Baked Tonkatsu and Sesame Garlic Brussels Sprouts

Normally, tonkatsu is fried and super delicious. Now, I have nothing against frying or fat or oil or anything, but fat has more calories than carbohydrates or protein. So I decided to see if baking it works. And it does. Baked tonkatsu is not as good as fried, of course, but it's still quite delicious and has far fewer calories. Typically, it's served with steamed white rice and raw shredded green cabbage. I decided that the panko bread crumbs were enough carbohydrates that rice was unnecessary, and that raw shredded green cabbage is boring, so I cooked up some shredded Brussels spouts with garlic and sesame oil.

Baked Tonkatsu
1 lb boneless pork cutlets
1/4 C all-purpose flour
1 egg
1 C panko bread crumbs
salt and pepper
coconut oil spray (or another high-heat oil)

Let me first say that you probably won't use all of the flour or bread crumbs, so you can adjust those accordingly after you've made it once. Every pork cutlet is different, though, so put more in your dishes to be safe so you don't have to wash your hands and refill mid-dredge. I ended up using about 1/6 C of flour and not quite 1 C of bread crumbs (I think... the package was not labeled correctly, so I went by weight when I input it in MFP's recipe builder).

Preheat your oven to 450°F. Set a wire rack on a cookie sheet and spray the rack with oil.

Pour the flour onto a plate, add salt and pepper, and mix together. Beat the egg in a small bowl (you may want to add a little water for consistency) with a touch of salt and pepper. Pour the bread crumbs into a bowl that is large enough to accommodate the cutlets.

Coat a cutlet in the seasoned flour, shake off the excess, then dunk it in the egg, let the excess egg drip off, then toss it in the bread crumbs until it's well-coated. Place it on the wire rack and repeat with the remaining cutlets. Put them in the oven for about 12 minutes, turning once. Oven temperatures can vary, so if they aren't browning, turn your oven all the way up for an additional few minutes. I think next time I'm going to spray them with oil just for that hint of fried flavor.

Before serving, cut the tonkatsu into strips. Serve with katsu sauce and sesame garlic Brussels sprouts.

Katsu Sauce
2 T ketchup
1 T molasses
2 T ponzu sauce (you could use soy sauce, but ponzu is better)
1/4 t garlic powder
1/4 t black pepper

Mix everything together! Usually I add 2 T unsweetened applesauce as well, but I'm out right now. You should add it if you have it.

Sesame Garlic Brussels Sprouts
1 T sesame oil
4 small cloves of garlic
1 10-oz bag shaved Brussels sprouts (I suppose you could get whole sprouts and shave them yourself)
salt and pepper
1 T soy sauce
Sesame seeds for garnish

Heat the sesame oil in a large skillet over low heat. Smash and peel the garlic, then slice it thinly. Add the garlic and Brussels sprouts to the oil and season with a little salt (just a bit because of the soy sauce later) and pepper. Cook over low heat for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in the soy sauce at the end. Spoon into bowls and garnish with sesame seeds (I did both black and white for fun).

Put it all together:

Serves 2.

Grilled Marinated Chicken and Stuff

This chicken was SOO good. I apologize for not having pictures of the meal once completed (though you do get bonus leftovers pics), but it actually wasn't terribly pretty. I was craving fajitas, but didn't want to cut up a bunch of chicken or cook indoors, so I decided to leave the chicken breasts intact, marinate them, and make my husband grill them!

Marinade:
orange juice
soy sauce
white vinegar
sunflower oil (just a touch)
garlic powder
ground cumin
ground coriander seed
cayenne pepper
black pepper

Place all ingredients in whatever proportion you want into a large zipper bag and mix it around a bit. Add in some boneless, skinless chicken breasts and refrigerate for at least 6 hours. You could use lime juice instead of orange, but I needed to use up some orange juice that I bought for my dad since we don't drink it.

Accompaniments:
bell pepper, cut into strips
jalapeño pepper, seeded and cut into strips
yellow onion, sliced
olive oil spray
salt & pepper
can of black beans
shredded Mexican cheese blend (I bought a light blend and can't tell any difference)
sliced avocado
tortillas

Place the veggies on a large sheet of aluminum foil that has been sprayed with olive oil, then spray the veggies. Sprinkle salt and pepper over them and toss. Seal up the foil to make a pouch for grillin'.

