All posts by Rene Averett

Recipes, Vegetables & Salads

A Smashing Hit: Smashed Turnips with Leeks


I trust everyone had a great holiday, whatever event you were celebrating. There are many winter holiday events, some religious and some not, but the one thing we really celebrate in the winter is food! We come up with some fabulous ideas for cookies, cakes, pastries, main courses, appetizers… it’s an “eat” occasion!

Personally, I feel like I’ve been eating non-stop since the middle of last week. There are cookies and cinnamon rolls that look like donut holes, lasagna, tiramisu, a fabulous sirloin roast and pumpkin pie. Almost everything was low carb, but still… I expected to pack on a few pounds from all of this. So you can imagine my surprise when I weighed in today to find I not only had not gained anything, but had lost about a pound! This kind of brings into focus the advice from Atkins to keep your burner stoked. Once the fat burning starts in the morning, those little snacks, a small lunch and more snacks, keep the burner going. I have gradually learned that I lose pounds more consistently when I eat three good meals with two or three little snacks along the way. And I am full all day long, not sitting around with a growling stomach, but actually enjoying a low carb candy bar and feeling good about it.

So, speaking of the holidays, I had a great Christmas dinner with the aforementioned roast sirloin, butternut squash with butter and cinnamon, cranberry sauce and smashed turnips with leeks. It was awesome. I’m sharing the recipe here for the turnips. I know this isn’t the most popular vegetable, but it is a great low carb one and mixed with other flavors, it’s really a good substitute for potatoes. Somebody must be buying turnips besides me though, because all the local grocery stores seem to keep a pretty good supply of these lovely globes. I look for 2 1/2 to 3 inch roots that are fresh so that they won’t have gotten bitter. Peel the skin off… it does taste bitter unless the vegetable is very young and fresh. If the skin is tough, you’ll want to peel down until you reach the softer part of the root.

My secret ingredient in this recipe is mashed potato flakes. This is not on the Atkins approved list unless you’re in maintenance, but I don’t use much and it adds both a little flavor and thickens the mixture so it is more like potatoes. You can omit them and the dish is still very good.

Smashed Turnips with Leeks

6 Turnips,  cut into 1 inch cubes (2 1/2 to 3 inches in diameter)
2 cups Cauliflower, frozen chopped or equivalent in fresh cauliflower
1 Leek, cleaned and sliced (all but the very tough part of the top)
1/3 cup Mashed Potatoes flakes
2 tablespoons Butter, divided
2 tablespoons Heavy Cream or Sour Cream
Bacon Bits (optional)
Salt and Pepper to preference
Garlic salt or garlic powder

In a 2 quart pot, add turnips and enough water to cover. If using fresh cauliflower, add that at this time also. Boil until the turnips are almost soft (about 20 minutes), then add the frozen cauliflower. Add more water as needed during cooking. Cook until vegetables are fork tender and break easily. Pour off most of the water, leaving about 1/3 cup in the pan. Using a heavy spoon, hand masher or spatula, smash the turnips and cauliflower into a lumpy mash or use a mixer to blend them to a smooth mash.

In a small skillet, melt 1 tablespoon of butter and lightly sauté the leeks to bring out the flavor and cook them until tender. Add to the turnips and cauliflower. Add potato flakes and stir in well, cooking a little on low heat to keep warm. Add remaining butter, seasonings and heavy cream or sour cream and mix well.

Serve with extra butter or a low carb brown gravy.

Makes 8 servings (1/2 cup)

Nutrition Info per serving:
Calories: 89.2 Net Carbs: 7.3 g Protein: 2 g

Leaving out the potato flakes will reduce the net carbs by about 2 carbs per serving.

Store and reheat leftovers or make into Turnip Pancakes as a breakfast or lunch side dish
Posted on 12/28/2012

Recipes, Vegetables & Salads

Rich and Comforting Cauliflower Cheese Casserole

I love the richness of this cauliflower dish with ricotta cheese added in. It’s like the best part of a lasagna dish, but it’s made with Cheddar Jack cheese instead of mozzarella. The flavors blend well and it is a beautiful side dish.

