Swimming upstream with the trout

Yeah yeah.  I know it's not trout that swim upstream, but keep reading.

I went to the grocery store to look at what fish looked good, assuming I would likely purchase some salmon fillets, when I asked the fishmonger, "what's the difference between these two fish?"  "One is trout." "Oh.  It looks a lot like salmon."  (not my finest moment)  But it does!  (And, in my defense, the label was partially cut off.)  Since the fishmonger said that you could prepare it the same way as you do salmon, I figured, let's try it.  I was a little worried as the boyfriend's taste buds tend to be, well, particular, but hey.  I was cooking, so I get to choose.

So, just like I have prepared salmon many times before, I decided to do it en papillotte (in a pocket).  The boyfriend was going to come over after working out, and I figured he was going to be a little hungry, so I figured that I should make a snack for him.  I decided to make kale chips again.  This time, the bunch of kale took up three baking sheets. They were, once again, a hit.

As for the salmon, I didn't want to do the exact same thing as I have done before (lemon, salt, pepper...and...basically, that's it)so this time I put a slice of onion on top and some bell peppers sliced into thin strips beneath.  I did, of course, stick with the salt and pepper, but didn't add acid. 

Once again, fish in a packet turned out...well...swimmingly.  It was flaky and the bell peppers still had some crunchiness left in them.  I probably cooked it at 350 for something like 15 minutes (honestly, I can't remember, as I'm finishing this post many months after the fact). 

Some other thoughts about cooking fish in a packet, if you do include either vegetables that exude a lot of liquid or you put some butter, lemon juice, and/or white wine, you end up with a nice "jus" in the bottom of the packet.  The best thing to do with that is to get a hunk of crusty bread (but not too crusty so as it hurts the roof of your mouth) and sop up that liquid.  Tast-i-licious.

A new crispy, yet healthy, treat?

I don't know about you, but kale has always been somewhat intimidating.  Not that I thought it would be hard to prepare, but the one(?) time I've tried it, it lived up to its bitter (literally) reputation. 

Enter "The Next Food Network Star." 

Reality TV has its up and downs, but I'm a sucker for a food-related reality show. ::gasp::  I love Iron Chef, Top Chef, ...any of the Chefs.  The Next Food Network Star is a competition to become the next personality on the Food Network a la Paula Deen, Bobby Flay, etc.  Contestants are asked (and constantly reminded because they seem to forget) to demonstrate their "culinary point of view" and to develop their story. I was hooked from episode one...and now, 6 seasons later, I realize much of the finalists are like those of American Idol - oddly, in some seasons, the runners-up were actually better than the winner. 

Season One's winners were a couple guys whose point of view was that they were preparing for dinner parties...or something like that.  Their show, Party Line with the Hearty Boys, didn't last more than one season.  I found them terribly insipid.  Season Two's winner fared differently.  The winner, Guy Fieri, has become the ubiquitous, bleach blond, spikey-headed, high octane host of multiple shows.  It might be that I would like some of his recipes, but his overuse of terms like "Flavortown" annoy me to no end. He now even hosts the ridiculously stupid "Minute to Win It" game show outside of the confines of Food Network.

Season Three was forgettable.  There was some sort of controversy when it was revealed that one of the finalists had lied about his background.  (Seriously, people, are we still doing that? Do people ever get away with it??)  The eventual winner was reinstated into the finale in his place, and she won.  I remember her "culinary point of view" but not her.  Apparently she found herself to be forgettable as well, because she chose not to renew the show for another season.

Season Four I remember better.  Of the final 5 contestants, four of them have their own shows. This is where the American Idol parallel is at its best, in my opinion.  The winner, Aaron McCargo Jr. just didn't suit me.  And his show, Big Daddy's House, seems clunky.  That said, it's in its third season, so who am I to judge?  His runner-up, Adam Gertler, had one show that didn't last, but now has a show called "Kid in a Candy Show" where he investigates all things sweet.  While he was frenetic and somewhat tiring to watch given his high energy, I think he makes a better TV host than Aaron.  The other two contestants who have shows work on the Cooking Channel (a sister station to Food Network).  I guess when you create a whole other channel, you need to fill up the hours.

Season Five is where my kale comes in.  This was a pretty good season.  While I found the runner-up to be insufferable, some of the other contestants had great appeal, in my opinion.  The winner, Melissa d'Arabian, has an interesting background.  She met her husband in France, has an MBA, and lived in TX.  For me, the draw to her was clear. Her show, Ten Dollar Dinners, shows how you can cook multiple courses for a family for under $10.  And, amazingly, she can do it.  I watch her show only if I stumble upon it, and the other day she was making croque madams.  As someone who is a sucker for essentially an open-faced grilled cheese with cream sauce and fried egg, I watched further.  A side dish she was making, was kale chips. 

