Sheet Pan Cauliflower with Balsamic and Parmesan

The blog post this week is one of my BULK VEGGIE recipes: I eat MAD quantities of vegetables. More vegetables than anything else, truly.

Vegetables are the only-only-ONLY thing I do not portion-control. I shall be eating four pounds of broccoli florets, two enormous heads of cauliflower, and four pounds of green beans this week. By myself.

This one is adapted from an Eating Well recipe: I love roasted vegetables. Nice and easy, does not take much blogging!

Trim up your cauliflower into florets. This is two heads’ worth.

Pan spray your sheet pan or roasting pan. Put your cauliflower on; give it another go with the pan spray. (I’m using pan spray to cut the calories. Olive oil would work too.)

I am calling it sheet pan cauliflower, because I have a marvelous sheet pan just the very same size as my oven racks that slides right in. 

Ten minutes at 400; stir; another ten minutes!

Then pull it out and add your herbs. Fresh is best, but none of mine survived this season! Fresh rosemary or thyme is great. What I’m using here is dried thyme and parsley.

I used probably three tablespoons or so of my balsamic. Toss it over the whole pan and stir the balsamic and the herbs through the cauliflower! Then I added a cup of fresh grated Parmesan. 

You want to do this just as it comes out of the oven so the balsamic will absorb into the cauliflower and the Parmesan will melt. 

For those of you trying to lose weight: eat as much as you want. That’s what I do: 115lbs here, let it speak for itself.

SHEET PAN CAULIFLOWER WITH BALSAMIC AND PARMESAN 

2 heads cauliflower, trimmed into florets

Olive oil pan spray

2 teaspoons each dried thyme and parsley (or herbs of your choice)

3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar 

1 C fresh shredded Parmesan 

Preheat oven to 400.

Pan spray a sheet pan or baking sheet. Put your cauliflower florets on; pan spray the cauliflower florets, trying to evenly coat.

Roast for ten minute. Stir. Roast another ten minutes.

Remove from oven. On hot sheet pan, stir herbs, balsamic, and fresh Parmesan through the cauliflower. Serve hot.

Serving size: 1 cup

Calories per serving: 35

Shrimp, Asparagus, and Spinach Risotto

Risotto is one of the best “gourmet” meals to turn out in your own kitchen - especially if you are Gluten Free! - because it tastes so fancy. But really, there are two tricks to risotto, and neither of them are hard:

1. You’ve got to have the right rice;

And 2. You’ve got to know how to STIR. And who can't take a spoon and STIR?

See? Not hard!

Trick #1. The rice. THIS is the kind of rice you need for risotto. It’s called Arborio. Doesn’t matter a bit the brand, this is just what my grocery store had. It releases the starch that gives risotto its creaminess. I’ve tried making risotto with other rices: no go. Don’t bother. 😊 Spend the money and buy the Arborio.l 

Stirring we’ll get to in good time! I’m going to get you pictures of that.

First I’m going to get my asparagus and spinach ready.

The spinach I bought fresh, and am just steaming in the microwave. Spinach, a little water, cover. 4 minutes and stir, is what I do.

Asparagus was also bought fresh. If it’s good fresh asparagus, you can just hold it in your hand and snap the bottom “woody” parts off the stems.

Discard the bottom ‘snap.’ Then snap the rest into bite-size pieces into a plastic something that can go in the microwave; we’re going to steam that too. Try three minutes and go from there. I did three, stir, three; that was too long!

Normally I’d add sautéing the shrimp here, but I didn’t want to peel shrimp, so I wound up with frozen, cooked shrimp instead: just what the grocery store had. Convenience. I dislike peeling shrimp!

Now we’re ready to start the risotto.

Gather your stuff together. A lot of folks like onion in their risotto; I don’t like onion, but will often use shallots; quite frankly, I forgot to put them on the grocery list. So! Olive oil, garlic, and you need to have your broth ready. I’ve got mine in a 4C measure here, you see, so I can try and tell you how much I’m adding! (I don’t usually heat my broth. A lot of recipes tell you to do so.) 