Ricotta Cauliflower Casserole

2 cups Cauliflower, frozen
2 tablespoons Butter
1 cup Ricotta Cheese
1 large Egg, fresh
1/2 cup Cheddar jack shredded cheese
2 tablespoons Green Onions
1/4 cup Mushrooms, pieces or slices
3 tablsepoons Parmesan Cheese, shredded or thinly sliced
1/4 cup Heavy Cream
1 tsp Italian Herb blend
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Heat the cauliflower in a microwave (or drop in hot water for a couple of minutes). Put in a small casserole dish , add butter and mix. In a bowl, mix ricotta cheese, egg, chopped green onions, mushrooms, seasonings and heavy cream. Add a pinch of salt. Stir in half the cheddar jack cheese. Add to the cauliflower and mix well. Spread Parmesan cheese over the top, then sprinkle the remaining cheddar jack over the top.

Makes 4 servings

Bake in 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes until the cheese is melted and the top is a golden brown. Let it set for about ten minutes before serving.

Nutrition Info: Calories: 310 Net Carbs: 4.2 g Protein: 15.5 g

Posted on 12/8/2012

Recipes, Vegetables & Salads

Tex-Mex Spanish Cauli-rice

From my LJ Blog on July 18, 2012.

Last week, I printed my recipe for Chile Rellanos and I made a pan of eight of them. With only two of us to eat them, it meant that we had leftovers. What a pity! So, for dinner last night, I planned the rellanos, but then I started thinking about the side dishes you usually get at Mexican restaurants with this type of dish. Namely rice and beans. I loved my grandmother’s Spanish rice. It wasn’t like the Mexican rice, but a Tex-Mex version, I would guess. I don’t know where Grandmother got her recipe, but she was from a long-standing Texas family, apparently several generations in west Texas. Like my grandfather, she had grown up on a ranch and the food she cooked was good working man fare. Anyway, her rice was filled with wonderful flavor and canned tomatoes rather than just the pale pink sauce you see on Spanish rice.

So I wanted to adapt this to a low carb version, which is pretty impossible using rice. So I turned to cauliflower, riced it, added one tablespoon of rice and made the recipe with the ingredients and spices that my grandmother used. It was awesome! PK and I loved it and I am happy to share this recipe here. Hope you enjoy. Let me know how you like it.

Grandma’s Tex-Mex Spanish Cauli-rice

This recipe is based on my grandmother’s Tex-Mex recipe for Spanish rice. There is one tablespoon of rice to give the rice flavor and the rest is cauliflower that has been riced to give a lower carbohydrate dish. You can omit the rice completely if you prefer not to put it in your diet. Not induction friendly, but good for Phase II on.

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon dry White Rice
1 12 to 16 oz package Cauliflower or start from fresh and parboil it, about 3 cups
15 oz can Diced Tomatoes
¼ cup Sweet Peppers*
½ cup chopped Onions
1 tsp minced Garlic
1 teaspoon Chili Powder
1 teaspoon Seasoning Salt or to taste
1 tablespoon Oil or Butter

Using a food processor or a cheese grater finely cut the cauliflower to rice-sized pieces. Don’t worry if you have a few larger chunks.

In a large pan, sauté garlic and onion in a tablespoon of olive oil or butter. Add canned tomatoes, about 1/4 cup of water and cauliflower and stir well. Add the chopped peppers and seasoning then cover the pan and reduce the heat to a simmer.

Let cook on low heat until the liquid is reduced and the rice is tender, between 20 and 30 minutes.

Makes about 6 servings, calories: 42, net carbs 6 (estimates)

*A few months ago, PK came home with a bag of sweet mini-peppers – red, yellow and orange, which we have pretty much kept in stock since then. They are wonderful stuffed with cheese and broiled for a snack, cut up in salads and added to any dish that would benefit from a touch of sweet chili.

This Spanish style cauli-rice dish can easily become a main dish by adding ground beef or diced chicken to it. Roll it up in a low carb tortilla and it’s a delicious snack or light lunch.

Recipes, Vegetables & Salads

Turnips Can Be Healthy

Continuing to move blog entries over, here is one from June 13, 2012, talking about one of my favorite vegetables — turnips. Two great recipes.

Ok, I admit that turnips are probably not on most people’s favorite vegetable list or even on the buy now and then list. And I will also admit that until a few years ago, I hadn’t even tried a turnip. I was beginning to ease into it a little though thanks to a Scottish Clans Burns Supper at Circus Circus Casino where the chef prepared traditional dishes for the catered affair that included haggis and “tatties and neeps” (potatoes and turnips). The flavor was intriguing and it was quite tasty.

