"Arby's" curly fries recipe (only healthy and not curly!)

The other day I decided to pull up my potato plants and dig out all the potatoes.  I ended up with a bunch of smallish red potatoes and wanted to use them up in something tasty.  I was going to do basic roasted potato quarters but instead started thinking about the deliciousness that are Arby's curly fries.  Mmmm.  Since I'm trying to eat healthier, I knew that I wouldn't be deep frying these, so I was looking for a healthier knock-off.  And lo and behold, I found one.  I don't have a fancy curly fry cutter so I decided to use my crinkle cutter instead.  But I discovered that since my potatoes were so small I was risking serious injury by using that thing. I instead decided to just slice them into thin rounds.

Ingredients

1-3/4 teaspoons salt, divided

4 russet potatoes (8 ounces each; 2 pounds total), peeled (I used baby red)

Olive oil spray

2-1/2 tablespoons egg substitute

1-1/2 tablespoons unbleached or all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons paprika (I used sweet Hungarian)

1/4 teaspoon cayenne

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon onion powder

Directions

Bring a large pot of water to a boil over high heat. Add 1 teaspoon salt.

Meanwhile, with a twin curl cutter, cut 7 ounces of potato curls, about 2 cups. (As I said, I just sliced mine instead.) Preheat the oven to 450°F. Lightly mist a small nonstick baking sheet with oil spray. Set aside.

Transfer the potato curls to the boiling water. Cook for exactly 3 minutes but no longer or they will break. Drain in a colander. Set aside for about 5 minutes to cool.

Meanwhile, in a large mixing bowl, combine the egg substitute, flour, paprika, cayenne, garlic powder, onion powder, and the remaining 3 4 teaspoon salt. With a fork, mix until well blended. Now, at this point, the mix will look very thick and pasty. At first I was seriously doubting the recipe and wanted to add water to thin it out. Don't. Just keep going!

Add the potatoes. Toss them with your fingers until they are coated with the seasoning mixture.

Here's what mine looked like at this point.

Transfer, allowing any excess seasoning mixture to drip off, to the reserved baking sheet. Arrange the potatoes, not touching, in a single layer. Lightly mist with oil spray. Bake for 18 to 24 minutes, turning them about halfway through.  When you turn them, respray with the oil spray.  Cook until crisp and cooked through.  Sprinkle on some more salt to your preference.  Serve with ketchup.

Finished product!

 These turned out quite tasty.  I think if I do this again I may double the coating and definitely add even more spices to it.

Oven Fried Zucchini Chips

My bounty of zucchini continues to grow as I continue to try to come up with different ways to use it.  Last night I made some mushroom won tons from my Cooking Light book that came out tasting OK, but not great - especially considering the effort.  The good thing is that the won ton recipe suggested dipping them in marinara sauce, which I also thought would be perfect for this oven fried zucchini chip recipe I found.  So, two birds, one stone.  My only challenge was that Cooking Light called for "fat free marinara sauce."  OK, I thought, how hard could that be?  It's red tomato sauce, not alfredo.  But every single brand had fat in it...except one.  So that's the one I bought.  And it tasted just like any other marinara sauce, so I didn't even miss the fat.  Anyway, on to the recipe.  

Ingredients

2 medium zucchini, cut crosswise, on a slight bias, to 1/4 inch thickness  (my zucchini was so huge, I only needed one)

2 eggs, beaten  (I used about a half cup of Egg Beaters)

1 cup flour

1 cup plain bread crumbs (I used Italian, since my plain bread crumbs were so old)

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese  (I only used about 1/4 cup, cuz I'm trying to be healthy and all)

2 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp garlic powder

salt and pepper

cooking spray (I use Canola)
fat free marinara sauce for dipping

Place the zucchini rounds in a single layer on a paper towel. Lightly sprinkle the zucchini with salt, probably no more than 3/4 tsp. Let this sit for about 20 minutes then dab the tops of the zucchini with paper towels to absorb moisture.

This was all one zucchini!

