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🍗 Comfort food – Chicken breast, smashed potato, Brussels sprouts. 2/22/19
There is a lot going on in the kitchen today. I am making pulled pork and John is roasting beef bones for gravy and then using them to make stock. Our daughter is working on making a panettone in remembrance of the fabulous one we had last Christmas in Florence, Italy. So the idea of a complicated chicken cacciatore has lost its appeal and we decide to make a straightforward chicken dinner.
John pan roasts the chicken breast and makes a packet of McCormacks chicken gravy. I steam some new potatoes and then smash them with just salt and pepper-no cream or butter. I also make what the family refers to as IYBS, incredibly yummy Brussels sprouts. I slice the B. Sprouts in half and season them with salt and a tiny bit of sugar then steam them cut side down for a couple of minutes.When the water is gone I add a bit of butter and a tablespoon of dry sherry. When the sprouts are browned, they are done. Yum!
Chicken breast and smashed potatoes with gravy and IYBS🥬 Chickpea, fennel, and mustard greens with ditalini. 2/20/19
Our regular chickpea stew got some new ingredients for tonight’s supper. Instead of celery, I used fennel. In place of collard greens or kale, I used spicier mustard greens. It is the same comforting dish with a slightly altered taste.
Chickpea stew with fennel, mustard greens, and ditalini
Posted in American, Easy, Kitchen tips, Legumes, Pasta, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian
Tagged chickpeas, fennel, mustard greens
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⚓️ Vietnamese sour soup, Take 2. 12/19/19
We re-made our authentic Vietnamese sour soup a little less authentic on the second try. This time we made it more to our liking adding a vegetable broth and more vegetables, a little less tamarind, and a more balanced fish sauce, sugar, salt combo. We also cut the shrimp and pineapple in smaller pieces so that they were more the size of the okra pieces. We found the two rice paddy herbs but after tasting them we only used one and threw the other one away. In the future I will stick to cilantro.
For the original recipe see 12/14/19.
Vietnamese sour soup, Take 2
🍗 White chicken chili. 12/17/19
Our take on white chicken chili is based on a recipe from Food Network that you can find here. It is super easy utilizing such time savers as rotisserie chicken and canned cannellini beans. Instead of two cans of the white beans we used one and one of non-fat refried beans to thicken it up. We also used only the breast meat from the chicken and saved the rest for John to have for lunches thus week. Part of a jar of medium Herdez green salsa added some kick as well as a Serrano chile instead of a jalapeño. Even making half a recipe we have some leftover which will probably join the chicken thighs and legs on John’s lunch menu this week.
Rather brown white chicken chili with a dollop of Greek yogurt and cilantro leaves
Posted in American, Easy, Legumes, Mexican, omnivore, Poultry, Recipes, Vegetables
Tagged Chili
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🥬 Spicy Thai basil eggplant. 12/16/19
We are still working on getting this to taste like our favorite Thai dish. The problem is, I think, since we are cutting down on oil and sugar that it is probably impossible to get it to taste like a restaurant meal. Tonight’s seemed a little heavy on the soy sauce and the eggplant needed to be fried more (that is a problem with cutting down on the oil.) But all in all a pretty good rendition. I should have gotten a red bell pepper so it would not seem so monochromatic but the grocery store only had orange and yellow so that is what I went with.
In the picture you will notice that I skipped having rice and filled the space with lettuce and a salad dressing that tastes like the sweet dressing at Asian restaurants. I made it from a combination of light mayo, Greek yogurt, yellow mustard, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, salt, and Splenda.
Note: salad dressing is not vegan
WW blue points = 4 (sesame and canola oils, brown sugar)
Spicy Thai basil eggplant with salad
Posted in Kitchen tips, Thai, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian, WW points
Tagged Eggplant, tofu
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Weekly Menu
I am a little late getting the menu up this week. We are concentrating on having a really good week both health-wise and diet-wise since Christmas week will be difficult. We have already started with spicy Thai basil eggplant on Monday and we are planning on white chicken chili on Tuesday. I put our week’s ideas down in a random order so we can make whatever appeals to us on any day.