Grill the chicken and veggie pouch over high flame. We like our meat kind of charred and our veggies caramelized. Make sure you flip everything at some point. Cook the chicken until an instant-read thermometer registers at least 160° F, then let it rest for 5 minutes while you heat up the beans and tortillas. Note: I heat tortillas directly over the flame on my gas stove. Slice up the chicken and plate it with the grilled veggies, beans topped with shredded cheese, avocado, and tortilla.

Nutrition info:

Bonus: Leftovers!

Poor little (big, actually) blurry chicken breast

In a very large bowl, I have:
2 C butter lettuce
2 C baby spinach
1/4 C light shredded Mexican cheese blend
1/2 C shredded carrot
1/2 a red bell pepper, sliced
6 oz leftover chicken breast, cubed

Avocado ranch dressing:
1/2 an avocado, mashed
1 T Greek yogurt
juice of 1/2 a lemon
1/2 t red wine vinegar
1/2 t Buttermilk Ranch Seasoning from Penzey's Spices.

Spaghetti with Good Stuff™

I don't know what happened, but it appears that Blogger has lost all the photos from my older posts. So I'll be steadily going back and replacing those in case anyone wants to see my old carefree recipes.

A couple of weeks ago, I was browsing MFP and came across a really cool recipe for Creamy Avocado Pasta (it was in the recipes forum with a link to someone's Pinterest site, but I found the original). It was way too intriguing not to try, so I promptly picked up some avocados and mini heirloom tomatoes. I'm not a huge tomato fan, but let me tell you how much I now love roasted mini heirloom tomatoes! They are tart, sweet, juicy, and their texture is very pleasing.

Well, I had planned to make avocado pasta again when my father was here last weekend, but that... didn't happen... and I ended up with mini heirloom tomatoes I needed to use (aka roast). The shrimp I had defrosting to go on top had gone bad, so I decided to try something different. Pasta still seemed like a good choice, and then my brain said to me "bacon goes really well with tomatoes." Sometimes my brain is really smart. Then, I remembered the fresh chèvre I had in the fridge. YUM. But I didn't feel like the dish was complete until after reading yet another "what's for dinner" thread on MFP in which someone posted about caramelized onions. Perfect! The final step was getting a bit more protein into the dish... and I remembered how this one time, I poached some eggs in white wine. OMG exciting! I must warn you, though, that this is not exactly low-calorie, but things can be adjusted.

Spaghetti with Good Stuff™
1 lb mini heirloom tomatoes (or any small tomato)
Olive or coconut oil spray
1/2 medium yellow onion
1 T butter
4 strips of delicious bacon (I use black forest bacon from Trader Joe's)
1/3 package (about 5.3 oz dry) spaghetti
White wine for poaching
1 T white vinegar
2 eggs
1 T olive oil
4 T fresh chèvre, crumbled
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 300°F. Quarter the tomatoes and lay them out on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Spray the quarters lightly with oil spray and then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place the tomatoes in the oven for one hour.

Meanwhile, thinly slice the onion. Melt the butter on low heat and then add the onions and a little salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions turn brown and sweet. They will take around 30 minutes, so time them accordingly.

When the onions have cooked for 10 minutes, start the bacon on low heat and leave it, turning occasionally, until its fully cooked. You can either crumble it after it's cooked or cut it up and then cook it. Either way is fine. Alternatively, you could bake the bacon ahead of time, which is what I do. I bake a whole package of bacon on a rack on a cookie sheet at 400°F for 20-ish minutes and then keep it in the fridge until I'm ready to use it.

When there are 20 minutes left on the tomatoes, start boiling a heavily salted pot of water (it should taste like sea water - that's the Italian secret!). Once the water is boiling, drop in the spaghetti and let it boil for about 10 minutes, according to package instructions, until it is "al dente."

The thing you want to do last is poach the eggs. If you've never poached eggs, I recommend doing a google search just to see some techniques. I use a very small saucepan for this so that I don't have to use a lot of wine. Fill the saucepan with enough wine that it will cover the eggs when you put them in; it will need to be about 2 inches. If you run out of wine, you can supplement with water. Add 1 T of white vinegar and bring the liquid to a low boil over medium heat. Crack one egg at a time into a small dish (like a little ramekin), and then drop it into the hot liquid. Repeat with the other egg and let them poach until they reach a consistency you like. You can poke them with a spoon to check the jiggle.

