Low-carb scrambled eggs that won't make you miss the toast

I'm not really on a low carb diet or anything like that, but I have noticed a generally-better feeling since reducing the amount of carbs I eat -- particularly the bloated feeling after eating a meal. A plateful of cabbage and spinach leaves a far better feeling than a plateful of cabbage and carrots, for example. And making a chili where I keep the diced tomatoes but substitute a can of crushed tomatoes with beef broth makes a big difference, too, while having virtually no negative effect on the taste or texture.

But two things I have made a special effort to reduce are grains and sugar, so have been eating far less bread and bread-like baked things. The message of "starch with every meal" came from somewhere -- not sure where -- and I have been shouting it down to good effect. It does not seem necessary, so I'm not sure where the idea came from.

I quite like scrambled eggs on toast, but have tried a few different things over the past few months or so and, with this one, I don't really miss the toast at all -- and I'm not just saying that.

You need:

• 2 large eggs
• 1 knob of butter
• 1 knob of goat's cheese
• 2 tbsp. finely chopped spring onions
• big handful of salad greens
• 1 avocado
• lemon juice
• ground black pepper to taste

Scrambled eggs are easily, obviously. People probably have their own ways of doing it, but mine is to melt the butter in a small non-stick saucepan* on medium heat, add the eggs and scramble in the pan with a spatula, then reduce the heat slightly and stir periodically until they start to congeal a bit. Then, crumble the goat's cheese in and mix it in. Continue to cook and stir until they are nearly the consistency you want, and then add the onions and black pepper. Remove from the heat.

On a plate, make a bed of salad greens. Peel and roughly chop the avocado and put it on the side. Drizzle the greens and avocado wiith lemon juice. Mound the scrambled eggs on top of the salad greens.

That's about it. It is what I am starting to consider a healthy meal: low in carbs, low in processed contents, high in fat, and a good amount of protein.

* I don't use non-stick much, but I do keep a non-stick saucepan and skillet especially for eggs. The reason is that I like to undercook eggs a bit. Some people prefer them firm -- McDonalds style, as I think of them. If I liked them firm, a cast iron pan would be fine. But undercooked eggs in a cast iron frying pan makes a sticky mess, in my experience. I have only seen eggs in cast iron work when they are fully cooked and form a firm patina that won't stick to the pan.

Slow-cooked dutch oven beef chili

This beef chili of mine is really good if you are willing to slow-cook it for about 2.5 hours, with a total cooking time of about 3 hours.

The ingredients are:

• 1 cup dried kidney beans: the most economical, but you could use about 3 cups of drained canned beans
• 700-800g stew beef
• 1 L jar of tomatoes (I used my home-canned tomatoes; a similarly-sized can of diced tomatoes would work)
• 1 L beef stock/broth
• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• 1 head of garlic
• 3 small or 2 medium onions
• 2 heaped tsp. cumin
• 2 semi-heaped tsp. smoked paprika (sweet)
• 1 semi-heaped tsp. ground cayenne pepper
• 1 heaped tsp. ground chipotle pepper
• 1 heaped tsp. cocoa powder
• 1 tsp. oregano (or some other Italian-like seasoning)
• 2 tbsp. tomato paste
• 1/3 cup flour
• salt
• pepper
• malt vinegar

About 12 hours before you plan to start (i.e. the night before), rinse the dried kidney beans and soak them in a covered bowl in about 3 cups of cold water.

When you are ready to start cooking, pre-heat the oven to 300F and get a dutch oven ready (the pot I used above was a 4.2 qt. Emile Henry Flame Top).

First, season the flour with a bit of salt and pepper and put it in a bowl, cut up the beef so that the pieces aren't more than about 1-inch cubes, rolling the pieces of beef in the seasoned flour as you go.

Then, dice the onions and chop the garlic. Heat the olive oil in the dutch oven over medium heat and add the onion and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes.

While that's doing, mix the spices (including cocoa powder) into a small bowl. After the 5 minutes is up, add the spices to the onions and garlic, combine well, and cook for about 1 minute.

Then, add the jar of tomatoes. Stir to combine, and then add the beef stock and the tomato paste. Combine well, add the meat and stir briefly. Then, raise the heat, and wait for everything to come to a simmer.

