Posted on 07/28/2018 4:12:20 PM PDT by Jamestown1630
Eggplant Parmigiana is one of my favorite dishes, but it’s a time-consuming dish to make and messes up a lot of dishes. And even though we’ve used for years a great, easy recipe from America’s Test Kitchen which involves baking instead of frying the eggplant, my husband’s commitment to low-carb eating makes any recipe that uses breading less than ideal.
Looking for a fast, low-carb alternative, I happened to find ‘Cooking with Pina’ on YouTube, and Pina’s quick, throw-together recipe. It may not be like what you are used to, but if you like eggplant for itself and are low-carbing, this might be a good way to get your ‘fix’ and vary your diet. You can use your own sauce, or buy bottled stuff. (We are actually making this right now, and tonight we’re using bottled because our year’s worth of the homemade stash is finally depleted :-(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuWw56O0P4w
(Pina's is a really nice website for Italian cooking - check out her Marinara sauce, using pesto, and the Potato Pie. And she finally taught me how that cute little stove-top espresso pot works - I must have one!)
Here in Maryland our 'Beautiful Swimmer', the Blue Crab, is the State Crustacean; and crab soup is a big deal. Ocean City throws a festival and crab soup cookoff every year, where local chefs compete in both Red and White categories. My favorite cookbook for traditional Chesapeake recipes has always been John Shields’ original ‘Chesapeake Bay Cooking’, and here is a recipe from that book for a traditional style Crab Soup:
Crab Soup at Cross Street Market (Baltimore)
Serves 10
4 quarts water
2 cans (1 lb. 10 oz.) tomatoes or 5 cups peeled tomatoes
1 can (10 oz.) tomato sauce
2 bay leaves
1/2 cup barley
1/2 cup fresh parsley -- chopped
1 Tablespoon Old Bay Seasoning
3 stalks celery -- diced
1 large onion -- chopped
2 ham shanks
1 beef bone
8 blue crabs -- cleaned/quartered
2 pounds claw crab meat -- picked for shells
1/2 head cabbage -- chopped
2 medium potatoes -- diced
4 cups mixed vegetables, fresh or frozen (corn, green beans, peas, limas, carrots)
salt and pepper to taste
In a large soup pot, combine the water, tomatoes, tomato sauce, bay leaves, barley, Old Bay, celery, onion, ham shanks, beef bone, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer for 1 hour.
Add the soup crabs and backs. Continue cooking for another 30 minutes. Add the cabbage, potatoes, and mixed vegetables. When the vegetables are tender, add the claw meat, and simmer a little longer. Discard the backs. Pick meat from the shanks, and add to soup.
********************************************
There are probably as many ways to make Maryland Crab soup as there are families who make it; this article from Mid Atlantic Cooking offers a history of the soup, and an exhaustive compendium of historical recipes; it also includes a recipe for making your own Old Bay seasoning from scratch:
https://midatlanticcooking.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/maryland-crab-soup/comment-page-1
And here's the link to John Sheilds' original 'Chesapeake Bay Cooking':
-JT
LOLOL....
Heck for me a major feat was putting frozen pre-made bread dough in pans for home made bread! It was wonderful and I’ll do it often! LOLOL I’m all about short cuts!
If you want a low carb fried zucchini, yellow squash, eggplant, etc., you can bread it with unflavored whey protein isolate powder, seasoned with whatever you like your breading seasoned with. It gets sticky, to handle. Just season your squash, and coat it with the powder, which, by the way, is completely neutral in taste. (I’m squeamish about odd tastes, so I wouldn’t eat it if it had a weird taste). Cook in a thin coating of oil, in a skillet, on medium low heat. Protein powder browns very quickly, so slice your vegetables thin enough so they’ll cook quickly. I get the protein powder at Sprouts market, where they sell it in bulk, cheaper than the prepackaged. It’s expensive, but sold by the pound, and it’s lightweight, and a little goes a long way. I hope you enjoy it. I’ve fried chicken like this, but because the powder browns so quickly, you have to finish it off on a rack in the oven, to get the chicken completely cooked. (It doesn’t seem to brown more, in the oven.) My husband could not tell the difference between this chicken and my regular.
