Low Carb Mexican Food

It seems like an alien concept to speak of Mexican food as low carb (and diabetic friendly), but a link to just such a concept popped up on my newsreader today.  About.com, which seems determined to cover the universe in their little multi-page articles concerning what and how, has several pages devoted to low carb Mexican food.  The discussion ranges from Mexican dishes that are already low carb, those than can be turned into low(er) carb, and how to survive eating out at a Mexican restaurant. 

Much of it we knew already (meat, dairy, eggs, some vegetables), but I was surprised to read a recipe for the already-low-carb chile relleno.  I had always avoided those batter dipped chiles, thinking that the batter was heavily starch.  That's what I get for assuming.  Chile relleno's "batter" is whipped egg whites. 

I've missed years' worth of what promises to be a tasty treat.  On my next visit to a Mexican restaurant, guess what I will be ordering?

New foods (so far)

Google has a new interface for Blogger, its blogging software.  Pretty much like going snow blind, if you ask me.   Oh, well.

I always think I'm going to try new foods, but end up with (mostly) the same old ones.  On Wednesday, I tried not one but two new things!

The Oneth.  I love roasting ears of corn.  It's so much fun to go to a fair or carnival and find the vendor who roasts the corn.  Butter, salt, cayenne with that roasted flavor is just so yummy.  A couple of grocery stores on this end of Houston have food trucks outside their entrances that specialize in roasted corn.  I finally took the time to stop by one to get a couple of ears.

Sadly, they were out of whole ears.  The only choice was roasted corn in a cup.  So I tried it, replying when asked, "Everything."  I was expecting salsa or cayenne or something spicy.  What I got was butter and mayonnaise (heavy on the mayo) with a little cayenne and some lime juice.  Although there was definitely a taste of roasted corn, the result was very like an overdressed salad--way too much mayo and butter to enjoy the corn.  After a few bites, it became too much, and I didn't finish the cup.

Since the cup cost a whopping $3, I have to say I was disappointed all around.  I do intend to try again (someday) to get one of those roasted ears, but will definitely balk when offered one in a cup.

The Twoth.  Leeks are not entirely a new item in my diet, but I can only recall purchasing them once before my last shopping trip to Kroger. They are about to become much more common.

I had been slicing the leeks and adding them to soups and stir-frys but, for the last one on the bundle, I decided to experiment with the leek as a standalone vegetable.  I had a little oil left from pan-frying some breaded chicken breasts, so I sliced the leek and tossed it in the pan along with the leftover bread crumbs. I seasoned with salt and garlic powder and deglazed the pan with some chicken stock.  After reducing the stock, I served the leeks with the pan-fried chicken and some mashed potatoes.

Definite yum.  Definite addition to the diet.

Christmas Toys (1)

I had a good Christmas this year--if raking in a lot of toys counts for making it a good one.  Now that I have a little time to look at all the goodies, I have to admit that Santa Claus (and My Prince) treated me very well.

Toy #1 is a Yoshi Knife (yes, as-seen-on-TV).  I actually picked it up myself (Santa Claus is not a terrific shopper, so I have to help him out).  I have wanted a ceramic knife for some time, but the prices I have seen have been more than I feel comfortable spending on a knife.  The TV ad for the Yoshi made me want this more affordable version.  When I saw it advertised at Big Lots, I stopped by on my round of errands to pick one up and saved it for my Christmas stocking.

I didn't have time to look at the thing until this past Friday when I opened the package and tried it out with Little Sister.  Opening the package was an ordeal.  The stiff plastic container is impossible to open without very sharp kitchen scissors.  The jagged edges that crop up during the opening process are alarmingly sharp and quite dangerous in themselves.  It was all I could do to get the package open.  Once I managed to pry the thing open enough to work out the knife, I had to tear the paper label to do so.  Not a happy experience.

I read the directions before trying the knife.  Cleaning is simple.  Use, however, comes with a lot of caveats that I had not expected, e.g., use the knife only for slicing, not for chopping.  Most of the "rules" make sense, e.g., ceramics can be incredibly strong (and, we are hoping in this case, sharp), but they can be shattered with improper use.  After all, even diamonds are "cut" to shape.  Storage may be simple enough, but I am still nervous when re-sheathing the blade.  Using only wooden or plastic cutting boards is fine by me. 

