Digital Thinkbox

From a recipe published in Cook’s Illustrated: American Classics which I got at my local news stand. If you haven’t looked at Cook’s Illustrate or its sister publication; Cook’s Country, I recommend that you do. They are quality publications with a lot of the why rather than just random recipes.

I’ve been wanting to do a Sherbet after the success of my chocolate “the bomb” sorbet. I’ve tweaked the recipe slightly, but what you see here is largely what was published.

I’m using fresh squeezed orange juice here, which I recommend. You will get the strongest, freshest orange flavor this way. If you can find fresh squeezed, unpasteurized at the store, go for it. Pasteurized orange juice will work, but will likely not taste as fresh. Stay away from concentrate, it is cooked to hell and back and won’t make your desert taste very good.

1 Tbsp grated orange zest. About 1-2 oranges.
1 cup (7oz) of sugar
1/8 tsp salt (kosher)
2 cups of fresh orange juice
3 tablespoons juice from 1-2 lemons
“caviar” from 2 vanilla beans (can substitute extract too)
2 teaspoons vodka (can use Triple Sec too)
2/3 cup heavy cream

1. Put zest, sugar, vanilla, and salt in a food processor blender. Process until damp using the pulse setting.
2. With the machine running, slowly add orange juice and lemon juice. Process until sugar is dissolved.
3. Strain mixture through a nonreactive, fine metal strainer (cheese cloth might work too), into a medium bowl. Stir in vodka or Triple Sec. Cover with plastic wrap and stash in your freezer until the mixture reaches 40 degrees. DO NOT FREEZE THE MIXTURE! Ice bath could work here too.
4. When mixture is cold, whip the cream in your mixer or by hand until soft peaks form.
5. Continue whisking (slowly if doing with a mixer), and slowly add the juice mixture in a steady stream. It helps to pour against the side of the bowl so you don’t get splashing,
6. Immediately start your ice cream machine and add the juice/cream mixture to the canister; churn until sherbet has a soft server consistency. About 25 to 30 minutes depending on your unit
7. Remove from the caniser and transfer to storage container(s). Press plastic wrap against the surface of the sherbet to force out the air. Freeze for at least 3 hours. Overnight is better.
8. With the plastic wrap on top, the sherbet will remain good frozen for up to a week…if it lasts that long, which it won’t.

Yeah this stuff is tasty. A little creamier than a sorbet. Only thing I noticed is it melts fast. A tablespoon of fruit preserves in place of an equal amount of sugar might provide some emulsifiers (in the form of pectin). But heck I ate it so fast, it didn’t have time to melt that much.

I was really pleased with the orange flavor too. The vanilla wasn’t noticeable, but seemed to add some more complex flavors. I think extract would work better in this case because the mixture doesn’t really sit and have time to absorb the vanilla. The mixture doesn’t cook either so not as much change to extract the vanilla from the bean.

Orange Sherbet. Woops!

Sorry. I wanted to get a picture before I ate it…I failed.

OK so I’m at it again. This is my second attempt at Swimming Rama…and this time I had the right ingredients. For this attempt I tried out this recipe. I’ll repeat it here as I changed it slightly.

Chicken
2lbs of Chicken Breast — Cut into strips or thin slabs. You could even do small cubes if you wanted. As long at it isn’t cut into big, thick pieces.
Spinach — The recipe steams a bunch of spinach. I don’t actually like cooked spinach so I used raw. Your choice.
1 fresh red chili pepper — diced or chopped.

1. Boil 6 cups of water
2. Add in the cut chicken
3. Immediatly take the boiling water from the heat and cover
4. Let stand until chicken is no longer pink. You can make the peanut sauce which this happens
5. When ready to combine with the peanut sauce, drain the chicken.

Peanut Sauce

2 tsp of olive oil or the vegetable oil of your choice
1/2 to 1 cup of finely chopped onion
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 cup of peanut butter, creamy or chunky your choice. I used fresh ground.
3 Tbsp of packed brown sugar
2 Tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp paprika
1/4 teaspoon of ground red pepper ( I used red pepper flakes)
1 14oz can of unsweetened coconut milk
1 Tbsp corn starch
1 Tbsp water
2 Tbsp fresh lime juice. I used the juice from 1 small lime

1. Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and garlic; cook until tender.
2. Reduce the heat to medium or low. Add peanut butter, brown sugar, fish sauce, paprika and red pepper. Stir until smooth.
3. Slowly add the coconut milk until well blended.
4. Stir sauce over heat until bubbling. Reduce heat to low. Combine corn starch and water and stir into sauce. Cook until sauce starts to thicken.
5. Add in lime juice
6. You may now add the chicken into the sauce. Pour over spinach and garnish with some of the fresh red pepper or bell peppers

This was FAR superior to my previous attempt. Not too peanuty, and just the right amount of coconut flavor. Could have been spicier though. Didn’t have much kick. Even with the red chilies and chili flakes. Of course you might get a hot chili so taste the chili BEFORE you add it to the dish. In fact, taste the sauce as you cook it to make sure it is what you want.

This would definitely be good with a side of rice too, but I was hungry and didn’t want to wait for rice to cook. This dish will also be quite good the next day as the flavors have a chance to blend and mellow.

Apologies for the pictures…it is a camera phone. I need to get a digital camera one of these days.

Swimming Rama MKII 1

Swimming Rama MKII 2

After a successful trip to the local Thai place where I had Rama chicken I wanted to recreate this dish. It is a nice Thai peanut sauce over chicken and spinach. This “recipe” is more of a combination of two recipes. One for Satay Chicken from a Cooking Light compilation, and one for Rama chicken off the Internet. Since this is summer, and it is hot here, I opted to cook the chicken on the grill.

