Monthly Archives: February 2011

Italiaslaw

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I’ve recently acquired a taste for fennel.  I didn’t used to like it (not a big anise fan either), but now I enjoy the fresh flavor and the fact that it keeps for quite a long time.  My favorite thing to do with fennel is to make a slaw-type dish; it’s basically fennel and other vegetables marinated in olive oil & vinegar. It keeps for a few days and gets better as time goes on and it has more time to marinate. I was inspired a bit by the Italian snack/appetizer pinzimonio.

Here’s today’s:

Also in season at the moment are watermelon radishes, so named because of their gorgeous color.  I think they look a bit like tie-dye hippie shirts.

Italian Fennel Slaw

  • 1 large fennel root
  • 3 green onions or 1/2 sweet onion
  • 1-4 radishes
  • a few tbsp white balsamic vinegar (could substitute apple cider vinegar)
  • 1 meyer lemon (or regular lemon)
  • olive oil (use less than the amount of vinegar)
  • salt & pepper to taste

Using the slicing disc of a food processor (or, slicing by hand), slice fennel, onions, and radishes into thin sheets.  Squeeze lemon juice on top, add vinegar & olive oil.  Top with fresh ground pepper and sea salt.  Mix well, let sit 10-15 minutes before serving.  Refrigerate unused portion.
Also good using: carrots, other types of radishes, apples, and more.

Black Bean Burger Experiment

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Foreword: I wouldn’t call this a success, but I wouldn’t call it a failure.  You can learn from my mistakes and probably make this one turn out awesome.  I’ve adjusted the recipe so hopefully you’ll have more success (or I will, too, next time I make them).

Black bean burgers, after much ado about everything.

After watching this TED talk about weekday vegetarianism (a great option!) , I’ve been inspired to create more vegetarian recipes.  Meat tastes great, but so do vegetables and legumes and all that jazz.  Letting the meat take the spotlight all the time is kinda unfair.  My idea was to create some black bean burgers, including some veggies and lentils furtively put in there for extra nutritional value and tastiness.

The flavor of the resulting recipe was awesome, but there were 2 problems: 1) too much liquid 2) not enough binder, resulting in the whole batch basically falling apart and me having to compact them after baking using waxed paper as shown in the unfortunate photos below.

Anyway, I’ve altered the recipe with these two things in mind so that hopefully you have a better experience than I did.  Don’t expect them to taste like beef; they’re their own thing and are not supposed to be trying to be fake meat.  There got a lot of other flavors going on (umami, earthiness, saltiness, and a light spiciness) and would also make a great burrito or taco filling.

According to caloriecount.com, they’re crazy high in all sorts of vitamins, from your mundane Vitamin A and fiber to exotic things like manganese. Doubt that makes them sexy, but they are tasty and good for you too.

Supercharged Black Bean Burgers

Makes 8 smallish patties or 4 large patties.   ~200 calories per large patty.

Ingredients

  • 1 can black beans, rinsed and drained and let dry
  • 1 cup lentils (about 1/3 of a cup dry, then rinsed, boiled for 15 mins, and let dry)
  • 1 bunch swiss chard, rinsed and chopped into largeish pieces
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tsp olive oil
  • 5 cloves of garlic
  • 1/4 of a large yellow onion, diced (= about 3/4 of a cup after dicing)
  • 1 tbsp cumin
  • 1 tbsp paprika
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • 4 dried shiitake mushrooms, stems removed and cut into smaller pieces

Make sure you have the lentils all cooked, the beans rinsed and drained, and both let set to dry for a bit.  Preheat oven to 375 F.

Boil chard in water for 10 minutes, then drain and rinse.  Press dry between some paper towels.  Set aside.

Add to food processor: eggs (sans shell, of course :P ), garlic, onion, olive oil, spices, soy sauce.  Blend until the consistency of runny oatmeal.

Add mushrooms and chard, blend a few times (pulse 2-3 times– 2 to 3 revolutions using pulse mode).

Then add the lentils, pulse once, then add black beans and pulse until the consistency of approximately meat-like-ness.

Lightly grease a baking sheet (I used vegetable spray) and form the mixture into patties.  Bake at 375 for 30-40 minutes or until browned on the outside and firmish when you poke them.

Soup-er Rainy Day

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brightening up a rainy day

It’s been raining for almost a week nonstop here in central California, and pretty cold for this area to boot (low 40s in the day, low 30s at night).  I know I’m not going to get sympathy from anyone…well, anywhere *but* California…but it’s a great excuse to make soup.

