Spaghetti Squash with Herbs December 28, 2008

This was served with the most macho of meats - elk steaks sauteed with BEER to balance out the girly squash.

Spaghetti  squash is really, really tasty. However, many people would not agree with my opinion on the matter. I came up with this recipe to entice my roommate to enjoy this vegetable as much as I do, and it worked! It’s a little long on the prep side, but this dish can be both the starch and veggie side dish, plus it looks fantastic, without too much effort. If you want to serve 4 people, I would use the whole squash and double everything else, but for two people, this is a perfect amount. The recipe calls for fresh rosemary because I have rosemary growing in my backyard. Used dried if you need to do a substitution.

The only problem is hacking the damned squash in half, really.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 Spaghetti Squash, cooked
• 1 red bell pepper, sliced into thin matchsticks
• 3 cloves garlic, very finely chopped
• 1 tsp fresh rosemary (or 1/2 tsp dried)
• 1 tsp dried parsley
• 1 tsp dried basil
• sea salt
• pepper
• 2 roma tomatoes/3 campari tomatoes, finely chopped
• 1 tbsp of butter/1 tsp white truffle oil (OMG, so fancy!!)

Method:

Cut the squash in half length-wise, and cook on high in the microwave for about 10 to 12 minutes, or until it’s nicely done and good and soft.  While this is happening you can cut up your bell pepper, garlic, tomato and fresh rosemary.

When the squash is done, use a fork to scrape out the flesh, which will come out in fine strands like… well… spaghetti. Hence the name.

Take a large, non-stick frying pan, and put a bit of cooking spray in and turn it onto medium low. Now saute the garlic, and then add the bell pepper when the garlic starts to soften up.

Once the pepper is mostly cooked, turn up the heat to medium, and dump in the cooked squash and the herbs, and add salt and pepper to taste. Once everything is good and hot and the bell pepper is totally cooked, stir in the fresh tomato and add the butter, or remove from the heat and drizzle the truffle oil over everything before serving it.

YUM!

Sage and Stilton Scones December 23, 2008

Ah… leftover cheese. I’m sure we’ve all seen this after a big Christmas party – there’s always a bit of cheese left over, and you probably aren’t feeling like just eating the stuff straight. We did a big Christmas BBQ at work, and we had quite a bit of Stilton (which is a blue cheese) left over on the cheese plate. So I took it home and came up with this recipe to use it all up, since it’s not the kind of cheese you can sit around and eat absolute mounds of. 

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup stilton or other blue cheese, very finely crumbled
• 1 tsp ground sage
• 3 tbsp liquid egg white 
• 1 cup skim milk
• 2 and 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup cold butter/margarine 

Method:

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and sage. 

Cut in your butter with a fork or a pastry blender. I used a fork because I was using margarine, but if you’re using butter, cut it into small cubes first. I also recommend you make the investment in the pastry blender if you want to bake a lot with butter – it’s a half moon shaped series of wires (sort of like a very firm wisk) attached to a handle. ANYHOW…

In a separate bowl, stir together the egg whites (which you purchase in a carton! How wasteful!) and skim milk.

Dump the crumbled cheese onto the flour mixture, then pour the mix and egg white mixture in. Stir up with a fork until the whole thing starts to stick together into a ball of ragged looking dough.

Dump the dough out onto your counter, (add a bit of flour to your counter if it seems to be sticking – mine didn’t need any though), and knead the dough 10 times. 

Flatten the dough into a rectangle, about 7 by 10 inches (I eyeballed this, don’t get out a ruler or anything!) and shape the edges so they’re even. 

Get out a good knife, and cut the dough into six squares, then cut each square in half on the diagonal. 

Place your scones onto a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil, shiny side down, and bake for 20 minutes. The stilton might melt and run out a bit, which is why you put the scones on foil – it keeps clean-up easy!

These are nice because they have a good sharp flavour, but you could really use any kind of leftover cheese to make them. If you were going to use something like swiss or cheddar, I would increase the cheese to one cup though. 

Healthy Chai Spice Shortbread! December 21, 2008

 

Look, it's about as healthy as you're ever going to see shortbread.

Well, not really. Not much, but ever so slightly, marginally better for you than standard shortbread. A smidgen healthier – don’t get too excited. This is adapted from a Whole Foods recipe, but my changes make these cookies diabetic friendly. As long as you don’t roll them in the sugar at the end. However, they look lovely and festive with the delicate sugar coating. You could also roll these in icing sugar, or even special dusting sugar, but they look great with regular sugar, and that is the thing people are most likely to have on hand.

The other benefit is that these cookies are almost silly they’re so easy to make, so if you need to put together some last minute baking as a gift, you can be in and out of the kitchen with a wrapped tin of cookies in under an hour!

 

This makes a big batch of about 28 – 30 cookies, which is perfect for gifting/bringing to a potluck at Christmas, but could easily be halved if you don’t need 30 shortbread cookies hanging around. I certainly don’t. 

Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter/margarine 
• 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp splenda 
• 2 SCANT cups whole wheat flour
• 2 tsp allspice
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup of granulated sugar – for rolling cookies in (optional)

Method:

Using a hand mixer, mix together butter and splenda for at least five minutes until butter is very whipped up and fluffy.

Add spices, flour and vanilla, use hand mixer to mix all ingredients together.  Mix should be a little crumbly.

Using a teaspoon, scoop up the mix and form into slightly flattened balls. 

Bake in a 250 degree oven for 18 minutes. Cool on the baking sheet for a couple of minutes, then roll the tops of the cookies in the sugar. 

Eat copious amounts, thinking to yourself, “they have fiber! And almost no sugar! And spices! Spices are healthy, right?”