Olive oil in the pan, enough for your garlic/diced onion/diced shallots - and enough to coat your rice, too, in a second. I’m using about 3-4 tablespoons. Cook your onions or brown your garlic. A lot of people use both.

Once those have cooked/browned, measure out 2 C of your <Arborio> rice. Add it right into the pan and start stirring. 

You’re wanting all the grains of rice to be coated and looking a little translucent. It’s kind of hard to see here. Aim at all the grains of rice being coated!

Then I added - I measured it! - a cup of broth and started stirring.

(A lot of recipes tell you to deglaze with white wine. I never have. The risotto turns out great anyway.)

SET A TIMER HERE FOR 20 MINUTES. That’s how you’re going to know when to start checking your rice for done-ness.

When it starts looking like THIS, when all the rice isn’t covered anymore and the boiling broth is causing little holes to open, that’s when you add more broth. Your rice will also start <sticking>! Definitely add more broth when you start sticking.

I added another cup or so. 

And so on. 

I kept that up until I had stirred in 4 C of broth precisely, and my 20 minute timer had (astonished!) 15 seconds left on it exactly. 

It doesn’t usually turn out that evenly!

Then I tested a few grains of rice and they were done. Take it off the heat!

I stirred in 2 tablespoons lemon juice and estimated about a tablespoon of mint flakes. I stirred in my asparagus, and then realized my pot was not big enough to stir in my spinach too. 

Needs must. Stir it together however you can. Mine ended up being stirred in its portioned-out Bento boxes. I topped it with the shrimp and some fresh Parmesan!

And this is how you tell a <really> successful risotto: not a thing stuck to the pan! 

SHRIMP, ASPARAGUS, AND SPINACH RISOTTO 

12 oz fresh spinach

1 lb asparagus, trimmed

12 oz frozen pre-cooked medium shrimp, thawed

2 C Arborio rice

3 T olive oil
3 T minced garlic
(1 diced onion, optional)

4 C low sodium, gluten free chicken broth

2 C fresh Parmesan 

Steam your spinach; set aside. Steam your trimmed asparagus; again, set aside.

Gather rice, olive oil, garlic, onion (if using), and broth. Saute onion and garlic in olive oil over medium heat. Add rice; stir until all grains are coated.

Add one cup of broth. Stir until the broth is almost absorbed and holes are forming in the rice as it simmers; see above. Add another cup of broth. Keep stirring and adding broth for about twenty minutes, until rice is tender.

Remove from heat.

Stir in lemon juice and mint. Stir in asparagus and spinach. Serve topped with shrimp and fresh Parmesan.

Servings: 7

Calories per serving: 333

Ham and Broccoli Tetrazzini

So this one is a ‘comfort food’ for my family that I have gluten-free’d and lightened up, for the sake of still being able to eat it without packing back on my lost 115 pounds!

I give full credit to my parents for helping me with this while I was gallivanting off yesterday at a Broadway touring show - absolutely loved what they did with Aladdin, by the way! They prepped my broccoli; they cooked my pasta; the ham was already diced in my freezer. So with all that - this went together in a SNAP.

It does usually take a little longer. 😊

Adding more broccoli is one of the main ways I lightened this recipe up. (Replacing the roux we usually use for sauce was the other.) Lots of vegetables is my main way of getting pasta dishes down to an actual 2oz-pasta-serving and having that be, you know, a real MEAL still.

Broccoli florets around here are bought in 2lb bags at Sams. 2lbs of broccoli to 14- or 16-ounces of pasta is a real thing, folks, if you want to eat pasta and not gain a hundred pounds! 

(Item: that’s not a figure of speech, either, from your blog-author who has lost one-hundred-and-fifteen. Note!)

