Garlic Anyone?

In keeping with the attempt to eat healthy, I decided to try a recipe that I've been wanting to try for a while. Baked chicken with a coating of All-Bran (Garlic and Herb) Crackers. I was excited about it. This is a considerably higher fiber option than regular breadcrumbs. And lower calorie to boot (18 crackers to a serving). Plus those crackers are wicked tasty.

Off to the store I go. Well, lo and behold, no All-Bran Crackers. Now, this is the grocery store where I shop almost exclusively, so I know that I've purchased them there before. But now the shelves are filled with the store brand gourmet crackers, none of which are even near my beloved All-Brans. So what to do? Well, I go back to the original recipe. Instead of All-Bran crackers (which was my touch) I picked up some Fiber One Cereal. A co-worker of mine has done this baked chicken thing with Fiber One before, so I knew it could work. My only concern was that the cereal has a sweetness to it that I wasn't sure I wanted in the coating of the chicken. The plot thickens.

When I got home, I had 3 plump chicken breasts, which were clearly larger than the 4 ounces each that I needed. I had looked at a baked chicken recipe and they gave a cooking time for a pounded out chicken breast. Perfect. I weighed them out and they were about 8oz each. Perfect. I pounded them out and cut them in half. But before I had even gotten to the chicken, I put 1.5 cups of Fiber One Cereal, garlic powder, dried oregano, dried basil, some salt and some pepper in my Cuisinart. (If I couldn't have gotten my hands on some Garlic & Herb crackers, gosh darnit, I was adding garlic and herbs!) Pulse pulse pulse until those little branches of Fiber One are made into powder.

I whipped up three egg whites (not until frothy, but until all the aspects of the egg whites were more homogenous than right out of the shell). With one hand (always keeping one clean), I put the now six pieces of chicken breast in the egg whites, turned them about and then into the powder. It worked swimmingly. From there, on to a baking sheet. (Did I mention I pre-heated the oven to 350? Quite a household commitment in 100 degree Texan weather, I might add.)

Once all six pieces were done, I put the baking sheet into the oven (middle lower rack) and baked them for 20 minutes. A quick flip and back in for 3 minutes. They were golden brown and cooked perfectly. Success!

While the chicken was cooking, I put together a bean puree that was the suggestion of the BF. I put two drained cans of Great Northern Beans and put them in the Cuisinart. I peeled three garlic cloves and threw them in. Let me stop here. That was too much garlic. I should have listened to BF. He told me that it was going to be too much. Let me repeat. I should have listened. In addition to the way too much garlic, I added some extra virgin olive oil. I probably should have used the really good stuff for this as the taste would have been a nice addition. Pulse pulse pulse. After tasting it (and, yes, I could tell it was too much garlic at that point), it needed something. I added some red pepper flakes and cayenne (not much of either, for the record). All in all, it's definitely something to do again, just not with as much garlic. This recipe made 4 servings.

So, if you put a serving of the puree and a serving of the chicken together, it's only about 200 calories. Tomorrow night, I'm going to add a spinach salad with some balsamic drizzle. I think it will work really nicely. Maybe the salad will break through the garlic of the puree. Fingers crossed.

Grand Plans - A quick post

Today I went by the grocery store just to get some pickles (I had to make tuna salad), and it was one of those situations where you end up buying a heck of a lot more than you plan. (Oddly, it was not because I was hungry.) BUT, I had specific recipes in mind. I've been wanting to oven roast some leeks (just thought it's worth a try), so I bought a bunch of leeks ($2.99). I thought about making my Melting Pot Soup, so I bought bok choy ($1.38) and chicken, spinach, and feta sausage ($3.17). In thinking back to my fantastic trip to Fredericksburg, I also decided to get some thin-cut pork chops to try out a wiener schnitzel recipe ($1.99). I purchased some avocados at Costco last week, and I've been dying to make some guacamole, so I bought an onion ($0.23), some garlic ($1.00), and some jalapenos ($0.19). In addition to some other items, I got a pretty full 4 bags for just around $35.

One thing I'm trying to focus on is not letting my food spoil before I get to use it. That's a hard thing for me because I always have such grand plans, but I'm hoping this time will be different because I do have grand plans.

Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

On May 5th, the IT department (and a few select guests, such as myself) had their 3rd annual Cinco de Mayo Salsa Competition. Apparently last year they had some chutneys from some of our co-workers originally from the Indian subcontinent, but this year, most items were traditionally salsa or queso.

My addition to this mix wasn't quite as stellar as I had hoped for, so I plan on revising the recipe and then posting it here at a later date. But the basics are back to my beloved corn niblets (canned, baby) and black beans (also canned). I suppose you might get a better bean flavor if you started with the soaking of the beans and so on, but this was something I had to put together very quickly, so that was not an option. I intended to put red onion in there but when I cut into my huge red onion (that felt firm to the light squeeze), it essentially exploded. The middle was rotten. Grody. Bummer. So I moved on to the huge shallot I had sitting with my garlic and put in a big shallot (finely minced) and a medium-sized clove of garlic (also finely minced). Truth be told, I attempted to grate the garlic through my microplane at first to turn it more into a mush that would work itself through the dish completely, but the ROI was lacking - not a lot of garlic mush for all the effort I was putting in. Dicing won out.

