Archive for October, 2008

Buffalo Borscht

Published October 19, 2008 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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When I was growing up, borscht was this red soup made from beets that came in a bottle. You poured it in a bowl, plopped some sour cream in the middle, and ate. But recently I discovered that there is a whole different kind of borscht, which is a sweet and sour cabbage soup. It tastes like my mother’s stuffed cabbage, one of the favorite foods of my youth, which she only made for special occasions. Actually, I remember liking the cabbage and the sauce better than the filling.

To make borscht, you cook meat to make a broth, then add the other ingredients. The meat typically was flanken, a cut of beef (short ribs) that appears to consist of bone, gristle, and fat, Clearly, this had to be updated. So get out the soup pot.

Buffalo Borscht (Sweet and Sour Cabbage Soup)

Cooking spray
1 1/2 pound buffalo roast, trimmed of all visible fat and cut in 1/2 to 1 inch pieces (I used bottom round)
1 large onion, coarsely diced
2 quarts of water
3 14 ounce cans of chopped tomatoes, undrained
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 large head of cabbage, cored and shredded

Spray the bottom of the soup pot with cooking spray. Brown the buffalo pieces, stirring occasionally. Be sure they get nice and brown to make a rich broth. When the meat is browned, add the 2 quarts of water. Stir so that all the browned bits on the bottom are mixed in the broth. Add the onion. Cover and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 2 hours, stirring once or twice. Stir in the tomatoes, lemon juice, brown sugar, and salt. Allow to simmer while you shred the cabbage. I cut the cabbage in eighths lengthwise, and then cut it in half inch slices across. Taste the soup and adjust the seasonings to your own sense of sweet and sourness. You’ll probably have to adjust it again after the cabbage cooks. Add the cabbage and stir well. Simmer for another 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Adjust seasonings (lemon juice, brown sugar, and salt) at the end of the cooking. I usually put soup in the refrigerator overnight to remove the fat, but when I did, there was absolutely no fat on the soup surface. It is hard to estimate the number of servings for this soup – it makes a lot. I estimate a 2 cup serving to be 2 grams of fat. Serve hot (it reheats very well) And yes, you can plop a dollop of fat free sour cream on it.

Variation: Some people add diced carrots, celery, or even beets to this.  I don’t. I like my cabbage straight up.

Slow-cooker Burgundy Chicken

Published October 17, 2008 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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This recipe comes from 1,001 Low Fat Soups and Stews, an excellent book with lots of ideas for meals from hearty every day dishes to elegant food.  The burgundy chicken cooks while you are busy doing other things, giving you a great dish that only needs a bit of finishing when you get home.  It’s been great reheated, and the last bit is going into the freezer for a meal later on.

Burgundy Chicken in the Slow-Cooker

Slow-Cooker Burgundy Chicken

1 1/4 cups Burgundy wine (I used a mix of leftover burgundy and merlot)
1 can (6 ounces) tomato paste
1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 large carrots, grated
8 ounces of mushrooms, sliced
1 bay leaf
4 large bone-in chicken breast halves, skinned and trimmed of all fat
2 teaspoons Italian herb seasoning (or mix your own with oregano, thyme, marjoram)
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
salt to taste

Mix wine, tomato paste, and Worcestershire sauce in the slow-cooker.  Stir in the remaining ingredients, except for salt, pushing the chicken breasts, meaty side down, into the sauce.  Cook on low for 5-6 hours.  Remove the chicken breasts from the sauce, keeping the sauce warm.  Once the chicken breasts are cool enough to handle, shred the meat (or cut it into strips), discarding the bones.  Remove the bay leaf, and season with salt as desired. Return the chicken to the sauce to warm.  Serve over spaghetti or linguini.  This makes 5 servings, with about 5 grams of fat/serving, plus an added gram of fat for a 2 ounce serving of pasta.  Splurge and add 2 Tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese for an additional 3 grams of fat.  [9 grams for the whole deal.]

