All posts by Rene Averett

Main Dish, Pet Food, Recipes, Seafood

Salmon Cakes for All

Maybe not quite all, but for those who count, namely the birthday boy, PK and me. By birthday boy, I mean Timmy Cat, who just turned nine years old. I wanted to celebrate with a special salmon cake for the cats, but only two of the four have any interest in people food. Timmy is one who never turns down a good meal and Milo enjoys most anything I eat, including spicy food. Hooligan may have eaten only a bite, but he definitely enjoyed the broth I poached the salmon in. So, for this special meal, I bought a pound of salmon and poached it in the oven until just cooked – about 20 minutes (350 F oven) in a pan with about a half inch of water in it. You can used canned salmon, but I prefer the taste of freshly cooked fish.

Are they appreciated? Timmy and Milo enjoy their salmon cakes. They may need a little help getting started so cut it in half or quarters to make it easier. Our dog, Flynn, also enjoyed a little of cake even though he isn’t a fish-lover. Must have been the cheese…

Like many cat parents, I thought a special treat on the cat’s birthday would be great and although there are lots of goodies at the pet store for dogs, there isn’t anything special for cats. I suppose it’s because cats aren’t into biscuits, cakes and cookies so much.   So I went hunting on the web and found a recipe for tuna cake, which can be easily made with salmon. The simple recipe first is the one for the cats, then on to the one for people. Actually the cat one is perfectly edible by people, just not as tasty as the people recipe.  My cats prefer bacon to shrimp, so I used bits of bacon to top it. You can also spread a little mayonnaise over the top as an icing if your cats like it.

Salmon Cakes for Felines

Ingredients:

1 Egg
3/4 cup Salmon
2 tbs Flour
4 tbs shredded or grated Cheese
Baby Shrimp or pieces of Bacon, to garnish
Sprigs of fresh Cat Nip and/or Cat Mint for garnish

Preheat oven to 350˚F.

Prepare cupcake tin or 4 silicone cupcake molds by lightly spraying with cooking spray.

z-kitty-cakes
Kitty birthday cakes – pre-bake and after. Yum…

Break up salmon in a medium bowl, checking for bones as you go. Lightly beat egg in a separate bowl, then combine with tuna. Add in flour and cheese. Stir to combine.

Makes 4 small cakes.

Scoop batter into cupcake tin or silicone cups. Bake for 15 minutes. Allow to cool completely before serving.

Salmon Cakes with Dill Sauce

Yes, this is the one for the humans. This recipe was originally for Carab Cakes and is adapted from EatingWell.com.  I have adjusted it to a low carb version. The main changes are to replace the bread for the bread crumbs with a low carb bread and the original recipe called for yogurt in the dill sauce, which I’ve replaced with lower carb sour cream. Use the flax meal sandwich roll recipe to make the bread (you can omit the oat fiber, buttermilk and onion flakes for this). Or you can buy low carb bread and use two slices of that. or you can just use whole wheat bread if you aren’t concerned about the 20 net carbs in it, which breaks down to about 4.5 additional carbs per serving.

I used a small food processor to chop the onions and the celery. Just be sure to trim off the pithy parts and the strings on the celery. Unfortunately, the blades just slide right over the parsley and dill. Chop those with a knife.

For the salmon cakes:

3 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 stalk celery, finely diced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
15 ounces canned salmon, drained, or 1 1/2 cups cooked salmon
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon Old Bay spice or other seafood spice
1 1/2 cup flax bread rolls (2 rolls), processed to crumbs
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

For the Dill Sauce
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons sour cream
2 green onions (scallions), thinly sliced
1 to 2 tablespoon lemon juice, about 1/2 a lemon
1 to 2 tablespoon finely chopped fresh dill*
Freshly ground pepper, to taste

z-salmon-cakes01
Chopped ingredients for the sauce and the cakes. From the top clockwise, chopped celery, parsley, onions, and dill. On the right, sliced green onions for the sauce.

