Thai Peanut Sauce Stir-Fry and Chicken Skewers

I have this insatiable craving for peanut butter, at all times of the day. Does anyone else have this problem? Last year I made this peanut sauce with noodles and chicken, but I wanted to try something new when Nick told me he had invited his mother over for dinner. I had my eye on a couple recipes, but ended up with the following recipe that was a huge success (although, I'll warn you, it was messy!).

Thai Peanut Sauce Stir-Fry and Chicken Skewers
(Adapted from EatRight.org and a recipe from About.com)

Ingredients
(Serves 6)


Peanut Sauce

• 2/3 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce
• 3 cloves garlic, minced (I omitted the garlic, but wanted to include this in case you don't want to omit it!)
  
• 2 tbsp sesame oil
• 1/2 tsp powdered ginger
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
• juice from 2 limes
• 1-1.25 cups water (depending on how thick you want your sauce!)
  

Stir-fry and Skewers

• 4 cups broccoli, chopped
  

• 2 cups sliced yellow pepper

• 2 cups sliced carrots

• 3 cup cooked brown basmati rice (or any type of brown rice or quinoa)

• 2 pounds chicken breast

• 12 wooden skewers (soaked)

• 2 green onions, chopped (I omitted this, because of FODMAPs)
  

Preparation

1. Sauce: In a small saucepan over very low heat, whisk together all ingredients until well combined (add more or less water, depending on how thick you want your sauce). Keep warm.

2. Bake the chicken at 350 degrees (I sprayed mine with some garlic olive oil and added some fresh ground pepper before baking). Bake for about 25 minutes, or until cooked all the way through. Let it cool for about 15 minutes (while preparing the vegetables, below).

3. Add the vegetables to a large saute pan, and coat with about three-fourths of the peanut sauce (the remaining sauce is for the chicken). Saute the veggies for about 15-20 minutes, or until vegetables are crisp-tender (stir on occasion).

4. Cut the cooled chicken into 1-inch cubes. Put the chicken on 12 soaked skewers (each person gets 2 skewers).

5. Add the chicken to a grill pan, brush with remaining peanut sauce and heat on medium (you may end up with leftover peanut sauce, but the leftovers can be used for tomorrow's dinner!). Heat until he chicken is hot and ready to be enjoyed.

6. Grab a plate and add your rice (or other starch), the vegetables, and two skewers on each plate.

Nutrition Facts
(1/6 of meal)

** I forgot to use low sodium soy sauce in this evaluation, so the true sodium content should be lower than this! **

I kid you not, this meal was amazing! Nick gave it a 9.5 out of 10. I will definitely be making this again. The sauce was super easy to make and I used it on pasta with chicken the next night. If you want to decrease the calories in this meal you could skip the second skewer, or stick to only 1/4 cup brown rice, instead of 1/2 cup.


QUESTION: Do you crave peanut butter like I do? What's your favorite way to use peanut sauce? Do you have another favorite sauce that you use for multiple types of meals?

Broccoli Brownies (Gluten Free)

We had an event at work a couple weeks ago and I had a dietetic intern with me who at one point mentioned broccoli brownies. Obviously I was curious and I requested that she bring some in the following week (she's an intern, I can boss her around. haha, jk). She was a pretty fantastic intern. Low and behold the following weekend she walked in with a plate full of broccoli brownies! She admitted they didn't turn out quite as delicious as she had hoped, and after one bite I had to agree. While they were tasty, I could see whole chunks of broccoli in them and it was sort of a turn off. I actually gave them out to the team members and they loved them (or at least that's what they told me). I decided I wanted to try my own version of a broccoli brownie so I started searching online and found this one that was adapted from Jessica Seinfeld's Deceptively Delicious cookbook. I was happy to see that it called for broccoli puree, rather than broccoli chunks, so I made some modifications and came up with this recipe;

Broccoli Brownies
(Makes 12)

Ingredients

Nonstick cooking spray
4 ounces dark chocolate squares, such as Lindt (60-80%)
1.25-1.5 cups broccoli puree (steam the broccoli then puree in a food processor or Magic Bullet)
1/4 cup Splenda brown sugar (or 1/2 cup real brown sugar)
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 T butter
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large egg whites
3/4 cup oat flour (or brown rice flour)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Coat an 8x8 inch pan with coking spray.

