My Homemade No-Guilt French Fries

 

See, the thing is, potatoes really are pretty healthy, in and of themselves.

The problem with potatoes is all the junk we DO to them.

So if you want to eat potatoes - cook potatoes!

When I want to indulge in french fries, I make french fries, because otherwise if I'm eating french fries that have been drenched in oil and salt, I only allow myself a few.

They're really not hard, if you can keep your fingers out from under the knife!

Buy a BAG OF POTATOES.

I buy the Yukon gold ones, because they taste like butter, without adding any calories! 

Win-Win. 

Scrub them, cut out any bad spots, then start chopping them up into your preferred french fry size. I like a fry that's somewhere between the itty-bitty fast food ones and the big steak fries, myself, but you do you! Try to keep the size fairly even if you can. They'll cook better that way.

I toss the fries into a great big bowl as I'm cutting them. That's because when they're all cut, I spray them with OLIVE OIL PAN SPRAY - note that! I do not toss them in oil! - I spray them with pan spray, toss them, give them another coat, toss them, spray them again, until they're all coated.

I use LAWRY'S SEASONED SALT on mine. I do the same thing in that great big bowl, once they're all coated with pan spray, toss the seasoning salt on the top ones, toss them around, salt the top ones, toss them, and so on.

I have wire baskets for my oven, copper wire baskets that came as a set with copper baking sheets, so I bake my fries in my wire baskets so they crisp on the bottom too. A regular metal cookie sheet or baking sheet will do just fine, you might just want to turn them more often so they crisp all over.

I bake them at 400, stirring every 10 or 15 minutes, until they're done. 

How long they take depends on how thick you've cut your fries! Just taste-test!

 

Steak Fettuccine

 This was simply marvelous - fancy dinner time! 

I used petite sirloin steaks. Sirloin was what my original recipe called for, and petite sirloins fit better on my little George Foreman grill. I don't have an outside grill here at my condo. Feel free to substitute any kind of steak you like, and cook it however you like! 

STEAK FETTUCCINE 

Ingredients

1lb fettuccine

12-16oz sirloin steak (or whatever kind of steak you’d like)

Oil, salt and pepper for the steak, if that’s the way you like to cook it

2T butter

2 cloves garlic, minced

2T all purpose flour (if you are GF, do NOT use nut flour here!)

2C milk (or thereabouts, you’re making a roux)

1/2C grated or freshly shredded Parmesan

1 1/2C cherry tomatoes, halved

4C baby spinach

Fresh parsley, for garnish

(It called for a balsamic glaze, but I am NO GOOD at making balsamic glazes, so I skipped that.)

Cook your pasta, according to package instructions.

I am not going to tell you how to cook your steak. I am not the expert steak-cooker in my family! I toss them straight out of the package onto my little George Foreman grill, and take them off when they look done. I let them rest, cut one open to check for done-ness, and go from there. —> Not real great instructions, huh? Just cook your steaks however you like to do it! 

Let the steaks rest. You’ll slice them later to go on top of the pasta.

Melt the butter in a large (LARGE) sauce pan. Add the garlic, sauté for a bit. Add the flour, stir around until it’s absorbed into the butter. Start adding your milk a little bit at a time; once it’s thickened, add a bit more milk, and so on until you’ve got a sauce. Add the Parmesan and tomatoes. 

While your sauce is cooking, wilt the spinach in the microwave. My recipe said to do that in the saucepan, but let’s face it, there’s no saucepan in the world big enough to really wilt spinach except four leaves at a time. Fresh spinach just takes up too much room!

Get out a great big pasta serving bowl.

Toss your hot pasta with the wilted spinach and the sauce. Top with the parsley and a little bit of extra Parmesan. Add your steak slices. I tossed it a bit more; you can always serve with the steak nicely arranged on top, however you want.

Serving size: 6 to 8

[If I figured calories for this, I didn’t write them down to save them! I’ll make it again and edit for you. It was definitely worth making again!]

Flourless Fudge Cake with Ganache

 For gluten free folks, this cannot be BEAT.

If you’re diabetic, I made it with sucralose, and so the only sugar was what was in the chocolate itself. Also marvelous! 

The ganache is so simple I don’t know why I haven’t tried it before! This is going to become a favorite cake topping, I do believe.

This time I used semi-sweet chocolate chips. The next time I make it I’m going to try and find my favorite dark Belgian chocolate chunks - wish me luck on that, they’re not always available! But I think they’d be marvelous in this. 