Prepare Creamy Dill Sauce first and put in the fridge to allow the flavors to chill and blend together.

Combine mayonnaise, sour cream, chopped onions, lemon juice, dill and pepper in a small bowl and mix well. Taste and adjust lemon juice, dill and pepper to your preference. I used about 1 tablespoons of lemon juice and dill in my sauce.

• You can use dried dill if fresh isn’t available. Or you can substitute parsley, but then it isn’t a dill sauce.

Prepare the salmon cakes

Preheat oven to 450°F.

Coat a baking sheet with cooking spray or use a silicone mat and lightly coat with cooking spray.

Heat 1 1/2 teaspoons oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and celery; cook, stirring, until softened, about 3 minutes. Stir in parsley; remove from the heat.

Break the bread into pieces and put in your food processor. Pulse until it is reduced to fine crumbs. Set aside.

Place salmon in a medium bowl. Flake apart with a fork; remove any bones and skin. Add egg and mustard; mix well. Add the onion mixture, breadcrumbs and seasonings; mix well. Shape the mixture into 8 patties, about 2 1/2 inches wide.

Heat remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons oil in the pan over medium heat. Add 4 patties and cook until the undersides are golden, 2 to 3 minutes. Using a wide spatula, turn slide them onto the prepared baking sheet, uncooked side up. Repeat with the remaining patties.

Bake the salmon cakes until golden on top and heated through, 15 to 20 minutes. Serve with dill sauce. Elegant and delicious!

Makes 8 – 2 1/2 inch cakes, two cakes to a serving, so makes 4 servings.

Nutrition Info Per serving for Dill Sauce
Calories: 209.3 Fat: 22.8 g Net Carbs: .9 g Protein: .5 g

Nutrition Info Per serving for Salmon Cakes
Calories: 227.6 Fat: 11.4 Net Carbs: 2.7 g Protein: 25.6 g

Tip: If you’re like me, you buy a bunch of fresh parsley or fresh dill, make one thing and throw out the icky green sludge a couple of weeks later. Plan to make a pesto with the parsley or use it on plates as garnish. Failing that, dry it. Same thing with the dill. I use an inexpensive dehydrator, but you can put your parsley or dill on cheese cloth and set it in a sunny spot to dry out. Once dry, put it in a plastic bag or a jar and use whenever you need it.

When preparing the salmon cake recipe, you can mix it up earlier in the day, stopping before shaping into patties, cover and refrigerate until 40 minutes before you want to serve them. Then shape them and cook as instructed. The dill sauce can also be made in advance. You can actually go through the shaping and putting on a baking sheet step, but if your ‘fridge is like mine, there’s no place for a baking sheet in it.

I’m pretty confident this salmon cake recipe will work equally well with tuna, crab and shrimp. As I try them out, I’ll let you know. Or if you try them before I do, let me know. Deal?

POSTED BY RENE AVERETT AT 9/7/2013 11:33 AM

Condiments and Sauces, Curds and Jellies, Jams, Recipes

Fruit of the Desert – Prickly Pear

When I was a kid, we used to travel across the southwest on vacation every other summer. Among the stop points along the way in many states was a Stuckey’s Store. They had gas, food, souvenirs, turquoise jewelry and cactus candy. In spite of having looked at it many times, I never once tried the cactus candy. So now, when presented with a few cactus pears from the volunteer cactus in my yard, I thought I would make cactus marmalade before tackling a candy.  PK had a recipe her mother used to make prickly pear orange marmalade. It sounded good.

Learn From My Mistakes

Well, the first try didn’t go too smoothly. I picked the pears carefully using tongs and a big bowl, brought them in and used tongs to hold the pear while I burned the thorns off. I even thought that prickly pears should be purple, but they felt a little soft to the touch, so I cut them up, as one preparation instruction said I could and popped them into the food processor to reduce them to pulp and juice. Except there was very little juice at the end. I put them on the stove and boiled them with water, but the result was about 1/4 cup of ugly brown liquid that had no flavor. The pears need to change color, which in turn meant getting ripe. Not one of the articles I read on the prickly pears stated that they should be completely purple or deep orange or whatever color they change to from green. Mine were on the plant so long that I thought they must not change colors. Since it was turning to winter and they still hadn’t turned but were shriveling up slightly, I thought they must not change colors. Scratch the first attempt.