2. Melt the chocolate in a saucepan on the stove, or in the microwave.

3. In a large bowl combine melted chocolate, broccoli puree, brown sugar, cocoa powder, butter and vanilla, and stir until smooth.

4. Add the egg whites, mix again. Add the flour, salt, and baking powder and mix again, until smooth and blended.

5. Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 20-30 minutes (depending on your oven....it took my oven 20 minutes to bake!).


ENJOY

NOTE: They taste best when they are warm, and even better with a dollop of whipped cream or vanilla frozen yogurt!




I only made a half batch the first time I made these, just in case they didn't turn out. Here is the batter.

I was licking the spoon and the bowl like a mad women, which I took as a good sign that they were going to be delicious!

And delicious they were.

Chewy and moist. And, a good source of fiber. Take that fiber companies! And if I wanted to add fake fiber, I could, but this is all real fiber from oats and broccoli. I love it.

A "C-" is still passing ;)

QUESTION: What's the craziest fat replacement you have used in a baked good? My other favorites are applesauce and pumpkin.

Shepherd's Pie, With Sweet Potato Topping (FODMAPs Friendly)

Shepherd's pie is defined as " A meat pie baked in a crust of mashed potatoes". This recipe differs from a "true" shepherd's pie because the potatoes aren't mashed, but whatever, this is 2012, I can make a Shepherd's pie with potato slices if I want! :)

Sweet Potato Shepherd's Pie
(Adapted from my low FODMAPs booklet)

Serves 6
Total time: 1 hour and 10 minutes


Ingredients

4 T garlic infused extra virgin olive oil
2 medium carrots, finely diced
1 medium zucchini, grated
1.5 pounds extra-lean ground beef (I used 96% lean)
1 bay leaf
3 T bunch fresh thyme, finely chopped
1 large tomato, chopped
2 cups tomato paste
1 T Worcestershire sauce
Dash of pepper
2 T chopped parsley

1 large eggplant, cut lengthwise into thin slices
1 yellow pepper, cut into strips

Potato Topping

1 sweet potato, thinly sliced
1 t extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste


Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 425. Heat 3 T garlic olive oil in a large pan and add carrot and zucchini. Cook for 2 minutes.

2. Add ground beef, bay leaf, and thyme. Cook for about 8-10 minutes (or until beef is browned).

3. Add tomato, Worcestershire, and tomato paste and cook, uncovered, for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

4. Remove from heat, and add parsley and pepper to taste.

5. In a separate pan, heat the remaining 1 T garlic olive oil and cook eggplant and yellow pepper until softened (eggplant will turn golden brown).

6. Next, place the sweet potato slices on a baking pan and lightly spread with the 1 t extra virgin olive oil. Bake the sliced potato in the oven for 20 minutes.

7. Assemble the pie; layer of the meat combination, next the eggplant, then the meat combination, then the yellow pepper, and the last layer will be the remaining meat combination, then top with the cooked sweet potato slices.

8. Cook for 20-25 minutes, or until the inside is nice and bubbly.


This is what the pie looks like before topping with potatoes.


This is what it looks like after topping with potatoes.


NUTRITION FACTS
(for 1/6 of the pie)

Even though I was FULL after eating one serving of this, I wanted more because it was SO GOOD! I actually added zero salt to this recipe and as you can see above the sodium was pretty low. That being said, Nick complained that it wasn't salty enough. If you want to add some salt, be my guest, but personally I didn't think it needed it. Nick still loved the dish, and ate it without adding more salt :)

QUESTION: Have you ever made a Shepherd's pie? Do you find that you like salt more or less than your significant other?

