Two Chubby Cubs reveal their slimming recipes to Femail (2024)

Serves 4

523 calories

You’re looking at this and thinking you can’t have such decadence on a diet.

Listen, we understand, we used to think the same thing, but this is one of our cheat’s recipes where a little of what you fancy does you good. When you’ve had a week of slimming meals and fancy a treat, this is something to savour and enjoy.

We tend to have something like this every couple of weeks to scratch the ‘need sugar, can almost see my feet again’ itch, and we very much encourage you to do the same. Life isn’t there to be filled with fruit salads and rice cakes, after all.

However, this is still a diet book, so if you want to slim it down a little, there are plenty of replacements you can make which are listed in Paul’s notes below. But sometimes – just sometimes – it’s worth going the whole hog.

INGREDIENTS

• 300g (10 ½ oz) strawberries,
• chopped
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 250g (9oz) strawberry ice cream
• 12 shortbread fingers
• 250g (9oz) vanilla ice cream
• whipped cream
• 4 whole strawberries

Heat a saucepan over a medium-low heat and add the chopped strawberries along with the sugar. Simmer for 7–10 minutes, stirring occasionally, to make a strawberry sauce, then remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Take four sundae glasses or bowls and put a tablespoon of the strawberry sauce into the bottom of each one, followed by a scoop of strawberry ice cream.

Crumble over 2 shortbread fingers, and add a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Spoon over some more of the strawberry sauce, followed by another 2 crumbled shortbread fingers.

Top each sundae with a swirl of whipped cream and a whole strawberry.

Notes from Paul

• There's a whole raft of ice-creams out there now that take pleasure in telling you how low in calories they are – they’re really rather good and worth exploring, although if you’re anything like us, you won’t be able to have half a tub in the freezer without shooting the kitchen angst-ridden glances all night until you succumb.

• Shortbread fingers can be swapped out for ladyfingers – those wee sponge fingers that your gran used to put in her trifle – which sounds like an awful euphemism but I hand-on-heart promise it isn’t.

• Strawberry jelly, made the night before and scattered with chopped strawberries before it sets, makes a perfectly acceptable substitute for the sticky strawberry sauce.

• You could always have an apple and a cry in the hallway cupboard if you were so inclined.

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Serves 1

477 calories

This is one of those recipes that lends itself to customization – add different meats, more cheese, peppers, more tomatoes, different mustards.

The key to this breakfast is making it the night before and wrapping it tight so everything sticks together – it’ll make it so much easier when it comes to frying it towards the end. This makes enough for one sandwich, but as ever, scale up to satisfy your belly or dining partners.

We sometimes like to cut a large French stick in half lengthwise, pack in the fillings and wrap tightly as one long baguette – then, in the morning, we carefully cut slices and fry them as below.

Ingredients

• 2 slices of bread
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• as much wafer-thin ham as you
• think you can get away with
• without an intervention (or
• about 35g)
• same as above, but with waferthin
• chicken
• 1 large ripe tomato
• slices of smoked cheese
• 2 eggs
• salt and freshly ground black
• pepper

METHOD

1. Make up your sandwich – mustard on the bread, then layer the ham, chicken, sliced tomato and cheese as many times over as you want – we’ve managed eight layers before now.
2. Wrap the sandwich as tightly as possible in clingfilm and pop it into the fridge – you want everything pressed together.
3. In the morning, take your sandwich out of the fridge. Beat the eggs with a pinch of salt and pepper and get your best frying pan out. Spray the pan with oil and set it on a medium heat.
4. Dip your sandwich into the egg mix, making sure it’s coated and has soaked up as much as it can, then fry it. The ideal sandwich is one that is crispy on the outside and warm and gooey in the middle.
5. Serve with a side salad if you’re still hungry, but I mean, come on ...

Notes from Paul

• Add chilli flakes if you’re one of those people who don’t enjoy a meal without your lips burning.

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Serves 6

488 calories

Ah, America. We love the place and can often be found waddling around Disney scowling at the children and wondering whether or not to kneecap each other so we can get to the front of the line. One thing we always take away from our trips, aside from chest pains and two suitcases of Skittles, is a love of their fantastic food. The cuisine in the theme parks can be pooh-poohed for being fast, cheap and lacking in quality, but then so are we, so we fit right in.

