Ask Dear Gaby

Cooking for me is fun.  So I always experiment with my old recipes and try to update them.  This time I experimented with risotto.   I have made risotto the traditional way using Italian aborio rice.  I have also made risotto with other grains such as barley and brown rice.  However, until yesterday, I never made it with Quinoa.  I love Quinoa since it is a complete protein and its tastes wonderful. So I try to incorporate Quinoa in many of my meals. Quinoa is great for vegetarians looking to add some protein to their diet.

Making risotto using Quinoa is quite simple.  Just take your favorite risotto recipe and substitute Quinoa for the aborio rice.   It’s a wonderful twist to risotto and will be a welcomed addition to your meal.

If you do not have a basic risotto recipe, I have included one below using Quinoa instead of aborio rice.

Ingredients:

1. 1/2 onion diced
2. 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter
3. 2 tablespoons olive oil
4. 2 cups Quinoa
5. 1/2 cup white wine
6. 4 1/2- 5 cups hot broth or water
7. 1/3 cup parmigiano cheese
8. 1/4 cup fresh parley chopped
9. chopped 2-3 green onions (optional)
10. Salt and pepper to taste

In a heavy pan, over medium heat,  melt 1 tablespoon of butter in olive oil.  Add the chopped onion to pan.  Cook onion until soft, approximately 2-3 minutes.  Add quinoa to pan, making sure to coat it with the olive oil-butter -onion mixture.  Cook for 2 minutes.  Add white wine.  Stirring frequently.  Add 1/2 cup of hot broth to pan.  Continue to stir frequently.  When the liquid is almost absorbed, add another 1/2 cup of  broth.  Continue to do this until all the broth has been added.  When the last of the broth is almost completely absorbed.  Turn off the heat and add remaining butter and cheese.  Stir until the butter has melted.  Add all the remaining ingredients.  Mix everything together. Cover pan and let sit for 5-10 minutes.  Serves 4-6 people

This recipe is your basic risotto recipe.  Once you learn the technique of making risotto than you can virtually add anything you’d like to it.  Try using dried porcini mushrooms along with other mushrooms to make a wild mushroom risotto. Add the mushrooms about 10 minutes into the cooking process. Soak about 1/4 ounce of dried porcini mushrooms in 1 cup of water. Add the 1 cup of the liquid you soaked the mushrooms to the hot broth.  But reduce  the broth from 5 cups to 4 cups.

I have made a variety of risottos including spinach, asparagus, seafood, meat, etc.  Risotto is also an excellent way to use up your leftovers.

If you haven’t made risotto–give it a try. It is not very difficult and it can be prepared in 20 minutes.

          

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I am so tired of everyone telling me that carbs are bad for you because they make you fat.  Most people I know who are dieting are limiting their carbs or almost completely eliminating them.  They’ve stopped eating pasta, grains, breads, etc.  How can one be so cruel to oneself?  Depriving yourself of these foods is not the way to go about losing weight and keeping it off.

Frankly, I can never stick to a diet that doesn’t allow me to eat what I want.  Which is why  I think many people “go on” different diets and can rarely stick to one.  A diet is NOT something one goes on or off of.  A diet is a way of eating; a way of life.  You do not go on a diet.  A diet is what you eat.  A diet is how you eat– forever.  Yes,  forever.

I love pasta, breads and all carbs so I refuse to eliminate these wonderful foods from my diet. Guess what?  I am NOT fat.  So therefore, it is not the carbs that make us fat.  What makes us fat is really very simple – Its how much we eat,  the way we cook what we eat, and our level of activity which makes us fat and has an impact on our weight and health.

Not a very complex idea. If you consume more calories than you burn off, you will gain weight.  If you burn off more calories than you consume you will lose weight. It is as simple as that.  Pure mathematics.   Approximately 3,000 calories equals one pound.  So to lose 1 pound of weight one must consume 3,000 less calories than one burns off over some period of time.  Ideally one should never try to lose more than 2-3 pounds per week.

The way one cooks has a big impact on diet.  If you fry food all the time, you will get fat.  Frying adds a lot of extra calories.  Instead of frying the food, oven bake it. Spray a little olive oil on the food, place it in the oven  and there you go– you are now oven baking.   You will eliminate a lot of unnecessary calories from your diet without eliminating the flavor.  None of my recipes call for frying.  No need to fry anything. Even with my eggplant parmigiana recipe I do NOT fry the eggplant. Rather I oven bake it. I promise you, you will not miss frying food.