Success

I started checking the markets and found one that had some of the pears in and they were half purple already. I let them sit about a week in a brown paper bag until they were completely purple and soft. The purchased ones already had the thorns burned off, but I still used precautions in handling them, in case there were tiny hair-thin stickers on them. You should use gloves when handling them or use a fork to hold them while cutting. To prepare, cut the ends off each end of the pear, then run a knife from one end to the other cutting under the skin. You can then carefully peel it back to reveal the pear inside.

This attempt came out pretty good. I thought the oranges made it bitter when I tasted the jam while cooking and I threw more sugar substitute at it. But once I tasted it after it was cooled down, using a teaspoon or so in with a cup of vanilla yogurt and whipped cream, I didn’t notice the bitterness, so perhaps the oranges need time to absorb the sweetness into the skins and pithy part. I also thought a thin skinned orange, rather than a navel orange, might be better so may try it with the little cuties oranges.

Now to the recipe. This can be used to make enough for canning, but I don’t include any canning instructions. This recipe makes about three 8 oz. jars of marmalade. You can double it to make more. You can also buy the prickly pears, peel them. reduce them to a puree, then put them in a plastic bag and freeze it to use later. Just don’t forget you have it in the freezer, as I sometimes forget things, and they end up being tossed out because they are found after three years. This recipe is adapted by me for low carb and I added a little ground clove to it. I used LC Foods Cranberry Sauce Mix to thicken it. You can just use a sugar substitute. The amount is in parentheses. If you don’t care about it being low carb, feel free to use sugar.  It will take two cups or more. One recipe suggested one cup of sugar per one cup of fruit mix. I think that’s too sweet.

Toni’s Prickly Pear Orange Marmalade

2 medium Navel Oranges, skin on
8 Cactus Fruits
Juice from 1 Orange strained
1/2 cup LC Foods Cranberry Jam mix or sugar substitute (1 cup sugar)
20 drops liquid Sucralose (1 cup sugar)
1 Lemon, juiced
1 teaspoon ground Clove

Cut off ends of the oranges, then slice very thinly, tossing away any seeds. Place in a bowl with 2 cups of cold water and allow to stand for at least 3 hours. (I soaked them overnight.) Pour orange water into a bowl, then put orange slices in a food processor to chop into smaller pieces.

Orange slices soaking in water.

Cut off ends of cactus fruit, then peel. Puree in a food processor then push through a small colander or sieve to get rid of the seeds. Combine with the orange juice and orange slices with orange water in a heavy sauce pan and bring slowly to a boil.

 

Prickly pear puree with froth on the top. Look at the beautiful color of this marmalade!

Turn heat to high and boil quickly for 5 minutes, skimming off any froth that rises to the surface.  Stir in the sugar, clove and lemon juice. Bring up to a boil again, lower the temperature to a medium heat and continue boiling and skimming until mixture thickens to almost a jam consistency. Taste to make sure it is sweet enough. Add more sugar if necessary. It will thicken more as it cools.

Prepare jars by and lids by running  them through your dishwasher to clean and heat the jars. Spoon marmalade into jars, leaving 1/2 inch at the top for the seal.

Prickly pear marmalade in the pot and…
… a bit of it on a scone. Yum!

 

 

 

 

 

Makes about three jars.

Nutrition Info per tablespoon of jam:
Calories: 13  Fat: .1 g  Net Carbs: 2.9 g  Protein: .2 g

POSTED BY RENE AVERETT AT 10/13/2013

Condiments and Sauces, Italian Inspired Recipes, Recipes

Celebrate spring with a Spring Time Pasta

Spring has arrived… at least in my part of the world. It’s a lovely spring day with trees budding out, some almost in full leaf and the temperatures are sweater weather. Other places… well, some of you are still digging out of snow. Down under, folks are getting ready for fall, so it might well be pretty warm. So some of these vegetables in this gorgeous spring pasta may not be available, so make it with whatever you can muster up. It will still be delicious.

