Authentic-ish Chinese

Blanched greens with oyster sauce is already the lightest thing on a Chinese table. 600g of gai lan is about 78 kcal. The only fat in it is whatever you dress it with, and the swap kit already tells you to blanch rather than stir-fry, which takes the oil from 45g to a few drops of sesame at the end.

Do that and you have saved 350 kcal across 4 people, which is real, and you have also finished. There is nothing else to take out.

I drafted a version that added 400g of firm tofu to raise the protein. It worked, in the sense that the numbers moved. It also turned a side dish into a main course and then compared the two, which is exactly the arithmetic this book exists to avoid.

Blanch the greens for 90 seconds, drain them hard, dress them hot with oyster sauce and a few drops of sesame oil. Eat them next to something else. That is the dish and it does not need me.

Traditional Chinese salt baked chicken is a masterpiece of culinary simplicity. You take a whole bird, wrap it tightly in parchment paper, and bury it in a massive wok or clay pot filled with scorching hot coarse salt. There is no sugary glaze to cut. There is no deep-frying oil to drain away. There is no heavy wheat batter to strip off. The cooking method relies entirely on the chicken's own skin rendering down under the paper, basting the meat in its own fat while the salt acts as a dry kiln to seal in the flavour.

I cannot strip the fat out of this dish without fundamentally destroying it. The only lever I have available is the chicken skin. To make the numbers look better and hit the brief for this book, I would have to peel the skin off the bird before cooking it, or swap the whole chicken for bare, skinless breasts.

If you bury a skinless chicken breast in a mountain of hot salt, even wrapped in paper, you are going to create a dusty, desiccated tragedy. The intense dry heat will pull every single drop of moisture out of the lean meat because there is no fat left to protect it. You'll be left chewing on something that resembles a chalkboard eraser. It isn't a clever culinary hack, it's a ruin.

This book is about making sensible trades, not pointless sacrifices. Some traditional dishes are already as pure as they can get, and this is exactly one of them. I refuse to give you a fake, dry win that tastes like sawdust just to claim a nutritional victory. If you want salt baked chicken, go out and eat the real thing, skin and all, and enjoy it.

The editor asked me to look at traditional sesame balls. These are glorious, deep-fried spheres of glutinous rice dough, stuffed to the brim with sweet red bean paste and rolled in sesame seeds. They're a masterpiece of texture. You bite through a crispy, nutty shell, hit a layer of chewy, sticky dough, and finish with a molten, sugary centre.

My job is to strip out the fat, drop the sugar, and push the protein up. I'm a working chef, not a wizard. Some things simply can't survive the transition, and this is one of them.

Let's look at the filling first. Traditional sweet bean paste is essentially pure sugar and mashed beans. To push the protein up in a dessert, I'd normally reach for egg whites or a lean dairy option like quark. But if you try to stuff a traditional sesame ball with sweetened cheese or egg, the moisture turns to steam in the hot oil and blows the dough apart. I know, because I tried it. I spent an afternoon scraping exploded dough off my kitchen walls.

Then you have the cooking method. To drop the fat, you've got to ditch the deep fryer and use the oven. But baking glutinous rice dough simply doesn't work. The shock of the hot oil is what makes the balls puff up and hollow out in the centre. Bake them on a tray, and they turn into dense, heavy rocks that could smash a window. You lose the entire point of the dish.

Then there's the dough itself. You can't make a sesame ball without glutinous rice flour. It provides the signature chew that makes Chinese bakery treats so good. If I swap it for plain flour or cornflour to try and bake a structured shell, I'm just making a dry pasty. It isn't a smart swap, it's a punishment.

I even looked at making a savoury version to hit the targets. To genuinely make the maths work for this book, I'd have to swap the sweet filling for minced lean pork or chicken breast, ditch the sugar, and bake the whole thing on a wire rack. At that point, you're eating a baked chicken meatball rolled in sesame seeds. That's a completely different recipe, and calling it a sesame ball is an insult to anyone expecting a dessert.

So I'm putting my hands up. This dish fails the test. I can't remove the fat and sugar while bumping up the protein without completely destroying everything that makes a sesame ball worth eating. If you want one, go to a proper Chinese restaurant, order a fresh plate, and enjoy the sugar and the oil. Eat a couple of them and accept what it costs your daily intake. I refuse to ruin a brilliant dish just to hit a mathematical target.

Chilli oil is exactly what it says on the tin. It's a massive pool of hot vegetable oil infused with dried chillies and spices. That's the entire recipe. To get more protein for your calories, I have to either add lean meat or strip out the fat. I can't add chicken breast to a condiment, and if I take away the oil, you're left with a bowl of dry red flakes.

There isn't a clever way around this. It isn't a sauce you can thin out with stock or vinegar, it's pure liquid fat. If you want a sharp heat, use fresh chillies. If you want proper Chinese chilli oil to spoon over your tofu, you have to eat the fat and accept the cost. Trying to change this recipe is a total waste of time.