When it reaches a simmer, put the lid on the dutch oven and transfer it to the oven.

The total oven-cooking time will be 2 hours 30 minutes. But, after 1 hour of the oven-cooking time has passed, and only if you are using dried rather than canned beans, drain and add the pre-soaked kidney beans to the pot. Stir to combine, and return it to the oven for the remaining 1 hour 30 minutes.

If you're using canned beans, you can add them at the end of the cooking time (i.e. after 2 hours 30 minutes in the oven). But, definitely do not do this if you are using dried beans because kidney beans are poisonous if not cooked properly (canned beans are pre-cooked).

After the cooking time is up (you can verify doneness by confirming that the meat is very tender and flakes well when put under pressure), give it a stir, and stir in malt vinegar, salt, and pepper to bring the seasoning up to your own taste preference (balsamic vinegar might substitute for malt -- but it is a bit sweeter). The vinegar just adds a tanginess that I normally find missing.

Then, let it sit covered in the pot for about 30 minutes to let it cool and the flavours combine.

Not browning the meat in this recipe is intentional, even though most braising books tell you to do it. If you want to be all French, I suppose there's no harm, but it doesn't add anything in my opinion.

This isn't as thick as some chilis, but it probably has fewer carbs than those and won't leave you feeling over-stuffed after eating a bowl. It will thicken a little bit as it cools.

Quinoa with beef, red pepper, and mushroom

Today, I decided to try and make use of quinoa. I had heard about this wonder-seed in a book I read recently -- it was mentioned particularly for its high quality protein content because it has all of the amino acids the body requires from protein, making it unique and particularly useful for vegetarians. Apparently, if you don't eat meat then it is more challenging to get all of the essential amino acids from your non-meat protein sources.

I bought some quinoa for the first time last week and tried it straightforwardly simmered in water according to the package instructions, except with a bit of salt in the cooking water. It had a taste of its own, quite similar to millet but a bit more robust. It wasn't an overpowering taste.

Since I'm not a vegetarian, I allowed myself to recognize that it had a taste that would go ideally with beef and onion. So, today, I decided to see if that would work.

I think it turned out well.

Here's what you need:

• 1/3 cup dry quinoa grain: I used Bob's Red Mill organic
• 1 large sweet red bell pepper
• 1 small-medium red onion
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 medium-sized white mushrooms: I used 1 creimini and 1 oyster mushroom
• 1 heaped tbsp. corn starch
• 1 tsp. beef bouillon: I used the beef "Better Than Boullion"; the package said 1 tsp. was equal to 1 cube of regular bouillon. BTB seems to have fewer mystery ingredients than regular bouillon and tastes as good if not better.
• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
• water as required below

In a saucepan, add the salt to 2/3 cup plus 1 tbsp. water and bring it to a boil. When boiling, reduce to a simmer, add the quinoa grain, stir, and cover. Cook for 12 minutes. After this time, it should be removed from the heat and left to stand covered for 10 minutes. Try to time this to coincide with the completion of the steps that follow, but a few minutes of extra standing isn't going to hurt.

Slice the red onion and finely slice the garlic clove. Chop the red pepper and the mushrooms.


In a saute or frying pan, heat the olive oil until it starts to smoke and then add the onion and garlic and stir with a spatula to distribute evenly. After a couple of minutes, add the red pepper and mushroom, distribute with spatula and let cook for about 5 minutes, disturbing with the spatula periodically.
 
Add 1/3 cup water to the saute pan, stir for about 30 seconds, then cover, and reduce heat so that it can simmer for about 3 minutes. At this point, add the bouillon and black pepper and stir it in until dissolved. Return cover and simmer for another 5 minutes.
 
At this point, the quinoa should almost have finished its 10 minutes of standing.
 
Mix the corn starch with an equal amount of water in a small cup or bowl until the corn starch is dissolved in the water. Add it to the saute pan and stir. The contents should start to thicken. Cook for about 1 minute.
 
Add the cooked quinoa to the saute pan and combine it with the saute pan contents and cook for another minute.
 
That's all!

Strawberry, banana, and date bread

I somewhat invented this today by combining a couple of recipes. There is a picture at the bottom of the post.