Therapeutic Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

Published October 12, 2008 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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You know you’ve had those days. Your stomach feels gorpy. You spent an hour on the phone arguing fruitlessly with a customer “service” representative about your account. You’re one step shy of a migraine – or maybe you already have one. You accidentally hit your finger with a hammer and broke it. You need muffin therapy. Just the word muffin is cozy and comforting. Muffin – muffin – muffin. Doesn’t that sound like a warm down quilt, wooly socks, and hot tea? And bananas, that comfort food from childhood. And of course chocolate – aaah chocolate. It needs no introduction. Now don’t go telling me that we need to learn to not seek comfort in food. That just not realistic. Everyone knows that misery loves calories. The trick is to have something gooey and satisfying on hand that also is not really high fat.

Therapeutic Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

3 ripe bananas

1/2 cup egg substitute
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 ounces mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 F and place rack in center of oven. Spray a 12 cup muffin pan with cooking spray. Whisk the flour, salt, and baking soda together in a medium bowl. Put the bananas into the large bowl of an electric mixer and beat them until they are well mashed. Beat in the egg substitute. Beat in the sugar. Add the flour mixture about 1/4 cup at a time, until it is incorporated into the banana mixture. Beat in chips. Spoon the batter into the muffin cups until they are about 3/4 full. Bake for 18-20 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool 10 minutes. Remove muffins from the pan and cool on a rack. These are delicious warm, and can be gently reheated in the microwave. They also freeze well, although I rarely have them left to freeze. These muffins are about 2.6 grams of fat/muffin. Eat two – you’ll feel better.

Variation: You can use regular size chocolate chips, which will make nice big gooey areas of chocolate in your muffins. I like my chocolate spread around more.

Come close. Note the gooey melty chocolate in the muffin.

I must go now. The muffins are warm and require my undivided attention.

Apple-Honey Fruit Pizza

Published October 10, 2008 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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Yesterday was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when Jews acknowledge their weaknesses, ask forgiveness, and vow to do better this year. Traditionally, people fast from sundown the night before to sundown on Yom Kippur day, and end the day with a break-the-fast feast.  Besides the feast, there are several things I love about this holiday:

  • You don’t just ask for forgiveness for sins against G-d, which you are granted, but for your transgressions against others, asking for them to forgive you also;
  • You read through a long list of sometimes humorous sins you might have committed, including being a zealot for bad causes (my favorite);
  • You ask to be forgiven for vows you have broken this past year, and, by the way, if you make vows this year and try as hard as you can and can’t fulfill them, then please forgive them too, in advance (I have a lawyer friend who says this is his favorite.);
  • You are asked not why you haven’t been as great as Moses, but why you haven’t been true to the best in yourself.

And now for the feast.  Our congregation has a potluck, and they assign either sweets or salads and side dishes by last name in the alphabet.  I got desserts, and decided to make a fruit pizza with honey and apples, traditional foods for this holiday. Remember the Wow factor of fruit pizza. (I am sure that food vanity, as well as food lust, is one of my weaknesses.) I know I said earlier that you probably couldn’t use hard fruit like apples on a fruit pizza, but I hadn’t thought of cooked apples – a revelation.

Apple-Honey Fruit Pizza

Cookie dough crust

I made the cookie dough crust the same way as before, with two exceptions: I left out the almond extract, and instead, when I mixed the dry ingredients, (flour, etc.,) I added 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon of ground nutmeg.  This made a nice, autumn-tasting cookie crust.

I also tried a new technique.  I cut a big circle of parchment paper and sprayed the bottom of the pan with cooking spray to hold it down.  Then I sprayed the top of the parchment paper with cooking spray before I put down the crust.  This solved a big problem for me, which is that my pizza pans are old and reprehensible looking, and must be covered with aluminum foil.  But the cookie crust always stuck to the aluminum foil when you cut up the fruit pizza.  This way, the crust lifted fight off the parchment and cooled on a rack.  I could freshly cover the pizza pan with foil to make it publicly acceptable, and plunk the crust on it to assemble.  Parchment paper is my friend.

Cream cheese layer:  I made this the same way as usual.