The photo is my aunt’s, she’s the one who got me this recipe! Her cake plate is definitely a prettier presentation than mine, and besides, she got a picture before most of hers was gone, lol.

FLOURLESS FUDGE CAKE WITH GANACHE

Cake Ingredients

Pan spray

One stick butter

1C semisweet or dark chocolate chips

3/4C sugar (or sucralose, if you’re diabetic!)

A grind or two of sea salt

1T espresso powder (Delallo’s is GF)

1t vanilla extract 

3 eggs

1/2C cocoa powder (Hershey’s is GF)

Ganache Ingredients

1C semisweet or dark chocolate chips

1/2t vanilla extract

1/2C heavy cream (often sold as heavy whipping cream, or whipping cream)

Preheat oven to 375. Spray a 9-inch cake pan with baking spray. (I’m buying a spring-form pan to make this next time.) Use parchment paper if you want, but I didn’t need to.

Melt the butter and the chocolate chips in the microwave, 15 or 20 seconds at a time. Stir until smooth. Add the sugar, salt, espresso powder, and vanilla. Stir until smooth. Beat your eggs in a small bowl, then add them too. Store until smooth. Add the cocoa powder, and again, stir until smooth. 

Pour the batter into the cake pan and spread it out evenly. Bake until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. The recipe said 24-26 minutes, but that was too long in my oven.

Cool the cake in the pan for 10 minutes. Then put a wire rack over the top of the pan, and flip it all over to unmold the cake onto the wire rack to finish cooling. 

Once the cake is COMPLETELY COOL, you’re ready to mix up the ganache. 

In a medium bowl or 2C measure, combine the chocolate chips and vanilla. 

In a microwave safe bowl, warm the cream. You want it hot but not bubbling: I did 45 seconds. 

Pour the hot cream over the chocolate chips and let it sit 2-3 minutes until the chips are mostly melted. Then stir until smooth. 

Spoon the ganache over the COMPLETELY COOLED cake, spreading it out to cover the cake and drip over the edges. Let it stand for at least an hour to set the ganache. 

Ashley’s Favorite Sauces: Peanut Sauce

Where do you use a peanut sauce? Good question! 

I first typed it up as a sauce for dipping spring rolls. Also good as a lo mein sauce, or any stir fry - I really like it on the stir fry’s with rice noodles!

PEANUT SAUCE

Ingredients

1/2C smooth peanut butter

1/4C soy sauce (be careful of your soy sauce if you are GF! It’s usually made from wheat. Get something specially marked GF)

1/4C water

1T rice vinegar (not seasoned! Just straight rice vinegar)

1T sugar or maple syrup

1t minced garlic

(Optional) Crushed red pepper

Whisk peanut butter, soy sauce, and water together until smooth. Add other ingredients, and stir until well mixed. 

Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce

Spring rolls are a much lighter appetizer than the fried variety, and go together ever so much quicker! I made mine with a peanut sauce, because the chili-garlic sauce I tried to buy ended up way too spicy for me (and everyone else at the bridal shower I took these to). But chili-garlic sauce was one of the options that my recipe gave to eat spring rolls with, so go get yourself a jar of chili-garlic sauce if you like spice!

A quick overview of how spring rolls go together:

1. Cook your noodles and prep your fillings.

2. Soften each wrapper in warm water, then add your fillings. 

3. Fold the ends in, and roll each spring roll. Moistening them in warm water makes them sticky, so rolling them and squeezing them together to make them stick is all you need!

4. Prep your sauces. 

Where to find spring roll wrappers? That’s a good question! My neighborhood Walmart that delivers groceries to my porch each week is carrying them now. If you have an Oriental Market, they would have them too. [Actually, if you have an Oriental Market within driving distance, you need to go check it out for more than spring roll wrappers, especially if you’re gluten free. They have THE BEST rice out there, and the prices on their rice noodles can’t be BEAT.]

VIETNAMESE SPRING ROLLS

Ingredients

2oz vermicelli rice noodles (I used the noodles from a package of Thai Kitchen Instant Rice Noodle Soup)

16 rice wrappers

16 large shrimp, cooked and cut in half

Chopped lettuce

Chopped fresh mint leaves

Chopped fresh basil leaves, fresh Thai basil if you can find it

Chopped fresh cilantro, if you’re somebody who doesn’t think it tastes like soap (I am)

Gather all your ingredients. Make sure everything is prepped, chopped, and cut.

Cook the noodles according to package directions. Drain and rinse WELL in cold water.

Fill a large bowl with warm water. You need a bowl with a flat bottom, large enough for the rice wrappers to fit in. Warm is fine, it doesn’t have to be boiling. Your hands are going in this!

