Salmon Cakes with Dijon Cumin Aioli January 19, 2009

OMG! Suddenly you have people coming over! You’re in a rush, and you have to make something fancy for dinner! Your father is judging you! Judging you as you frantically search the cupboards for something tasty, fast and healthy…

This happened to me, so I whipped these up, and they were a big hit! Also, really tasty, and pretty good for you.

Ingredients:

• 2 cans of salmon
• 1 clove garlic, very finely chopped
• 1/4 cup very finely chopped onion
• 1/2 a big zucchini, grated and with most of the moisture squeezed out (see below)
• salt, pepper to taste
• 1/4 cup egg whites, just to bind everything together
• Dijon Cumin Aioli for garnish

Method:

1. Chop up the garlic and onion, then add it to a bowl.
2. Drain the canned salmon really well, and pick out any big bones, dump into a bowl with the garlic and onion, add salt and pepper
3. Grate your zucchini, and spread it into a tea towel. Now wring the crap out of that tea towel to get lots of the moisture out. Repeat, then add the zucchini to the bowl too. This is about 1 cup of zucchini when I do it.
4. Mix everything together, and add the egg white a bit at a time to help it stick. 
5. Take 2 tbsps of the mixture at a time and press into cakes. You may need to squish extra moisture out towards the end. I get 12 cakes, about 2 inches across. 
6. Fry in a hot non-stick pan with some pam until golden brown.
7. Serve with Aioli!

Dijon Cumin Aioli

In a bowl, mix together:

• 2 tbsp miracle whip
• 1 tsp whole grain dijon mustard
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1/4 tsp cumin 

Spoon into a sandwich bag, nip the corner off with some scissors, and then pipe onto finished salmon cakes.

 

Frying the salmon cakes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Golden brown!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YUM! He's so happy I'm going to eat him!!

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!

Turkey Meatloaf with Cranberries, Roasted Garlic and Herbs November 11, 2008

I love meatloaf. It’s easy to put together, you throw it into the oven and forget about it, and you can make it as fancy (as in this version) or as simple as you want. 

I am also convinced I’ve found the perfect meat for meatloaf – extra lean ground turkey. I picked up a package on a whim at Safeway, since it’s hard enough to find ground turkey or chicken, and to see extra lean ground turkey is even more rare. 

What makes extra lean ground turkey so amazingly perfect for meatloaf is threefold:

1. Much better for you than ground beef
2. Sticks together so well you can dispense with breadcrumbs and egg
3. Doesn’t overwhelm more subtle flavours, like ground beef would

I came up with the basic idea for the loaf while at the gym, and then did my usual highly experimental cooking when I got home to throw it together. I realize most people balk at the idea of serving meatloaf when entertaining, but this came together so well, I would serve this at a dinner party.

Ingredients:

• 3 cloves of garlic, roasted (instructions to follow)
• 2 sprigs fresh rosemary (or 1/2 tsp dried rosemary)
• 1/2 tsp sage
• 1/3 packet onion soup mix 
• approx 1 lb extra lean ground turkey
• 1/3 cup dried cranberries (or fresh, if you have them)
• ground pepper to taste

Method:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350

2. Roast garlic! Take three cloves of garlic and peel them, then put them in a pan and put the pan into your hot oven until the garlic is golden brown – about 10-15 minutes should do it. Check on your garlic a couple of times. Once golden, remove garlic from oven, let cool a bit, then chop/smash into small chunks.

3. In a bowl, combine ground turkey, rosemary, sage, pepper, onion soup mix, cranberries and roasted garlic. Note – if you use fresh cranberries, they will be quite tart. Depends if you like that sort of thing. I do. Mix together until ingredients are well mixed and you can form a loaf that stays together easily. 

4. Put the loaf in the pan you roasted the garlic in, then put that in your 350 degree oven, and bake for about 35-40 minutes until cooked all the way through.

5. Slice and enjoy! Smells divine, tastes like Christmas, and is low in fat and calories for a comfort food like meatloaf – served two ravenous roommates.

Funtime Bonus – to serve this at a dinner party:

• Double the recipe
• Instead of making one loaf, make four mini loaves
• Put a tsp of cranberry sauce into the centre of each loaf before baking
• Garnish with crispy fried sage and prosciutto ham, or wrap each loaf in prosciutto before baking!