Apple-honey topping

Apples, peeled and cored
1/4 cup water
2 Tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup of honey
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Use firm apples that won’t turn to mush when you cook them.  I used Jonagold, but there are lots of good cooking apples this time of year. I needed 6 apples.  It’s going to depend on the size of your apples.  I would cook extra (you can always eat them).  Cut the apples lengthwise in about 1/2 inch wide slices. I cut mine into quarters and then each quarter into 5-6 pieces. Again, this depends on the size of your apples.  Put the apples in a large pan with the water and sugar.  Cover and cook over a low heat until they are tender, stirring gently occasionally so they cook evenly.  Watch them carefully. You don’t want them to turn into apple mush – you want them in distinct pieces.  Using a slotted spoon, remove the apples from the pan and spread on a flat surface (like a cookie sheet) to cool.

To make the honey glaze, heat the honey and cinnamon in a small bowl, stirring to incorporate the cinnamon (I didn’t stir it in well enough, and had to remove a couple of globs of cinnamon, which you can see in the photo.)  I heated the honey in the microwave. Allow to cool slightly.

Assembly: The fruit pizza can be assembled a couple of hours before you serve it, but it doesn’t hold for a long time, because the crust will get soggy. To assemble, spread the cream cheese topping over the cooled cookie crust. Gently place the apple slices in concentric rings on top of the filling.  Be careful not to squish the apples when you are handling them.  Once the apples are in place, gently spoon the honey-cinnamon glaze over the fruit pizza. Refrigerate the pizza, uncovered, for 20 minutes to allow the glaze to set. This is especially important if you are going to wrap it to take somewhere. Slice with a pizza cutter or a sharp knife. 12 servings with 6 grams of fat/serving, or 16 servings at 4.4 grams of fat/serving.

In this next year, may you be true to the best in yourself.

Chicken Enchilada Casserole

Published October 8, 2008 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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My neighbor and I have been taking turns making dinner to eat as we watch the presidential debates.  This is a handy casserole because you can make it a day ahead if you need to and cook it when you get wherever you’re going to eat it.  Also, it is large, and of course, I’m always looking for something I can eat another day (and leave some with Florence as well).  An additional benefit is that it used up an excess of corn tortillas in my refrigerator.  The original recipe, from Cooking Light, set aside this and that for garnishes to be added in the last 5 minutes of cooking.  I was less interested in glamour than tasty and quick to bake, but you could hold back a bit of the green onions, olives, and cheddar and put them on 5 minutes before the casserole is done.  I also lightened the recipe up a bit.

Chicken Enchilada Casserole

The chicken filling

1 1/4 pounds cooked, shredded skinless chicken breast (about 4 cups) see Note
1 large onion (about 1 1/2 cups) chopped
4 garlic cloves
1/2 cup of beer
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon ground red pepper
2  14 ounce cans (or 1 28 ounce can) diced tomatoes, drained
1/2 cup of thinly sliced green onions
1  2 1/4 ounce can of sliced ripe olives, drained
2  4.5 ounce cans of chopped green chilies, drained

The white sauce

5 Tablespoons all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
2 cups non-fat milk
6 Tablespoons egg substitute (or 2 egg whites)

The rest of the assembly

Cooking spray
6  6-8 inch corn tortillas, cut in half
6 ounces reduced fat cheese (I would have just used that pre-shredded reduced fat four cheese Mexican cheese mix, but I only had 2 ounces of it in the refrigerator.  So I added whatever reduced fat cheese was there, mostly cheddar and a little Swiss.

Serve with:
Salsa
Fat free sour cream

If you are going to bake the casserole right away, preheat oven to 350 F.

Note on the shredded chicken:  You can use any cooked chicken breast you have, like from soup, etc.  I defrosted a couple of chicken breasts and put them in a shallow bowl with about a cup of water.  I microwaved them, covered, on 7 for about 4 minutes on each side.  They were ugly, but very juicy, and could easily be shredded with a fork.