If you eat no more than 25g of carbs/day, you can eat all the grease you want. It’s the carbs that cause the arteries to harden and the cholesterol to increase. You just have to find low or no carb breading ingredients. Some people use ground up fried pork rinds (skins) you buy in the snack aisle. I can’t stand those; they taste gamey to me. You can grind sesame seeds up into a meal (don’t grind too much, or you’ll have sesame butter). But you have to use low heat, because they burn easily. You can make sesame chips by grinding sesame seeds into a paste, season to taste, spread it super thin over 8 “ squares of parchment paper, then microwave about 30 seconds or so, cool, peel off the paper, and fry the dried sesame sheet in a little oil, over low heat. Will burn quickly, if you’re not careful. Cool on a rack, and break into chip sized pieces, or leave it whole, and make a tostada. Haven’t found a suitable French fry substitute, but you can bake thinly sliced zucchini rounds, (use the really big zucchini, the smaller ones shrink up a lot, salted REALLY lightly, and bake them on a rack, as low heat as your oven will go, til crisp, and you have a pretty darned good potato chip substitute. They’ll burn if you’re not careful. You can use a dehydrator, too, which won’t burn. I don’t have one,though.
You can make little patties out of the ground ginger, bread that up too, the serrannos too and you can just do some French fries in the now seasoned oil
Thanks! That’s one low carb site I haven’t tried. I have used regular old red radishes, unveiled, in beef stew, in place of potatoes. I can barely tell the difference, and as I said, I’m squeamish, and don’t like odd tastes. They have the consistency of a red new potato, rather than a fluffy potato.
I think roasting them takes out some of the bitterness.
I’ve never noticed any bitterness in the untoasted seeds, but I’m not sure they would break down into a paste if they were already roasted. Maybe.:)
I’m not sure what you mean :-) I meant that roasting radishes takes some of the bitterness out.
Oh, sorry. I couldn’t figure out which comment you were commenting on. I thought it was about using sesame seeds to make low carb snack crackers.
I don’t care for raw radishes, but I just throw them in the stew with the rest of the vegetables. They didn’t have any bitter taste. I have heard that roasted radishes are a good substitute for roasted potatoes. I’ve got to go back on my keto diet tomorrow. I’ve been compulsively eating lately, and I’ve gained a lot of weight. Have to cheat this weekend, though. Mini family reunion, and I’ve been asked to bring my potato salad.
I love potato salad - but with NO SWEET STUFF in it - or eggs.
Potatoes, onion, celery, mayo, mustard, S & P, maybe a little cayenne. That’s it.
Your Mileage May Vary ;-)
I think everybody has their own potato salad recipe. Mine has your ingredients, plus eggs, sweet relish, a little apple cider vinegar, a tiny but of sugar, (both of those to counteract the blandness of the mayo) and CELERY SEED (for a huge bowl, I use about half a tablespoon). The celery seed is vitally important. It gives it a subtle complexity. Here in Oklahoma, I think they use more mustard than mayo. It’s bright yellow, and practically inedible. My husband likes mustard, so I put in more than I would for just myself, but not that much. Never tried cayenne. Are you related to Chef John? ;)
Yes, I left out the vinegar.
It drives me crazy that potato salad that we buy in the store here seems to have No Mustard! It’s just this pallid, white mess, with undercooked taters...
You can always add mustard, but you can’t take it out. They sell some prepackaged here that doesn’t seem to have mustard, but any restaurant, it’s loaded with mustard. The stuff in the stores is practically as hard as a raw potato. Probably got calcium chloride in it, to keep it from being mushy. Nothing like homemade, is there?
DRESSING ING ¼ cup Dijon ½ cup red wine vinegar 1 ½ cups canola oil
METHOD Blender mustard and vinegar at medium speed for about 15 sec. W/ machine running, slowly drizzle in ½ cup oil. Don’t add all the oil or the vinaigrette will become too thick. It should be very creamy. Transfer the vinaigrette to a small bowl and, whisking constantly, slowly stream in cup oil. (Refrigerates up to 2 weeks. Use a blender or immersion blender to re-emulsify).