Wrap Star – 1 of 3 October 1, 2008

Long time, no post. I have been out of the house, and therefore, not cooking! Well, I’ve been cooking, but I haven’t cooked anything worth posting.

Today I decided to make a quick dinner that involved wraps, as we had some, and they needed to be eaten. Because I hadn’t cooked anything creative for a while, I came up with three new recipes and let Adam, my roommate choose which one he wanted to eat. However, it turns out that I think all of them sound yummy as hell, so I will be doing a three part series on wraps! Today:

Low Fat Tuna Wraps with Zing!

Supplies:
2 cans tuna, drained
1 cup fat free cottage cheese
2 stalks celery, finely chopped
2-3 tbsp Dijon mustard (to your taste)
1/2 cucumber
Romaine lettuce
6 8″ tortilla wraps

Method:

1. Cut up cucumber into matchstick strips, and wash lettuce, cutting out the thick center part of each leaf. Set aside.

2. In a mixing bowl, add tuna, celery, mustard. Drain some of the extra whey from the cottage cheese, discard it, then mix the cheese in too. Add some pepper, and stir until mixed together.

3. Top each tortilla with 1 leaf of lettuce, a good amount of the cucumber, and 2 heaping tablespoons of the tuna cheese mixture. Roll up and enjoy! Adam loved these!

Note: you can make lettuce wraps out of these if you just substitute a large leaf of lettuce for the tortilla. That’s what I did, and that subtracts about 120 calories from each wrap. When you think that a can of tuna only has about 130 total calories, and skim milk cottage cheese has 90 per cup, and the mustard, cucumber and celery are all neglibable, at least in the calorie sense, you realize these wraps are very light on the waistline! Not to mention they’re very high in protein!

Autumn Cauliflower Soup September 15, 2008

Ah! No posts for a while… Turns out the carpets in my apartment were being replaced, so I had to move all my furniture into the non carpeted areas of my house… The thing is, most of my place is carpeted, so you can see where this went.
Madness ensued.
It didn’t help that I also decided to paint my living room… Anyhow this is a soup I was planning to make for the better part of a week. It’s a nice, rich soup (similar to Mulligatawny, sort of?) that is good for two reasons: 1 – it’s like a creamy soup with none of the cream, so it’s healthy and 2 – if you use vegetable stock, this is a vegan friendly dish. Oh boy!
It’s also got the benefit of looking totally rotten when you’re making it, so you can gross out whomever you want to eventually feed it to. He he he.

Autumn Cauliflower Soup:
1 leek, thinly sliced white and light green part only
2 cloves garlic
cooking spray
1 tsp curry powder (I may have used as much as 1.5, I always just guesstimate…)
1/4 tsp turmeric
1 tsp olive oil
4 cups hot stock – I used chicken (use vegetable for a vegan friendly recipe)
1 head cauliflower, roughly chopped
salt & pepper to taste
1/4 tsp nutmeg (the secret ingredient!)

1. Sauté leek and garlic with cooking spray until translucent, but not browned in a large stock pot.
2. Add olive oil, curry powder and turmeric, and cook for about 1 minute more until spices are fragrant. Yum!
3. Add your hot stock and cauliflower, some salt and pepper to taste. Now, to use the technical cooking term, boil the ever loving crap out of that, keep the lid on the pot so all the stock doesn’t evaporate. Give it 20 minutes or so.
4. Mash up your cauliflower with a potato masher. If it gets crumbly and looks like brains, it’s done. Gross!
5. Whip out your trusty immersion blender and puree the soup until it’s thick and creamy.
6. Add a bit more salt if desired, and stir in the nutmeg.
7. Heat through and serve with crusty bread. Note: this soup is really thick and the bubbles tend to pop rather explosively. I warned you.

OPTIONAL: Top with crumbled prosciutto ham! Simply pan fry some slices of prosciutto until it’s crispy, and then crumble it over the top of your soup. This makes it un-vegan, but I love prosciutto.

Roast Lamb September 7, 2008

I was born in New Zealand, and I love Lamb, mainly because I was raised on the stuff. It makes a great Sunday dinner because it’s quick and easy to roast, and doesn’t require you to make a gravy for it. This recipe was adapted from one by Jamie Oliver.