Lastly, your level of activity does impact your weight.  So the more activity you incorporate into your daily life, the more calories you will burn off.

So how can you incorporate the foods you love into your diet and still lose and/or maintain your weight is the real question.  Stop frying foods, increase your level of activity and pay attention to the quantity of food you eat to help assure your calorie intake is not greater than the calories you burn off.  If you do these three simple things you will lose and/or maintain your weight. So forget all these crazy diets – just use your common sense.

If you look at many of the recipes I have included in my blog, it has all kinds of foods in it – YES even carbs. Try some of my recipes out and let me know what you think about them.  Most of all please remember – CARBS DO NOT MAKE YOU FAT.

          

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I love eggplant parmigiana.  It is one of my favorite things to eat.  However, as you know it can be packed with calories:  the eggplant is fried with breadcrumbs and packed with lots of cheeses.  I have taken the classic eggplant parmigiana recipe and got rid of many of the calories.  My version is not fried and breadcrumbs are used only on top.  Although my version has less calories than the original, the flavor is wonderful. You won’t miss a thing except of course, the calories.

Ingredients

• 4 eggplants*cleaned, sliced and drained (see note below)
• 3/4  lbs fresh mozarella (thinly sliced)
• 1/2 cup freshly grated parmigiano cheese
• a large bunch of fresh basil (washed and ready to use)
• 3-4 cups freshly prepared tomato sauce (or store bought)
• 2 tbs italian style bread crumbs
• Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 425° with oven racks  placed in center of oven. Meanwhile, Pat the eggplant slices dry.  Then on lightly oiled non stick baking pans, put the eggplant slices in a single layer in the pans.  Light spray olive oil on the eggplant slices and place in oven for 6-8 minutes.  Take the pans out, flip over the eggplant slices and lightly spray the eggplant with olive oil. Return to oven for another 6-7 minutes.  Remove from oven then cool.

Once cool, take out a medium baking dish (I use pyrex) and lightly spoon some tomato sauce all over bottom of pan to prevent eggplant from sticking when cooking.  Than layer as follows: eggplant slices slightly overlapping , than basil leaves (Make sure there is a leaf on each slice of eggplant) , than mozarella and parmigiana cheeses than a little tomato sauce just enough to cover.  Repeat until  baking dish is full.  You should finish the top with a final layer of eggplant.  On top,  put more sauce, sprinkle some parmigiana cheese, add a few basil leaves and sprinkle some italian style bread crumbs on top. Salt and pepper to taste. (this can be done ahead of time.  Cover and place in refrigerator if not cooking right away).

Preheat oven to 350°. Bake eggplant parmigiana in oven for 30-45 minutes or until sauce is hot and  bubbly. Remove from oven and let it coolk for 15-20 minutes and serve with extra tomato sauce and cheese on the side.  If you serve it right away, it could be liquidy.  If it is, no worries, simply drain it before slicing it.  Mangia!

*Note: Eggplants contain alot of liquid so you should extract as much of the liquid you can before using them in a recipe.First take sliced eggplant, sprinkle salt on the slices and put the slices on a platter with a heavy pot on top in order to extract the liquid.  Let it sit for at least 2 hours. You will be amazed on how much liquid actually is removed from the eggplant. Do not skip this step or your eggplant parmigiana will be watery.

          

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I love meatballs made with ground beef, pork, and veal.  I usually make my meatballs with very lean (95% fat free) sirloin and ground turkey breast meat. However, I have friends who are vegetarian.  So I needed to come up with a vegetarian version.  I ultimately decided on using eggplant since it has such a meaty texture and I substituted that in my recipe for the meat.  Everything else is the same.  However, the meatballs made with eggplant are more fragile, so I cook them separately in a little  tomato sauce and serve over pasta-  These are soooo good, you may even opt to make these even if you are not a vegetarian.