When I went back into a low carbohydrate diet, I began looking at the turnip more closely since the carbs in a turnip are easily 1/4 of the amount in a potato (3” potato is about 65 carbs, 8 of which are fiber and a medium turnip is less than 8 carbs and a little over 2 are fiber). Would turnips be a good substitute for potatoes?

Before the arrival of the potato on the European continent, turnips were used in many of the ways that potatoes are used – roasted, boiled, stewed, cooked in hash and other ways. So, the use was very much the same. The flavor is not the same as a potato, but similar. The turnip needs to be peeled as the skin is bitter, so that might explain why one Irish lad I met was shocked to learn we eat the “jackets”. So with this in mind, I began auditioning the turnip in many roles that the potato had played in my cooking. I started with turnip fries and have to say, they are really good. This was followed by roasted turnips and those have become a favorite. But could the turnip replace the potato in potato salad?

I have made it several times now and even though the turnip alone is a very good replacement, the other vegetable that often steps in for potato, cauliflower, enhances the salad even more. Together the combination is a winner. Best of all, whatever potato salad recipe you use, the turnip and cauliflower combo is the low carb base for it. My recipe is my grandmother’s Texas-style potato salad that I loved while growing up, although I’ve made a couple of modifications omitting the celery in it that doesn’t agree with me and adding bacon bits for a little extra punch. So try my recipe or use your own to do your own evaluation of turnip and cauliflower salad.

Texas Style Turnip Cauliflower Salad

Replace potatoes in the salad with healthy turnips and cauliflower while still keeping the taste of  potato salad.

Ingredients:
4 medium Turnips (Approx. 1 lbs.)
4 Hard Boiled Eggs – chopped
1/2 medium Sweet Onion, chopped
1/4 head of Cauliflower (about 1 and ½ cups when chopped)
1/2 cup Celery,  diced (optional)
3/4 cup Mayonnaise (more or less to taste)
1/2 cup Bacon Bits
2 tablespoons of sugar free Sweet Pickle Relish
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 tbsp Yellow Mustard
2 tbsp of no cal, no carb Honey Mustard Dressing (optional – I use Walden Farms)

Peel turnips, making sure to remove any of the stringy fibrous outer layer where the plant has been cut off. This will not get tender when cooked. Cut the turnips into ½ inch or bite-sized cubes. Trim the cauliflower and cut into approximately the same sized pieces as the turnips.

Add to a pot of boiling water and cook until the turnips are tender (about 25 to 35 minutes, depending on the size of your cubes). Drain in a colander.

Transfer turnips and cauliflower to a mixing bowl that gives you enough room to mix the entire salad and add onions, eggs, bacon and celery. Mix.

In a small bowl, add mayonnaise, pickle relish, mustard, honey mustard dressing and seasonings. You can use seasoning salt or other flavored salts instead of regular sea salt. Mix dressing with a spoon until all ingredients are blended.

Pour dressing over the vegetables and stir until well mixed. Cover with plastic wrap or a bowl lid and put in the refrigerator for a couple of hours to chill.

Total carbs per ½ cup serving is 6 carbs, 2 fiber, so 4 net carbs.

Another easy recipes combining turnips with green beans is delicious.

Quick and Easy Green Beans with Turnips

Green beans with turnips in a bowl served with a pan fried hamburger patty covered in mushrooms and onions.

 

1 pound Green Beans, trimmed and cut into 1 to 1 ½ inch pieces
3 medium Turnips, peeled and cut into cubes
2 oz of Salt Pork, cut into cubes
1/2 cup Onion chopped
4 slices of Bacon, cooked and diced (optional)
1 tablespoon Garlic, chopped
Salt and Pepper to taste
1 cup of Chicken Broth

Put green beans, turnips, garlic, onion, seasonings, broth and salt pork in a pot, add enough water to cover and boil until the turnips are almost tender, about 30 minutes. Add diced bacon and cook a few more minutes until the turnips are completely done.

Makes 6 to 8 servings.

Total carbs per 1/8 of recipe is about 5.3 grams – net carbs are about 4 grams.

And to complete the trio of turnip recipes, here’s the fried turnip recipe.

French Fried Turnips

Updated May, 2014 to a better way to do this.

2 large turnips, peeled and cut into ½ inch by 2 or 3 inch planks.
1 teaspoon sugar substitute
Seasoning salt
Vegetable oil, such as peanut oil or olive oil

Bring a pot of water to a boil and drop the turnip planks into the water for about 10 minutes to pre-cook them.  They should be almost fork tender.  Drain and put the planks on paper towels to dry.