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Place a wire rack on top of a foil lined baking sheet and spray the rack with cooking spray. Really get that sucker nice and oiled, otherwise your zucchini will stick.

Set up your breading station as follows: on one plate, season the flour with 1 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp pepper, mixing it well; next to it, have a shallow bowl with your beaten eggs; and in a second shallow dish, mix together the bread crumbs, Parmesan, garlic powder, oregano, and red pepper flakes. Dip the zucchini rounds, a few at a time in the flour making sure to shake off extra flour. Follow this up by dipping the flour coated zucchini into the eggs then tossing them around in the bread crumb mixture. 

Line up the breaded zucchini on the wire rack.Lightly spray the tops of the breaded zucchini with the cooking spray and bake for a total of 20-25 minutes, flipping them over half way through cooking time. Be careful when you flip.  A few of mine tried to stick. A spatula helped get them up. When you flip them, spray the other side with cooking spray.  Serve with the marinara sauce (or if you don't care about being healthy, ranch dressing!)

These turned out quite good.  Next time I may try them with panko instead of regular bread crumbs.

You can see the ones toward the bottom where the breading came off a little when I tried flipping without a spatula.

Ramen Shrimp Pouches (but not really)

I love the show Good Eats.  I think Alton Brown does a fantastic job breaking down recipes, ingredients, and kitchen tools.  I feel like it's as much of a science show as a cooking show.  I'm bummed that he won't be making any new episodes. I was quite excited that I got to meet him last fall, when he came to Raleigh for a book signing.

Anyway, in one episode he cooks things entirely in pouches. Some were cooked in parchment paper (en papillote, if you want to get all French about it) and some in aluminum foil.   In this episode he made shrimp ramen pouches, and I knew I wanted to try it.  It seemed like a super easy recipe.  Also, in college, despite my best efforts I never met a ramen soup that didn't make me sick to my stomach.  I wanted to see if it was all due to those sodium laden flavor packets or if it was the noodles themselves I didn't like.

The first time I made the recipe, I made the mistake of reading some reviews of people who said there was too much liquid, so I made a version with much less liquid.  The end result?  There wasn't enough to cook all the ramen noodles through, so a few were crunchy. Also, one of my double wrapped foil packets leaked.  Boo.  So this time, I wanted to remake the recipe but use more liquid and also use a different vessel.  Earlier this year I bought some white corningware ramekin-like mugs for making French onion soup, so I figured they would be perfect.  I also changed up Alton's recipe to include more veggies because hey, I have squash to use up!  I also downsized to accommodate there just being two of us eating this.

Ingredients

1 package Ramen noodles (throw away the flavor packet)

1/2 cup mushrooms, chopped
12 small raw shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
1/8 cup sliced scallions
1/4 cup zucchini, sliced into thin strips
1/8 cup bell peppers, sliced into thin strips
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 cups vegetable broth (I used fat free)
1/2 cup mirin (found at an Asian food store)
1/4 cup soy sauce (I used reduced sodium and would recommend this, otherwise it can be too salty)
4 teaspoons sesame oil 

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Break ramen noodles in half.  Break them into a few more chunks and divide evenly into your cooking vessels. I used 2 corningware French onion soup ramekins.

Here's the dry ramen at the bottom of the mug.

Chop up all your veggies.  You can really add whatever you like and want.  Just remember to cut things up into fairly small pieces so they cook through.

 I had green and red onion, mushrooms, zucchini, all kinds of bell pepper, and a few green beans from my garden.

Stack the following ingredients on top of noodles in each of the bowls, in this order: mushrooms, shrimp, onions, scallions, red pepper flakes, and then any other veggies.

In small bowl, combine vegetable broth, mirin, soy sauce, and sesame oil. Distribute liquid evenly among bowls. Cover the bowls with foil and place them in a baking dish they'll both fit in (in case you have any liquid spillover). Bake them in oven for 35 minutes, and then carefully check shrimp and veggies for doneness.  If necessary, throw them back in the oven. Serve immediately. At the table, I added some Sriracha to mine for an extra kick.

