Saturday 29 November 2014

Less Sinful Smoked Mackerel Pate

smoked mackerel pate
smoked mackerel pate

Fish pate is something that always makes an appearance at Christmas, whether it's as a starter on Christmas day or as part of the Boxing Day buffet. We had a food tasting session at my Slimming World group this week which was an opportunity for me to try out another recipe from the Slimming World Christmas book.

Mackerel pate usually uses cream cheese or crème fraiche but you can cut the calories - while keeping all the taste - by using Quark instead. If you haven't come across Quark before you're really missing out - it's a very versatile curd cheese that has a very plain taste so can be used in both sweet or savoury dishes. It can be used in place of crème fraiche, natural yogurt or cream cheese and is virtually fat free. It is also quite thick so is good for dishes where you want a robust texture.

Making this mackerel pate is really simple. The recipe from the Slimming World book was actually for smoked trout pate but I couldn't get any smoked trout, so mackerel it was!

You need
250g smoked mackerel fillets
125g Quark
3-4 spring onions, chopped
1 tsp horseradish sauce
couple of drops of Tabasco sauce

Dry-fry the chopped spring onions for a couple of minutes and flake the fish into the same pan and stir until combined.


Spoon into a large bowl and mix well with a fork into the Quark until you have a relatively smooth texture.

Add the horseradish and Tabasco. Mix well and transfer to a serving bowl. Serve with breadsticks or melba toasts.

4 comments:

  1. How many syns is this? Thanks

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. hi, if you use smoked trout as in the original recipe, it is free on Extra Easy and Original, and 2.5 syns on green per serving and the full quantity serves 6 (it was 12 in the book but I halved the quantities). I'm afraid I don't know whether mackerel would be different in syns as I haven't followed SW for a while and I know points do change.

      Delete
  2. Just Bought smoked mackeral out of lidls to try this.200g packet is working out at 2syns and whatever is in the horseradish

    ReplyDelete
  3. I made with wasabi instead of horseradish. Any different

    ReplyDelete

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