While the eggs finish poaching, everything else should have finished, so drain the pasta and toss it in the olive oil. Portion it onto two plates and then top with the onions, crumbled bacon, tomatoes, and chèvre. Remove the eggs with a slotted spoon and place on top of each dish. Enjoy with a nice salad.

Serves 2.

Ch ch ch ch changes (and granola!)

This blog is turning over a new leaf. The recipes contained hereafter in this blog will be delicious and also healthy. Let me clarify that by healthy, I mean good for the body and good for the soul... I mean real food for real people. I don't mean "this week eggs are bad," or "fat-free cream cheese," or "gluten-free," or "paleo/primal/caveman/throwawayyourflourAAAAH!"

Let me start with something simple. I've been making my own granola, loosely based on Alton Brown's recipe. Store-bought granola is expensive and can be full of sugar and calories (and cinnamon GROSS). My coconut & black sesame granola is none of those things.

Coconut & Black Sesame Granola
3 C (240 g) old fashioned rolled oats 
50 g black sesame seeds* 
45 g unsweetened coconut shreds 
1/2 C date puree** 
1/4 C coconut milk*** 
big pinch of salt 

Mix everything together in a big bowl (use your hands to make sure everything is well-incorporated), then spread it out on a cookie sheet and bake at 250°F for 1 hour and 15 minutes, turning occasionally. It's not very sweet, but it's delicious, especially with some Greek yogurt and fruit (banana, pineapple, and/or mango in particular!).

Makes 10 servings. 

* You can find black sesame seeds for a great price at international markets!
** Date puree from http://healthykitchenguide.com/using-medjool-dates-instead-of-sugar-in-recipes/ (I made about 2 cups and keep what's left in the fridge). 
*** I used light coconut milk this time because it's what I happened to have on hand... because for some reason, Trader Joe's only carries light. /grumblegrumble

Holiday Baking

We po' this year, so gifts are homemade. I started out with salty maple-roasted pecans (no photos, sorry), which are just pecan halves coated in maple syrup and sprinkled with Kosher salt, then roasted for about 5 minutes at 450°F. Then I moved on to cookies. I started with brown butter sugar cookies for the flavor, but combined the recipe with your average sugar cookie for the look.

First, I attempted to brown 3 sticks of butter. There was a bit of an... accident... so I ended up with 1 cup of brown butter and added a stick of regular butter. Since I was ready to make the cookies, I just threw the cold stick of butter into the still-warm brown butter, which ended up working really well for the mixing.

After the butters equalized a bit, I creamed them with 1 cup each of white and brown sugars.

Next I added 4 eggs, one at a time, and 1 teaspoon of double-strength vanilla extract.

I stirred together 5 cups of all-purpose flour, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, and just under a teaspoon of salt (because as you know, I always use salted butter).

On low, mix the dry into the wet ingredients about 1 cup at a time. I ended up mixing in the last cup by hand because the dough was so thick my mixer was straining.

Wrap the dough and chill it for at least an hour. I do not recommend being lazy and leaving it in the bowl like I did. It stuck horribly and was a huge PITA to get out.

I let my dough chill for about 3 hours, then rolled it out on a very lightly floured surface and cut it into random shapes of cutters I have lying about (I'm not much of a dough cutter). Some of the cookies got dusted with evaporated cane juice, which gave them a nice mellow sparkle. The cookies baked on parchment at 400°F for about 7 minutes. After they cooled completely, I iced them with a mixture of icing sugar (1/2 cup) and milk(1 tablespoon). To one batch, I added about 1/2 tablespoon of blackberry-flavored corn syrup, and to another, I added a splash of almond extract and maraschino cherry juice (mostly for the color). Then, I went out and bought some cookie icing so I could make silly designs.

A Couple of Quick Bites

After I made these two, I realized that I needed to document how delicious they were...

First, a BLT, but with fried gold tomatoes. The 'maters were green when I bought them, but by the time I was ready to eat them, they had turned yellow-orange, though not ripe enough to eat plain. First I sliced them and then lay them out and salted them. After about 5 minutes, I dipped the slices in a buttermilk-egg mixture, then coated them in a cornmeal-flour mixture. Salt and pepper was included in each step. They were so juicy and tart and sweet, and perfect with the bacon (the same bacon as for my most recent pizza) and Companion sourdough toast.