The final product.  Yum!

Stuffed squash

At the moment, all of my squash seems to be coming in at once.  I'll walk out one day to see some cute little 3 inch baby squash and come out the next to see mutant jumbo squash in its place.  So I've been trying different recipes with squash.  I chopped some up with some other veggies and threw them in foil and grilled them. I made some pretty delicious zucchini bread.  And now I've made stuffed squash.  

It all started out by seeing a recipe in my Cooking Light cookbook for cheesy beef and rice casserole. I've had some blocks of cheese in my fridge I've been meaning to use up, so this seemed like the perfect application. And Joe doesn't turn anything down if it has cheese on it.  But the recipe itself sounded more like a filling for something than a meal (in their notes they even say that it would be great inside burritos).  So I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and use up my cheese and extra squash by making stuffed squash.

One of my zucchini squash had gotten to gargantuan size so I thought that the standard cut zucchini in half, scoop out contents and stuff with filling idea may not work.  Then I saw this super cute alternative to this approach on this blog.  Basically you make little "bowls" out of pieces of squash. Neat!

My massive zucchini.  I named him Bernie.

So I started on the recipe.  Now I change things up sometimes based on what I have already, so I've made some alterations to the original casserole.  My version is below.

Cheesy turkey and rice casserole stuffing 

1/2 pound ground turkey (I use 93% lean) 

1 cup chopped onion 

1 cup chopped green bell pepper 

1/4 cup water 

1 tablespoon chili powder 

1 teaspoon ground cumin 

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano (I had fresh, so I used it instead)

1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained  

1 (4.5-ounce) can chopped green chiles, undrained  

1 cup instant brown rice (uncooked)

1/2 cup fat-free sour cream (I used fat free Greek yogurt)

1/2 cup sliced green onions 

Salt (I used about a teaspoon)
Pepper

Dash of red pepper flakes (totally optional - only add if you want some heat)

3/4 cup (3 ounces) reduced-fat sharp cheddar cheese, grated

Preheat oven to 375.

Cook first 3 ingredients in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until meat is browned, stirring to crumble. Add water and next 6 ingredients (water through rice); bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes. Uncover and simmer an additional 5-6 minutes, or until rice is cooked. Remove from heat. Add the sour cream and sliced green onions and mix well.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

If you have giant squash, cut them into 3-4 inch long pieces and carefully scoop out the filling, being careful to leave some at the bottom to make a bowl.  Here's a picture of what mine looked like.

The yellow guy you see in the back there was part of a fat yellow squash I already had in my fridge, picked a few days prior from my garden.  I have 4 varieties of squash in my garden.

After doing some scooping out, seeing how much filling could actually fit into the zucchini bowls, and seeing how much filling I had made, I decided to use another (smaller) zucchini from the garden to stuff the traditional way.

Once I had them all carved out, I salted and peppered each one, and then added my filling.  I put them all on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

I let them bake about 20 minutes, when the squash started to soften.  Then, I added the cheddar cheese to each and let it bake until the cheese was melted and the squash was sufficiently cooked through.

Here's the finished product!

I did still have some filling left over though.  So if you make this recipe and don't have 4-5 squash to use up, I would either halve the filling part of the recipe, or resign yourself to have extra filling you'll just have to make into burritos.  :)

Shrimp and turkey pot stickers....and oh yeah, welcome!

So I kept thinking about starting one of these food blogs after finding so many that I really enjoyed reading, but here I am actually doing it. And here is my inaugural post and first recipe. Now, the reason that I enjoy food blogs is that they are written by real folks toiling away in their home kitchen, learning by trial and error.  The authors tend to give a lot of detail as to how they prepared the dish (including when things go horribly wrong and how they fixed the problem!) and they also tend to have beautiful professional looking photographs accompanying their postings.

I do tend to be a wordy person and I do photograph my cooking results but at least for now I'll be lacking in the fancy-pants photograph side of things.  Hey, I'm learning.



