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It’s that day again, when after a weekend of cooking for 3 I have switch back to 1 and 1 picky eater (me). And inevitably that means Salmon and Pasta for Amelia and Salmon and salad leaves for me. Pasta hates me, I love it but looking at it makes me gain about 2lbs.

When we were shopping on Sunday I decided to pick up a tub of Mascarpone cheese for a change – I love it on the forbidden pizzas so wanted to see if I could incorporate it in to my lower carb meals.

What I made us for tea this evening was very quick and as usual used the Indiana Jones method i.e. made up as I went along.

• 1 Salmon fillet
• Oil – I used sesame seed but feel free to mix it up
• Mascarpone Cheese
• Fusilli Pasta

Cook the salmon in a tin foil parcel with a generous glug of the oil of your choice. I had the oven at 200 deg C for about 20 mins – to allow for warming up time.

Once the salmon is done, turn off the oven but don’t removed the salmon.

Cook pasta – in our case enough for Amelia.

when pasta is cooked, drain off the water but leave the pasta in the pan.

Remove the salmon from the oven, remove the skin and with a fork break into large pieces and add to the pasta. I didn’t add all of it as I don’t eat pasta.

Add 2 generous tablespoons of cheese and stir well to flake the salmon and coat the pasta and salmon.

Put the salmon and pasta on a plate (and then add the remaining salmon to the pan and add some more cheese and stir well and serve)

Season with some pepper.

I had my salmon and cheese with some peppery rocket leaf mix a large amount of which Amelia helped herself to.

The dish seemed to go down well in spite of Amelia having a snuffly nose which usually puts her off her a food a bit.

Due to Jon’s (crazy) commute to and from Canary Wharf we only eat as a family at the weekend; and with two of us on hand to help encourage Amelia to develop eating habits which are not Tudor-esque we generally use this as the time for trying out a new dish. Once mastered I will then cook it again while she naps during the week and what she has for tea, Jon will have for supper when she gets home. Even though we may not all eat together during the week she will still eat the same meal.

This afternoon I decided to finally try out one of the recipes from Nick of MyDaddyCooks website a go, namely the oven baked Salmon with roasted butternut squash, new potatoes, red onion and chestnut mushrooms. You can find the recipe, and the video (of course) here.

As it is me, and I’m like that, I deviated from the recipe slightly by the addition of 3 chopped medium courgettes to the vegetable mix, negating for us the necessity of cooking a separate vegetable accompaniment and minimising the amount of washing up at the end.

This was a very easy meal to prepare, it did take a while to do all the chopping; mainly due to having to deal with a butternut squash selected by Jon which not so much resembled the classic pear shape but more a very toned pumpkin.

Every 8-10 minutes I gave the baking veg a mix with a small wooden spoon, turning them over making sure they didn’t burn. This was an excellent tip form Nick as it meant that not old �did I not have to soak or excavate my roasting pan from a layer of charred veg, but the butternut squash didn’t char as it is wont to do.

I highly recommend you give this dish a go, it is very filling and warming and the sesame seed oil really heightens the nutty flavour of the mushrooms without being overpowering.

I never did get a photo of the meal as by the time I remembered the plates were pretty much devoid of any traces of food!