Dip one wrapper in the warm water to soften for a few seconds.

Lay it flat on a cutting board. Place two shrimp halves in a row across the center. Add some cooled noodles, lettuce, and fresh herbs. You want this in a row down the center, leaving enough space on each end to roll it in.

Fold the uncovered ends down toward the middle, then roll tightly. I rolled them basically like a burrito, if that helps anyone. The moist rice wrapper should be sticky enough to stick to itself, so you should be able to have it hold once you roll it up. If it’s not, reach back into the warm water with a finger or two and moisten it a bit more. 

Repeat with remaining wrappers.

Ashley’s Favorite Sauces: Peanut Sauce

Ingredients

1/2C smooth peanut butter

1/4C soy sauce (be careful of your soy sauce if you are GF! It’s usually made from wheat. Get something specially marked GF)

1/4C water

1T rice vinegar (not seasoned! Just straight rice vinegar)

1T sugar or maple syrup

1t minced garlic

(Optional) Crushed red pepper

Whisk peanut butter, soy sauce, and water together until smooth. Add other ingredients, and stir until well mixed. 

 

Baked Florentine Pasta

 

This one was a GEM. Nice and easy, finished up under the broiler, and oh so good! Nice and cheesy just like a casserole should be, and that’s even using low fat dairy so it’s not a calorie splurge, can you believe it? I cut a whole huge 9x13 into 8 dinner servings and they were only 315 calories each!

A note on the spinach - how much?? Well. Lots! Fresh spinach really cooks down. I used two Sam’s Club bags of fresh spinach, and they were huge. Bulk bags. My original recipe called for 2 10oz bags. However much you like spinach. Get a lot. 

BAKED FLORENTINE PASTA

Ingredients

16 oz Tinkyada pasta (if you need GF) - I used the spirals to soak up the sauce

4oz Neufchâtel cheese (that’s the lower fat cream cheese, use regular if you can’t find it), softened

3/4C grated Parmesan cheese (3oz)

A bit of ground nutmeg (I didn’t measure)

2C fat free half and half

1T olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

Fresh spinach - how much? See note above.

2T flour*

4oz part-skim shredded mozzarella 

Fresh parsley, for garnish

*NOTE ON THE FLOUR: if you’re GF, you want to use 1-to-1 GF baking flour or rice flour here. NUT FLOURS WILL NOT WORK.

Preheat your oven to 350. (I forgot this, as usual.)

Coat a 9x13 pan with pan spray. Coat it WELL. Cheese sticks.

Cook your pasta according to package directions, making sure not to cook it past al dente. You don’t want it getting mushy in the oven!

Drain your pasta in a colander and return the pot to the stove.

While the pasta is cooking, mix the cream cheese, Parmesan and nutmeg together as well as you can. I had to use the back of a spoon. Stir in the half and half.  Set aside.

Back to the pasta pot you returned to the stove. 

Add the oil and garlic, and heat until the garlic is fragrant. Add your spinach in batches, and stir until it’s all wilted. (I had to cover the pot and let some of it steam.) Add the two tablespoons flour, stirring it into the spinach until the spinach is coated and the flour pretty much disappears. 

Remove from heat.

I moved it over to the other side of my stove.

Add the pasta back in - run some hot water over it in the colander if it’s started sticking together. 

Add the sauce. Stir until everything is well mixed.

Now comes the tricky part: get all that into your 9x13 without spilling it everywhere.

Top with the mozzarella. Cover tightly with foil, and bake until heated through, 15-20 minutes. 

Take the foil off and turn the broiler on. 

Broil until browned on top - you can see my picture above! - about 4-5 minutes.

Take out of the oven and garnish with parsley to serve.

Servings: I got 8, but they were heaping dinner-size servings. It freezes well!

Calories: 315

Shrimp Scampi

 My grandmother's recipe! This is copied out in my mother's handwriting, so you can see her 'Mama's Recipe' at the bottom - this goes back a ways! Wonderful flavor --

SHRIMP SCAMPI

Ingredients

Finely chopped garlic - LOTS

1 small jar chopped pimento

2 sticks butter (or part olive oil)

3/4 C white wine

Rosemary leaves (crush) - sprinkle lightly

Lemon juice of 2 lemons

Simmer 2 hours (or as long as you can). 

This recipe says for 7, cook 80 shrimp (20-25 count). DO NOT OVERCOOK. Pull the pan off the heat and eat them as soon as they turn pink!

We eat ours over steamed rice.