Low fat or Italian?

The latest delicious and olive have winged their way to me. Two very different themes this month. Delicious is all about low fat and low calorie with definitely some interesting things. For example, ‘poached egg and new potato salad with crispy bacon and a mustard dressing’, ‘lemon and lime granita’, ‘pea, ham & Taleggio tart’, the fabulously green ‘basil sorbet’, a very interesting sounding ‘crab and salmon cheesecake’ and ‘old fashioned ginger beer’. All very interesting if a tiny tad virtuous! This month’s olive has a distinctly Italian feel to it. After a quick flick, my initial highlights are: ‘poached chicken with a mustard herb sauce’, and three very interesting dishes with my personal super food pesto – ‘pesto and potato tart’ – sorry Dr Atkins, this sounds fabulous! ‘butterflied chicken with pesto cream’, ‘salmon with lemon pesto crust’, ‘Gennaro’s grilled lamb cutlets filled with Parma ham and herbs’, ‘chocolate crinkle cookies’, ‘spinach, bacon and new potato salad’, ‘Giorgio Locatelli’s Grana Padano crisps’ served with aged Balsamicand surprisingly for me and collection of interesting desserts. However, personally I felt the desserts were not displayed at their best on the busy retro crockery. Seeing the Midwinter’ design from my childhood was really nice but it just didn’t work with the mango and vanilla terrine. My favourite desserts at first glance were ‘blackberry fluff’, ‘quick peach brûlée’ and my top pick - ‘chocolate and raspberry torte’. As I have a trip to D, MC and T’s next weekend, we have plenty of delicious material to work with.