I like soup. No, I love soup. Soup is easy. Saute some onion, throw in some vegetables, add some spice simmer in some broth, puree and you have warm, creamy goodness. I can do soup. In fact I've started making some kind of soup once a week for my lunches. And to quote a famous ad, hmm hmm good. So, this week's soup creation was garbanzo and spinach. When I did below.
Creamy Garbanzo soup
1/2 onion, chopped
1/2 red or orange pepper, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbls olive oil
1 tsp sesame oil
1 can garbanzo beans
Juice one lemon
zest 1/2 lemon
2 cups chicken broth, low sodium (If you want to make this vegetarian you can always use vegetable broth. I always go with chicken because I find it to be more neutral tasting than vegetable. But, to each his/her own.)
1 cup water
1/2 bunch spinach
And the usual suspects of seasoning salt, pepper and whatever else you think will be good. I used thyme and parsley.
Directions:
1) In a large pot heat 1 tbls olive oil. Watch the heat with olive oil. It has a low burn point and if the oil starts smoking it's done for so patience my reading friends. patience. Or you can always substitute vegetable oil. :)
2) saute onion, peppers and garlic in olive oil over medium heat for about 10 minutes.
3) Add everything else except liquid and spinach. Season to taste and I let it cook for about five minutes to eat everything up
4) Add broth and water bring to a simmer. I usually add another round of seasoning here. But, I like my soup really seasoned
5)Cover and simmer on low for about 20 minutes stirring occasionally. (Can someone please tell me why you stir here. I mean I always read it in other recipes, so I do it. And I always guess it helps blend flavors or makes sure everything cooks evenly or something. But, unlike the olive oil I don't know the real reason why. Thanks)
6) Once vegetables are tender it's time to puree. I use a hand blender and puree right in the pot. So much easier than the let the soup cool and then transfer to a blender, and all that. But, I guess whatever works for you will work fine.
7) Once pureed bring to a simmer. Simmer uncovered for about 5 - 10 minutes or until heated through
8) Add fresh spinach and stir in until just wilted.
Servings: 5 (1/2 cup) Calories: 155 (according to calorie count recipe analyzer)
Loved this soup. It has a strong punch of lemon and cilantro which I really enjoy. I think the Garbanzo beans are somewhat mild in flavor, but the texture is creamy and hearty. I think if I did this again though I would add the sesame oil later at the end and maybe a touch more. I don't really taste it in the soup.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Scones failure: the aftermath
When I first started this, and decided that scones would be my first attempt at creating my own lower calorie, lower fat, better for me recipe I wrote "baking is a science." Well one thing about science it involves experiments and experiments involve reports. So, I'm going to dig through my memories to HS chemistry and do a science report on my experiment. Maybe I'll learn.
Objective: Okay if you don't know this by now please go back and read my earlier posts. It will make this so much easier on both of us.
Method: Swap the following items for healthier ingredients:
1) Butter - replace with applesauce
2) Milk - replace with buttermilk
Also, add cornstarch to attempt to control gluten.
Result: Well it wasn't scones.
Texture: chewy and moist.
Taste: Bland
Any mistakes?: Funny you should ask. The original called for one egg, separated. I forgot to separate my egg. I was supposed to only add one yolk to the dough and save the egg white for an egg wash at the end. I think this may be a contributing factor to the very un-dough like result.
Conclusion: It became clear as soon as I mixed the dry and wet ingredients that there was way too much liquid involved. Upon further research I learned that a good dry to wet ratio for scones is 3:1. Maybe I should have done that research a little sooner? (Look this is science it's about learning and improving from past mistakes)
So, I don't have scones, but I do have a good start for some healthy cookies or muffins. So, this was not an utter failure. Still, I'm not giving up on my scones. I've got some ideas on what I can do to make this work. The obvious correction is to decrease the amount of wet ingredients. But, I've got another idea of something that may work. Oh I'm not saying what, yet. But, if it works I'm a genius. And if not well....