For the chicken filling:

Coat a large non-stick skillet with cooking spray.  Place over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and sauté until tender but not brown, stirring occasionally.  Add shredded chicken, beer, red pepper, and tomatoes. Cook until most of the liquid evaporates, stirring occasionally. (Confession, after 20 minutes, my liquids hadn’t evaporated enough, so when I used the filling, I used a slotted spoon to drain it a little more.) Remove chicken mixture from the heat. Stir in green onions, olives, and chilies.  Set the mixture aside.

For the white sauce:

Put eggs substitute in a medium bowl and set aside. Whisk together flour, salt, cumin, and coriander in a medium saucepan. Gradually whisk in milk, stirring until it is well-blended (be sure no lumps are clinging to the sides).  Place over medium heat and cook for 8-10 minutes or until thick, stirring constantly.  Yes, I know it is boring to stand and whisk. Pour yourself something tasty to drink and think of far away places.  Just don’t stop whisking or you will have a lumpy mess.  Believe me, I know.  When it is nice and creamy and thick, gradually add the hot milk mixture to the egg substitute, stirring the eggs substitute and milk mixture constantly with a whisk.  Set aside.

To assemble:

OK, now the fun begins.  You should have a big pan full of chicken mix, a bowl of white sauce, a bowl of shredded cheese, and tortillas.  Spray a 2 1/2 quart round casserole or soufflé dish with cooking spray.  Put a half cup of white sauce on the bottom of the casserole dish.  Arrange 4 tortilla halves over the sauce, top with 2 cups of chicken mixture, 1/2 cup of white sauce, and 1/2 cup of cheese. Repeat the layers twice more – you will wind up ending with cheese – sprinkle all the remaining cheese over the top.

If you are baking this right away, bake for 40 minutes at 350, or until bubbly.  If you are putting it in the refrigerator ahead of time, bake for 1 hour (mine took about 15 minutes longer) at 350, or until bubbly.

Serve with salsa and low fat sour cream.

This makes 8 servings with about 6 grams of fat per serving.

Chicken Soup

Published October 5, 2008 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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I learned a new way to make chicken soup. Not a new recipe, but a new technique. Who would have thunk it! I have made chicken soup the same way forever – a fat chicken, an onion stuck with a few cloves, celery, and carrots. Throw them in the pot and cook forever.

This is the way my mother and grandmother – and probably generations before that, made chicken soup. Well, maybe not the cloves. The only thing I ever remember my mother doing with whole cloves was sticking them in the cross hatches on the top of a canned ham – a recipe that I think involved pineapple rings and brown sugar. And I don’t remember Grandma Freydl ever using cloves, whole or ground. The only spice I remember Grandma using was cinnamon, in fantastic cookies and cakes.

The chicken soup is always delicious, but my big disappointment has always been the chicken breasts, which should have come out tender and succulent, but after several hours of cooking had every bit of flavor cooked out of them and tasted like cardboard. They weren’t even good cut up and put back into the soup. Then I read a recipe that said if you wanted to use the chicken breasts for a meal, cut the chicken in quarters and REMOVE THE CHICKEN BREASTS AFTER 20 MINUTES OF COOKING. Revelation!! The breasts are succulent and can be eaten for dinner, or on a sandwich, put back in the soup after it is finished or whatever. The dark meat can withstand the continued simmering, so it can stay in the pot and continue to add flavor to your soup.

Chicken Soup

1 4-5 pound chicken, cut into quarters
1 large peeled onion stuck with 4-5 whole cloves
3 large carrots, cut in half
3 cleaned large stalks of celery, cut in half
salt and pepper (see note)

Put 5 quarts (20 cups) of water into an 8-10 quart pot. Add the chicken, onion, carrots and celery to the pot. I usually peel the carrots because I am fond of cooked soup carrots, but you don’t have to. I take the chicken wings off so they can stay in the pot after I remove the chicken breasts, and leave the skin on everything to add flavor to the broth. I take the skin off after the chicken is cooked, and before I add it to the soup for serving.  NOTE on salt and pepper: I usually don’t add salt or pepper to the soup until I use it. That way, if I am using the broth as a base for something that has soy sauce or fish sauce as flavor, I can control how salty the resulting dish will be.