Ingredients

1. 3 eggplants, sliced, oven baked with a little olive oil  at 450°F for 7 minutes on each side.  Then put into a food processor for 1 minute or so to resemble the consistency of a ground meat.
2. Egg Whites (equivalent of 1 egg)
3. 1/3 cup Freshly Grated Parmigiano Cheese
4. 2 cloves of fresh garlic finely minced
5. 2 tbs of Fresh Flat Leaf Italian Parsley chopped
6. 2 tbs of Pignoli Nuts (Pine Nuts)
7. Day Old Bread (about 1/2 baguette per pound of ground meat), crusts removed, dried, and soaked in warm water; Squeeze  the bread to remove the water and leave bread moist.
8. Sea Salt to taste
9. Ground pepper to taste
10. Olive Oil

In a large bowl, combine  the ingredients, 1 through 9,  together,  using your hands.  Form into little meatballs about 2 inches in diameter.   Heat up the olive oil in pan over medium heat.  When the olive oil is hot, add the meatballs, turning occasionally in order to brown on all sides.  Than lower heat, and cook meatballs for about 4 minutes more or until cooked all the way through.   Freeze or serve with your favorite tomato sauce.

Note: You may also consider putting a small cube of mozarella cheese in the middle of the eggplant meatball before putting into the pan to cook. Follow instructions above for cooking.  Serve with tomato sauce.  Great as an appetizer.

          

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I love making my own pizza dough.  I first started making the dough with all purpose flour.  (Feel free to substitute all purpose flour in this recipe).  Being into healthy eating I decided to not use white flour anymore.  Next, I tried using whole wheat flour.  Unfortunately, pizza dough made with whole wheat flour isn’t very exciting and the dough doesn’t have the elasticity it needs.  I guess you can add gluten to it but I decided against that.  Next, I tried using various combinations of all purpose and whole wheat flour–still not great.  This is when I got serious about making pizza and started buying my “00″  (double zero)  flour via the internet.  What an amazing pizza it makes.  Yes, there are several brands of flour but decided on Caputo.  It makes an amazing pizza.

Ingredients

• 18 ounces of warm water ( 100-105°)
• 1 tsp of active dry yeast
• 4 tsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1 2.2 lb bag of “00″ flour (approximately 6 1/4 cups)

I order my Cavuto “00″ flour from www.PennMac.com.  You can usually find “00′ flour in any italian gourmet food shop.  But if you want the best– try Caputo flour– direct from Naples Italy.  “00″ flour is packed with protein (usually around 10-12%) so it is healthy.

          

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Ok- I love my happy hours.  I work hard all day.  After work, I feel like having a drink.  In the summer, I like chilled prosecco.  It is light on the calories and so I don’t feel I am “cheating”.  However, I love my cosmos and other flavorful martinis but they have so many calories.  When in season, I love to make drinks with blueberries in it. I feel like I am getting my antioxidents and still enjoying happy hour.  This drink is lighter than most on calories– but it is great to drink.  Serve some appetizers with this cocktail.

Ingredients

• Fresh blueberries (6-8)
• Fresh Mint Leaves (8-10)
• Simple Syrup  (1 tsp)
• 1/2 lime cut in half
• 3-4 ounces Vodka (Blueberry flavored if you have it)
• Chilled Prosecco (may substitute Soda Water)

Take the first 4 ingredients and muddle in a cocktail shaker.  Add Ice,  vodka and shake.  Strain into a chilled martini glass. Top with prosecco. Garnish with Fresh mint leaves and/or blueberries.  Yummy.

          

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Quinoa is an amazing food.  It is a whole grain that is also a complete protein: meaning that it includes all nine essential amino acids.  Quinoa is the seed of the plant (Chenopodium quinoa) which is related to spinach, chard and beets. Quinoa is great staple for vegetarians who need to increse their protein intake. Quinoa has the amino acid lysine, which is essential for tissue growth and repair.  Cooked quinoa seeds are fluffy and creamy, yet slightly crunchy with a nutty flavor. In appearance it resembles couscous but is much more nuitritious.  I use the light yellow color quinoa in my recipes.  However, it comes in a variety of colors such as orange, pink, red, purple or black.  Quinoa is cooked very much like long grain rice.  You will need to add two parts liquid to one part quinoa.  It takes only about 15 minutes or so to cook. 

What I like most about this particular recipe is that it can all be made in one pot.  That’s right- this recipe is a complete meal in one pot, making cleanup a breeze.  I usually serve this during the week when I don’t have as much time to prepare a nuitritious meal. 