The knife's first test was on an onion.  It was not quite like slicing butter,  but it was certainly easier than any previous onion-cutting experience I have had.  I could also get better control over the thickness of slices, making some of them quite thin.  (I need better control over my wrists before I get all of them to be that thin.)  I was pleased.

When LS came over, I showed her the knife and let her play with it a bit.  She was even better at making thin slices and reminded me of the tomato demonstration in the commercial.  I didn't get to that test until last night, when I actually needed to slice some tomatoes.  Sure enough, the Yoshi knife did a good job on them and let me get some nicely thin slices.  I was surprised, however, that even this sharp blade was not so razor sharp as to get through the skin without some extra pressure.  (Tomatoes are tough these days.)

Despite being less than overwhelmed by the knife, I am pleased enough to think I will continue to use it with some frequency.  I also will think about getting some other knife styles with ceramic blades. 

Last night I used the knife to make a side dish to go with turkey patties.  I sliced one onion, two tomatoes, and some roasted red peppers (from a jar).  These were sauteed in the pan used to cook the turkey, picking up flavors and the dab of oil left over from cooking the turkey.  I added a little salt while I was sweating the onions and then a little garlic/herb seasoning mix while the vegetables were cooking down.  I served the resulting vegetable mixture over the turkey patty for a delicious dinner.  Sadly, I am not enough of a cook to know what others would call what I made.  Happily, the Yoshi Blade worked a treat to make preparation easy and quick.  Even better, I have another low carb dish to avert a food coma.

Next Food Network Star

I follow several reality shows now that I have such easy access to cable television for the time being.  One of theshows is "The Next Food Network Star."  Sunday night's episode was interesting, with the main challenge being to create a savory dish inspired by carnival sweets and junk food.  There were the obvious "lollipop" (salmon roulade with creamy cheese to help make the spiral effect) rolled up on a stick or the "candy apple" meatball on a skewer with a sticky chili sauce coating the outside.  There were also the less obvious "banana split" (three meatballs with sauces with crouton "bananas") and "funnel cake" (some sort of fritter with tandoori chicken on top).  There were also some real failures, some of which were exacerbated by complete obliviousness to the flaws in one's cooking, some of which were just general cluelessness.

Aside from the competitive aspects of the show, the creativity of the challenges and the contestants' responses are what interest me most.  I can't imagine responding to these challenges so creatively, certainly not with the time constraints and pressure that they are facing.  And yet they often come up with utterly fascinating dishes which are well worth revisiting--at least for inspiration if not actual replication.  I'm really thinking about that lollipop as something My Prince will like.  Indeed, I think we he would like all of the dishes that I mentioned here.  (Of course, he would.  They're all meat dishes.  And that makes me wonder how to redo these as vegetable dishes.)

Yes, a challenge to myself.  I can't begin to think of how I might respond to the challenge of using all four of these carnival inspirations in a savory dish, but I will try to meet the challenge for one of them.  Which one, I can't say.  I'll let you know when I figure it out.

Spinach Hodgepodge Follow-up

LOL!  I was curious to see how my "hodgepodge" recipe stood up against others and did a Google search on the ingredients:  spinach "yellow squash" tomato.  Here are the results.  They seem to cluster in the realms of curry (serve with rice) and pasta sauce (serve with pasta) and involve lots of seasoning and/or cream.  Since most of my seasoning came from the pre-seasoned canned tomatoes, perhaps I should try some unseasoned ones and then have some fun with my spice rack.  Unfortunately, I'm out of both spinach and yellow squash, so I'll just have to throw something else together to keep playing with my food.

As for my original "recipe," I'm happy to report that it's even better as a leftover.

Just throwing things together

I cook some pretty tasty food most of the time, but I don't consider myself a chef of any caliber.  I don't particularly like following recipes (although I enjoy reading them for inspiration).  I've had no training to speak of, unless you count watching my late father cook when I was a child.

What I do love is just throwing things together to see what happens.  That's undisciplined, I know, but it makes both cooking and dining an adventure when I'm in the kitchen.  Adventure = fun, so, of course, I love it.

Last night necessity directed my cooking.  Little Sister had brought us some fresh spinach that was not so fresh.  She had bought herself too much and needed to offload some before it passed its expiration date, which was imminent.  I actually didn't get around to the spinach until a day or two after that date, so it was getting rather urgent to do something with it.  Rather than make a salad, I decided to cook it.

