Variation on an old favorite -- Feta fish with tomatoes and baby bellas

Cross Listed from Santini60.Blogspot.Com

Since returning home from his stay in Holland Hospital, JB has a new set of dietary restrictions.  Specifically, he is on a very low sodium diet.  Two days spent preparing his food and counting grams has been instructive, and it turns out that if you cook all of your own food from scratch, sodium is a relatively easy thing to control.  Tonight's dinner, for example, was based on the old family recipe for Jim's fish, but with a twist.  Feta cheese has a lot of sodium in it -- but it provides a lot of flavor.  So my approach was to use a couple of tablespoons of feta along with a Roma tomato and a handful of baby bella mushrooms for the topping.  (That works out to a tablespoon of feta for each fish fillet, and a half of a Roma tomato each, plus some chopped up mushrooms.  I added some dill, and ground a little pepper onto the fish.)

Here's the mixture ready to go on the tilapia.  Just enough feta for flavor.  Bake it at 375 for 20 minutes if the fillets are frozen.

I stir fried a carrot and some broccoli, based on Emmy's recipe for kale and carrots.  I didn't have the courage to add garlic, though.  I wasn't sure how it would work with broccoli.  It turned out quite well without it.

I think Jimi would approve of the changes -- and it paired quite well with the carrots and broccoli.

Sesame Chicken

One of my all time favorite American-Chinese dishes is Sesame Chicken. So delicious, and so very, very bad for you. Breaded and fried chicken that is then coated in a sticky sweet-spicy sauce? Probably not health food. So when Andy and I discovered a recipe in our Joy of Cooking for Sesame Chicken that looked much healthier, we decided to give it a shot. Here's the recipe as we make it:

The cast of characters. If you can't find Tahini Paste where you live, creamy peanut butter is a good substitute. However, you can then leave out the sugar. 

Step One: Boil a large pot of water and add the 3 bone-in chicken breasts. Cook 8-10 minutes until complete.

Step Two: While that is going on, do the following:

Step Three: Chop up one green onion/scallion and grate about that amount of ginger - it should be about 2 teaspoons worth when grated.

Step Four: In a large mixing bowl, whisk together 1/4 cup tahini paste (or peanut butter) and 2.5 TB sesame oil until well combined.

Step Five: To the tahini/sesame mixture, add the scallions, ginger, 2.5 TB soy sauce, 1 TB white vinegar, chili paste/Sriacha to taste (optional - I used a bit less than a TB), and 1 tsp sugar. 

Step Six: Whisk until well combined.

Step Seven: Remove chicken from boiling water and allow to cool a bit until it can be handled; Shred the chicken and add to the bowl with the sauce. Mix thoroughly.

Step Eight: Serve over rice of your choice, we went with brown, and some veggies on the side. Ours was sauteed kale and carrots with garlic.

Enjoy!

Back ribs with bone in

We had these in Flor-Ida and I was pleased yesterday to see them turn up in our local supermarket.

So I paired them with a dish I have attempted a couple of times while away from home but with sketchy results.  I was confident that I would get a better result cooking at home.

The key is relatively slow cooking, a braising simmer if you will, to maintain the moisture in the pork.  What we don't like about pork CHOPS for example, is that they are hard to cook while maintaining the moisture.  They get dry and a bit tough.

These ribs have plenty of fat and after trying them again today I now emphasize that it is extremely important to get the bone in ribs.  That cut is cheaper by 20 cents a pound or so.  Further you are paying for the bone so even with the price differential you may be paying a bit more for the part you are actually going to get to eat.  Santini has taught me that price sensitivity when it comes to food is the wrong approach.  The results and what you are actually going to eat are what is important and the result for this meal is better with the bone in cut.  Take the cheap cut, buy the bone.

So the cooking directions are as follows:

Cut the onion into large pieces, get it started with some oil.
As soon as the onion begins to soften start browning the pork in the same pan.
Add a braising base, I used some beer that one of the guests from the Oscar party left at our house, a particularly full body beer.  You want something with enough carrying power to handle the strong tastes of the other ingredients.
Sauerkraut.
Get it all up to a boil then reduce heat and simmer.
I have done it uncovered but I now believe that I am trying to keep the moisture in so today I simmered covered (with an open vent in the cover).
At least 45 minutes, slow cook.
To judge when it is done I personally want the bone to begin to separate itself from the meat.

