Spicy, Tasty and Healthy!

Ok- so like everyone else in the world, I have a New Year's resolution to get healthy and eat right.  Very unoriginal and un-foodie-like I know, but, what can ya do..  So lately I've been scouring the Internet and cookbooks for healthy and tasty recipes to make and this past week I requested a healthy meal when we were dinner guests at my parents house.   My mom came across a recipe for vegetable and pork stir fry that was featured on The Biggest Loser and made by Rocco DiSpirito. 

My mom and I made it on Thursday evening and it was really good.  My parents didn't particularly like it, but Ryan and I loved it so we made it last night for Ryan's family and it was a huge hit! The combination of the ginger, orange, red pepper flakes and peanut butter make a surprisingly complex sauce.  You could add any vegetables to this and in fact we added carrots. I would love to try it with an Asian medley with broccoli and baby corn and all of that good stuff, but Ryan is not a fan of broccoli so maybe I'll have to make this just for me someday.   This is also a fairly quick and easy recipe, which is nice for busy weekday nights.   We served this over brown rice.  

Vegetable and Pork Stir Fry

Rocco DiSpirito

serves 4

Ingredients:

cooking spray

1 lb. lean pork loin cut into bit size strips

Salt

4 tablespoons chopped fresh ginger

1 large red onion, thinly sliced

1/2 pound snow peas*

1 tsp. red pepper flakes

1 cup frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed

2 tablespoons natural peanut butter

2/3 cup chopped fresh basil

heat a large nonstick skillet, spray cooking spray, season pork with salt and add to pan.  Stir fry until golden brown and cooked almost through, about 3 minutes.  Remove pork and set aside. 

Spray cooking spray and add ginger, cook for one minute.  Add onion and season with salt and cook for about 4 minutes. **We added one clove of garlic, finely chopped,  for some extra flavor**.  Add snow peas and continue to cook until tender. Remove vegetables from the pan.  Add orange juice concentrate and red pepper flakes and bring to a boil.  Whisk in peanut butter and return to a simmer. Toss in pork, vegetables, and basil to combine.  Adjust seasoning if needed and serve!

****To make this dish even quicker, we used frozen carrots and snow peas and partially cooked them, and then added when instructed. 

**Not to drill home the whole diet/new years resolution thing, but this dish is only about 300 calories per serving.

I like spices

Ok, remember that post where I vowed to be more bold? Well, I've taken that to heart and really tried to order dishes at restaurants that really catch my attention and are different than the things I normally order. I've also been a lot bolder when it comes to spices. My dinner tonight was definitely bold and very different for me. I was leafing through another issue of Cooking Light and I found Coconut-Chile Snapper with a Caribbean bean puree. I was very intrigued by the recipe ingredients and the Caribbean bean puree..the fact that black beans and banana was on the same ingredient list was really interesting to me so I decided I had to try it. Normally, any dish with jalapenos, I veto it, but this dish was really not that spicy for me. It was more of an underlying heat and a level of flavor than crazy-spicy-sweating-eyes watering spicy.
This was another dish I made for one so I had to adjust the amount of each ingredient. If you know me, you know I'm not good with numbers, so I think the consistency of coconut chili sauce was a little different, but all in all it turned out really wonderful.
I started by mincing shallots and then adding them to a sauce pan with a clove of minced garlic. After that softened I added thinly sliced bananas and let that saute for a minute or two. The smell was actually amazing at this point with the sweetness of the banana and savory smell of the garlic and shallots. When that was softened I added black beans, vegetable broth, lime juice and cumin and salt. I covered the saute pan and let that simmer until all of the liquid was absorbed. (Just so you know I'm not being specific about measurements for the ingredients, because I really eyeballed it and measured it out for one person). When that was finished I poured that in to the food processor and pureed it up! It doesn't look appetizing but it tasted amazing. The sweetness of the banana combined with the garlic really worked together and the hint of lime juice made it really pop. According to the article in the magazine, the sweetness of the puree is supposed to compliment the spice in the fish and it really did.After the puree I started on the fish which did not take much time at all. Even though the recipe called for snapper, they did not have any at the grocery store so I bought tilapia instead still worked great with the ingredients. I combined coconut milk, shredded carrot, minced jalapeno, chili powder and salt in to a sauce pan and brought it to a simmer. Once it was simmering I added the fish and covered the pan and let it cook for about 10 minutes. I realized later that I should have turned the heat down once it started simmering because the pan got too hot and the sauce cooked into the fish, which really wasn't a bad thing, just not how the recipe described it.
But as long as it tasted good, who cares!! Once the fish flaked when I stuck a fork in it, I knew it was done and ready to eat. I poured the remaining sauce over the fish.
This meal turned out really good...and I mean really good. The bean puree was awesome and really complimented the heat in the coconut chile sauce. The chile sauce was really not that spicy, I think next time (and there will be a next time) I'll add more chile powder and (gasp!) more jalapeno.. But even though it wasn't that spicy, the fish and coconut-chili sauce was wonderful. The carrot and jalapeno worked really well together and the chili powder gave a great layer of heat. The coconut milk also really complimented the spicy flavors. I wasn't able to find light coconut milk, but I wasn't using much anyway, so I don't think it really mattered (calorically speaking).Once again Ryan was not here to join me, but I'm definitely making this for him because I think he will really like it (especially the spicy part) and he's been apprehensive about buying and cooking fish, so now I have 2 great fish dishes for him to taste.
I'm really proud of myself for doing something different and upping the spice level a bit. I'm getting obsessed with finding new and different recipes so hopefully May will be full of them.