Ingredients:

• 1 cup quinoa
• 2 cups broth or water
• 2-3 cloves fresh minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 8-10 chopped sundried tomatoes
• Shrimp (24) cleaned and deveined
• 12 asparagus tips
• 1/4 cup fresh pesto
• 1/4 cup chopped basil
• toasted pignoli nuts (pine nuts)
• 2 green oinions cleand and finley chopped
• Salt and pepper to taste

Put the olive oil in the pot and heat up over medium heat.  Add the garlic and sundried tomatoes.  cook for 2 minutes.  Add the broth or water and quinoa and cover pot.  When liquid comes to a boil  reduce the heat to low.  Meanwhile, take the pesto and mix in the shrimp and put aside.  After about 10 minutes or so of cooking open up the pot and add the shrimp and asparagus tips on top. Add more liquid if needed.  Cover.   Once the shrimp is done cooking (about 5-8 minutes).  Turn off the heat.  Add salt, pepper, fresh basil, green onions and pignoli nuts. Mix together and serve immediately.    Serves 3-4 people.

          

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Yes- I love making timballos.  They are simple and elegant.  Great to serve for company.  On Sundays, we have a traditional family dinner – Italian Style: we have plenty to eat, lots of wine to drink and enjoy sitting around the dining room table gossiping about anything and everything.  Last Sunday, I was planning on grilling chicken breast with a pesto sauce.  It was just my husband and I, so I didn’t need to do anything special.   However, the night before, we received a phone call from family saying thet were flying into Miami and would love to visit with us.  I realized after we hung up that I didnt have enough chicken to feed everyone for Sunday dinner.  So I decided to make a timballo– Why not?  I have made timballos before using Tuna – why not substitiute the tuna for the chicken with pesto and add sundried tomatoes .  I already had the eggplant which I was going to use to make eggplant parmigiano. Sunday morning, I prepared the filling and baked the sliced eggplant.  I then assembled my timballo and cooked it before my visitors arrived.  This way I could serve it at room temperature.  It was a hit.  My visitors couldnt believe that I whipped up such an elegant meal with very little notice.  The one thing I learned is making a timballo is a technique.  One can stuff it with whatever ingredients they have on hand including leftovers. People love the timballo, it can be prepared and assembled ahead of time making entertaining easy.

For the shell you will need:

• 2 medium eggplants
• Olive Oil
• Sea Salt

For the filling you will need:

• 1 lb chicken breast (diced)
• 1 1lb calamari steaks (cut in 1 inch strips )
• 6 garlic cloves crushed (You can never have too much garlic)
• ¼ cup fresh basil pesto
• Toasted pignoli nuts (Pine nuts)
• Fresh basil enough to line pan
• Chopped sundried tomaotes enough to line pan
• 1/2 lb mozarella cheese
• 1/4 cup freshly grated parmigiano cheese
• 2 tablespoons Olive Oil
• Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
• 3 eggs or substitute egg whites

 You will also need freshly made tomato sauce (or store bought if you must) and some chopped fresh basil to serve on top.

Directions

First slice the eggplant, length wise in slices of ¼ inch.Sprinkle salt on them, weight down the eggplant and let sit for several hours to extract the liquid from the eggplant. Preheat oven to 375°F. Drain. Wipe off the salt, Spray eggplant with a little olive oil and bake  on a non stick sheet in the oven @ 375°F  for approximately 5 minutes on each side. Remove from oven. Let cool.

Let’s prepare the filling: Heat olive oil in sauté pan using medium heat.  Add the garlic. Cook 1 minutes. Add chicken and cook for 2-3 minutes then add calamari, salt and freshly ground pepper.  Cook about 15-20 minutes until cooked thru.  then stir in fresh basil pesto.  Set aside to cool in a glass bowl along with its juices. Once cool, add about half the mozarella cheese (diced), the parmigiano cheese, eggs or egg whites, pignoli nuts and mix with wooden spoon.

While chicken mixture is cooling take a non stick spring form pan lightly coated with live oil, and line eggplant slices along the bottom and let pieces hang over sides.  Preheat the oven to 375ºF if you are going to cook right away. Now add a layer of fresh basil leaves on top of the eggplant.  Than add the layer of chopped sundried tomatoes, and than a layer of mozarella cheese sliced thinly. Than put the chicken filling into spring form pan.  Fold over the tops of the eggplant slices.  You will need to add additional eggplant slices to cover the top completely. At this point you can cover and refrigerate if you are making this ahead.

