Super foods recipe: sautéed lamb and green beans with creamy caper sauce

A seemingly self-indulgent dish cleverly deceives your tastebuds by using low-fat cream cheese instead of cream. Salty capers work beautifully with lamb and give a real flavour kick. Serve with boiled new potatoes.

Green beans are a good source of both vitamins and minerals, including some calcium and folate. Just 60 grams (four tablespoons) of green beans count as one of your seven-a-day, and with virtually no fat, they are a low-calorie bonus to any weight-management program.

Preparation: 10 minutes

Cooking: 20 minutes

Serves 4

• 1 onion
• 450 g (1 lb) lamb fillet, trimmed of fat
• 30 g (2 tbsp) capers
• 15 g (1 tbsp) olive oil or canola oil
• 225 g (1 c) frozen green beans
• 5 g (1 tsp) cornstarch
• 30 g (2 tbsp) low-fat (1%) milk
• 115 g (1/2 c) low-fat cream cheese or 130 g (1/2 c) grated low-fat cheddar
• 45 g (3 tbsp) chopped fresh parsley

1. Slice the onion, then slice the lamb into one-centimetre-thick (1/2-inch-thick) pieces. Drain and rinse the capers. Heat the oil in a large frying pan over high heat. Add the onion, reduce heat to medium and cook for five minutes, or until the onion begins to soften and brown.
2. Push the onion to one side of the pan and add the lamb. Cook for six minutes, turning the meat occasionally and pressing on the pieces in the hot pan so they brown evenly. Add the green beans and onion and cook, stirring, for another two minutes. In a small dish, stir the cornstarch and milk together to form a smooth paste. Use tongs or a slotted spoon to transfer the meat, beans and onion to a dish and keep warm.
3. Add 90 millilitres (six tablespoons) of boiling water to the pan and boil over high heat, stirring with a whisk. Reduce heat to low, whisk in the milk and cornstarch paste, and return to a boil. Beat the cream cheese lightly with a fork to soften it and gradually whisk it into the sauce until smooth and hot. Stir in the capers and parsley. Transfer the lamb and beans to four plates and spoon a little sauce over each portion.

•  Fresh green beans work just as well as frozen ones. Trim them and cook in boiling water for two to three minutes until just tender. Drain and continue as for the frozen beans.
• Use frozen fava beans instead of green beans.
• Try thin veal or pork scallops instead of lamb. Cook the meat as is, frying it on each side, or cut it into thin strips and stir-fry.

When adding boiling water to the pan in step 3, scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan with the whisk. This will add extra flavour to the creamy caper sauce.

Nutritional information: 252 calories • 12 grams fat • 3 grams saturated fat • 6 grams carbohydrates • 27 grams protein • 3 grams fibre.

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