Then came the seasonings. I knew I wanted to put in cumin. It is one of my all time favorite spices. The smokey mild heat just can't be beat. (I'm a poet and I didn't even know it.) And it goes with so many other things. So I added a liberal amount of cumin, some cayenne, salt, and pepper. It still didn't have enough zing. So I added a bunch more cumin. Better, but still lacking. I opened up my pantry and searched for something that would work. Aha! Taco seasoning! So I sprinkled in probably 1/3 of the packet on this mixture (which was two cans of each corn and beans). It livened it up and got it to pretty decent, but like I said, it's going to need some refining. Oh, and measuring. That's the thing I find so hard about writing down my cooking exploits....I don't really measure. I guess I need to get better at that. Experiment while I'm in the mood, but just take note of what I'm doing.

Killer Spaghetti...or is it Killing Spaghetti?

On Saturday I was, once again, trying not to spend any money and use the food stuffs I had already at my disposal. I was also inspired (yet again) by a Nigella Lawson recipe featured on her TV show (all repeats, but I still watch them while drooling). Lemon Garlic and Mushroom pasta. Because I went to Costco back for the Valentine's party, I knew I still had scores of lemons and limes. And I had some Dreamfields (high protein, low on the glycemic index) spaghetti. I had a huge clove of garlic. No mushrooms. Okay, so my version was going to be Lemon Garlic Spaghetti.

Let me tell you, not only was this one of the easiest dishes I've ever made, but it was so tasty that I ate about half a box of pasta in one sitting. No, that's not advisable, but it's almost unavoidable due to just how good this stuff tastes.

I did this with spaghetti, and frankly, I think any long pasta would work well. I don't anything like a rotini or penne would make a nice pairing with the sauce. But that's just me.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 box of spaghetti
• 2 decent-sized cloves of garlic, crushed or minced
• 1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1-2 Tbsp really good "sipping" olive oil (super tasty, but nothing you'd cook with)
• 1 large lemon

Implements:

• Big pasta cooking pot
• Large non-stick skillet for sauce
• Garlic crusher or chef's knife for mincing
• Microplane/zester
• Tongs

Instructions:

• Once you've gotten your water up to boil, salt it like you've never salted anything before. I've often heard that you want your pasta water to be as salty as the Mediterranean. Mine might have been as salty as the Dead Sea, but it was just that much tastier.
• Put the pasta in the boiling water (check the package for the proper timing). Don't forget to stir it around periodically so the pasta doesn't stick.
• While the pasta is cooking, heat up a non-stick skillet over medium/medium-low heat with the extra virgin olive oil (not the super good stuff)
• When the oil has come up to temperature (shimmering slightly), put in the garlic. The point here is to brown it slightly, but watch out - burned garlic is one of the nastiest tastes on the face of the Earth...very bitter, almost metallic. If you're concerned, lower your flame.
• Did you stir the pasta?
• While the garlic is browning, rinse off your lemon and use a microplane (or zester) to put the zest of the entire lemon into the oil/garlic mixture. The aromas will begin to dance and it is such a happy fragrance.
• Cut the lemon in half, and squeeze in the juice from one half. My lemons were particularly large, so feel free to put in the lemon from a whole lemon. Just depends on how citrusy you want your dish. Stir in the juice and the zest.
• Turn off the heat under the skillet and just make sure the sauce is combined.
• Assuming you've stirred your pasta periodically, by the time the buzzer has gone off, you've got some perfectly al dente and separated pasta. Take your tongs and pull out some of the pasta. Let the water drip off of it, and add it to the skillet. Take the tongs to make sure the pasta is covered with the sauce. Repeat with the next bunch of pasta and continue until you've got the half box of pasta rolling around with the sauce.
• Since the skillet has been turned off, it's now "safe" to add in the really good olive oil. Choose a deeply-colored olive oil that you might use for dipping bread and pour in 1 tablespoon of the sipping olive oil. (If you don't have that great bottle of olive oil, you can use your extra virgin olive oil, but I wouldn't put as much on it.)
• Turn the pasta around in all the sauce once again, and separate into two bowls. Make sure each person has some garlic, some lemon zest, and some of the olive oil/lemon juice mixture. Just to top it off, if you've got the really good olive oil, drizzle on one more teaspoon or so to each of the servings.

I was so excited by this recipe that I posted my glee to Facebook stating I had "just had some killer lemon garlic spaghetti." A friend of mine from Italy responded with, "Spaghetti with lemon and garlic???? You are spaghetti's killer." I'm guessing that means this is not one of the approved sauces for the pasta, but boy did I love it. In fact, I've got leftovers for lunch today. :-)