Fortifying

Fortifying means raising the energy and protein in a dish without raising the volume. It exists because losing weight and muscle during treatment is a real hazard, and because a low-fibre diet has already removed several of the foods people normally lean on for calories. Ordinary healthy-eating advice is turned upside down for this period, on purpose and with the backing of the guidance. Full fat, not low fat. Small and rich, not large and virtuous.

The four moves

Fortified milk first, because it goes everywhere else. Whisk 2 to 4 tablespoons of skimmed milk powder into a pint of whole milk and keep it in the fridge. Use it in tea, sauces, custard, mash and shakes without thinking about it again.

Butter and oil into starch. A knob stirred through mash, rice or pasta at the end.

Cream and cheese into savoury dishes. A spoon of double cream into a soup off the heat, or a handful of grated Cheddar folded into a white sauce.

Egg yolk into something hot but not boiling, whisked in off the heat, which thickens and enriches at once.

The cue

The dish should look glossier and taste rounder, and it should coat the spoon rather than run off it. If a soup tastes thin at the end, it usually wants fat rather than salt.

Common mistakes

Fortifying the meal you were going to struggle to finish anyway, rather than the small one you will actually eat. Adding cream to a soup and then boiling it, which splits it. Reaching for low-fat versions out of habit. And leaving the fortifying until the plate is in front of you, when a spoon of milk powder built into the sauce twenty minutes earlier would have gone down unnoticed.

Little and often beats three large meals here. Six small things across a day is a normal target when appetite is poor.