Broccoli just went in one of my monster plastic bowls - into the microwave to steam! 3 minutes, stir, another three. I have found tender crisp is easier to achieve when you’re steaming if you are ‘covered’ but not too tight. Plastic wrap with a vent or two cut in it will work.

I used Tinkanyada pasta this time. Probably tastes more like regular pasta than any other gluten free stuff that I’ve tried, especially if you bake it. Macaroni and cheese’s, that sort of thing, I almost always use Tinkanyada. It has to boil like regular pasta, too, unlike the rice noodles that I just soak.

Broccoli: done. 

Pasta: done. Diced ham: thawed. 

Time for the sauce. 

I used my usual broth base to get 14 oz of broth in a four cup measure. Once that was heated and mixed in, I added a cup and a half of milk and two heaping tablespoons cornstarch. Whisk and into the microwave - I stir every minute - until boiling and thickened slightly.

**Celiacs: note that ‘Gluten Free’ right on the front of the Argo cornstarch! Unfortunately cornstarch is something you’ve got to watch out for; it’s often ground on the same machinery they use to grind wheat. They’re tricky and don’t always tell you that! Buy a cornstarch that’s MARKED Gluten Free.

I 

It is a pretty thin sauce, no matter. Fresh Parmesan thickens it up a bit too. I used - oh, I don’t know - a small handful, maybe half a cup. 

And it’s all ready to assemble! Top with fresh Parmesan too.

HAM AND BROCCOLI TETRAZZINI 

1 lb Tinkanyada pasta

8 oz diced ham

2 lbs broccoli 

14 oz water

3 T broth base

1 1/2 C milk

2 T cornstarch 

Fresh Parmesan

Cook pasta according to package directions.

Trim and steam broccoli.

Mix broth base and water. Heat to boiling. Whisk cornstarch into milk; stir into broth base. Heat until boiling and slightly thickened. 

Add 1/2 C fresh Parmesan. Stir in.

Stir together pasta, ham, and broccoli. Top with sauce and fresh Parmesan.

Servings: 8

Calories per serving: 253

Even *Dog Food* from Scratch is not Hard!

I thought, after talking to my aunt (who is one of my cooking inspirations - you will hear more on my aunt and my father, no doubt, following this blog!), that this might be a timely post after some of the bad press dog food has gotten recently.

This is my Hamilton:

As you can see, he is a dearly beloved little dog!

He is also an unfortunately *picky* little dog, who will not take pills unless they are ground up in wet food - which has to mean gluten free, in my refrigerator! So, for a while there, I did the expensive-gluten-free-canned-dog-food route. Then - I started tossing ingredients in the crock pot.

I vary what I use: it’s always a meat, some kind of frozen vegetable,  and rice. Today it’s chicken, as you can see; frozen chopped broccoli, because that’s what I had in the freezer; and brown rice.

The meat I use varies widely by what I’ve got in my freezer and what’s been on sale at the store. He’s had cheap cuts of beef, pork chops, chicken, fish - yes, this little one even likes fish! The dog food in the freezer now was made from frozen salmon, because that was what was on sale. 

He usually gets frozen peas and carrots for the vegetable. I forgot to buy any of those; hence the chopped broccoli, which was already in my freezer. Green beans are supposed to be good for dogs too; this one just won’t eat them. 

Meat and vegetable into the crock pot with enough water to cook the rice later! And now while that slow-cooks, I’m going to make the deadly beloved dog mad by going to pop him in the bathtub. 

Returning several hours later! Chicken is done, so I pull it out to shred, and add two cups of rice to the crock pot while I’m cooling and shredding chicken. 

You will not do this without company. I never do.

Return the shredded chicken/pork/beef/flaked fish/whatever back to the crock pot and give it an hour or so to cook the rice!

A note on storing: That’s a problem for which I’ve never found a real satisfactory solution. Most of it gets frozen, of course, but I don’t have enough room in my freezer usually for extra Tupperware. I use the sandwich size ziplocks. It’s kind of a mess getting dog food into ziplocks, but they lay flat and don’t take up much freezer space! 

