Soy-encrusted sweet&sour chicken

A recent favorite dish of ours has been this dish here...what I'll call "Soy-encrusted sweet&sour turkey" (or chicken)

I grind up a ton of dried soybeans to make a chunky-grained soy flour with my awesome Cuisenart food processor, then with a good cup of this, seasoned with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Then I beat one egg, and I toss in some fairly big but bitesized cubes of turkey breast in the egg to get them 'sticky'. Then I toss all the coated cubes into the big bowl with the soybean coating, and toss it around and it gets all the soy flour and bigger crunchier bits to coat it. then in a skillet, i heat up some olive oil to about medium, and plop in the coated turkey cubes sizzling in there, turning them to lightly brown each side. If there was a lot of extra coating that fell off in this process (which starts to burn at the bottom) then after hte turkey is done, I take out the turkey pieces, dump out the excess coating, and put the turkey back in and just for hte very last minute, I toss them around with just enough Sweet & sour chili sauce (spicy-hot), and voila!
So essentially it turns out to be a somewhat improved/healthier version of fried chicken you get in asian stir-fry dishes-- first off turkey has a mildly better proportion of amino acid quantities compared to chicken, and it does not use regular carbohydrate-loaded flour as a batter-- instead soybeans ground up have an excellent larger proportion of proteins and some good lipids, and delivers that extra bit of crunch without it having to be deep-fried. Just some good ol olive-oil sautee work gets it just right!

Here's Jojo claiming ownership of his third bowl of this dish (over a bed of veggies and rice noodles) :)

"Garlic Butter"

mmmmm....
great random thing for garlic-onion lovers..

Decided to make a sort of "garlic butter" based on taking a head and a half of garlic cloves (better to pre-roast in oven wrapped in foil and a drizzle of olive oil--then they get a tad sweeter, and will maintain color when made into this spread), and sliced onions carmelized in a bit of olive oil, then blended this ton of garlic and slightly greater portion of teh carmelized onion with more olive oil, fresh ground pepper and salt, blended until it created a spreadable "butter-like" paste....

So far, it's come in handy just as an addition when making other sauces for dishes, and also as a "glaze" spread onto some 300C/500F fast-baked whole wheat pitabreads for some veggie open-face sandwiches...

haha it's sure a delicious way to get bad garlic breath fast though!

Real Protein Bars Act 1

I finally prepped a real batch of high-protein energy bars, using pure protein powder as a key ingredient. And this batch of protein bars turned out better than a couple other energy bars I had whipped up before.

Took a look at what goes into many protein bars, from many sources, and then came up with my own combining the elements I thought worked well together–so here goes:

Ingredients:

5 egg whites (into a big heat-proof bowl for cooking over a double-boiler)

~10 heaping Tbsp homemade almond-butter (ie take almonds in a food processor with a pinch of salt and grind them up until turns into something much like peanut butter, except almonds have a healthier array of fats than peanuts)

2 one-ounce squares of Bakers unsweetened chocolate

~1/2 -2/3 cup of skim milk

6 scoops of vanilla protein powder (100% protein, mix of whey protein and something else I think)

3 packages of pure gelatin powder (unflavored, also pure protein– each little pack was 7 g, so about 21 g )

1/2 cup ground dried soybeans (I make my own soy bean flour here since I haven’t found pure soy flour in Swiss stores)

1 cup of high-protein whole wheat flour

1/3 - 1/2 cup of nonfat dry milk

1/4-1/3 c dark brown sugar
Preparation:

In a double-boiler boiling with medium-high heat, beat the egg whites and sugar with an electric mixer until fluffy and cooked (a few minutes). Then put the chocolate cubes in the milk microwaved to melt the chocolate, by stirring it into a thick chocolatey mixture when milk is hot.

Then pour in all the dry ingredients, almond-butter and melted chocolate into the egg whites and stir (a bit of an arm workout near the end, itself!)

Onto wax paper or parchment paper, scrape out dough, hten roll it out into a slap, and I sprinkled on a very light layer of finely grated toasted coconut to help make the outside less sticky.

Also… I left them out on the counter to 100% cool down for about 2-ish hours, which I found helped slighly dry out the bars which would help for preservation, and to keep them less sticky in storage. (flipped them over once, too, to dry both sides)

They turned out quite good for a first try! Texture was just right, firm enough to hold togeter in nice bars but fairly soft and chewy inside. And with the ~1/3 c sugar, they were just very lightly sweet and seemed to be the perfect amount.

Overall made 20 bars plus some trimmings…already all gone….hrmm. This weekend will make another batch!

