Alex Hughes: Low-cal comfort food that doesn’t compromise on taste

Sign up to IndyEat's free newsletter for weekly recipes, foodie features and cookbook releases Get our food and drink newsletter for free Get our food and drink newsletter for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. open image in gallery Alex Hughes’s debut cookbook ‘Low-Cal Kitchen Bangers’ is here to prove that comfort food doesn’t need a calorie bomb to hit the spot Don’t cut out carbs Hughes grew up in an era of size-zero supermodels and women’s magazines that promoted skinniness, and got into a cycle of crash dieting and gaining weight from her teenage years. Because once you’ve lost weight if that’s your goal], you then need to maintain it.” She says her recipes are “something that you can sustain – you don’t feel like you’re missing out on anything”. Choose lower-fat meats and cheeses If you’re making a beef burger, “5 per cent fat beef meat halves the calories compared to the 20 per cent fat style, you’ve got low fat cheese slices. “Because the longer you go no, no, no, can’t have them, your brain does this thing ‘I want it, I want it’ – and then what’s going to happen is, instead of having a couple of squares, you’ll eat the entire block.” Hughes suggests, if you’re going to eat something high in calories, to “make space for it” by cutting down somewhere else.