This was, of course, dinner tonight. He does love chicken!

Lentils with Bay Leaves and Thyme

Lentils and beans in the Instapot are the easiest ever. Love them.

Actually, crock pot might rank up there on easiest, mightn’t it? So - equally easy, perhaps, but the Instapot sure is quicker.

One cup of lentils to two cups water: easy enough. 

For those of you who are new to cooking beans or lentils from dried, sort through them - I just do it pouring into my hand a few at a time - because dried beans are so little processed, sometimes there is grit or small rocks in them. (Can you believe it, in this age of processed food, that we still get rocks in our beans? But - yeah.)

Who’s used to cooking with bay leaves? These things take some getting used to. They come in WHOLE LEAVES, you see: you toss them in for flavoring when cooking, and then remove them before eating. 

Toss your two bay leaves in whole, with your lentils and water/broth and plenty of thyme. Set it for the Beans/Chili setting for 8 minutes. 

And there it goes! 

-Make sure you remove those bay leaves when it’s done!

I’m tossing these lentils on top of my quinoa, with some spinach and topped with a dollop of Greek yogurt to make it into a Buddha bowl for lunches this week. But they’d be good as a side, or with rice, or over whatever you like to eat your lentils on.

Bento-box-Buddha-bowls ready to go!

INSTAPOT LENTILS

1cup lentils

2 cups water

2 bay leaves

1 tablespoon thyme

Add to Instapot. Set for 8 minutes on Beans/Chili. 

Let stand for 10 minutes then release pressure manually.

Servings: 4

Calories per serving: 110
(Calories for just the lentils, not the Buddha bowls)

Ricotta Quiche

This recipe originally came from www.delish.com, to give credit where credit is due; but I have changed it so much in the years I’ve been using it I am claiming it for my own at this point!

I make it crustless, because that’s easiest, especially easiest for the GF. I’ve got recipes for hashbrown crusts and veggie crusts and all, but eating it like a frittata without a crust saves time on my feet - and calories. <Just make sure you go heavy on the pan spray!>

This quiche is great, because the ricotta keeps it lower calorie, and you can toss absolutely anything in it. I’m using spinach in it today and topping it with tomatoes, but sausage-and-spinach is another favorite, and ham-and-broccoli also works well.

NOTE ON THAT RICOTTA: for those of you who are gluten free, watch those ingredients on ricotta cheese! I have found oat gum in some brands,and those oats are NOT the specially grown and harvested GF ones, I guarantee you!

For those of you new to cooking, anytime you’re using eggs in a recipe - beat them first. Just with a fork. You see below.

Add your ricotta and Parmesan in and beat them together. It does a bit of beating sometimes, to smooth it out.

Your tablespoon of cornstarch goes into a 1/4 cup milk. Add that to your bowl of ricotta and eggs and mix in well.

I already had a package of frozen spinach cooked and in the fridge leftover, so that’s what I tossed in. Whatever you’re mixing in, add it at this point.

I wanted my tomato slices on top, so they weren’t mixed in. 

Note on the knife: that’s an actual ‘tomato’ knife, designed for cutting tomatoes, and that thing is AWESOME. I don’t even know where my mother found those - it’s been years ago - but if you ever see such a thing, spend the money and pick one up!

Preheat your oven to 375. Pour the quiche into a pie pan <with plenty of pan spray!> and top with the tomato slices. I set the timer for 35 minutes to check it, but it was 45 before it was done.

I make this so often, I just usually look at it to see when it’s done - but I DID try the knife trick this time, and the knife inserted in the middle came out clean when my eyes thought it was done. So! Try that. It’s more objective, lol.

RICOTTA QUICHE

4 eggs

1 15-oz container of part-skim ricotta

1/4 C Parmesan cheese

1 T cornstarch 

1/4 C milk

1 12-oz package frozen chopped spinach, cooked

2 Roma tomatoes, sliced

Preheat oven to 375.

