Catering & Hotel Keeper Award - Healthy Menu Award

Not enough healthy puddings but more imaginative ideas than last year was the verdict in the healthy menu competition.
One of the judges, Miriam Polunin, food editor of She, reports on the winners

WHAT makes a healthy eating winner? The judges of the Caterer &: Hotelkeeper/Evian Healthy Menu Award were looking for a menu that allowed diners to choose a healthy meal without feeling they were losing one of enjoyment. The winning menu had to offer delicious, imaginative dishes that just happened to be low in saturated, hard fats: high in food value by using fresh produce such as vegetables and fruit; high in vitamins; had good sources of low-fat fibre; and strong on quality, additive free ingredients. The winner was Hamilton's in Weymouth, which scored highly by devoting most of its short menu, which is changed weekly, to fish and game dishes - all strikingly low in saturated fat.

On the average week, Hamilton's will give half its menu over to interesting fish - brill cooked with fresh mussels and whelks, steamed escalope of salmon with saffron and ginger or skate poached in dry cider. Other judges', included Anton Mosimann, Caterer editor Gary Noble and
Richard Foulsham of Evian. They decided that not every dish on the winning menu had to be healthy, but that the general approach must be.

Hamilton's sometimes offers a high-fat dish, such as the salmon and turbot mille-feuille. Quail is sometimes served with a warm beetroot and thyme salad, rabbit as roast saddle, wild rabbit as a terrine.

The proprietors of Hamilton's, the D'Agostino brothers, Roberto, Marco and Emesto, call on their Italian parentage for some of their imaginative vegetarian dishes that generally have little fat.
Poached spinach gnocchi; tortellini verdi stuffed with ricotta and served in a sauce of wild mushrooms, white wine and creme fraiche; aubergine charlotte; and artichoke tatin are often on the menu. When soups are described as "creamed", the effect is usually achieved by purees rather than added cream.

The brothers enjoy hunting for unusual fresh ingredients: they see what is available, dream up a dish, then when they've used up what they bought for it, change the menu to fit what's best on the market that week. Onion bread at Hamilton's is made with white flour and served with the brothers' own potted crab (simmered with a touch of dill and bumet), but they can vouch for theother ingredients as they make the bread themselves.
Almost all dishes come with an appetising colourful salad.
When vegetables are offered, the mixed bowl still has crunch without being too raw.
"Jacket fries" served with grilled steak are in large chunks, limiting fat absorption. Hamilton's sometimes serves rich puddings and home-made ice cream, from marmalade to whisky and honey oatmeal flavours. It also has imaginative low-fat and low-sugar desserts: summer puddings, served on a puree of blackcurrants with a quark of quenelle, baked summer berry strudels with apricot coulis and assiette of tropical fruit with fresh lime sorbet.

The cheeseboard includes a low-ish fat Capricorn goat's cheese and a low-fat quark in its selection of unpasteurised British cheeses. Decaffeinated coffee, still or sparkling mineral waters and tea are available as well as alcoholic drinks.

Hamilton's finds that in Weymouth it competes with the "meat-two-veg- and-chips-for-£2.75" market.

The D'Agostino brothers have all worked in London restaurants. Last November they enlarged their fathers coffee shop to include 60 seats for evening use, plus a function room for 40.
The menu is chalked on a black-board, brought to your table. Cheapest meal might be a pint of prawns (in their shells), served with a dip and granary bread,
at £4.25; the most expensive, £8.50 for something like a cassoulet of Dublin Bay prawns' and local scallops in a leek and herb white wine jus with leeks.

The judges verdict - "it's wonderful to see healthy eating ideas built into menus so that you don't have to be a puritan or a pariah to dodge high fat levels and over processed ingredients."