Ingredients:
1 leg of New Zealand lamb, thawed
50 grams proschutto ham
Fresh rosemary
Salt
Pepper

1. Take your lamb, and make 10 to 12 thumb sized slits in the leg.
2. Take short pieces of rosemary about 1 to 2 cm long, and wrap them in chunks of ham, making little plugs of pure goodness.
3. Plug those holes! Gross!!
4. Sprinkle the lamb with salt and pepper.
5. Seat the lamb at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, then drop the temperature to 350 and roast for 20 minutes a pound. Your meat thermometer should read 150 in the thickest part of the leg to get a leg that has a nice mix of well done to medium rare meat.
6. Devour!! Graham and Adam got roast lamb with Boursin mashed potatoes, and I slivered up some lamb onto a raw spinach and cabbage salad. It was really, really good!!

Broccoli and Two Cheese Dinner Fritata August 24, 2008

Necessity is the mother of invention, and the bastard father of most of my recipies. If you ever find yourself needing to use up some old broccoli, or a carton of eggs, this is a nice easy way to do it.

Ingedients:

10 eggs
3 medium heads broccoli
Salt
Pepper
1 large, ripe tomato
1 cup shredded cheese (Chedder, Swiss)
Thinly sliced soft cheese (Brie, Camembert)

Materials:

1 12″ springform pan
Cookie sheet
Tin foil
Cooking spray

Method:

Chop and wash you broccoli, then place into a bowl with a very small amount of water and microwave for 5 minutes to partially cook it.
Slice your tomato up thinly (1/8″), and cut your soft cheese to match. Try for 6 slices of tomato and 5 of cheese.
Next, wrap the outside of your springform pan with tinfoil, and spray the inside with non-stick cooking spray. Also, set your oven to 350.
Crack ten(!) eggs into a large mixing cup and stir in shredded cheese and salt and pepper to taste.
Take your broccoli out of the microwave and drain it if needed.

Now, plop that steamed broccoli into the greased pan, and spread out so it covers the bottom.
Now, pour the egg mixture on top.
Finally, arrange the tomato and soft cheese on top of the broccoli.
Gently place pan onto cookie sheet, and then put the cookie sheet into the oven.
Bake until a toothpick comes out clean – about an hour. Then broil for a couple of minutes to brown the top.

Once that’s done, let it sit on the counter for a couple of minutes and release the springform pan. You should have a lovely, firm fritata.

Slice up and enjoy. Feeds four. Serve with ketchup if you’d like. I don’t mind, I love ketchup.

Variations:
Add/substitute:
Thinly sliced and sauted leeks
Mushroom (also cooked)
Bell pepper
Ground chicken

Note: 10 eggs sounds like a lot, but it is divided by 4 – so it’s less than a typical 3 egg omelette, and with a lot more veggies in it!

Easy Taco Salad August 19, 2008

Wherein I post thoughts, recipes, and wonder how those rap dudes keep their pants up. To start you off:

Kathleen’s Easy Taco Salad (serves 4-6)

• 1 head romaine lettuce
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 bell pepper (your choice of colour)
• 1 avocado
• 1/2 red onion, cut into thin, small chunks
• 1 cup chopped cucumber
• 2 breasts chicken
• 1 tsp hot chili powder/taco seasoning
• seasoning salt
• 1 jar salsa
• cheese, grated (grate as much as you’d like)

1) Wash and chop all veggies except avocado, and put into a big bowl. Toss the salad (hurr)

2) Chop up raw chicken breasts and fry up with your seasoning salt and chili powder. If you don’t have that, try some taco seasoning instead.

3) Remove pit from avocado and slice into chunks.

Get everyone to get a big individual bowl of the salad mix. Top with as much avocado as you’d like. Add some of the cooked spicy chicken breast chunks, then add salsa to your taste, and some grated cheese.

Optional: crumble corn chips over the salad for extra crunch.

Why eat this?

Salsa is good for you! It has almost no calories (20-25 per 1/4 cup) and is made from veggies. It packs lots of flavour for very little cost. It’s far better for you than most salad dressings. I don’t add sour cream to this salad because it doesn’t really need it. Trust me, you’ll see. The avocado and cheese add lots of creamy texture, and avocado is full of good fatty acids. Even with cheese, this is very healthy because the bulk of the salad is veggies and lean meat.