The idea with a Pasta Primavera (Spring Pasta) is to use vegetables that you can get fresh at the market so that it’s bursting with goodness and flavor. For the pasta part, I used Dreamfield pasta, which claims to have 5 effective net carbs per serving.  Generally, I eat about half a serving because it’s quite a lot of pasta. Recently I have heard that this claim is not true and the pasta is no lower carb’d than any other one.  I have also heard some people say that Dreamfield does affect their glycemic count, so if that is an issue, you can substitute in spaghetti squash or even shredded or thinly sliced zucchini or omit it altogether.  All I can say is that I have used it and it didn’t seem to slow my weight loss but this kind of thing will vary from person to person, so to be safe, use one of the other alternatives.  My recipe is based on one from Chef John at AllRecipes.com, but with a few modifications.

This recipe does use a pesto sauce. You can use a purchased one or make your own fresh. I’ve included the pesto recipe I created for this dish.

Spring Time Pasta
aka Pasta Primavera

2 cups Zucchini, sliced
1 cup Broccoli, fresh chopped or diced
6 spears fresh Asparagus, sliced
1 cup Leeks, sliced both white and green
3 tablespoons Green Onions, finely sliced
2 cups Brussels sprouts, shredded or sliced
1 tablespoon Garlic, minced
1/2 cup Mushrooms, sliced and cut into pieces
1 cup Chicken Broth or bullion
1 tablespoon Olive oil
1/2 cup Parmesan Cheese, shredded

Prepare all vegetables. Cut asparagus on the diagonal to expose more surface.

Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat, then add garlic, onions and leeks and sauté until the onion is translucent. Add mushrooms, broccoli and Brussels sprouts. Cook and stir for about five minutes. Add chicken broth and the rest of the vegetables. Cook for another 10 minutes.

Prepare enough Dreamfield pasta (I used angel hair spaghetti) to serve however many are eating at the meal. Measurement and cooking instructions are on the spaghetti box.

Per serving, mix 1 cup pasta and 1 cup vegetables together and add 1 tablespoon pesto sauce. (Recipe below.) Toss together and let sit about five minutes, then toss again before serving.

Nutrition Info: (for vegetable mix only – pasta is not included):
Calories:46 Fat: 0.2 Net Carbs: 6.6 g Protein: 2.9 g

Spinach Asparagus Pesto

This pesto can be made with basil instead of spinach, which is the usual for pesto, but I had spinach on hand and lots of fresh asparagus, so I thought, why not? It is very yummy and worth the little bit of effort to make, especially if you have a food processor. You can put any extra in a jar in the refrigerator to be used later. Just try to use it within a week or two. In addition to being a great sauce for the vegetable dish above, it is also wonderful on fish, chicken or pork.

2 cups Baby Spinach, fresh,, packed
1/2 cup Parsley
4 spears Asparagus, fresh – parboiled
1/3 to 1/2 cup Olive Oil
3 cloves Garlic,
1/4 cup Pine Nuts
1 teaspoon ground Oregano
1 teaspoon fresh or ground Basil
Salt, dash
Black Pepper

Preheat oven or toaster oven to 325 degrees. Spray a pie tin or something similar with cooking spray. Spread the pine nuts over them to toast. Toast about four minutes, then stir or shake them around and cook another two or three minutes.

Par-boil 4 spears of asparagus – bring water to a boil and put the asparagus in for about two minutes. Cut into pieces and put in your food processor along with the rest of the ingredients. Process until all the ingredients are finely chopped and blended. You will probably have to use a spatula to mix some down into the lower area where the blade is and process again. If the pesto seems a bit dry, add another tablespoon of olive oil.