Then I attempted to make laksa. But I cheated and used store-bought Thai red curry paste. I accidentally used too many noodles, and wished I had used ramen instead of rice noodles (I couldn't find singapore or laksa noodles, and I didn't have time to go to the Asian stores). The broth is just curry paste, chicken stock, and coconut milk. Veg are carrot and broccoli, because that's what was in the fridge; red bell pepper would have been awesome. The shrimp were fantastic. It's topped with some basil (not Thai, because, again, I couldn't get it) and a wedge of lime. There were shrimp-less leftovers, into which I cut up some pressed 5-spice tofu. That was also very good.

"Norwegian" Apple Pie

I found this pie crust recipe that calls for vodka, which sounded really interesting to me, especially after reading the theory behind it - vodka evaporates, so the crust is supposed to turn out super-flaky. The desire to make a caramel apple pie came to me a few weeks ago, until I read a post on Something Awful in which the Norwegian goat's milk cheese, gjetost, was used. I just happened to have a block of gjetost in the fridge, so I looked up recipes for gjetost apple pie and found one involving both sour cream and cardamom (two of my favorite edibles). Of course, I left out the cinnamon. :D

Start with the filling, since I think it's better after marinating for a while in the fridge. I used Honeycrisp apples because again, those were on-hand. In a large bowl, stir together 2 tablespoons of sour cream, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, 1/2 cup of sugar (or evaporated cane juice), 1/2 teaspoon of cardamom, a pinch of Kosher salt, and 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour.

Next, peel and quarter your apples, remove the cores and cut them into about 1/2" slices. My three apples weighed just over 1.5 pounds, which is enough for a deep-dish pie. Use less if you're using a regular pie tin. Then toss the apple slices in the sour cream mixture, cover, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours (that's all the time I had, but more would probably be better).

Time for the crust, which I'm doing in the food processor. Cut up 3 sticks of butter (I, of course, use salted butter) into small cubes, then place in the freezer for about 10 minutes. If you're making the crust by hand, put the cubes back into the refrigerator. Get out the food processor (or a large bowl) and add 4.5 cups of flour and 1/2 a tablespoon of Kosher salt. Give it a quick whir (or whisk). Add in the butter cubes and pulse (or rub or cut) until the mixture resembles course crumb. Sprinkle 1.5 tablespoons of vodka and 1/2 cup of water over the flour/butter and pulse (or stir) just until the dough holds together. Pour the dough onto your work surface and form it into a block, then wrap it in cling-film and let it rest there for 1 hour.

After 1 hour, roll out half of the dough on a floured surface into a 10" circle (leave the other half on the counter until it's time to cover the pie). Lightly press the dough into your tin. I overlapped the rim just a bit since I wasn't using a proper pie tin and I wanted the side to stay in place during blind baking. Trim the excess dough (I left it a bit rustic because that's just how I am). Turn your oven to 300°F and then put the tin in the freezer for 15-20 minutes.

Take the tin out of the freezer and cover the crust with parchment or aluminum foil. Fill the lined crust with dried beans, rice, or pie weights. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the crust is cooked but not browned. Remove the lining and weights and bake for 5 to 7 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool. Turn the oven up to 350°F so it can preheat while the bottom crust cools.

Shred 2 to 4 oz of gjetost, depending on your taste. Once the bottom pie crust has cooled, sprinkle half the cheese over it, then spoon in the apples after giving them a final toss in the sour cream mixture. Sprinkle the rest of the cheese on top of the apples.

Roll out the remaining half of dough into another 10" circle. I have another of the tins I used for the pie, so I used it as a guide for trimming. Lay the upper crust over the pie, pressing it gently into the inside rim of the bottom crust. Brush with egg wash (1 egg beaten with about tablespoon of water). Cut fun shapes out of the dough scraps and brush both sides with the egg wash before gluing to the top crust. Make slits or a small hole in the top crust to let out the steam.

Bake at 350°F for 35 to 45 minutes until the crust is golden and the filling is bubbly. Let the pie cool for at least 20 minutes. Remember to take a picture before you cut it. Oops! Serve slightly warm so the cheese is still melty (we took it over to my mother-in-law's house and set it on top of the warm oven).

Note: the apples still had a slight crunch, so if you don't like that sort of thing, either let the apples sit in the liquid for longer and/or slice them thinner.

Another note: don't use a cake tin if you can help it - getting that first slice out is ridiculously difficult. I just don't have a deep-dish pie tin (yet!).