BOUCHON'S BIBB LETTUCE SALAD
This salad is all about freshness. Use plenty of fresh-picked fines herbes: parsley, chives, tarragon, chervil; (savory, rosemary, and marjoram, would be too strong). Finish w/ a squeeze of l/juice. Buy nice rounded, mature heads of Bibb lettuce, with good weight; these will have the greatest amount of tender yellow interior leaves. If leaves have become soft and leathery, a rinse in cold water refreshes them.” SERVES 4
ING 4 heads bibb lettuce Ks/p 2 tablespoons minced shallots 2 tb minced chives ¼ cup Italian parsley leave ¼ cup tarragon leaves ¼ cup chervil leaves ½ cup Dijon Vinaigrette tb plus tsp fresh lemon juice
METHOD Carefully core from each head of lettuce and separate the leaves, but keep each head of lettuce together; discard tough outer leaves. Because each head of lettuce will be reassembled, the easiest way to work is with one head at a time.
PREP First, place leaves in cold water to refresh them and remove any dirt, then lift out and spin dry in a salad spinner. Place the leaves from a single head of lettuce in a bowl. Sprinkle w/ pinch of salt, a few grinds of pepper, 1 ½ teaspoons shallots and chives, and tb each parsley, tarragon, and chervil. Then toss gently with 2 tablespoons of vinaigrette and teaspoon lemon juice. Repeat with the remaining heads.
SERVE For each serving, arrange the outer lettuce leaves as a base on the plate and rebuild each head of lettuce, ending with the smallest, most tender leaves.
Hi...and thanks for the tip. I’ll show this to my wife who’s always looking for new ways to cook something...she’ll love it!
You are welcome!
MUSTARD PARMESAN POTATOES
METHOD Halve small yellow potatoes, dip cut side in Dijon, then in parm.
Place cut side down on parchmented pan. Drizzle with olive oil. Bake/brown 20 min at 425 deg.
Lemon Mascarpone Mousse
ING lb container mascarpone cheese, 1/2 cup conf, or to taste
1-2 tb limoncello or orange liqueur,tsp vanilla, 2 cups Lemon Curd, cup whipping cream (35%), whipped
METHOD Whip mascarpone, conf, limoncello and vanilla light and fluffy. Add lemon curd; whip/combine.
Fold in whipped cream. Spoon into serving dishes or top fresh berries.
SERVE garnished with berries and mint.
That news you read about Donald Trump ordering his steak doused in ketchup—that’s fake news. Or at least that’s what David Burke, the New York chef who runs BLT Prime inside the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., says. While the president does in fact prefer his steak well-done, Burke says that ketchup was “probably for a side of French fries,” not his dry-aged New York strip...
Q: Let’s talk about the steak order heard around the world. In February, President Trump came here and ordered his steak well-done and with ketchup. What was your reaction?
Well, first off he doesn't order it with ketchup, and he doesn’t eat it with ketchup. What we make for the president normally is a piece of Dover sole. Or he’ll have a hamburger, or a steak, or a shrimp cocktail. But he usually eats Dover sole. And you know what? I have no problem with a well-done steak...
A lot of Americans eat well-done meat. I’ve found people, especially if they’re a certain age, order meat well-done because that’s what they grew up eating. People forget that back in the day there wasn’t reliable refrigeration, so there was a lot of bacteria in meat that you had to kill by cooking it well-done. It had nothing to do with the pleasure of eating a steak, which was seen a luxury. So when you get into a habit, it can be hard to break.
Listen, I like my meat cooked to a certain point. Typically, meat tastes better the longer you cook it because of the caramelization that occurs. That being said, with a good steak, you want a nice caramelization on the outside but still juicy enough on the inside. I’m not defending the president, but our steaks are so good—even well-done—it’s a delight.
“When he comes in, people get up and shake hands with him. It’s not a secret. It’s an event.”Myself, I prefer a medium-rare steak, and it’s a really good way to eat a steak because you're getting the succulence of the fat molecules. Lamb I like medium. Duck I like medium. At the end of the day, people should be allowed to eat in peace. As far as the ketchup goes, [Trump] likes French fries, and most likely the ketchup was for his fries.
Q: So table 76 is Trump’s table. Do you get a lot of requests for table 76? I can’t answer that, but our general manager might know. The first-timers want to sit on the rail. I like the rail because of the view. In this room, there’s really not a bad seat in the house. We also have a private room that [Trump] likes to sit in. But when he comes in, people get up and shake hands with him. It’s not a secret. It’s an event. I would have to say he’s been here five or six times since he took office. (Excerpt) Read more at dc.eater.com ...
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