First, I chopped some fresh garlic and threw that in the bottom of a casserole dish.  I washed and tore the spinach (picking out a couple of limp leaves) and tossed that into the dish.  I chopped up some green onions and . . . tossed 'em into the dish.  I opened a can of slices tomatoes (Italian seasoning) and poured that in, liquid and all.  Finally, I sliced some yellow summer squash and placed that on top of what was in the casserole dish.  A little salt, a little pepper, a quick toss, and it all went into the oven along with a roast.

I kept an eye on the spinach, pulling it out when the squash was looking soft.  How long that took, I couldn't say (more indiscipline with the clock), but I could guess at 30 minutes.  The idea was to cook the spinach and onions without turning the squash to mush.  I was close enough, I think.

The resulting dish ("Spinach Hodgepodge"???) was quite tasty.  I did add a little salt at the table (I almost always do anyway, since I undersalt most of my dishes when cooking), but otherwise the dish needed nothing.  The squash had just enough crunch, the tomatoes added a touch of acid, and the whole combination complemented the roast beef nicely.

This time I got pretty lucky and "just throwing things together" worked out well.  The low carb count was an added bonus.

Pumpkin fail 2

Bad idea. Bad, bad, bad idea.

Well, it might have been a good idea when I first had it, but all the traveling and time away from home, meant that my pumpkin might have been past its prime. Or that my initial enthusiasm for all things pumpkin might have waned. Or that I just never really felt like I had a good idea about how pumpkin can be used for a side dish rather than a dessert.

Nonetheless, I did try. Once I got the thing opened and more or less prepared for cooking, I tried a couple of things.

• Boiled some pumpkin meat with Splenda and water. Added cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, butter. Light mash. I didn't care for the taste. It was a bit earthy for me. My Prince had three helpings.
• Baked shards of pumpkin (peel on) at 375 degrees for an hour, wrapped in foil, dotted with butter. The buttered bits tasted better than the unbuttered bits. I ended up cutting off the peeling (which had finally softened enough to actually be a peeling), chopped the meat, and tossed it into a Mystery Stir Fry. Hidden among the other ingredients, the taste was fine. Tasted alone, still earthy.
• I saved the seeds. They've been spread out and drying for a couple of days, but I still don't know how to get all the strings off. Maybe they will just fall off when I try to roast the seeds.
  

The other half of the pumpkin went in the trash. I hate to waste food like that, but I really didn't like it. And it was hard to handle. I might try pumpkin soup with canned pumpkin, but I do believe that that is the last (more or less) fresh pumpkin that I will try.

Fennel ideas

I'm still working out how to work with fennel. In the course of my reading, I ran across this list of serving ideas from the World's Healthiest Foods site:

• Healthy sautéed fennel and onions make a wonderful side dish.
• Combine sliced fennel with avocados, and oranges for a delightful salad.
• Braised fennel is a wonderful complement to scallops.
• Next time you are looking for a new way to adorn your sandwiches, consider adding sliced fennel in addition to the traditional toppings of lettuce and tomato.
• Top thinly sliced fennel with plain yogurt and mint leaves.
• Fennel is a match made in Heaven when served with salmon.

I have everything on hand except the plain yogurt and fresh mint. I have to break down and try something, don't I?

Green bean casserole

One of the staple dishes of Thanksgiving dinner seems to be green bean casserole. That would be the one made with cream of mushroom soup and canned fried onions. I don't remember this dish from my childhood, so I'm thinking it's something that has been popularized in recent years by one or the other food manufacturer. It has become so popular that grocery stores in this area regularly fill up one of the end caps of a food aisle with all of the ingredients in one convenient spot.

It's a tasty dish, to be sure, and a handy way to get kids to eat green beans. Unfortunately, it's overloaded with sodium and carbohydrates and is roughly the consistency of glue.

Happily, I found a recipe for green bean casserole that is none of these things. It appeared in the same place I found the Frog Eyes (My HEB Goodness, Holiday, 2007). I haven't actually made the recipe as of this writing, but I have all the ingredients at hand and hope to have prepared and tasted it by the time this post is published.

