Category Archives: Recipes

Turkey and Lamb Ragu – A Lesson In Flavor Bones

I’ll tell you a secret. Buy bones and keep them in your freezer, then use them to flavor stews and sauces. I did this for my lamb and turkey ragu, which had very little lamb meat in the sauce but all the lamb flavor – from a pound of lamb neck bones.

Beef, pork, and lamb neck bones are an excellent way to flavor soup stock and sauces because bones release gelatine from the collagen and albumen and impart an earthy, musky flavor to your stew. The meat around bones is also the most tender and flavorful, because the bones have the best blood supply in the cut.

I made a simple ragu sauce from lamb neck bones and ground turkey, and came up with a sauce that makes it really, really hard to go to a restaurant for the same thing. Enjoy! Continue reading

Oil-Free Lean Turkey Pasta Sauce

Eliminating the pork/beef and oil from an old recipe was hardly noticeable. This sauce gets its taste from the amount of time the tomatoes are allowed to stew, as well as the addition of olives and capers at the end. This pasta sauce was an eye-opener towards the use of leaner ground meats for sauces. The meat is really just for texture and I could even have done without.

Dinner tonight: Rigatoni and lean turkey meat sauce, mushrooms, capers and olives. Mangia!

Rigatoni and lean turkey meat sauce, mushrooms, capers and olives. Mangia!

 

Oil-Free Turkey Pasta Sauce Continue reading

Zuchini and Arugula Salad

I ordered lunch from Dig Inn once and loved their side zuchini and arugula salad, so I thought I’d give it a shot at home. We had some extra green squashes so I chopped it into little pieces and discovered they didn’t need to be cooked before eating.

Afternoon snack: Zuchini, arugula, and beet salad on endive with a side of hummus. Drool.

Zuchini, arugula, and beet salad on endive with a side of hummus. Drool.

This salad is so simple and refreshing and we didn’t need to use any oil. The arugula is so rich in flavor it hardly needs anything else. We added some beets for color and snacked on it with endives. All you need is a little patience in chopping, lemon, salt and sugar, and you’re on the way to healthy and happy.

It's about color.

I love this salad’s color, and that’s only secondary to its taste.

Continue reading

Oil-Free Chicken Fajita

Being forced to cook without oil makes one realize that it is often unnecessary. This is a hard habit to break simply because sauteing seems to be how most dishes are started, no matter if it’s a soup or a casserole or a stew that’s simmered for 3 hours. Garlic, onions and vegetables are always inevitably sauteed in oil before anything else is done. Especially in Asian cuisine, stir-fried dishes seem to be a staple, as is the use of oil.

We made this fajita without frying and without adding any oil or flavoring other than that provided by its ingredients.

Chicken fajita topped with salsa, cilantro, black beans, avocado on a tomato wrap.

Chicken, peppers and onions on a cast iron skillet

We found that more often than not, the sauteing ingredients (commonly onions, peppers, garlic) produce their own flavored liquid which adds to the complexity of the sauce or stew. Continue reading

Fish Chunk Pasta Sauce – Oil-Free

Gallbladder Diet Friendly: No meat, no oil, no dairy, no eggs, no nuts. Rich in tomatoes, fish, garlic.

Recent dietary changes eliminating most fat from oil and meat have forced us to redefine our cooking. I wanted to see how the absence of the traditional browning of the garlic in olive oil would change the flavor of this sauce. Apparently that didn’t do much damage as the sauce turned out flavorful even without the fish which was added in the last few minutes.

Tuna and salmon cubes in tomato, capers, mushrooms, olives and fresh oregano over pasta.

Tuna and salmon cubes in tomato, capers, mushrooms, olives and fresh oregano over pasta.

The sauce is light and briny due to the capers and olives. The mushrooms add a nice touch to the texture and consistency, while the fish serves only as a bonus to munch on atop the dish.

Enjoy this recipe below. Continue reading

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