Spiced up Salads

I wanted to share some favorite salads…. I admit that I’m a bit low on average at eating enough fresh, water-rich, low-calories, high vitamin and beneficial fiber greens, compared to the daily portions I should be eating—Largely because I’m a bit of a salad snob and can’t stand to eat a boring salad. So, combining my love of vegetables, and exciting flavor combinations, I’m able to still find rich salads that I find exciting and entertaining!

So maybe you can also benefit from some spiced-up salad ideas …
Asian Tofu Salad:

Contains:

Chunks of romaine lettuce and other mixed greens, soy-sauce marinated thin strips of firm tofu (then seared in a hot skillet with sesame oil, and coated with sesame seeds and crushed garlic), halved fresh baby corn spears seared also with a dash of soy sauce and sesame oil, halfed cherry tomaos, strips of red and green sweet peppers, fresh bean sprouts, thin long strips of very lightly cooked shitake or regular mushrooms, sometimes a small topping of roasted pine nuts for fun, and a dressing made of soy sauce, oil, white vinegar, and a dash of a dark sugar. (Watch out for too much salt in this one…soy sauce can make a dish very salty, so for sure don’t add extra salts to any component)

Chicken Salad:

Contains:

Marinated chicken breasts pan-cooked till edges crispy then diced (marinade 2+ hrs: in this time, a mix of tomato paste, minced hot pepper, chili powder, crushed garlic, some oil, herbs, and vinegar), over a bead of chunky romaine lettuce, cherry tomatos, a bell pepper, thin-sliced slightly cooked onions, thin-sliced radishes, steamed broccoli peces, and some thin slices of a sharp cheese ( I find it takes the flavor much further w/o taking the fat-calories just as far, by using small quantities of a potent cheese). I sometimes make my own croutons from a bread hanging around by dicing the bread, then heating olive oil in a skillit till quite hot, and tossing/quickly braising the breadcubes in the olive oil till edges start to brown and get crispy, and tossing in herbs and seasoning at the last minute to coat them. I frequently do a balsamic-mustard viniagrette for chicken salads (olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and some generous scoops of a spicy mustard shaken up to emulsify).

Spinach Salad: (no elegant picture of this yet, just from a huge half-consumed serving bowl I dished up at a recent party)

Contains:

Freshly washed spinach (i’m always suspicious about sand in spinach…major salad turn-off to bite into grains of sand while enjoing a juicy good salad!), thin-sliced carrots, a few types of sweet peppers cut into chunks, a whole-grain wheat pasta (like these spirals, or a macarroni, and cubed feta cheese…
For the dressing (hence to make it a slightly warm salad) :

dice up a big bundle of tomatos, and finely dice an onion or two, and cook in a skillet with a fair amount of olive oil, until onions are transparant, and the mixture makes a fairly homogeneous paste. If dried up too much, add some water to get it to a thick moist paste (similar to a pasta tomato sauce), add in some salt, pepper, chopped basil if you like or other herbs, and while still very hot, I douse in some red wine, cook the alcohol out of it, then remove from heat. Then add in enough vinegar (I use a white vinegar with this one) to make a very tomatoy viniagrette. Mix into salad and ready to go!

Easy healthy snack or meal..

I do this as a snack pretty often... Anyone else make and eat the snack "ants on a log" as a kid? Well, I sure did in pre-school! (celery sticks filled with peanut butter and raisins as "ants" on top)

But here’s an ‘adult’ version that I think tastes better, and is definitely healthier:

Fresh celery sticks

Fresh-ground almond butter (peanutbutter made with almonds– you’ll need a good food processor to grind it to a paste)

dried figs, cut into small pieces

Almonds have a much healthier assortment of fatty acids than peanuts do, and if you have a good food processor, take the non-roasted almonds (non-heated products keep the good types of fatty acids intact), Just add 400g and a teaspoon of salt and blend for a long time until peanut-butter consistency.

Secondly, using figs rather than raisens is better, because they are much higher in fiber (so having enough fiber, and water, swells in the stomach and makes you feel much more full than just the nearly pure-sugar raisens on top). The good fats from the almonds also send signals to the brain telling you that you're satiated and don't want to eat more, so it makes it easier not to snack extra when you have a reasonable amount of good fatty acids in the food, too.

This this batch size above, and with a plentiful spread of almond butter (60g) onto 4 huge celery sticks (235g), and 70g of figs, comes out to a large-feeling meal, which provides 20 g protein, 45 g carb, and 30 g of good quality lipids, 225g water, and 15 g fiber. Delicious and keeps me feeling full for longer than any other meal or snack (when in smaller portions)