This is one I’d been talking about for a while now – stroganoff. This version is made with chicken, but it works just as easy with beef too.

Chicken Stroganoff

What You Need:

• 20-24oz skinless chicken breast
• 1-1/2 to 2 cups chicken broth/stock – low sodium
• 12 oz can evaporated milk
• 8 oz mushrooms – sliced
• 1/2 medium onion – sliced thin
• 1 cup edamame – shelled (optional)
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons margarine
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon granulated garlic
• salt, pepper to taste

What You Do:

Cut the chicken in to bite sized pieces.

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat, add about a teaspoon of oil or spray with no-stick spray and add chicken, cooking and turning just to brown on all sides. Work in small batches and set aside as it cooks. You don’t want to crowd the pan with too much meat or it will cool the pan off too much and make it harder to brown the meat.

Once all the meat is done, turn heat down to medium and deglaze the pan by adding about 1/4 cup of the chicken stock and stirring the pan to loosen up and bits of meat stuck to the pan. After most of the stock as cooked off, add the onions and sautee for about one-two minutes, until they start to turn translucent.

Add the mushrooms and cook about 2-3 more minutes. Add in the edamame if using and cook about 1-2 more minutes until beans are heated, onions are caramelized, and mushrooms are softened.

In a clean saucepan, make a roux by heating the butter over medium heat just until butter has melted. Add flour and wisk into the butter to form a paste consistency, heat until it starts to bubble, stirring constantly to keep from burning.

Incorporate the milk slowly in to the pan, about 2-3 ounces at a time, stirring constantly. After each addition, let the liquid start to thicken again before adding more. After milk has been added, start incorporating the chicken broth. If you want a thicker sauce, only use about 1 cup of broth. For a thinner sauce, add about 1-1/2 cups.  It should take 3-4 minutes to fully incorporate all the liquid to the roux. Stir in garlic powder, salt, pepper and Worcestershire sauce.

Stir meat and vegetables in to the sauce and simmer over low heat about 5-7 minutes until meat is cooked through and everything is fully heated. If sauce is thicker than desired, add more broth. If too thin, allow to simmer longer, uncovered, to reduce the amount of liquid.

Serve over whole-wheat pasta, shirataki noodles, piece of toast, bed of quinoa or how ever you like, or just straight up!

If you want beef stroganoff, sub beef broth for chicken broth and your favorite lean cut of beef. I typically get the stuff sold as “stew beef”, it’s bits and pieces usually from trimming other cuts, and while they’re already chunks, I typically cut them down a bit more. Cheaper cuts of steaks work well too because of the moist cooking method used.

First off, sorry about the so-so picture. I forgot my camera at work today and the phone on my Pre is decent, but not good for close-ups. Second… this fish turned out soooo much better than I even hoped it would. And third, yea… another recipe. What can I say… after being out of town for a week I’ve been hankering to get back in the kitchen!

I’ve seen a few recipes for nut-crusted fish, typically they involve slathering the fish with mayo, piling on the nuts and baking. That’s basically what I did here, but I got both conservative, and creative. Instead of the usual pecans or walnuts, I went for the pumpkin seeds. Make sure you get them out of the shell though. You could likely do this with just bout any nut you want… I may try pistachio’s next.

For a half-pound of fish you’ll need about 1/4 cup of your nuts or seeds, and use a food processor or Magic Bullet type blender and chop them to a coarse meal consistency. You want some chunks in there!

For the fish, I went with a northern fillet, good fish, Canadian wild caught. Just watch out for the bones. This should work with any fairly flaky, white fish like tilapia, cod, even cat fish. Heated up the oven to 350 degrees and lightly sprayed a baking dish with some olive oil flavored cooking spray. If you’re using frozen fish, make sure it’s fully thawed and dried off.

Then I took the fish and spread about 1.5-2 teaspoons of (fat-free of course) mayo on it and then seasoned with some fresh ground black pepper, a bit of salt and some granulated garlic. You can mix this up to suit your own tastes… try lemon pepper, or maybe some dill.

Next spread half the ground nuts/seeds over the fish, patting it in to the mayo to get it to stick a bit. Put the fish in the prepared pan, that covered side down and repeat the process with the other side.

Pop it in the oven for about 20-25 minutes. This is going to vary depending on the thickness of the fish you used. If it’s a really thin fillet, it may even cook in as little as 15… so check it. It’s done with it flakes apart easily if you poke a fork in to it.

I served this with some srhooms and onions (I just chopped them, lightly covered with olive oil and seasoned with garlic and cayenne pepper, cooked in the oven for about 12-15 minutes) and a side salad with a home made, steak-sauce salad dressing.

