MARJORY McGINN

WHIPPING up a dinner party with memorable, tasty dishes can be as stressful as a job interview. But creating a menu that is not only delicious but also highly nutritious, low-fat, and preferably air-miles-lite is probably a step too far for most home cooks, promising tears and tantrums even before the first guest has rolled up.

However, according to nutritionist and "cycling gourmet" Nell Nelson, presenter of the TV programme The Woman Who Ate Scotland in which she celebrates Scottish delicacies and produce, creating a healthy, tasty gourmet meal isn't as arduous as it sounds. The trick, she says, is to keep things simple and use fresh, seasonal ingredients in interesting ways.

"A dinner party should be a treat, you don't want to serve up cottage cheese and crisp breads. You want a meal to be well-balanced: a little bit of protein, some carbohydrates, a little fat and fibre, which balances your blood sugar. You want a meal that makes everyone feel good and provides a bit of energy," says Nelson, who, apart from her show on STV and writing books on food, is also a consultant nutritionist at Neal's Yard Remedies in Edinburgh.

"Use local, seasonal ingredients, which will taste better and you don't have to do very much to them. Right now there are some fantastic Scottish fruits and vegetables in the supermarket, particularly broccoli which is a superfood. It's a case of using fresh ingredients in ways that will stimulate people's taste buds."

To prove that healthy gourmet food can have plenty of taste and attitude, Nelson recently joined forces with chef Jason Gallagher, who owns the Stockbridge Restaurant in Edinburgh, to create a Guilt-Free Gourmet Menu. The set menu appeals to those who want to indulge themselves but not at the expense of their health and it's high on vegetables, fruit and omega oils and cuts back on fattening saturated fats such as butter and cream. At present, the menu features pea and mint soup, seared salmon with an avocado salsa, and for dessert, baked ginger apples with Calvados. The same kind of menu, says Nelson, could be used at home for a dinner party and it would take around half an hour to cook for about six folk.

"Scottish produce is perfect for a dinner party menu, particularly fish like good quality farmed salmon, trout, mackerel or herring," says Nelson. "With herring you can toss it in oatmeal and fry it with a squeeze of lemon, and this is a great flavour - you don't need to do much to it. You can take Scottish salmon as well and add a bit of lemongrass to it, chilli or coriander and that's lovely. These spices are healthy and stimulating, and you can adapt them well to Scottish produce."

Gallagher, who was recently named City Chef of the Year in the Scottish Chef Awards, agrees that when cooking for dinner parties you should keep things simple and wholesome, but says that today there is such a huge amount of produce available throughout the year, and from around the world, that most home cooks become swamped by choice. "As a chef I find that even when I'm writing a menu I've just got to decide on certain things and stick with them, otherwise you can get carried away," he says.

Gallagher grew up in South Africa and has worked as a chef in Britain and Bermuda, and although he has been exposed to many different cuisines he favours classic French with a modern twist. For a simple wholesome dinner menu Gallagher says you can't go far wrong with Scottish fish and seafood, with scallops being a real favourite.

"Scallops never let you down, whether they're used as a starter or a main. You can pan fry them for about 30 seconds each side and serve them with salads or pasta. I serve them with crushed vine tomatoes, bacon and sage. Blanch and peel the tomatoes and roughly chop them. Crisp the bacon in a pan, add the tomatoes, sage and precooked scallops."

And if your arteries are not too challenged you could also use a cream sauce. "Reduce some white wine," says Gallagher, "put cream in, poach your scallops in that sauce, add some Parmesan cheese and Dijon mustard, or you could add a slight curry taste by adding some curry powder. That works well. Add them to pasta or have them with rice. You can also put scallops on skewers and do them very quickly on the barbecue."

Barbecues are obviously an easy option for summer entertaining and almost anything can be threaded onto a skewer, including cheaper cuts of meat, chicken or king prawns. Pork or lamb can be marinated first in lime juice for extra flavour and added to pieces of pepper, chunks of red onion, mushrooms, or wedges of fresh pineapple. Or bake a whole fish (wrapped in tin foil) on the barbecue.

Edinburgh-born Nelson says for dinner parties she favours recipes with an exotic twist, possibly influenced by years spent cycling around the world in places such as the Far East and Australia, combining her twin passions of eating and exercising.

Her travels have yielded her many unusual recipes and challenging foods as well but she is as polite as she is adventurous and wouldn't earmark anything as too exotic, or inedible. "I never drew the line at any foods, it's part of different cultures. In China they eat the whole animal, however. They eat what they've got and maybe that's something that could catch on here."

One of her favourite dishes for dinner parties is an easy Moroccan tagine with chicken, which is almost a meal you can make up as you go along. "It's a very easy dish, just add chicken pieces, preferably good quality chicken. Add some liquid, dried apricots, cinnamon, garlic, onion. Put it on the cooker top and simmer (for around an hour, until the chicken is cooked through). You can also add almonds to it, ginger, prunes if you like them. This gives you a well-balanced meal with the antioxidant properties of cinnamon and carotene, and fibre in the apricots. Serve it with wholegrain rice or cous cous."