Medicine In Your Spice Cabinet

Nick and I have learned a hard lesson about cabinets; do NOT paint them! Yeah, painting cabinets is a labor-intensive job and most cabinets are better off without paint. So, overall our cabinet project wasn't the biggest success, but I did manage to better organize what was inside our cabinets and drawers after taking everything out and putting everything back in. For example, my spices used to be all over the place, but now I have this nifty little spice rack that pulls out and drops down. They are all placed in alphabetical order (for now) making it easier to find the spice I need.




And speaking of spices, today I am going to discuss some of the amazing health benefits that two of my favorite spices provide. Starting with my favorite (ironically), garlic.

Garlic

What a great picture, right? I wish I could say I took it myself, but it is from this article in the New York Times. This is a garlic bulb, and the individual sections are each garlic cloves (in case you didn't know the difference).

I know you may be wondering why am I blogging about something I can't eat. Even though I can't eat garlic, I still love it and try to enjoy the flavor by using my garlic infused oil (which, by the way, probably provides very minimal health benefits). Nick, my lovely Italian Stallion, can eat three garlic cloves in a sitting (or four). After watching Nick eat a dish with four cloves of garlic in it the other day, I decided to start adding chopped garlic cloves to many of the dishes I make (I chop the garlic and then add it to the dish after I have cooked the dish, so it really just adds more flavor to Nick's portion but doesn't distribute throughout the dish to my part of the dish. So sad.). Here are some reasons to eat more garlic;

• Garlic has anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-clotting properties.

• Allicin is the active ingredient in garlic that provides the anti-inflammatory and anti-clotting properties, and it tends to be destroyed by heat.

• While cooking garlic may destroy most of garlic's beneficial properties, the antioxidant properties are probably not effected by cooking (yeah!). The most notable antioxidants found in garlic are vitamin C and selenium.

• You are supposed to crush garlic before consuming it, and let it sit for about 15 minutes to help release some of garlic's healthy compounds

• There are sulfur-containing molecules in garlic (such as Allicin) that produce hydrogen sulfide gas, which may help expand blood vessels and thus lower blood pressure.
  

• Studies suggest that you need about 2-5 grams of garlic per day in order to get any benefits (1 clove is about 1 gram).

• Read more here and here
  

Wondering what type of recipe calls for raw garlic? Well, there's Original hummus, Black Olive Hummus, and garlic broccoli. Do you know any others?

Turmeric

Turmeric is an ancient spice that is found in curry dishes and is a kitchen staple in India. Turmeric is actually a root (like ginger) but because it's so difficult to grind you almost always find it already ground. I love turmeric, but it's one of those very distinct spices with which you can easily ruin a great dish. It's a great flavor, when used correctly. I love how it "stains" any dish it comes in contact with yellow! I once heard that yellow dye is made with turmeric, can anyone second that statement? Here are some of turmeric's benefits;

• Curcumin, a compound found in turmeric, may inhibit the cell enzymes that contribute to inflammation (inflammation can cause chronic diseases such as cancer and arthritis).

• Studies show that turmeric may aid in the prevention of acne, allergies, Alzheimer's, arthritis, asthma, cancer, cholesterol problems, inflammatory bowel disease, and type 2 diabetes (to name only a few).

• Try to get 1/2 - 1 teaspoon per day, if you can, and keep it in the fridge to extend shelf-life.

• If you use curry in your cooking you are likely getting some turmeric, but studies suggest it's not enough. Some curry blends have more turmeric than others. It's best to stick with plain turmeric, or just add extra turmeric to your curry blends.
  

Try some of these recipes; Indian-Style Rice with Cashews, Raisins and Turmeric, Pork and Carrot Curry, AllRecipes' 20 Best Turmeric Recipes, or you could do what I do and add it to simple egg dishes, homemade soups and stews, or cooked vegetables! Also try adding turmeric to;

QUESTION: What is your favorite dish with garlic and/or turmeric?

Some other great medicinal spices include cinnamon, ginger, and coriander, just to name a few! Happy Monday everyone :)