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!