A sloppy joe is delicious – a sandwich stuffed full of seasoned beef mince. A hamburger that will leave your shirt stained, your beard wet and your belly full. We’ve combined it with potatoes and cooked it all in one pan to try and minimize the fuss, and the resulting dish is absolutely glorious!

INGREDIENTS

• 900g (2lb) potatoes, cut into 1cm
• (½ inch) cubes
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 10ml (2 teaspoons)
• Worcestershire sauce
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 750g (1½lb) beef mince
• 500g (1lb 2oz/about 2 cups) passata
• 1 medium carrot, peeled and finely diced
• 1 red pepper, finely diced
• 2 celery stalks, finely diced
• 1 teaspoon mustard powder
• 1 teaspoon chilli powder
• 1 teaspoon cider vinegar
• a good pinch of salt and freshly
• ground black pepper
• 80g (3oz/about ¾ cup)
• mozzarella cheese, grated
• 1 tablespoon hot sauce (we use Buffalo sauce, but feel free to mix it up)

METHOD

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C fan/400°F/gas mark 6.
2. Pop the cubes of potato into a bowl with the olive oil and
3. Worcestershire sauce and tumble them around until nicely coated.
4. Scatter them on a baking sheet and cook in the oven for 35–45 minutes, turning them every now and then until they’ve softened and browned.
5. While the potatoes are cooking, heat a little oil in a pan over a medium heat and cook your onions, adding the garlic just as the onions are turning translucent.
6. Add the beef mince and cook until browned.
7. Add the passata, carrots, red pepper and celery and stir through, then stir in the mustard powder, chilli powder, cider vinegar, salt, pepper and a tablespoon of water. Cover the pan and allow to bubble away gently on a medium heat until everything has thickened up nicely.
8. When the potatoes are ready, stir them straight into the pan and make sure everything is mixed together well.
9. Top with the mozzarella, or any other cheese you’ve got to hand, and pop under the grill until the cheese has browned nicely.
10. Drizzle with the hot sauce and serve.

Notes from Paul

• If you have an air fryer, pop the potato cubes in with a dash of oil and the Worcestershire sauce – the air fryer will take care of them, tumbling as necessary.

• If you use a large, ovenproof frying pan, this whole dish becomes a one-pot job.

• If you’re not planning on having your ‘I’m being good’ side salad with this, it will make enough for four big portions

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By Claire Toureille for MailOnline

Last year, the couple appeared on James Martin's Saturday Kitchen, where they revealed a boat disaster during a long weekend to Copenhagen sparked their weight loss.

'We have always been big, we've always been half-heartedly dieting, but we went to Copenhagen for a long weekend, and the two of us hired a solar panel boat,' James explained.

'This boat picked up quite a lot of speed, and we're trying to slow it down but the momentum of it, first carried us into the harbour and then it carried us closer and closer so you could see the people getting more and more alarmed.

After deciding to shift the pounds in 2018 James lost 9st 11lbs while husband Paul shed 10 stone.

'And then we just slammed on the side of it, quite a crash, Paul then tries to get out, falls over on the jetty,' James went on.

The cherry on top, he explained, was when a boiled egg the couple had nicked from their breakfast restaurant fell out of Paul's pocket as he fell.

Paul admitted the incident happened when the couple was at their biggest, with James weighing 28st and Paul 25st to 26st.

Soon after, the pair were approached by the Davina McCall to lose some weight for her TV show This Time Next Year, and James explained it had felt like 'theperfect opportunity to take it seriously ans try to lose what we needed to lose.'

Quickly, the couple shifted the pounds at an incredible rate, which helped the soaring success of of their blog and Instagram account, which they initially set up in 2014.

'We started a blog because we wanted somewhere to put our recipes on and talk about ourselves,' James explained.

'It just started picking up, we went from 1,000 followers to 10,000 to 100,000 followers,' he said, before adding that 'the last year [had] been crazy following the release of their cookbook.

The couple, who love to cook, were motivated to publish a weight loss recipe book after seeing recipes shared in slimming groups and thinking they could do better.

'What we try to do is take a basic recipe, like say, a salad, and add little bits in,' James explained.

'Our recipes are very much about "here's the standard, here's the core of it, do what you want with i",'' he added.

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