⚓️ Vietnamese (sweet and) sour soup with prawn. 12/14/19
Making this dish was quite an adventure when we prepared it in Ho Chi Minh City during a cooking class. It was also quite an adventure preparing it at home. There are a lot of ingredients and some are not available in your local grocery store. So John and I ventured out to our local Asian supermarket, Ranch 99. Even there we did not find everything we needed and had to improvise. This may be due to the fact that we did not know where to look or maybe the name was different. But in the end we made a fairly accurate tasting soup. Here is the recipe given to us by the Saigon Cooking School –
Recipe for sour soup
We had to substitute celery for elephant ear and cilantro for the herbs. Here is the mise en place. Once the cooking starts it moves quickly and it is good to have everything ready.
Mise en place for sour soup
After sautéing the garlic and adding the water you place the tamarind paste in a sieve and lower it into the boiling water. You stir it around and press it through the sieve until it is mostly gone except for a few seeds.
Sieving the tamarind
Once you have the tamarind in the broth you add the rest of the vegetables and shrimp and cook for a few minutes until they are done. At this point you add the fish sauce, sugar, and salt. We used about a teaspoon of sugar and added extra fish sauce to bring it to an approximation of what we wanted. John added some additional sugar to his bowl and I added some additional salt to mine. We both went with a squeeze of lime.
Pot with vegetables in the soup
As far as what we would do differently I would cut up the shrimp and the pineapple into smaller pieces. We might use chicken stock or vegetable stock instead of just water. John has suggested using cilantro stems in the soup instead of just the leaves for garnish. I suggested putting some snow peas in for more bulk. We are very pleased with how this turned out. It tasted pretty much the same as we made at the cooking school. We are going to try it again next week with the modifications we think will make it perfect for us.
Vietnamese sour soup
Posted in pescatarian, Recipes, Shellfish, Vegetables, Vietnamese
Tagged Vietnamese sour soup
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🐟 Seared scallop dinner. 12/13/19
I skipped a post for yesterday since it was our leftover dinner for the week. We had leftover stuffed peppers. But on Friday we had one of my favorite dinners—plump, seared, ocean scallops with new potatoes and snow peas. And don’t forget homemade tartar sauce! Yum! It makes an ordinary week night dinner seem like a special occasion.
I start steaming the potatoes ahead of John searing the scallops. They only take 15-20 minutes depending on their size. When they are done John heats up the cast iron pan with a little vegetable oil until it is smoking and then lays the scallops in.
In the meantime I have stringed and refreshed the snow peas in some ice water and put them in the pan that the potatoes have just come out of. I spray it with some buttery Pam first. The water still clinging to the snow peas gives them a quick steam and then I add a teaspoon of light butter. The whole dinner cooks in about a half an hour and it is sooo good!
WW blue points = 7 (oil, light butter, mayo, potatoes)
Seared scallops with new potatoes, snow peas, and tartar sauce
🦃 Peppers stuffed with ground turkey and farro. 12/11/19
Inspired by a blog post by Cooking Without Limits for stuffed peppers, I decided to try making some myself. John was busy installing a new modem and router so I had to come up with a recipe on my own. One thing I do know about ground turkey is that it tends to taste sweet and lacks texture.
In order to counteract the sweet and mushy problems, I chopped up some mushrooms and seared them hard. I also sautéed onions and garlic. I seasoned with every new ingredient.
Mushrooms and onions cooking
I also seared the ground turkey and mixed it together with the vegetables. Next step was to add oregano and chile flakes and deglaze the pan with white wine. I added a can of petite diced tomatoes and some farro that I had cooked earlier. I took a taste. Still too sweet! At this point I used my ultimate fixer, fish sauce. With a little tomato sauce it tasted great.
I stuffed 4 half peppers that I had microwaved to soften and added some additional tomato sauce, covered the dish, and baked it for 30 minutes at 350F. We really enjoyed our turkey stuffed peppers tonight!
WW blue points = 8 (oil, farro, ground turkey)
Yellow bell pepper stuffed with ground turkey
Posted in American, Grains, Kitchen tips, omnivore, Poultry, Recipes, Vegetables, WW points
Tagged bell peppers, farro, Turkey
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