Objective: Okay if you don't know this by now please go back and read my earlier posts. It will make this so much easier on both of us.
Method: Swap the following items for healthier ingredients:
1) Butter - replace with applesauce
2) Milk - replace with buttermilk
Also, add cornstarch to attempt to control gluten.
Result: Well it wasn't scones.
Texture: chewy and moist.
Taste: Bland
Any mistakes?: Funny you should ask. The original called for one egg, separated. I forgot to separate my egg. I was supposed to only add one yolk to the dough and save the egg white for an egg wash at the end. I think this may be a contributing factor to the very un-dough like result.
Conclusion: It became clear as soon as I mixed the dry and wet ingredients that there was way too much liquid involved. Upon further research I learned that a good dry to wet ratio for scones is 3:1. Maybe I should have done that research a little sooner? (Look this is science it's about learning and improving from past mistakes)
So, I don't have scones, but I do have a good start for some healthy cookies or muffins. So, this was not an utter failure. Still, I'm not giving up on my scones. I've got some ideas on what I can do to make this work. The obvious correction is to decrease the amount of wet ingredients. But, I've got another idea of something that may work. Oh I'm not saying what, yet. But, if it works I'm a genius. And if not well....
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Scones become diner rolls ... Is this some kind of kitchen magic alchemy or just an experiment gone wrong
Okay, in a fit of inspiration, or insanity you be the judge, I decided to try to create a lower fat, lower calorie, better for me scone. I like to think I entered the kitchen for this experiment boldly if not with a lot of confidence.
Okay, so the basis of my experiment is the scone recipe below:
2 cups flour
2 tbls sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup milk
1 egg
My plan was to substitute splenda for the sugar, unsweetened applesauce for the butter, buttermilk for milk, and add cornstarch to help control the gluten.
I felt pretty good as I started to mix the dry ingredients. I mean that was easy. I just followed the recipe and decided to start with 1 tbls of cornstarch to start. It seemed, from my little bit of experience, to be a good, safe amount.
Next was the applesauce. I had no idea how much applesauce to use in place of butter. I read the one article on TLC about low fat baking and the upshot was there is no magic formula. You just have to experiment. So, I decided to add 1 tbls of appleasauce at a time until I got the desired consistency of small crumbs. 10 tbls, or 1 cup+2 tbls of appleasauce, later I got the consistency I thought I was looking for. Plus, it smelled alright, and when I took a small bite of the nascent dough, it tasted alright.
Next came the wet ingredients -- or where things started to go wrong. I mixed 1 whole egg, with 3/4 cup buttermilk. That's right, I decided to do a 1:1 substitution for the buttermilk. I figured that I wanted to keep the moisture content the same between the recipes, I certainly wouldn't want more buttermilk than milk, and it just seemed like a good place to start. So, I mixed the egg and the milk together and mixed into the "dry" ingredients.
The ingredients mixed very well together. Only what was in the bowl wasn't a dough. It was batter. I had created a lower calorie, lower fat, better for me recipe for some kind of batter. Which would be fine, but not my goal. My goal was to have a dough for a quick bread that would bake into a scone. So, at this point I had two choices. I could try and fix this or I could cut my losses now and create some kind of muffin? cake? cookie? This was an easy choice. I wanted scones with my tea and darn it I was going to do my best to get them.
So, instead of looking at the batter in the bowl as batter, I looked at it as too moist dough. As far as I know there was only one thing to do: add more flour and corn starch. A lot more four and corn starch. 2 tbls at a time I added flour to the batter. After adding 4 tbls I stopped with the that and added 2 tbls of cornstarch. The result? Well it was less batter-ish and more dough-ish, but still nothing I could turn onto the counter and knead. I went back to the flour. After adding a full cup of flour I had a less wet doug, not quite dry, glutinous stuff and I thought maybe I can knead this. This is where things went terribly wrong
I laid a piece of parchment paper covered with a little flour on my counter. I turned my sorta dough out onto it. I placed my freshly washed hands onto my "dough" to kneed and quickly realized that wasn't going to happen. Yes the batter/dough was more firm and stickng together wonderfully, there was no kneading this.