Makes about 10 one tablespoon servings

Nutrition Info per tablespoon:
Calories: 92.3 Fat: 9.6 g Net Carbs: 1 g Protein: 1 g

POSTED BY RENE AVERETT AT 3/20/2014

Condiments and Sauces, Recipes

Irish Horsey Sauce Highlights Flavor

So, my bowl in the picture is a little messy, but we all know I would never make it on Iron Chef! This is a quick Horseradish sauce that I whipped up to go with my Corned Beef Quesadillas. I used creamed horseradish, mixed with mayonnaise and just a bit of Irish green from the parsley. I didn’t have any fresh parsley on hand, so used dried parsley, crumbled into the mix. It makes about 2 to 4 servings, depending on how crazy you are about horseradish.

Irish Horsey Sauce

Add a bit of parsley to bring a touch of green to this easy to make horseradish mayonnaise sauce that works well with meat and with fish.

1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/2 tablespoon horseradish
1 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley
1/4 teaspoon white pepper

In a small bowl, mix all ingredients together. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use. Makes 4 one tablespoon servings.

Nutrition Info:
Calories: 92 Fat: 10 g Net Carbs: 0.4 g Protein: 0.2 g

POSTED BY RENE AVERETT AT 3/14/2014 12:15 PM

Drinks, Recipes

O’Kelly’s Slim Irish Cream

Generally speaking, Irish Cream is not a low calorie or low carb drink, but it can be. You do need to make it yourself though. There are many Irish Cream recipes available and almost all of them call for sweetened condensed milk. While you can buy low carb sweetened condensed milk, you can also make your own. But the recipe I’ve adapted ever so slightly is from Mercy at Food.com, partially because it doesn’t require sweetened condensed milk and you are essentially making a sweetened cream. I called it O’Kelly’s in honor of my roomie’s Irish heritage.

Once you have the Irish Cream made, then try the Irish Cream Cheesecake made with it. Truly a great way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day!

This recipe makes over 750 ml — I got about 850 ml, so prepare a bottle that can hold at least 750 ml and maybe a small jar for the extra. You will also need a funnel.

O’Kelly’s Slim Irish Cream

3 cups heavy cream
1 2/3 cups Irish whiskey
( I used Bushmill’s, but you don’t need an expensive whiskey, just an Irish one)
1 teaspoon instant Espresso coffee
2 tablespoons sugar free chocolate syrup (Hershey’s or Walden Farms)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 cup Ideal sugar substitute or other suger alcohol crystal
24 drops of liquid sucralose

Mix coffee powders with sugar alcohol crystals. Add a little whiskey and the chocolate syrup then stir to make a paste. This will dissolve easier when added to the recipe.

Place cream in a heavy pan and cook on very low heat until it is reduced to about 2 1/2 cups, about 30 minutes. If you want it a little thicker, cook until it is the consistency you prefer.
Cool until the cream is about room temperature.

Blend whiskey, liquid sucralose, coffee paste, and extracts and pour into a blender with the cooled cream and blend until smooth.

Makes about 25 1 oz servings

This will keep 2 to 3 weeks in the refrigerator. Shake well before pouring.

You can make this using a sugar substitute such as Splenda but the carbohydrates are higher due to the filler that is used to hold the sucralose. I use EZ-Sweet liquid sucralose, which you can purchase from Netrition or Amazon. I show the carb counts using the different chocolate syrups and using Splenda for all of the sugar replacement.

Nutrition Information:

1 oz serving With Hershey’s Sugar Free Chocolate Syrup
Calories: 89.5 Net Carbs: .6 g Fat: 5.3 g Protein: .3 g

1 oz serving With Walden Farm’s Sugar Free Chocolate Syrup
Calories: 88.9 Net Carbs: .4 g Fat: 5.3 g Protein: .3 g

1 oz serving With 1 cup Splenda & Hershey’s syrup
Calories:89.5 Net Carbs: 2.6 g Fat: 5.3 g Protein: .3 g

POSTED BY RENE AVERETT AT 3/14/2013 1:06 PM