Bring the broth to a boil, skimming the impurities (the grey stuff that floats to the top) off occasionally. Reduce heat and simmer covered for 20 minutes, skimming occasionally. At this point, remove the chicken breasts. If you are energetic, you can take the skin off the chicken breast, and remove the meat from the bones and toss the skin and bones back in the pot. I’m usually not that energetic. I just want to sit down and eat the nice juicy chicken breast. Continue to simmer the broth, covered, for another 1 1/2 hours. Remove the chicken and vegetables from the broth and set aside. Allow the broth to cool for about 20 minutes.

Strain the chicken broth into a large container or two. I use a small, fine strainer, but you can use any strainer or colander lined with cheesecloth. Put the strained broth into the refrigerator for at least 3 hours or over night. When you take it out of the refrigerator, the fat will have risen neatly to the top and solidified.

Skim every bit of the fat off the broth. Although I take every bit of fat off the broth, I usually count the resulting chicken soup as having 1 gram of fat/cup, since I am sure that I don’t do as good a job of removing fat as store-bought chicken soup.

You are now ready to use the broth for whatever you want. My immediate use was to make chicken noodle soup for myself and my friend Tizzy to warm us after working outside in the brisk fall air. I cooked fine No Yolks noodles, skinned and cut up the chicken thighs, cut up the remaining soup carrots (I ate one of them right out of the pot the day before), and two of the stalks of cooked celery. I added a tablespoon or so of dried parley flakes, as well. I warmed 4 cups of broth, and added the noodles, etc., to heat through. We each seasoned our soup to taste with sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Our big bowls of soup had about 8 grams of fat.

I froze the remaining broth to use in later recipes.

Hint: You can freeze any soup in sturdy zip top bags, which takes up less room in the freezer, as long as you make sure that the outside of the bags are dry, and you have room to freeze them flat before you stack them.

Down Home Buffalo Swiss Steak

Published October 2, 2008 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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There are definitely days when I’m not feeling very gourmet, and the slow cooker is my best buddy.  These are days when you want something hearty and comforting – and frankly that will make good leftovers.  Enter Swiss  Steak, something I remember from diners of my youth (or horrors, was it the school cafeteria?) And why is it Swiss, anyway?  Naturally, I used buffalo to lower the fat count.

Buffalo Swiss Steak

3 pounds of buffalo steak, preferably rump or chuck.  Don’t waste a succulent T-bone on this
1 large onion
1/4 cup of all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 15 ounce can of stewed tomatoes
1 can of tomato soup concentrate, undiluted

Cut onion in half lengthwise and then slice thinly lengthwise. Put onion in the bottom of a slow cooker.  Mix flour, salt, and pepper on a piece of waxed paper.  Trim buffalo steak of all visible fat, and cut into serving size pieces (6-8 pieces). Dredge both sides of the meat in the flour mixture (This means press them into the mixture so that the flour adheres to the meat.) Put the meat on top of the onions in the slow cooker.  Pour the can of stewed tomatoes and the can of undiluted tomato soup over the meat and onion.  Turn the slow cooker to low and cook for 6-8 hours.  This has about 5 grams of fat per hearty 6 ounce serving

I served this with mashed potatoes.  You now how to make fat free mashed potatoes, don’t you – not the kind with cream and butter your mother used to make.  Cut potatoes into eighths. Put them in a pot and cover with fat free chicken broth.  Bring to a boil, and then simmer until potatoes are tender.  Drain broth, saving it in a cup.  Mash potatoes with a potato masher, adding bits of the broth to moisten the potatoes as you mash.

ABOUT KAREN

I have lost 200 pounds. I did not do it through surgery – I don’t like knives and needles – or by joining a club, vigorous exercise, or rigorous dieting. I did it by gourmet cooking. To be precise, by cooking low fat, really delicious food. I love to cook as much as I love to eat. Food magazines are some of my favorite reading. I would feel deprived if I couldn’t have the sensuous experience of good food crossing my lips. This blog is about my perpetual feast, my passionate love of food, with recipes, photos, and occasional advice and principles that I have learned along the way.

More about me.

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