I’d been craving tom kha gai, a Thai chicken-coconut soup. (I dunno why I’ve been on this Southeast Asian food kick lately, but I’ll probably blame having just finished reading A Cook’s Tour.)  The coconut milk, though, pretty much negates the healthy soup factor, so I opted for a regular ol’ chicken vegetable soup.  The chicken adds richness, the carrots and green onions sweetness, spinach an earthiness, and the lemon, kaffir lime, and galangal a tangyness.

~300 calories for the whole pot, and chock full of tons of vitamins: vitamin A, iron, potassium, vitamin C, and fiber.  Luckily this whole diet thing makes it pretty easy to write up recipes, since I sort of measure everything anyway.

Kestrel’s Thai Chicken Soup

Makes 1 serving as a meal, 2 servings as a side or starter.

If you do your prep first, the cooking will go super fast.

Ingredients

  • 1 skinless boneless chicken thigh (I prefer the thighs because they have more flavor & are cheaper), chopped into bite-sized pieces
  • Sea salt & freshly ground pepper
  • 1/2 tsp vegetable oil
  • 1 can chicken broth (Swanson 100% natural is what I used)
  • 1 tbsp fish sauce (nước mắm)
  • a few kaffir lime leaves (anywhere between 1-3 is fine)
  • a few coins of galangal (I find it’s a bit sweeter and fruitier than ginger)
  • 1 sliced ring of lemon
  • 2 small carrots, sliced into coins
  • 1 1/2 cups fresh spinach, chopped roughly
  • 1/4 cup shelled soy beans/edamame (I bought preshelled frozen ones)
  • 2 green onions, sliced
  • 1/2 to 1 cup of chopped fresh cilantro/coriander leaves

Add the oil to the bottom of the pot and heat up.  Add chicken, salt, pepper.  Keep stirring until chicken is a little bit browned.

soup base

Add chicken stock, galangal, fish sauce, lime leaves, lemon ring.  Bring to a boil.

adding veggies

Turn down to a simmer.  Add carrots, then bring to a simmer again and add spinach, soybeans.  Bring to a boil.

simmer!

green onions & cilantro


Throw in green onions, cilantro, and turn off immediately so the cilantro and green onions don’t overcook and lose their brightness.  Stir, let cool for a minute, then enjoy.  Garnish bowl with a few sesame seeds if you want.

all done!

Pro tip: don’t try to eat the lemon ring, galangal, or kaffir lime leaves.  They’re all pretty tough and pungent.  You could probably take them out before serving if you wanted, or just eat around them like I do.

Valentine’s Day

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This year, I was my own Valentine.  I decided to spoil myself with a tasty dinner since I’ve been pretty good about sticking with my diet, and one day off wouldn’t kill me but would make me happier.

Happy Valentine's Day!

The menu?

  • Sugar snap peas sauteed in butter, garlic (3 cloves!) and sherry
  • Filet mignon seared with Hawaiian Ono Seasoning Salt, then baked to medium-rare, served with ponzu dipping sauce
  • Mashed yukon gold potatoes made with butter, milk, and five spice powder
  • A 2003 Priorat that left a little to be desired, but was fine
  • Green & Black’s dark chocolate with cherries for dessert

The whole meal complemented itself very well.  Ponzu’s zingy flavor cut the richness of the steak and all the butter.  The five spice powder in the mashed potatoes added a nuttiness and emphasized the sweet, richness of the potatoes.  The peas were only cooked the bare minimum necessary and had just enough pungent garlic and a little bit of a rich juicy, sauce.

Highly recommended.

Many of my male friends were quite jealous of my dinner, needless to say.

The Low-Calorie Bún Experiment

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Low-cal, Low-carb bún results

Low-cal, Low-carb bún results

 

Bún is a Vietnamese dish that makes use of rice vermicelli and, as far as I can tell, the kitchen sink– veggies, herbs, meat, egg, fish sauce, you name it.  It can come in soup, but the form I’m most familiar with is just the noodles in a bowl, topped with said kitchen sink.  It sounds really healthy, right?  Rice noodles and mostly veggies? Well, just 1 cup of rice noodles alone will set you back about 500 calories.  Top that off with meat roasted in sweet sauce, eggs, and daikon and carrots that were marinated in sugar and vinegar, and as you can imagine, those calories inevitably add up.

I happened to have some konnyaku noodles lying around.  Famous in Japan and China as “diet noodles”, they have very few calories and are full of fiber– filling you up without expanding your waistline.  You can usually find them at Asian groceries (particularly ones that target Chinese/Japanese folks), but I think I saw some tofu shirataki noodles (similar, but with tofu added and marginally more calories) at Safeway the other day.

These things sound amazing.  The problem is that when you first take them out of the package, they smell kinda funky.  To counter this, rinse them a lot and boil them.  Problem #2 is that the texture is pretty darn rubbery (sort of like eating soft rubber bands), so using them as a substitute for regular pasta isn’t really going to make you  very happy.