I've heard about kale chips and passed them up at every opportunity.  But this seemed like an easy thing to try, and if it turned out horribly, ehh...not much was lost.  Basically, the recipe calls for three ingredients: kale, olive oil, and sea salt.  Guess what?  DELICIOUS.  And really as easy as it sounds.  Set your oven at 275 and start ripping the leaf off the stalk.  Easy - pinch the stalk at the base and run your hand up to the top of the leaf.  Some of the stalk will rip off in your hand, but not to worry.  Rip the leaf up into pieces about an inch in size.  I ripped and then rinsed (organic kale - no need to do anything other than rinse).  Then, make sure the kale pieces are dry. 

Once they're dry, move the kale pieces to a baking sheet (it took two) and put a total of two tablespoons of olive oil over the dried pieces (I put a tablespoon on each baking sheet).  Roll them around and make sure every leaf gets a little oil on it.  Sprinkle with sea salt.  Not too much, though, because you can always add more after they come out of the oven.  Into the oven they go - 10 minutes then move them around and flip them as best you can.  Put them back in for another 10 minutes, or thereabouts, until they're crispy.  I put a little more sea salt after they came out.  Delish. 

Oh, and Season Six of The Next Food Network Star was pretty good.  Aarti Sequeira, the winner, has a show called "Aarti Party" where she makes sometimes overwhelming Indian food very accessible to the average American.  I haven't tried any of her recipes yet, but they always look tasty. 

So, my only question is...do you lose any of the nutritional value by baking the kale?  If you know, please post!

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.

Quick and healthy summer dinner

Lately, the concept of slimming down has been at top of mind. I've gained some weight since I started dating my boyfriend. My friends say it's "happy weight" as it comes from indulging in dinners out at restaurants, Saturday morning doughnuts, or Sunday afternoon Coke floats. And, yes, more alcohol has been consumed on those lazy weekends while watching sports.

In our defense, we have also done a lot of active things like going to the golf driving range, having batting practice (with a wooden bat and a tennis ball...sort of a bit odd), pitch and putt, long walks, etc. I have also joined the gym where he goes and have committed to going 3-4 times/week at minimum (having someone to meet there sure does help).

But let's be honest. It's all about the food.

So, in an effort to prepare a pretty healthy dinner the other day, I improvised a salmon en pappilote. (Thankfully, this is not rocket science.)

I didn't have any parchment (though I've lately decided I should at least have some in my pantry, so that needs to be remedied), so foil it was. I wasn't actually sure how that was going to affect cooking time, so I looked up some recipes on epicurious.com (the best recipe site out there bar none...of course I'm biased since my bro-in-law is the technology team lead of the website) just to get a sense of how long it should cook. The resulting information? 25 minutes at 350. (well, sort of...keep reading)

I take out two large pieces of foil and doubled them over. I put about a teaspoon of olive oil on each. Over at my cutting board, I sliced about half of a zucchini in 1/8th inch slices. I then placed half of the sliced zuke on each piece of foil; salt; pepper.

Side note: when I say salt and pepper, I mean fresh ground. I have a sea salt grinder and a black pepper grinder. They are my go to spices. And now, back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

I then put the salmon on top of the zuke slices. When I went to my grocery store's fishmonger, I asked for 3-4oz fillets. Frankly, I wanted more, but I know you're really only supposed to have that sized fillets. As luck would have it, he cut them a bit too large and they were 6oz each. (Sweet!) I really can't imagine only eating half of that portion, so I think 6oz fillets are the way to go in the future. But I digress....I put the salmon fillets on the zukes. I then dusted them lightly with dried oregano, dried basil, and a touch more sea salt. Then I sliced a lemon (because I'm not actually sure if I can eat oven roasted salmon without lemon) and put a couple slices on top of the lemon.

I sealed up the packets by lining up the long sides and folding them over a couple times. Then I folded over each of the shorter sides a couple times. The little presents were ready. I put them on a baking sheet and put them on the lower of my two oven racks (sort of low middle). I set my kitchen timer for 20 minutes, as in my experience, salmon always takes longer to cook than the recipes say. I don't know how it could be such a universal problem, but it is. So my theory was that I would check on it after 20 minutes and, depending on the progress, would mentally prepare myself to not eat for a while.

As suspected at the 20 minute mark, the little packets weren't quite done. The good thing with salmon is that I don't need it to be cooked to a fair-thee-well, but it looked close enough that "properly cooked" seemed within grasp, so I decided to try for a bit more. I turned the oven up to 400, put the packets (re-closed) back in, and reset the clock for 10 minutes. Truth by told, I knew the oven wasn't going to get up to the full 400 by the time the buzzer went off, but I figured it would work all the same.

When the ringing began, I took out the packets. I couldn't hold back and risked a bit of fingertip burning to open it up and check if we were done. We were. They were absolutely perfect. In the next 90 seconds while we waiting for the foil to become a little more manageable, I microwaved some Uncle Ben's Brown & Wild 90 Second rice. Once that was done, I put half of the rice on one plate and the contents of one packet on top of that. I did the same for the other plate. The fish, zucchini, lemon slices and olive oil had made a great sauce that permeated the wild rice.

I thought it was delicious, but perhaps more importantly, the boyfriend thought it was fantastic and requested that I make it again...soon. (He also had the suggestion of adding more zukes some with a thicker cut to add some more veggies and more texture. I think he's got something there.)

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. :-)