Here's the recipe:

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Splendid Green Bean Casserole

Prep Time: 10 minutes/ Cook Time: 15 minutes

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• 2 large shallots, peeled and sliced thin
• 2 cups fresh sliced mushrooms
• 2 tablespoons HEB Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 2 bags (12 oz. each) HEB Ready Fresh Go! Green Beans
• 1/4 cup HEB Texas Twist Ranch or Caesar Dressing

1. Heat oven to 500 [degrees] F. Line small baking pan with foil and spray with nonstick olive oil cooking spray. Spread the shallot rings evenly in the pan and bake for 5 minutes or until golden. Remove and cool.
2. Combine mushrooms and olive oil in a microwave-safe bowl. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and microwave on high for 2 1/2 minutes. Set mixture aside.
3. Prepare green beans according to package directions, drain, and place in large serving bowl.
4. Top green beans with mushrooms, dressing, and shallots. Serve warm. You can also cover the dish with plastic wrap, refrigerate, and microwave for 5 minutes on high before serving.

Makes 10 servings

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Nutrition Facts:

One serving = 3/4 cup
80 calories, 2 g protein, 5g total fat, 1 g saturated fat.
0 g trans fats, 7 g carbohydrates, 1 g dietary fiber, 2 g sugars,
0 mg cholesterol, 70 mg sodium

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I'm having to make some substitutions, especially in brands (sorry, HEB, all your stores are across town here in Houston). That's gonna make some difference in some of the nutrition numbers, but, since I'm watching carbs, I'll be sure that those are not adversely affected by the change. Your mileage may vary.

*crossing fingers*

UPDATE: Made it. Ate it. Loved it. The only seasoning, however, came from the salad dressing that we added before we served the dish. We used Newman's Own Ranch Style dressing. While the dish tasted good, I felt that it needed more flavor. Everyone else seemed to manage it without anything else, but I had to hit the salt shaker. In any case, I am now confident enough about the dish to start playing with the recipe. Mmmm.

Mock yams

One cup of diced sweet potato (raw) is 23.42 grams of carbohydrates. One cup of chopped carrots (raw) is 12.26 grams of carbohydrates. All orange veggies are not the same, but they look close enough for my purposes. We are substituting carrots for sweet potatoes this Thanksgiving.

My Prince loves sweet potatoes, preferably candied with sugar and smothered with marshmallows. Ditto for Mama. I have fooled My Prince with carrots before, so I'm going to try it with Mama. He liked it enough to ask for more. He even (pause to absorb the shock) liked the carrots so much that he asked to learn how to cook them for himself when I'm gone.

Here's what I do:

• Boil some peeled baby carrots until very tender. You can put a little sea salt in the water if you want to. The important thing to put in the water, however, is your sweetener. I use Splenda, but you may have other thoughts about what works best for you. Use maybe 1/2 to 1 cup. You want the carrots to taste really sweet.
• If the cooked carrots taste sweet enough, just drain, add some butter, and serve. If they need more sweetness, drain most of the liquid and add more Splenda until you think you've got the taste you want. Then butter and serve.
• To get a brown sugar taste, you can use Splenda's version of brown sugar or just splash in a bit of sugar free maple syrup. I use the maple syrup because it doesn't have as many carbs as the Splenda brown (I'm serious about the splash bit).

If you really want to fool everyone, mash the carrots. My Prince was happy to have the whole ones, but we may have to be a little more devious with Mama. Still, we tend to eat less when we are served an intact vegetable rather than a mushy mound (I think).

Another use of jicama

Friday night is party night at Mama's house. It's been that way since I was a teenager and had my own crowd of friends (four or five teenagers is a plenty big crowd!) come over for pizza and talk-talk-talk. Nowadays, Big Kid Cousin and Little Sister make up the "usual crowd," but this past Friday added a young(ish) couple from Mama's church to the group.

While the menu didn't start out as pot luck, it sure ended up that way. The young(ish) bride brought chile con queso, with ground beef and mild flavoring. Little Sister brought big slices of jicama with a couple of dressings for dipping sauces. Neither of her dressings were the traditional lime and cayenne flavors, but they held up well for giving the jicama a little taste.

Toward the end of the evening, I was nibbling around and just dipped a slice of jicama in the queso. Wowee zowee! Nice flavor combination. I'll certainly try that again. A low-carb, high-fiber substitute for chips is a good discovery any time.

Edamame (2)

Well, I repeated the stir-fry using edamame, celery (3 stalks, finely sliced), carrots (handful of miniatures, finely sliced), and packaged cole slaw (3-4 cups). A few spices to taste, and I had a healthy, low-carb, and, well, tasty side dish. Without the rice. Woot!