Struggles of a White Man

Last night Erin and I had dinner at Bangkok Bistro in Hyde Park. It is a very good and always busy Thai restaurant that isn't too expensive. I am actually impressed at Cincinnati's offerings for Asian food. There are a bunch of Indian options across the city, my favorite is Ambar India in Clifton, but Erin isn't big into curry. We also have our local Chinese places: Doodles and China Gourmet. Both are a step up from a fast food place you get your Moo Goo Gai Pan that sits in a shopping center or in the food court at the mall. But those places all deserve their own posts.

My complaint is the spiciness scale. After you order your Pad Thai, Chicken Jalfrezi or General Tso's chicken, the Asian person taking your order will ask "How spicy?" They will give you a scale: 1-5, 1-10, or like the shady, yet delicious Krishna Indian restaurant across from my school, maybe the scale is 1-6. Now, I'll eat the spiciest thing you can find, and I'll love it. but, for a whole meal there is a line, I want it to be outrageously spicy, but not so much that I can't enjoy the flavors. So, my initial response is usually to go one step below the highest: 9 of 10, or 4 of 5.

Now, I'm going for that comfortable eating sweat that should accompany eating hot wings or Asian food. Yet, I'm often disappointed at the mildness of my meals from these places. So, I've been erring on the side of my tongue bursting into flames recently. Last night I ordered a 10 on a scale of one to 10 (Erin ordered a 1 for her seafood stirfry). Once again, I was disappointed. Yet, I know that these Asian cooks have the ability to bring me the spiciness I crave, so what's the deal?

My only rational conclusion: I'm being discriminated against because of my race. My friend Craig, a lover of all things spicy and Indian food particularly, is a firm believer in this theory. And I now join him. I think the people taking my order see me and think "sure, this white guy thinks he wants a 10, but he can't really handle it, we'll go easy on him." It might be even more explicit, when they go to the kitchen, it wouldn't surprise me if they say, "one chicken Pad Thai, spiciness 10, its for a white guy though."

The solution? I'm not sure. I think I'm going to stop recognizing the number system. Instead, when they ask how spicy, I'll answer "as spicy as you can make it". Or, I'll just say, "pretend you are cooking it for your father, make it that spicy". Or, I just need to make some Asian friends that I can take to dinner so I can gain legitimacy at my favorite Indian, Chinese and Thai restaurants.

Roast Beast

Over the past few weeks Erin and I have made a pork loin roast and a beef sirloin roast. I got the pork loin roast idea from my mom. While I was home for Christmas break she made a great tender pork loin roast that was bought already seasoned with garlic and lemon. She slow cooked it in a crock pot for 6 hours and added potatoes, onions, carrots and celery and some water. It made for an easy and great dinner. The pork was so tender you didn't need a knife.

Erin and I tried to recreate it. It didn't work, but we aren't sure why. I think the pork that I bought was about the same as my mom used, preseasoned and everything. I even consulted her before cooking. She said to just be creative and use what we have and cook it on low for 6 hours or on high for about 4 hours. We cut the loin in half, added carrots, potatoes, onion, apple, sun dried tomatoes and a hot red pepper; we set the crock pot on high for about 4 hours. We seasoned with salt and pepper, parsley, garlic and a bay leaf.



I think the flavors worked ok together. But, the pork ended up a little dry and tough. The potatoes were ok, but the apples were just mush.

In one of the funniest cooking moments we have had together, Erin took a big bite of what she thought was a sun dried tomato. But, it was the hot pepper. Erin isn't the biggest fan of spicy stuff, although she is starting to come around. But, the look on her face after biting into that pepper was of pure horror. She immediately ran into the kitchen and asked what would help cool her mouth. I told her milk and bread. She shoved a slice of bread into her mouth as her eyes welled up with tears. She laughed/cried in anger and pain. I poured her a glass of milk as I tried to keep from cracking up. She kept mumbling with the piece of bread in her mouth and looked oh so helpless. I kinda wish I had the camera out, but I don't think she would let me post a picture even if I took one. Anyway, the meal overall wasn't a big success.

Last week, we decided to go for a beef roast. I saw a Giada episode where she made roast beef with a spicy tomato sauce. Here's the recipe. As a bonus, she used a food processor for the sauce, and we are still looking for every opportunity to use our new kitchen machine. We bought a top sirloin roast from the grocery. We seasoned the meat with lots of salt and pepper and seared the meat on all sides.

Then we put it into a roasting pan and dumped a can of diced tomatoes and put in the oven for about an hour. Our only semi-mistake was that I only put the oven on 300. I wanted it to be medium or even medium rare, but I should have kept to Giada's suggestion of 375 for 30-40 minutes.

As I sliced the roast beef, it was a little rarer than we were going for, but it looked great. The sauce was pretty easy, we stayed pretty true to the recipe, adding some dried parsley to the little fresh parsley we had. Some how Erin's home grown parsley had survived the cold of winter up til January, but we didn't have enough. We also added the tomatoes that cooked with the roast, red wine vinegar, olive oil, crushed red pepper, salt and pepper. The food processor did its work and we were left with a great smelling, if not the most appetizing-looking sauce.


We finished the meal with a simple salad with a homemade vinegar and olive oil dressing that we tossed with the lettuce, sunflower seeds and croutons. The meat was flavorful and tender. It was a good cut of meat, even though it wasn't too expensive (I think it was about $4/pound). The star of the meal though was the sauce. The vinegar and tomato combo really "popped" in your mouth. Erin has since named it "pop sauce". We should have invited some one over for dinner, it was far too much food for Erin and I. I cut the rest of the roast in to pieces about 3/4 inch thick and they made for good steaks for dinner and sandwiches the rest of the week. All in all it was a very good meal. Here is the finished product: