage is pretty fun to make.

My nude little sausage experiment a few weeks ago confirmed for me what I already knew. I would like to make actual sausages with actual casings. So Cakes and I trotted off to K&K deli last Saturday and bought us some hog guts. Than we trotted off to Home Outfitters (which, by the way, still has a HUGE assortment of the sexiest blenders and mixers ever, please buy one. I think everybody should have one!) and procured us a sausage stuffer meat grinder contraption for the Kitchen Aid.

Then we stuffed ourselves a heap of sausages. We made two different kinds: a beer, garlic, rosemary and mustard sausage and a spicy black olive Chorizo sausage with red wine. Both were pretty yummy, although I think we'll have to use slightly fattier meat next time as they felt a little dry to me.

I thought I'd be grossed out at having to handle innards, but it really wasn't gross at all. Mind you, the casings came all nice and clean. I don't know that I would have enjoyed the sausage making as much if I had to clean the intestines from a hog I once knew as "Pinky".

Stuffing the sausages is dead easy, although it's definitely a two person job: one person to fill the hopper and work the on/off switch and one person to guide the sausage and twist the links as they come off. We stuffed the whole batch that you see in the photo above inside of 30 minutes. We had 4 Friends over to help us celebrate our new talents and by the end of the night, the six of us managed to eat all the sausages but about a dozen. Pretty impressive feat. J-Y kept claiming that they were the best goddamn sausages he'd ever eaten, but then J-Y also drank a whole bottle of wine all by himself so perhaps was feeling pretty positive about the whole world, deserving or no.

Judge for yourself.

Chili and Black Olive Chorizo

Will make about 20 to 25 sausages if you use 18 mm casings

• 800 grams organic ground pork
• 600 grams organic ground beef
• 150 ml red wine
• 5 cloves garlic minced
• 1 tablespoon paprika
• 3/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 3 teaspoons sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
• 1 cup minced pitted semi-dried kalamata olives
• 1 teaspoon liquid smoke
• 1 1/2 cups cooked arborio rice
• 1 cup minced fresh organic parsley

Mix really well. Before you stuff into casings, take a tablespoon or so and fry it up quickly in the frying pan so you can taste whether the seasonings are what you want. Then you can adjust the seasonings because there's not much half for a badly seasoned sausage once its in the casing. Once you're happy with the taste, stuff into soaked, rinsed casings. You could also roll these into roughly sausagy shapes if you don't have the equipment for stuffing casings, but in that case I'd add a raw egg or two in to help the sausages stick together better.

Garlic, Rosemary and Mustard Seed Sausages

Will make about 20 to 25 sausages if you use 18 mm casings

• 800 grams organic ground pork
• 600 grams organic ground beef
• 150 ml beer
• 5 cloves garlic minced
• 1/2 tablespoon crushed dried rosemary
• 2-3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh rosemary
• 1/2 cup seeded Dijon mustard
• 3 teaspoons sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon cayenne
• 2 teaspoons chili pepper flakes
• 1 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
• 2 teaspoons liquid smoke
• 1 1/2 cups cooked arborio rice
• 1 cup minced fresh organic parsley

Follow the same directions as for the spicy black olive chorizo.

Classic Veal Shanks

Quite a lot of the time I walk home from work and so on cold and snowy days, I trudge home and by the time I get there, I'm chilled and am looking forward to something warm and comforting. Like almost everybody else, I have limited time during the week to prepare meals. I do all the fiddly stuff at the weekends, but during the week, when my time is at a premium and the last thing I want to do after having been at the office for 10 hours is make a mess in the kitchen and then have to clean it up.

On cold and snowy workdays, I love my slow cooker almost as much as I love my husband, Cakes. After minimal effort the night before or first thing in the morning, I can walk in the door at 6 or 7, shake the snow off my feet and breathe in the smell of caramelized onion, tomatoes and veal without having to lift a finger. Heaven.

This classic braise would do well with veal, lamb or pork. I happened to choose veal shanks because that's what was on offer at the butchers.

Serves 4

• 4 x 3-inch thick slices of veal shank
• 1 large sweet onion
• 4 cloves garlic
• 2 cups red wine
• 1 tin chopped plum tomatoes
• 2 cups good beef broth (or if you're really lucky, substitute veal glace)
• 1 teaspoon lemon or orange zest
• salt
• pepper
• 1/4 cup flour
• fresh parsley

Brown the shanks on either side in a bit of olive oil in a heavy frying pan. Pop them into your slow cooker. In the same frying pan, gently saute your onions and garlic until soft. pour the red wine into the pan and use a spatula to scrape all the good brown bits off the bottom of the pan into the red wine. Pour the contents of the pan into the slow cooker. Add all the rest of the ingredients. If you're making this ahead to be cooked later, just pop the whole slow-cooker insert into the fridge. When you're ready to make your braised veal shanks, turn the slow-cooker on low and let it go for 6 to 8 hours.