My stir-dry technique involves some steaming since I don't like to have to stand too long in the kitchen. While that helps move things along, there is still plenty of crunch when I am too impatient to let everything cook to a pulp.

Tuna-stuffed Eggs

Just for a change from Hurricane Ike, I'd like to highlight an online cookbook that I recently found. It's actually part of Dr. Richard Bernstein's book, Diabetes Solution. I found a PDF file of the book's recipe section on D-solve (a solution until there is a cure). To download the 344 pages of low carbohydrate recipes, click on the link for Additional Resources and then the link for Free Recipes. That will start the download of the PDF file.

This recipe for Tuna-stuffed Eggs is found on page 227 of the file.

TUNA-STUFFED EGGS

Makes 8 halves
Per egg half.
Effective carbohydrates: 0.3 g
Carbohydrates: 0.3 g
Fiber: 0 g
Protein: 7.4 g
Fat: 6.9 g
Calories: 93

I love the combination of tuna with anchovies and capers, but you can make one or both optional.

Ingredients:

4 hard-cooked large eggs, peeled
1 3 1/2-oz. can olive oil-packed tuna, well-drained and mashed
2 Tbsp mayonnaise
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 anchovy fillets, cut in half lengthwise
16 capers

Cut the eggs in half lengthwise and use a thin, sharp knife to take a tiny slice from the bottom of each half so it will sit firmly in place after stuffing. Scoop out the yolks with a small spoon and place in a small bowl. Set the whites on a platter.

Mash the yolks with a fork until smooth (or press them through a sieve). Stir in the tuna and mayonnaise. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Using a small spoon, stuff the whites with the yolk mixture. Cut each strip of anchovy in half crosswise and crisscross the pieces on top of each egg; garnish with the capers. Serve immediately or chill.

I tried this recipe today. I didn't have any anchovies, so I used bacon. I didn't read the garnish instructions (I am so bad with following recipes); I just chopped the bacon up and mixed it in. I liked the flavor pop from the capers, which meant I had to use more than two per egg.

The recipe is basically an inversion of tuna salad (putting the tuna in the egg instead of vice versa). It's a tad more sophisticated than my normal tuna salad, but, if I couldn't have pickles, I could at least have cayenne. The egg was nice and tasty, and then the cayenne kicked in. Mmmm.

Baked beans strike out

Baked beans have not been part of my family tradition. Maybe Daddy didn't like 'em. Maybe Mama couldn't make 'em. For whatever reason, I can only remember encountering them at one of our wonderful family reunions when I was a kid. There was, however, too much potato salad, fried chicken, and banana pudding to think much about baked beans.

Nowadays, however, I have begun to dabble in the baking of beans. This mostly involves grabbing a can of this or that bean and seeing what develops. A couple of days ago I did some of that dabbling and came up with disaster.

It all started out really well. I partially drained cans of:

• pork and beans,
• black beans,
• pinto beans

and dumped them all in a pan. They looked yummy, and I knew they would taste yummy when I took them out of the oven.

The problem started when I opened the can of plain diced tomatoes instead of the can of tomatoes with chiles. I had to compensate with red pepper flakes, since I didn't want to use a whole can of chiles to go with the tomatoes. Oops! I overcompensated. Too much red pepper.

Strike two came when I thought some celery might be good to add. I had already chopped about 2/3 of a large onion and added that. More chopping didn't appeal to me. I was already tired of standing, so I opted for celery seed. I've been using dried celery flakes for some of my stir frying, but am not very experienced with celery seed. Who knew how much flavor those little buddies carried? Again, too much of a good thing.

Strike three came when I took the beans out of the oven. I had baked them for 30 minutes at 425 degrees. Then, when it was time to broil the pork ribs, I switched the oven over to broiling, raised the temp, and placed the ribs above the beans to keep the beans from burning. That wasn't strike three. Strike three was when I realized that I hadn't put any meat in the beans. I had been thinking about it, wishing I had some sausage to throw in. It was only when I took the pan out of the oven that I realized that I had plenty of my old standby (bacon) and could have used that for flavor. *sigh*

As it turned out, the peppers didn't kill us, and the celery seed was tolerable. I dipped out pan juices from the pork ribs to add some extra taste to the beans. We did well enough, but next time I think I will do more chopping and pay more attention to what I'm putting in the pan. Or not. :)