*Unless*…I thought to myself…you substitute them for rice vermicelli.  Rice vermicelli has a little bit of a rubbery texture– not quite as bad as konnyaku noodles, but some nonetheless.  What contains rice vermicelli? Bún bowl!

The results were pretty awesome.  I’d skip the salted duck egg, myself, because this brand shown in the picture isn’t that great.  I’d use a regular chicken egg and subtract about 30 calories.  Overall, with the duck egg, the dish came in just under 400 calories and has a lot of vitamin A, fiber, and decent amounts of other vitamins.  And it’s a *lot* of food.  The key to successful bún is to have the marinated shredded carrots and daikon, usually done with rice vinegar, water, sugar, and salt and let to sit at least overnight.  I substituted Splenda and didn’t notice much of a difference.  I roughly followed the recipe at Battle of the Bahn Mi, found here.

Low Calorie, Low Carb Bún

Makes 1 *large* low calorie serving

  • 140 g of konnyaku noodles (7 bunches, seems to be about 3/4 of a cup)
  • Marinated daikon/carrot mixture (see recipe link above)
  • 1 chicken sausage (I used Trader Joe’s Chicken Mango), cut into coins
  • 2 green onions, chopped finely
  • 1 serrano pepper, chopped into thin rings (substitute jalapeño for less spicy, or omit it entirely if you’re a wimp :P )
  • 1/3 cup fresh cilantro/coriander leaves
  • 1 hard boiled egg, chopped up
  • 1/4 lime worth of lime wedges
  • 2 tbsp fish sauce (nước mắm)

Rinse, then boil the konnyaku noodles for 5-10 minutes.  Simultaneously, brown the sausage. When the konnyaku is done (which can basically be whenever, it doesn’t need much cooking but can take as much as you throw at it), drain it and rinse it with cold water.  Let it dry.

When dry, put into a bowl and top with veggies, marinated carrot/daikon, cilantro, sausage, and chopped up egg.  Squeeze lime wedges over the top and pour a tablespoon or two of fish sauce.  Admire the pretty food, then eat it.

I couldn’t finish the whole bowl…

Chinese Leeks and Celery Root

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Yesterday on the way home I stopped by my favorite local grocery store to pick up food for the week.  I grabbed a random assortment of vegetables that happened to look good that day: broccoli rabe, chinese celery, yard long beans, mizuna, chinese leeks, celery root, pioppini mushrooms, and of course onions and garlic.  For some reason, I was seeing green, I guess.

I’ve been a fan of celery root for about a year now.  I’m not a huge fan of celery, but for some reason the nutty, crunchy, somewhat herbacious flavor of celery root appeals to me– which is a good thing, because it’s pretty low calorie and has vitamins in it.  Baked, it retains its juiciness and crunch yet is a bit softer and sweeter, with a more mellow flavor.

Celery root sausage bake with hardboiled egg and blueberries in the bento for tomorrow's lunch!

Tonight I was inspired by the word “baked” on a random website, and thought that the celery root would be delicious baked with some spicy chicken andouille sausage (from Trader Joe’s).  Throw in some chinese leeks for color and flavor, garlic, and a potato with some olive oil and voila. Comfort food that isn’t terrible for you.  You can do this with most vegetables (and throw in whatever meat, just brown it first) and they usually come out sweet and tasty.  It’s a great way to get rid of whatever vegetables you happen to have lying around.  (For more caramelization, I think you can cook them on a slightly lower temperature for a longer period of time with more oil, but they come out great in 45 minutes this way.)

Celery Root Sausage Bake

(Makes 3 servings, ~420 calories per serving according to my rough caloriecount.com calculations)

Ingredients

Garlic, salt & pepper not pictured.

  • 2 Trader Joe’s (or equivalent) Smoked Andouille Chicken Sausages
  • 4 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 celery root, peeled well, rinsed, then diced in large cubes (~3 cups)
  • 5 stalks chinese chives (green onions or regular chives might work as substitutes, but use more.)
  • 1 yukon gold potato, diced in large cubes
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • Salt & pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375 F.  Get out a pan you can take from stovetop to oven (I used a le cruset braiser, you could use that or a cast iron pan.  You could use another type of pan if you brown the sausage on the stovetop in a pan, then scrape every last tiny bit into a baking pan.).

Prep veggies according to directions in ingredients.  Chop sausages into 1/2″ rounds.  Add olive oil to pan, heat up and then add sausages.  Stir sausages occasionally.

When they’re browned all over, turn off heat and add all the other ingredients.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Stir well.

Put in the oven and bake for at least 45 minutes, or until a fork goes easily through the potato.  Voila!  Very simple.  You can start this before your favorite TV show and when it’s done, your food should be too!

The veggies should have become slightly golden brown too.