Beat eggs in a mixing bowl. Add ricotta and Parmesan; mix together thoroughly,  until smooth.

Stir cornstarch into milk. Pour into egg mixture; blend well. 

Add spinach and stir. Pour into a well-greased pie pan and top with tomato slices. 

Bake 35-45 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Servings: 6
Calories per serving: 155

Shrimp and Broccoli Fettuccine

I had a recipe for this somewhere when I made out my grocery list... Not sure what I did with it! So I’m kind of winging it on this one. 😊

I’m doing the broccoli first: I buy veggies in bulk at Sam’s, so this was two pounds of broccoli florets. Trimmed and steamed in the microwave. 

Shrimp next: I buy them peeled and deveined. They’re still raw, so I count them “from scratch,” but pre-peeled, pre-tailed, and pre-deveined saves an enormous amount of time! I’m just doing a quick sauté in a well-seasoned cast iron skillet.

NOTE ON THAT CAST IRON: figure out how to inherit it, if you can, lol! The old stuff is best. This skillet is from the mother of a friend; I've got another of my great grandmother's. Perfectly serious about the 'inheriting,' you see! 

If you’re GF, I seriously recommend locating your closest Oriental Market. I am in mine all the time.You can tell that’s where these came from! Rice noodles are my favorite of the GF noodle picks, I think - remember your Pad Thai at your favorite Asian restaurants? - these are those noodles. And they're "regular" noodles in the Oriental Marker; that is, they sell them at "regular noodle" prices, not gluten-free noodles prices. Price: $1.69 or thereabouts; ingredients: Rice Flour and Water; calories, 200 per 2oz serving.  Love them. Get thee to the oriental market.

All that broccoli and shrimp is going to make 2oz of pasta a serving, I promise! I didn’t used to believe it, either. Enough vegetables and lean protein and it really does make it a dinner-size portion.

I put the sauce together while the pasta was cooking. The recipe I can’t find probably called for a roux with Parmesan, but since I’m on my own here, I’m making a favorite of mine. It’s in my handwriting in my own cookbook, on an index card - spotted and stained, you know those are your best recipes! No clue where I got it. It's titled "Italian Wedding Pasta Sauce," for what that's worth! 

I mix 2 heaping tablespoons of cornstarch into a cup and a half or so of milk, and microwave until boiling - I use my IKEA four-cup measures for this. Keep an eye on it - it will boil over on you fast! (Mine did, as a matter of fact.) Add 14oz of chicken broth once it’s thickened slightly - I know my recipe calls for a can, but it’s so hard to find GF broth, I usually use this broth base - marked Gluten Free, you can see! It is processed and pretty high in sodium, I'm sure - but needs must. I give in on the broth base.

Put that back in the microwave for another 2 minutes or so, until it’s boiling and thickened slightly. It’s still a thin sauce, so I used some fresh Parmesan to thicken it up a little more.

Then it’s time for bento-boxing! I’m cooking on a Saturday morning, just prepping for the week. This reheats well! Add a little half and half or whatnot if the sauce has soaked up - rice noodles, in particular, are terrible at that, I will admit.

SHRIMP AND BROCCOLI FETTUCCINE 

12 oz shrimp, peeled and deveined 

2 lbs broccoli florets

14 oz of Pasta

2 heaping tablespoons cornstarch 

1 1/2 C milk

14 oz chicken broth (or equivalent)

1/2 C Fresh Parmesan 

Start pasta water heating. 

Trim and steam broccoli florets.

Sauté shrimp. Set broccoli and shrimp aside.

When pasta water boils, start pasta and sauce. Mix cornstarch into milk and microwave two minutes or until boiling and thickened slightly. Add broth; again, bring to a boil. Stir in 1/4 C Parmesan; add a little more, as needed, to thicken sauce.

Drain pasta when done. Rinse if using rice noodles.

Toss pasta, broccoli, and shrimp with sauce.  Top with Parmesan.

Servings: 7
Calories per serving: 258