Place into a preheated over (375ºF ) and bake for 30-40 minutes until completely heated through.  Remove from oven. Let rest 30 minutes.  While the timballo is resting, heat up the tomato sauce. Place a flat serving platter over the spring form pan and invert it onto the platter on it so now the timballo is upside down on the platter.   Gently remove the spring form pan and you should have a nicely looking timballo. Sprinkle fresh chopped basil and serve with the tomato sauce. Serve with a nice Chianti. Mangia.

          

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I love to have breakfast everyday.  It is the most important meal of the day.  I try to  make my omelets, frittatas, etc with egg whites only.  It reduces the fat and calories in this dish making this a very healthy recipe. This has approximately 300 calories per serving and is high in dietary fiber, potassium, selenium, vitamin a, and vitamin c.  It has approximately 18 grams of protein per serving.  I would keep the salt to a minimum.  I like to serve this for brunch with sparkling water served in champagne flutes and topped with a little pomegranate juice.  In this recipe I use eggplant and bell peppers, but you can add what ever combination of fresh veggies that you like such as zucchini, mushrooms, asparagus, broccoli, etc. Also feel free to omit the cheese or replace the Feta cheese with goat cheese or freshly grated parmigiano cheese.

Eggplant and Feta Cheese Frittata

Ingredients:

• 16 ounces egg whites beaten
• 1 teaspoons olive oil
• 1 eggplant (peeled and diced, tossed with 2 teaspoons olive oil and baked in the oven at 450° F for 15 minutes)
• 1 bell pepper diced
• 2 Morning Star farms breakfast sausage patties (optional) crumbled
• 1/4 onion diced
• 4 ounces feta cheese crumbled
• 1 tomato diced
• 3 cloves garlic
• 4 tablespoons assorted fresh herbs such as oregano, parsely,  and/or basil
• Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 450° F.  In a non stick 10 inch skillet, saute the onion, bell pepper and garlic in olive oil until softened (8-10 minutes) over medium heat. Add the  baked eggplant, cook for another 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes, breakfast sausages if using, fete cheese and fresh herbs.  Cook for 3-5 minutes.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Add beaten egg whites cook until eggs start to firm up on the sides.  Then place into preheated oven to finish cooking and eggs have completely set.  (about 5-8 minutes).  Remove from oven.  Let cool for a few minutes before serving.

          

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I love meatballs made with ground beef, pork, and veal.  My mother use to make them exactly that way.  To the meat, she would add day old bread made into bread crumbs,  fresh Italian parsley,  freshly grated cheese , eggs, salt and pepper.  Than she would brown them in olive oil and finish cooking them in her homemade tomato sauce.

Then in an effort to make Italian meatballs healthier and of course avoid the beef, I saw recipes using ground turkey instead of beef, veal and pork.  Not quite the same as the real thing– but they were pretty good.  Now I have taken it a step further to provide more flavor but not the additional calories. Pignoli Nuts (Pine Nuts)  is a very traditional ingredient for Meatballs from Napoli.  They  add incredible flavor and texture to the meatballs.

Ingredients

1. Equal parts of Ground Turkey Breast, Ground Turkey Dark meat, and Lean Ground Sirloin
2. Egg Whites (equivalent of 1 egg) per pound of ground meat
3. 1/4 cup Freshly Grated Parmigiano Cheese per pound of ground meat
4. 2 cloves of fresh garlic finely minced per pound of ground meat
5. 2 tbs of Fresh Flat Leaf Italian Parsley chopped
6. 2 tbs of Pignoli Nuts (Pine Nuts)
7. Day Old Bread (about 1/2 baguette per pound of ground meat), crusts removed, dried, and soaked in warm water; Squeeze  the bread to remove the water and leave bread moist.
8. Sea Salt to taste
9. Ground pepper to taste
10. Olive Oil

In a large bowl, combine  the ingredients, 1 through 9,  together,  using your hands.  Form into little meatballs about 2 inches in diameter.   Heat up the olive oil in pan over medium heat.  When the olive oil is hot, add the meatballs, turning occasionally in order to brown on all sides.  Than lower heat, and cook meatballs for about 10 minutes more or until cooked all the way through.   Freeze or serve with your favorite tomato sauce.

          

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