Marinate:
1 whole chicken breast (or two halves) cut into strips. I got about 8-10 strips.
1 Tbsp brown sugar. I used dark, light is an option.
2.5 Tbsp of low-sodium soy sauce
2 teaspoons of fresh ginger. I just grated some fresh stuff into the bowl.
1 zest from one lime.
1/4 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes
2 garlic cloves, chopped or minced.

Combine in a bowl and let the chicken marinate for about 10 minutes. Fire up the grill.

Sauce:
The sauce is where things get interesting. I didn’t like the cooking light sauce, and didn’t have all the ingredients for the other one. So I winged it.
1-3 Tbsp of light brown sugar
1.5 Tbsp of low-sodium soy sauce
Thai fish sauce (a few dashes to taste)
2-4 Tbsp of peanut butter (fresh ground if you can get it)
juice of 1 lime
1 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes (to taste)
1 garlic clove, minced.
1 5oz can of coconut milk
Heavy Cream

Combine in a sauce pan and cook over medium heat. This is mostly a guide. Start on low side of the ingredients and add to taste and consistency. I didn’t like the low peanut flavor so I added peanut butter until I got the flavor I liked. Towards the end of the cooking I didn’t like the color nor the consistency so I added 1-3 Tbsps of heavy cream. That lightened it up, offset the lime flavors, and thinned out the mixture a bit.

Put the chicken on skewers and grill for about 5 minutes per side on your grill. After they are cooked remove from grill and let the meat stand for a few minutes covered with foil. Plate with a bed of spinach, then the chicken topped with the sauce. Serve with white rice if you wish.

Post-mortem:
Came out pretty good. the chicken had a distinct lime flavor, although I thought the lime juice was too much in the peanut sauce. I’d omit this next time. It could be spicier on the whole. More red pepper flakes, or maybe some red curry sauce. It had just the faintest bite.

Definitely a strong peanut taste, which is what I was shooting for, although the sauce could be thinner. I could probably back off on the peanut butter since after it cooled a bit the peanut taste got much stronger. Needs more coconut milk too.

All in all, a tasty meal. I’d definitely do this again.

Chicken Rama w/Peanut Sauce

Got my new cook book: Gourmet Nutrition today and I’m impressed. Make sure you check out their PDF sample. I’ve been doing the Texas Thin Crust Pizzas for awhile now and they are awesome. A deal combined with Precision Nutrition prompted me to take the plunge and buy them. Well I got my book this evening and I dived in.

Behold ! Baked Chicken Strips with Portobello Pizzas topped with fresh salsa.

I apologize for the horrible photo. Bad lighting coupled with a terrible camera phone didn’t make for a good food picture.

Baked Chicken Strips

6oz boneless, skinless chicken breast meat cut into 1/2inch strips
Salt
Pepper
Paprika
1 Omega-3 Egg
2 tbsp Water
1/4 cup Whole wheat breadcrumbs
1/4 cup no sugar added coconut

Preheat oven to 350F. Season the chicken with salt, pepper and paprika. You won’t need a lot. Add the egg and water in a mixing bowl and whisk together. Combine the breadcrumbs and coconut in another bowl. Dip the chicken in the egg mixture and then bread. This is pretty basic stuff here.

Put the chicken strips on a non-stick cookie sheet or one that is lightly coated with oil. Bake until golden brown. About 15 minutes. Serves 1-2

Portobello Pizzas

3 Portobello mushrooms (stems and gills removed)
1 cup Salsa (Fresh recipe to follow or use store-bought)
1/4 cup Pine nuts
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 400F. De-stem and de-gill the shrooms. Don’t forget to wash them! Place the mushrooms upside down on a baking tray. Top each with salsa, pine nuts, and then Parmesan cheese. Bake 10-12 minutes. The above measurements are estimates, I just use a few pine nuts, and only made two mushrooms.

Note: Use fresh pine nuts. I had some older ones and the flavor was gone. The mushrooms would have been much more interesting with the pine nuts. As they were they were awesome.

Fresh Tomato Salsa

1 Vine ripe tomato
1/4 cup diced red onion
1/4 cup corn
1/4 cup black beans
1 tsp fresh garlic
1 tbsp lime juice
1 tbsp fresh cilantro (chopped)
Salt
Pepper
Chili powder

Combine in a bowl and mix. Yeah it is that easy. I substituted fresh small red peppers (removing the seeds) for black beans giving it more kick. I also made the onion pieces bigger to make it chunkier. Amount are also really flexible. Make extra and have it with chips.

I was pretty impressed with these three recipes, they went well together. At first I was a little underwhelmed with the chicken, but it is a much more subtle recipe compared to the mushrooms, which if you spice it up railroads all the other flavors on your plate. You think the chicken is the main coarse, but those mushrooms took over and kicked ass! The poor chicken became the side dish.

About 300 calories for the two mushrooms give or take and another 200 – 250 calories for the three chicken strips. So a 500-600 calorie dinner that was filling and high in protein. Nice.

Today we started another round in our fitness challenge. The last fitness challenge was over 16 weeks and I lost about 14lbs and 3% off of my body fat. I still have a ways to go. Here are my current numbers:

161 lbs
23% body fat

I’m still overweight by about 10lbs, but I’d like to be in the 140lb range, but body fat percentage is more important that actual weight. 18%-20% would be ideal, even less if I can work it.

I’m doing the P90X DVD again this cycle, although I’m doing the “lean” version of the workout in an attempt to build more lean muscle and burn off fat. The workouts are pretty good, but intense. I sometimes struggle to do the whole workout.

Besides exercise diet is the other half of the equation. Without a good diet, I’m not going to lose anything. I should probably be eating between 1500 to 1700 calories per day give or take.