Heat the oil in a skillet on medium high.  Gently ease the turnip planks into the oil in a single layer. Cook until the bottom is lightly browned, then turn the turnips over. Cook until the turnip is golden brown and easily pierced with a fork, then remove to drain on paper towels. Blot the tops with a paper towel to remove excess oil, then season with seasoning salt and/or pepper, if you wish.

Makes four servings, approximately 4.1 net carbs each.

Tip:  You can prepare these in advance, partially cook the planks in oil to just a slight brown, then drain and refrigerate or freeze them until you are ready to use.  If frozen, thaw the planks before the final drying.  Then heat the oil and finish frying them for a crisp french fry.

Original post  on  9/15/2012

Beef, Main Dish, Pork, Recipes

Pizza On the Menu – Yes!

When you’re eating low carb, you automatically assume that there are some foods you just can’t eat… like pizza. Wrong! You just can’t eat pizza from Papa Murphy’s or Papa John’s or Pizza Hut or … you get the picture. The real culprit is the bread crust. You can either order a pizza with lots of meat and vegetables on it and just eat the toppings, or you can make your own at home with several options for a low carb crust.

Over at Your Lighter Side, there is a really good chicken crust. Yep, odd as that sounds, ground up cooked chicken mixed with mozzarella cheese and Italian seasonings fills in remarkably well for bread. In fact, it almost tastes like bread. I really can’t improve on the recipe there, except to say that I add in the seasonings when I am processing the chicken and cheese in the food processor.

If you like, or at least don’t mind, cauliflower, it can also be processed to a rice-like consistency with mozzarella cheese and pressed into a pan to become a very good crust. I like it and it is sturdy enough to stand up to the pizza toppings. Again, the recipe is on Your Lighter Side for cauliflower pizza crust.

I also use a flax meal crust, which is more of a bread made from flax meal and almond flour. This version is mine and is on this blog, so find it here.

Now for the toppings — here’s where you can get creative! I recently found a product called Montana Redneck Cottage Bacon that is a smoked bacon from the shoulder butt and it is delicious. It is similar to the bacon you find in England and Ireland, which is more like Canadian bacon, only it’s in strips. So I used this to create my great bacon pizza. If you can’t find it at your stores, use thick sliced bacon instead. I used Classico Alfredo Sauce for the base sauce to make a delicious white pizza. There are other low carb Alfredo sauces, so just check for the lowest carb one you can find.

Bacon with Alfredo Sauce Pizza

1 8″ pizza crust (chicken, cauliflower or flax)

2 slices of Montana Pork Shoulder Bacon or thick sliced bacon
2 oz Italian pork sausage
1/4 cup bacon bits
1/2 cup onion, diced
1/4 cup mushrooms, chopped
2 tablespoons chopped black olives
1 tablespoon butter
2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
1/2 cup fresh Spinach leaves, torn
1 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded
2 tablespoons Parmesan or Reggiano cheese, shredded
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
1/2 cup Classico Alfredo Sauce

Preheat oven to 375 degrees (F). Prepare your favorite low carb pizza crust and partially cook it as stated in the recipe for that crust. Let crust cool a bit while preparing the toppings. I use a cake pan with parchment paper on the bottom to spread the crust on and it makes a nice size for 4 slices.

In a skillet, melt butter and add onions. Cook and stir until they are tender. Add the mushrooms and cook a couple of minutes longer. Remove to a paper towel. Add the bacon to the skillet and cook it. If you’re using pre-cooked bacon, you can skip this step. Crumble the sausage into small pieces and brown in the skillet. Break the bacon into smaller pieces.

Spread the Alfredo sauce over the pizza base evenly and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of Italian seasonings. Sprinkle the onions and mushrooms over the sauce, then add the sausage, followed by the bacon pieces, then the bacon bits and olives. Spread the spinach leaves over the top, then cover them with the mozzarella cheese. Sprinkle the Parmesan cheese and pepper flakes, if you are using them, on last.

Bake for 25 to 35 minutes until the cheese is lightly toasted. Let sit for about 5 minutes to set, then cut into 4 slices and serve.

Nutrition Info 1 slice (toppings only)
Calories: 270.8 Fat: 14.7 g Net Carbs: 4.3 g Protein: 14.3 g

Posted on 4/1/2014 2:09 PM