This whole meal can be prepped up in about 10 minutes than make the salad while the fish and veges are cooking. Supper simple. Throw some bell pepper chunks in with the shrooms and onions if you want a splash of color (and flavor).

The recipe this is based on came from a bariatric friendly cookbook (I’ll get around to reviewing it for here eventually.) I tweeked it for quantity, and to better suit my own tastes… and the cookbook calls it Zucchini Pancakes. I described this to a friend last night and she goes “you mean zucchini latkas…..”

Yea, I had to look up just what latkes were. Ok fine, I know I don’t have to be Jewish to cook Jewish foods any more than I have to be Italian to cook spaghetti… but I couldn’t come up with a better title for the post. So there. Actually here… here’s how they looked upon completion.

And no… those aren’t monster shrooms, they’re baby bellas… that’s a saucer, not a full size plate.

Anyways, on to the food… I’ve been in a cooking mood this week, and you guys get the benefits of my trials and errors. I tried these last night… and they were good… good enough that I wanted to have them again, but they were missing a lil somethin’-somethin’. I made them again tonight, and yea… I nailed it.

Keep in mind, this is for my tastes… try it, and if you aren’t impressed, I won’t refund your money but you can try again and mix up the spices a bit more to your liking.

Start out with about 1 pound of zucchini (2 medium) and shred them. A food processor works just spiffy for this. Dump the stuff in to a colandar and sprinkle a liberal teaspoon or so of salt over it all. This helps draw out the water… and there’s a lot of it. Let the colandar sit over a bowl or the sink for 20-30 minutes.

While that’s sitting take 2 eggs out of the fridge and set them on the counter and then put the following into a small bowl.

• 2 Tablespoons shredded Parmesean cheese (fresh if you have it)
• 2 Tablespoons dried basil leaves
• 1 Tablespoon fresh chive, chopped finely
• 1 teaspoon lemon pepper (you should be using the no-salt kind)
• 1 teaspoon granulated garlic (again, not the kind with salt in it)
• 1 teaspoon Splenda (about 1 packet if you go that route)

Once your zucchini’s been sitting there for bout 30 minutes, give the stuff a very quick rinse and then using a nice clean dish towel (or a wad of paper towels), wrap up the zucchini and squeeze the heck out of it to get as much water out of there as you possibly can. Then give it a few more squeezes for good measure. Work with half the stuff at a time if it’s easier. You should end up with about 2 cups, give or take.

Stir the zucchini and spices together until mixed up reallly good, then put back in the colander, cause it’s still going to keep giving up water. Heat up your griddle or skillet to medium-high (about 350 degrees).

Now this part gets a little tricky, but I think you can handle it.

Separate the egg whites from yolks for both eggs, putting the whites in a clean bowl. Use stainless or glass… or copper if you have it. Yolks… do whatever with them.. I ended up tossing them cause couldn’t think of a use for them. Leave a comment if you have an idea for what to do with them next time I make these.

Add 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar to the egg whites if you have it. If you use a copper bowl, you don’t need the tartar. Basicially, the cream of tartar (or using a copper bowl) helps keep the egg whites from separating as fast once you beat them. And that’s what you do… using a good wire whisk, beat those egg whites until you get stiff peaks. You can cheat and use an electric mixer, but I did it by hand in about 3 minutes. Stiff peaks mean if you pull the whisk out the whites stay standing… like this…

Now fold the zucchini mixture in to here and place about 1/4 blobs on to the hot griddle (use some cooking spray to keep them from sticking!) and use the back of a spatula to flatten them out to about 1/4 inch thickness, like so…

Let them cook for about 5-6 minutes on the first side, carfully flip over and cook about another 5 minutes on the second side… they should brown up nicely… like this…

Now latkes are traditionally served with sour cream, and I imagine it would go really good. But I don’t have any on hand, fat-free or otherwise… so I tried mine with a bit of ranch dressing and they were very good. Even plain, these are good, but a nice sauce or some sort just dresses them up that much more.

You’ll get about eight of these out of the recipe… and I think there’s about 2g of protein per. Not a heck of a lot, especially for me at three months out. While they are tastey enough to be a main dish item, I really should only do one of these as a side to my main protein. I made a half-batch and so have a couple left over. I’ll see how they hold up in the fridge and reheating with my dinner tomorrow.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, I sauteed the ‘shrooms in a lil bit of olive oil and when they were about done added a splash of Worcestershire sauce and few shots of my home-made hot pepper sauce. Yum.