The first recipe was a modified banana bread recipe that came from who-knows-where and that I've tweaked over the years, and the second one was the "Strawberry Bread" recipe from Lovina Eichner's "The Amish Cook's Baking Book".

The banana bread recipe I started with about 5 years ago used butter as the fat, called for white flour and a cup of sugar, and had nuts in it. It used yogurt as an acid which allowed for the use of baking soda alone.

The Amish recipe also called for nuts. I left the nuts out, as I always have with banana bread, because there's just so much calorie overload in pretty much any baking (flour, sugar, oil -- all are very high-calorie) that I don't think nuts carry their weight in breads like these.

In the banana bread, I had normally reduced the sugar to 1/2 cup, substituted 1/3 cup canola oil for the butter, and added a couple of handfuls of raisins to compensate for the reduced white sugar. I had also split the flour 50/50 between white and whole wheat.

I didn't like the idea of strawberries combined with raisins. But, dates seemed like they might go well.

I tried to take the best of each (inclusive of mixing methods) and add my own opinion.

Anyway, this is what I ended up with:

• 1 cup white flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2/5 cup canola oil (i.e. roughly between 1/3 and 1/2 cup)
• 1/2 cup frozen strawberries
• 2 medium-sized overripe bananas
• 2 eggs
• 6-7 dried dates
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder (I am using Bob's Red Mill -- all are not created equal)
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350F.

When the strawberries are in a semi-frozen state, chop them (they are easier to chop when partially frozen) into small chunks. Chop the dates, too. Set aside.

In (large) bowl #1: sift together flours, salt, baking powder, and baking soda

In (small) bowl #2, whisk the eggs until they're foamy on the surface

In (medium) bowl #3, chop and then mash the bananas with a fork. Add the eggs from bowl #2, and the oil, sugar, almond extract, and vanilla extract. Whisk together until well-blended.

Fold the contents of bowl #3 into the dry ingredients in bowl #1 with a spatula. Don't overmix -- just fold until the dry ingredients have been moistened.

Fold the chopped dates and strawberries into the batter. Again, don't overdo it -- just until they are roughly evenly distributed throughout the batter.

Grease a 9" x 5" loaf pan (I normally use the residue from the canola oil measuring cup that by now is sitting in the bottom of the cup).

Put the batter into the loaf pan and bake until a toothpick pushed into the centre of the thickest point comes out clean. For me, this was 65 minutes.

Once done, put the loaf pan on a cooling rack and let it cool for about 5 minutes. This will make it easier to remove from the pan. Then, remove the loaf from the pan and cool on the cooling rack.

At this point, I normally drape aluminum foil over the loaf (reflective side down) with the thought that maybe it keeps some of the moisture in and cools more slowly, adding a bit of beneficial residual cooking. It's not a waste of foil because I use the same foil to wrap the loaf for freezing or the fridge.

Anyway, here is what it looked like (and it tasted very good -- especially if you like things that aren't too sweet). The strawberries and dates are strong flavours that go together well and fire at different speeds (as do the vanilla and almond extracts).

Wild rice, tilapia, and mushroom & onion sauce... plus spinach!

For some (good) reason or another, I thought these would go well together and they really, really did.

You need:

• 1 filet tilapia fish
• 1 small onion
• 1.5 white/Cremini mushrooms
• 1 tbsp. butter
• 1 tbsp. all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1/4 cup wild rice
• 2/3 cup water
• olive oil for rubbing tilapia
• handful of spinach
• salt and pepper

The steps are below. Obviously, you can (and should) organize these so that some of them run in parallel.

Wild rice
There's not much to this, it just takes a long time to cook (mostly unattended). Rinse and drain the rice, put it in a well-covered saucepan with 2.25x as much water as rice (i.e. for 1/3 cup rice, use about 3/4 cup water). Try 1/4 cup rice to begin with, since I found 1/3 cup a bit over-filling. Bring it to a boil and then reduce to a very low simmer and leave it there for 40-45 minutes. Remove from heat (keep it covered) and let stand for 10 minutes in the saucepan and then flake it with a fork.

Tilapia
Not much to this, either. Rubbed with olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper, and then baked in the oven at 425F for about 10 minutes. I used High Liner frozen tilapia, which is better than the fresh I've tried (see the end of the post for more on this).