When it's ready, use a large slotted spoon to gently remove the shanks from the sauce and set the shanks aside on a plate. Pour the sauce into a saucepan, bring to the boil and thicken with a a bit of flour that's been shaken in a jar with some red wine or beef stock.

To serve, place the shanks in a bowl and top with the nice gravy and some fresh parsley. I served mine with a basic gremolata of lemon, parsley and garlic. It's also nice on top of a pile of  fresh polenta or grits.

1 cup chopped fresh parsley

The Science of the Souffle

Souffles look hard, and sound hard, but really aren't. It's pretty difficult to bollocks one up and the general populace will never believe that it took you exactly 11 minutes to whip something that impressive up. When you serve a simple souffle people think you're some sort of culinary genius, which is just fine with me. The simple fact is that a culinary doofus could make a souffle.

You can whip up a quick souffle even if your cupboard is almost totally bare. All you need is an egg or two, some sugar, fruit and a starch (in this case, cornstarch). If that wasn't reason enough to love the souffle, consider this: You can make them well in advance and just bung them back in the oven to re-puff them. You wanna know how? Well, here comes the sciency part...

The base for any souffle is a nice dense whipped egg white. This egg white base makes up the structure of the souffle. The whipped egg white is really just a huge collection of millions of eeny weeny teeny tiny bubbles suspended in a thin film of egg white. Like the bubbles in your bubble bath, only smaller and not so soapy.

Because these bubbles are really just pockets of air, when you bake your souffles the heat of the oven causes the air to expand and so each tiny bubble becomes just a little bit bigger. And because each bubble is now a little bit bigger they each take up a bit more space, and your souffle starts to rise up out of its container.

That's only the first part. Because if it wasn't for the coagulation of the egg white, the souffle structure would completely collapse when you took it out of the oven. Thankfully though, that same heat that expands all the little air bubbles, also coagulates the proteins in the egg white changing it from a raw liquid into a cooked solid. The same thing that happens when you fry an egg in a frying pan.

Any souffle will collapse slightly when it is removed from the oven and cools a bit. This is because, as the air inside the bubbles cools down, the bubbles shrink a little bit because the air takes up less space. The bubbles don't shrink all the way though, because the solidified egg white holds the whole thing up.

Not so scary any more, eh?

Now the really great part.

Because the egg white has solidified and the air bubbles shrink when cold and expand when heated, you can make the souffles ahead of time, chill them and then you can re-puff them almost all the way back up by heating them up again. How fantastic is that? If you were having a dinner party, you could make them the day before and then heat them back up in a warm oven while your guests are enjoying their main course. All those magic little bubbles would get to work for you, puffing things up, and your guests would be none the wiser.

I made this souffle on Sunday afternoon. Cakes and I ended up not having dinner that night because we ate them all. They are tangy and not too sweet with a very big grapefruit flavour and a gorgeous, soft, marshmallow middle. They feel so rich and sensual on your tongue that you'll have a hard time believing that they are practically fat free and pretty low-cal! You could easily substitiute any fruit juice in place of the grapefruit juice  - try lime, raspberry or passionfruit!

Easy as all get-out grapefruit souffles

(adapted from a recipe found in Australian Gourmet Traveller March 2006 page 36)

Serves 6

• 250ml (1 cup) fresh squeezed grapefruit juice (you could use lemon, lime, orange or a combination as well) (about 3 small grapefruits or 2 large) - reserve the spent skins - you'll need the skin of six grapefruit halves.
• rind of 1/2 grapefruit, finely minced (about 1.5 tablespoons)
• 100 grams sugar (divided in half)
• 15 grams corn starch (about 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon)
• 2 tablespoons water
• 2 egg whites

Use a grapefruit spoon to clean any remaining pulp and membrane from the inside of 6 grapefruit halves. Dust the inside of the pith with sugar. Set aside.

Combine juice, 50g sugar and rind in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Simmer until juice is reduced to 150ml. Strain out rind pieces.

Mix starch and water together. Whisk starch mixture into hot juice and continue to whisk over low heat until juice is substantially thickened. Remove from heat and immerse pan into a cool water bath. Whisk until the juice mixture is cold, about 3 minutes. Set aside.

Whip egg whites until soft peaks form. Add 50 gm sugar and continue whipping until firm peaks form. Fold egg whites into grapefruit mixture in two batches.

Spoon souffle mix evenly into grapefruit halves, filling until level with the top.

Place halves on a baking tray and bake in a 360F oven for 15 minutes, or until puffed and the tops are brown.

Serve with a dusting of icing sugar. If you're making these ahead, cool to room temperature and then refrigerate inside a plastic container large enough to accommodate the souffles without touching the tops. Reheat them in a 360F oven for 8-12 minutes, until they have re-puffed, before serving.

Each of these souffles is: 100 cal, 0.2 grams fat and 2 WW points