Saturday, February 28, 2004
Woo hoo! Low sodium cheese! If you're near a Central Market, run on over and check the cheese area labelled "German, Dutch and Danish" (that would sound so much better as Deutsch, Dutch and Danish) for Nokkelost. Only 45 mg of sodium per ounce! It's a slightly herbed cheese, there's a hint of cloves in it and a bit of caraway seeds. The downside? $19.95 per pound - yikes! But for cheese that you can eat as though you were completely normal, and also serve to normal people without them saying ewwwww, it's worth an occasional binge. We had potluck this evening, and everyone enjoyed the cheese- half a pound served as an appetizer was gone in no time. We served it with pumpernickel rye bread, and unsalted kosher dill pickles that I got from Healthy Heart Market.
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
So we were having friends over to dinner; they're Indian and vegetarian. I didn't want to try cooking Indian food- I'm sure they could do that better than we could. I thought I'd make chili - they are leaving TX for CA, chili would be the proper Texas send-off, right? I have several vegetarian "chili" recipes that are quick and easy, but pretty ordinary. I wanted to do something better, and I was thinking what about cashews? They are popular in Indian cooking, and would add some protein and some heft to the chili. So I googled for cashew chili recipes, found about 70 of them, and then merged them, added a couple of ingredients of my own, and left out the salt. The secret to leaving out the salt, in this case, is the green chilies - nobody notices that salt is missing when there's enough chili! So here's what I came up with:
2 cans NSA (no salt added) beans - kidney beans or black beans or black soy beans (Eden sells these)
3 white onions, diced (other onions would work too, I'm sure, but if you use red or yellow, get smaller ones, so you don't have massively too much onion)
1 red bell pepper (green would do too, but red looks better in the chili), diced
1 cup diced celery (somewhere between one and two stalks, or one small pre-chopped container from the supermarket salad section)
2 cans NSA diced tomatoes with green chilies (Eden sells these)
1 small can NSA tomato paste (the Conta brand from Europe is not specifically NSA but it's very low sodium; when I can't find Hunt's NSA I get Conta which is only about 20 mg of sodium)
1 Tablespoon each ground black pepper, chili powder, cumin, oregano, minced garlic (I buy jars of minced garlic. I think this would be a couple cloves worth, if you did it from scratch)
1 bay leaf
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1 cup raw, unsalted cashews (the bulk bins at Whole Foods are one place to get these)
1/3 cup raisins
Heat a little olive oil in a frying pan, and sauté the onions, peppers, celery and garlic until the vegetables are translucent. Move them to a biggish stew pan/dutch oven. Add the beans and tomatoes INCLUDING the juice from the cans. Add everything else, stir thoroughly, and bring to a boil. As soon as it bubbles, cover the pot, lower the heat, and simmer for an hour and a half.
Serve with cornbread, seasoned with cumin; or corn chips and green salsa. Guiltless Gourmet makes unsalted blue corn chips. Healthy Heart Market has low-sodium cornbread mix; follow the directions and add 1 tsp cumin (or less, to taste - I like spices).
If you want slightly milder chili, make one can of tomatoes plain instead of with green chilies; if you want really bland chili (why?) make both cans of tomatoes plain.
2 cans NSA (no salt added) beans - kidney beans or black beans or black soy beans (Eden sells these)
3 white onions, diced (other onions would work too, I'm sure, but if you use red or yellow, get smaller ones, so you don't have massively too much onion)
1 red bell pepper (green would do too, but red looks better in the chili), diced
1 cup diced celery (somewhere between one and two stalks, or one small pre-chopped container from the supermarket salad section)
2 cans NSA diced tomatoes with green chilies (Eden sells these)
1 small can NSA tomato paste (the Conta brand from Europe is not specifically NSA but it's very low sodium; when I can't find Hunt's NSA I get Conta which is only about 20 mg of sodium)
1 Tablespoon each ground black pepper, chili powder, cumin, oregano, minced garlic (I buy jars of minced garlic. I think this would be a couple cloves worth, if you did it from scratch)
1 bay leaf
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1 cup raw, unsalted cashews (the bulk bins at Whole Foods are one place to get these)
1/3 cup raisins
Heat a little olive oil in a frying pan, and sauté the onions, peppers, celery and garlic until the vegetables are translucent. Move them to a biggish stew pan/dutch oven. Add the beans and tomatoes INCLUDING the juice from the cans. Add everything else, stir thoroughly, and bring to a boil. As soon as it bubbles, cover the pot, lower the heat, and simmer for an hour and a half.
Serve with cornbread, seasoned with cumin; or corn chips and green salsa. Guiltless Gourmet makes unsalted blue corn chips. Healthy Heart Market has low-sodium cornbread mix; follow the directions and add 1 tsp cumin (or less, to taste - I like spices).
If you want slightly milder chili, make one can of tomatoes plain instead of with green chilies; if you want really bland chili (why?) make both cans of tomatoes plain.
Sunday, February 01, 2004
Less than a month since the last post!
I've been convincing friends to cook with less salt, and they are slowly discovering that it's not that difficult to make something tasty without automatically throwing in a teaspoon full of salt. We've been able to eat at other people's houses more often, and we've had people over for dinner at our house more.
Speaking of dinner, I'm off to find it now. But first, an extremely easy recipe:
pieces of chicken or turkey for 4 people (I use skinless boneless breasts of either)
flour
butter, olive oil
small can of no salt added mushrooms
cheap fruit-flavored wine
using a small handful of flour, lightly roll each chicken breast in flour.
Melt 2 Tbsp unsalted butter in a frying pan, and add a tablespoon of olive oil. Brown chicken on both sides.
Add can of mushrooms, liquid and all; add 1-2 cups apricot or peach wine, enough to almost completely cover the meat. Bring to almost a boil; turn down heat and simmer on low for an hour. Serve each piece of chicken with a spoonful of the mushrooms and thickened "sauce" over it.
Apricot or peach wine work best; apple wine would also work, but that would probably work even better with pork cutlets if you happen to eat pork. I dunno about cherry wine. Berry flavored wine would definitely NOT work for this.
I've been convincing friends to cook with less salt, and they are slowly discovering that it's not that difficult to make something tasty without automatically throwing in a teaspoon full of salt. We've been able to eat at other people's houses more often, and we've had people over for dinner at our house more.
Speaking of dinner, I'm off to find it now. But first, an extremely easy recipe:
pieces of chicken or turkey for 4 people (I use skinless boneless breasts of either)
flour
butter, olive oil
small can of no salt added mushrooms
cheap fruit-flavored wine
using a small handful of flour, lightly roll each chicken breast in flour.
Melt 2 Tbsp unsalted butter in a frying pan, and add a tablespoon of olive oil. Brown chicken on both sides.
Add can of mushrooms, liquid and all; add 1-2 cups apricot or peach wine, enough to almost completely cover the meat. Bring to almost a boil; turn down heat and simmer on low for an hour. Serve each piece of chicken with a spoonful of the mushrooms and thickened "sauce" over it.
Apricot or peach wine work best; apple wine would also work, but that would probably work even better with pork cutlets if you happen to eat pork. I dunno about cherry wine. Berry flavored wine would definitely NOT work for this.