A perhaps interesting side note is that the kraut there on the left is Gino's homemade sauerkraut making one of its first appearances since it came out of the fermenting crock.  At the time I removed it from the crock I wasn't real sure about whether I liked it or not.

So how was it today?

Excellent.

And everything transferred to the dinner plate.

The tiny potatoes came out almost as good here as they were in Flor-Ida but I think I will go with 4 and a half minutes next time instead of 5.  The green beans were also microwaved so the only real cooking was the pork.

Which was excellent.  TOPWLH pronounced it as possibly the best ever.  She says that almost every time.

Public Service Announcement for coffee drinkers

If you have one of these:

And you find yourself with some of this:

I suggest you get yourself one of these:

It was available as a four pack from Amazon, for  about $12 for the four of them.  Target probably has them, too.  It fits inside the coffee maker just like one of the K cups, and does not require that you modify the coffee maker in any way.  It does not work for the Keurig version 2.0 series, the new ones that require a K-cup with a micro chip in it so that you can only use "approved" coffees.  (I have tried this one, it works fine.)  I like the coffee, too!  (And "thank you" to NCW for the suggestion.)

New Year's Day -- Black Eyed Peas -- After supper edit

Last things first, here's a shot of my dinner plate with all of the traditional southern elements on it. Black eyed peas, greens, pork and corn bread. Served with a little sprinkle of hot sauce. Done and done. I won't have to cook again for a month.

Southern food traditions are not new to me -- I can and do eat grits now and then, for example.  But I've never tried the New Year's tradition of black eyed peas.  Research on the internet gave me two recipes that seemed within my skill set, and though there are lots of variations on this one, I stuck with a fairly basic approach.  It's based largely on a recipe by Emeril.   This all started when I walked into a local supermarket and saw a table stacked high with one pound bags of blacked eyed peas, marked down to $1.29 (from $1.59).

Last night, after chatting with my favorite teenagers on earth over Skype, I put the beans in a pot, added 6-8 cups of  water as directed on the package, and left them on the counter over night to soak.  This is how they looked this morning.  Drain and rinse.  Repeat.  Set the beans/peas aside.

Recipes of this type are guidelines, no chemistry involved, unlike baking.  Research had indicated that this could be bland, so I chose two different kinds of pork products to flavor it.  The thick sliced hickory smoked bacon -- about a half pound.  And a cup of diced leftover Christmas ham.  All the recipes I saw also called for at least one whole onion.  This is a large sweet onion.

This cast of characters photo (below) is a little misleading.  Because I used bacon, I never used the olive oil.  And since I used bacon and couldn't find a low sodium chicken broth, I didn't use the salt either.

Brown up the bacon, add the onion and ham and -- this is a lot -- 2 tablespoons of minced garlic.
Also add two bay leaves, a half teaspoon or so of thyme, and as much pepper as you like.

Cook all of this until you've rendered most of the fat out of the bacon and the onions are soft.

Add a full quart of chicken broth (4 cups) plus one cup of water to the pot.  Add the peas/beans at this point, and stir.  Bring the mixture to a boil, cover and reduce the heat to low.  Simmer for 25 minutes.

Remove the cover and continue to cook uncovered for another 25 minutes on medium-low heat or until the beans/peas are tender.  Adjust seasonings to your taste.  Variations include celery, red bell pepper, ham hocks, canned diced tomatoes and stir in torn up kale when 5 minutes of cooking time remain.  Serve as a side dish with greens, cornbread and a pork main dish.  Add rice to it and you can call it Hoppin' John, another traditional southern New Year's dish.

Or you can cut a small piece of cornbread in half and ladle up some black eyed peas over the top.  Add some hot sauce of your choice -- but be sure to get plenty of pot liquor.  And always remove bay leaf from anything you've cooked before you dig into it.  This was really, really yummy for lunch today.  It'll also be served with greens and a pork tenderloin for supper tonight.  And cornbread.  Which is a whole other story.