Mushroom & onion sauce
Heat about 1.5 tbsp butter in a saucepan on 60% heat. Meanwhile, cut about one-and-a-half white or Cremini mushrooms into thin slices, and dice a small onion. Add mushroom & onion to the butter when it's fragrant and bubbly. Sweat them for about 5 minutes, stirring to redistribute every minute or so. Add about 1 tbsp. all-purpose flour and stir to coat (it will look very dry). Cook for another minute. Add about 1/3 cup milk, stir, bring to a boil and then simmer for 1-2 minutes, stirring periodically. Season to taste with salt & pepper.

Spinach
Wash spinach and steam for 2 minutes.

Wine
I'm not very good at picking wines to go with food, so I just picked up the one I had on hand and it worked very well -- much to my surprise. I don't usually buy pricey wines, and this was no exception. It was Pelee Island Cabernet Franc VQA 2007 -- an Ontario (Canada) wine.

That's about it. I just put the rice around around the edge, the tilapia in the middle, the sauce on top of the tilapia, and the spinach on the side.

The only potential problem I can think of is that the quality of tilapia seems very variable. I've had frozen tilapia that tasted very good and was firm/flaky (High Liner) and fresh tilapia that was rather soft and tasted of chlorine. Since I see nothing at all wrong with the frozen tilapia (and since it is farmed and can presumably be frozen at the peak of freshness), I keep buying the High Liner stuff.

Once the rice is taking care of itself, it's a pretty quick meal, and it tastes really good. I think the reason is that the main flavours -- wild rice, mushroom, spinach -- are all quite musty in taste. You can hardly detect an edge between the three flavours and they integrate really well. The tilapia and onion are both sweet (as are the butter and milk in the sauce).

Ontario autumn porridge: what to do with the apples coming out of our ears

In this part of Ontario at this time of year, we have apples coming out of our ears. Pick--your-own apple farms are in abundance for the month of October, and apples appear everywhere in supermarkets in the month that follows -- 50 cents per pound at my local supermarket for the local varieties.

Apple pie is one of the obvious uses for this extravagance, but there is only so much you can take.

Over the past few days, I've been trying to use apples and their byproducts to come up with a good porridge. Today's was just about right. You could reasonably make this with all-local ingredients, except for the cinnamon.

Here is what you need for 1 serving:

• half of an Empire apple: Empire apples are good because they fall apart when cooked. You could also use a Mac apple, but it would be more tart.
• 1/4 cup sweet apple cider: I am talking about the pressed apple cider and not the alcoholic cider
• 1 cup water
• 1/3 cup uncooked grain cereal: over the past few days, I have used a ground 10-grain cereal made by Bob's Red Mill. Today, I was at the bottom of the bag and mixed 10-grain cereal with Quaker rolled oats (not the quick variety). Essentially, anything that has about a 10-minute cooking time will be OK with this recipe. Something I have not yet tried in this recipe but would probably be great are Oak Manor Farms's Toasted Porridge Oats. They are a farm in SW Ontario but available in the GTA.
• 1 cinnamon stick: only if you like cinnamon with your apple
• maple syrup: readily-available local maple syrup is available all over Ontario

First of all, dice half of an Empire apple. You don't need to peel the apple unless peels really bother you. They will soften during cooking and add a nice texture and flavour, I think.

Put the apple cider into a saucepan, bring it to a boil and then add the apple pieces. Simmer (covered) the apple pieces in the cider for 2-3 minutes.

Then, add the water and bring it to a boil. Add the cereal grains and stir briefly to prevent clumping and then reduce to a simmer. Reduce heat and simmer covered for 10 minutes. Stir periodically (every few minutes).

[ Optional (cinnamon): Depending on how cinnamon-y you like your apple to taste (if at all), add the cinnamon stick to the saucepan earlier or later in the cooking process. If you like a strong cinnamon flavour, add the cinnamon stick when you add the oats. If you like a mild flavour, add it about 8 minutes into the 10 minutes simmer time. ]

Once the grains have simmered for 10 minutes, remove from the heat and uncover. Add the maple syrup to taste (for me, this is about 1 tbsp.).

Put it into a bowl, let it cool down a bit and then serve.

I was pretty impressed with this. I think cider is to apples what tomato paste is to tomatoes -- it amplifies the essential flavour.