Dinner last night was GOOD. My wife stewed some chicken leg quarters in the crock pot until the meat was falling off the bone. To the pot I think she added some carrots, celery, onions, bay leaf and thyme along with a bit of chicken stock. Again with the low fat, good healthy complex carb theme I steamed some brussel sprouts without any oil. I ‘baked’ a sweet potato in the microwave. Just 5 minutes and it was tender and steaming. Again, I didn’t use any fat to cook it. I can’t say much for the presentation, but the flavor was excellent. What really put this over the top was the little bit of sauce that was spooned over all of this. I made the sauce from the stew pot juices. I strained off all the spent vegetables and separated as much of the chicken fat from the juice that I could. This left me with about 3 cups flavorful chicken stewing broth. I put this in a pan and reduced it down almost to nothing! I was left with about 3/4 of a cup of wonderful, delicious chicken demiglas. I’ve never made a demiglas from poultry before. I was very very pleased with the result. Just a little bit added huge flavor to the plate.
Chicken
Healthy Eating and Bento Inspiration
I have been so bloated from all the parties and rich foods of the holidays. I am looking for lean proteins, good complex carbs, low fat foods, and lots of fresh vegetables. I haven’t been getting enough protein so I really loaded it up for dinner last night. I have a mixture of cooked grains mixed with fresh carrots, celery, cabbage and green onions dressed with a bit of rice vinegar. Lean chicken from the deli counter of the supermarket. And eggs! Yes, eggs. Notice they are quite pale? I used one whole egg and 3 egg whites to make these tasty, fluffy, light but packed with protein scrambled eggs. It was very satisfying.
I have been inspired by Biggie over at Lunch in a Box with all her wonder healthy bento box foods. So I jumped on the bandwagon. I had forgotten that my dear wife had purchased some Japanese lunch boxes a while ago. I took them out of storage and put them to use. You can see some leftovers here. There’s some of my seaweed and mushroom soup, fresh vegetables, more deli chicken breast and leftover cooked grain salad. Thanks Biggie! Now I just have to make time to prepare more. I was scrambling this morning to get this together.
Asian Influenced
I ate a lot over the holidays. I ate too many sweet rich foods. It’s time to cut back on the carbohydrates and fat and fill in with flavor. There is no better way to do this than with Asian food. You’ll be seeing a lot if low fat low carb meals from me in the near future. Tonight I made a mushroom and seaweed soup served with a soy/mirin marinated grilled chicken served on a salad with a ginger soy dressing. It was delicious, low fat, low carb and absolutely satisfying.
I used two kinds of dried mushrooms. One was already shredded into thin strips and the package simply called it “dried black fungus”. The other is my favorite dried mushroom, a dried shitake. These were soaked in water for a good 4-5 hours before cooking. I like to soak my mushrooms in zip-lock bags. It’s easy and convenient.
If you haven’t had soup made with dried seaweed you are missing out. I am inspired by many of the Korean soups (masters of soup if I may add) that use seaweed as a base. The Japanese also use dried seaweed as a soup and flavor base. I have two kinds in my soup this evening. One is Japanese – dashi kombu. This comes in wide sheets and hydrates to give a chewy thick seaweed in the end. I broke this up into small pieces. The other is a shredded seaweed. This one is much thinner and opens up into sort of very thin seaweed leaves as it hydrates and cooks. Both have a wonderful salty sea-like taste. It really is wonderful.
Here are everything combined together. The seaweed has been broken up into small pieces. The shitakes were sliced thinly. The mushroom soaking water was added to add all that wonderful color and flavor. To this I added some salt, lots of fresh ground pepper, lots of chopped garlic, a splash of soy sauce, and about 4 cups more water. This was heated to boiling and then simmered for two hours. This picture was taken before adding the water and cooking.
I made a simple salad of finely shredded romaine lettuce, green cabbage and carrots. This was eventually tossed with a dressing made from grated ginger, a splash of soy sauce, rice vinegar, mirin, sesame oil and olive oil.
Here is the salad with the grilled chicken on top. The chicken was marinated for two hours with a mixture of sesame oil, mirin, and soy sauce. It was grilled and allowed to rest for a few minutes before slicing.
The soup! It was delicious! I could eat this every day. The flavor of the shitake was most pronounced and it mingled with the seaweed flavor. I enjoyed dinner tonight!
Chicken and Broccoli
I came home from work last night and wanted to make something that fit my three requirements: 1) easy to throw together, 2) healthy and low carb, and 3) delicious. This is what I came up with. I makde a chicken and broccoli stir fry and served it on a bed of spaghetti squash. It turned out really nice.
I love spaghetti squash. It is healthy and delicious and it has such an interesting texture. I use it fairly often when I want to lower the carbs in a dish where I would normally have rice or pasta. Of course it isn’t the same but it still tastes great. I had a small sized squash here. The question was how to cook it quickly. I usually bake it in a hot oven for 45 min to an hour to get it soft and tasty. I didn’t want to wait that long so I looked to my microwave. I sliced the squash in half lenghthwise and removed the seeds. Then I placed the halves back together and tied it with some butcher’s twine. This I placed in the microwave and cooked it on high for 10 minutes. It was cooked to a perfect texture. Although you don’t get the caramelization that you would in the oven, it still performed well. I left it to rest while I prepared the rest of the dish.
I pre-steamed the broccoli for just a few minutes. Just until it was slightly cooked but still a bit crunchy. It would cook more in the stir fry. I cubed the chicken and seasoned it. I also added red onion, garlic and ginger. The onions, garlic, ginger and chicken were stir fried in my wok until the chicken was done. I added liberal doses of soy sauce, sesame oil and mirin. I tossed in the broccoli and covered it to cook through for a few minutes. I then added some corn starch slurry to thicken up the sauce a little bit.
This was so good I’m having the leftovers for breakfast this morning!
New Years Day Pot Roast
Nothing is more comforting than a slow cooked pot roast. On a bitter cold first day of the new year this really hit the spot. Slow cooked in my new Le Creuset pot with carrots, onions, peppers, red wine and a bit of honey mustard bbq sauce this really came out well. I served it in a big bowl with left over mashed potatoes and sopped up the juices with the left over day old sourdough herb onion bread.