So my inspiration for making these pot stickers came from the fact that one of my Cooking Light cookbooks has an Italian-inspired mushroom won ton recipe in it that I need to try.  In looking at this recipe again, I kept thinking that I had seen a more Asian flavored ground turkey won ton recipe somewhere in the book, but of course I couldn't find it, in that book, or in any other place.  So, I turned to my best friend, Google, and saw what I could come up with.  I ended up finding a great shrimp pot sticker recipe on yet another gorgeous food blog (now bookmarked!).  They had in turn found this recipe from Martha Stewart's website. This blog was especially helpful in showing how to properly fold the wonton wrappers for pot stickers.

Well, given that my original goal was to make ground turkey pot stickers and the fact that I had a lot of bok choy in my fridge to use up, I've slightly altered the recipe that they presented.  So, here's my version, fully acknowledging that my inspiration came from here.



Shrimp and turkey pot stickers
1/4 pound small shrimp, shelled, de-tailed, and deveined
1/3 pound ground turkey (I used 93% lean, which I find to be the best kind)
1 large egg white (I used Egg Beaters instead)
1 teaspoon Sriracha 
1 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil
2 teaspoons low-sodium soy sauce
1 medium carrot (I used about 12 baby carrot sticks, as it's what I had. I chopped them into thirds)
1 1/2 cups bok choy, chopped into thirds
1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger (I used jarred fresh ginger cuz I'm lazy)
2 scallions, chopped
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1/2 onion, chopped into quarters
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 package 3-inch round Chinese dumpling wrappers (available at large
supermarkets) (I was unable to find the round ones and just used square won ton wrappers)
2 tablespoons olive oil

For the dipping sauce:
1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1 teaspoon rice-wine vinegar
1 scallion, sliced
Sriracha, to taste.  I added about 1/2 teaspoon. Add more if you want it spicier.

In the bowl of a food processor, combine shrimp, turkey egg white, carrot, bok choy, onion, garlic, ginger Sriracha, salt, pepper, sesame oil, and soy sauce. Purée until all the chunkier items (like the carrots, shrimp, and onion) are broken down completely and there are no big chunks.

Get out the won ton wrappers you want to use and keep them in between some damp paper towels.  Re-cover the stack as you take each one. 

Place about 1 teaspoon of filling in the middle of the won ton wrapper. Moisten two edges with some egg (I used Egg Beaters).  Fold the wrapper over to make a triangle and seal all the edges.  Then, sit the wrapper upright and start pinching/pleating around where you sealed it.  These pictures helped me out greatly.  Get a great big dinner plate out and moisten some more paper towels.  As you finish shaping each pot sticker, gently place it underneath the moist paper towels on the plate.  The amount of filling you add is very important: if you add too much filling, it oozes out of the seam when you try to pinch it shut, but if you add too little you've got a pot sticker with all this won ton dough and a sad, too-small pocket of tasty filling.

In a small serving bowl, whisk together ingredients for dipping sauce.

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a non-stick pan over medium heat until hot.  Carefully add half your pot stickers to the pan and cook until the bottoms are golden brown. This took 2-3 minutes for me.  I carefully would lift a pot sticker to see how brown he was. 

Then, add about a cup of hot water to the pan and cover.  Let it cook 5 minutes.  Take the lid off and let it cook about another 5 minutes, or until all the water has evaporated and the pot stickers start to crisp up a bit on the bottom again.  Carefully remove with a spatula and eat with the dipping sauce!  (You can also keep them warm in an oven if you want to eat all batches of the pot stickers at once).  Then, carefully clean out your pan with a paper towel and repeat this process with the other half of your pot stickers.

Here's a photo of the finished product.  Not the highest quality photo, but you get the idea (hopefully).

And this was only half of the pot stickers I made!

I should also add that this recipe makes quite a lot of pot stickers.  After assembling enough pot stickers to fill my pan twice, I was getting tired of the assembly process and figured we had enough anyway.  So, I had enough filling leftover to make 8 "meatballs" that I then baked in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes.  We dipped these into the dipping sauce as well and it was delicious too.  Just an idea if you get tired like me. :)