My heart sank. Honestly in that moment I thought I had a complete mess on my hands, literally. It was all stuck to my hands. And again I was faced with a few choices. I could try adding more flour, but i was pretty sure that would mean needing more of other things, too. And I didn;'t even know how to begin to approach that problem. Or I could throw the whole thing away. That seemed like a waste. Option three bake it. Stick it in the oven and see what happens. I chose three.
When I was kid i used to make drop biscuits. I thought maybe these could be drop scones. I grabbed two spoons and started plopping -- my batter? my dough? -- whatever you want to call it onto parchment lined pans. I placed them in a pre-heated 375 degree oven and to see what would come out.
15 minutes later I opened the oven and found round, browned, bread like things. I put my creation on cooling racks and they smelled okay, but it wasn't scones. Scones should be a little crumbly, tender. Whatever I pulled out of the oven were none of those things. In fact, it reminded me of a deflated dinner roll.
Okay, so the basis of my experiment is the scone recipe below:
2 cups flour
2 tbls sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup milk
1 egg
My plan was to substitute splenda for the sugar, unsweetened applesauce for the butter, buttermilk for milk, and add cornstarch to help control the gluten.
I felt pretty good as I started to mix the dry ingredients. I mean that was easy. I just followed the recipe and decided to start with 1 tbls of cornstarch to start. It seemed, from my little bit of experience, to be a good, safe amount.
Next was the applesauce. I had no idea how much applesauce to use in place of butter. I read the one article on TLC about low fat baking and the upshot was there is no magic formula. You just have to experiment. So, I decided to add 1 tbls of appleasauce at a time until I got the desired consistency of small crumbs. 10 tbls, or 1 cup+2 tbls of appleasauce, later I got the consistency I thought I was looking for. Plus, it smelled alright, and when I took a small bite of the nascent dough, it tasted alright.
Next came the wet ingredients -- or where things started to go wrong. I mixed 1 whole egg, with 3/4 cup buttermilk. That's right, I decided to do a 1:1 substitution for the buttermilk. I figured that I wanted to keep the moisture content the same between the recipes, I certainly wouldn't want more buttermilk than milk, and it just seemed like a good place to start. So, I mixed the egg and the milk together and mixed into the "dry" ingredients.
The ingredients mixed very well together. Only what was in the bowl wasn't a dough. It was batter. I had created a lower calorie, lower fat, better for me recipe for some kind of batter. Which would be fine, but not my goal. My goal was to have a dough for a quick bread that would bake into a scone. So, at this point I had two choices. I could try and fix this or I could cut my losses now and create some kind of muffin? cake? cookie? This was an easy choice. I wanted scones with my tea and darn it I was going to do my best to get them.
So, instead of looking at the batter in the bowl as batter, I looked at it as too moist dough. As far as I know there was only one thing to do: add more flour and corn starch. A lot more four and corn starch. 2 tbls at a time I added flour to the batter. After adding 4 tbls I stopped with the that and added 2 tbls of cornstarch. The result? Well it was less batter-ish and more dough-ish, but still nothing I could turn onto the counter and knead. I went back to the flour. After adding a full cup of flour I had a less wet doug, not quite dry, glutinous stuff and I thought maybe I can knead this. This is where things went terribly wrong
I laid a piece of parchment paper covered with a little flour on my counter. I turned my sorta dough out onto it. I placed my freshly washed hands onto my "dough" to kneed and quickly realized that wasn't going to happen. Yes the batter/dough was more firm and stickng together wonderfully, there was no kneading this.
My heart sank. Honestly in that moment I thought I had a complete mess on my hands, literally. It was all stuck to my hands. And again I was faced with a few choices. I could try adding more flour, but i was pretty sure that would mean needing more of other things, too. And I didn;'t even know how to begin to approach that problem. Or I could throw the whole thing away. That seemed like a waste. Option three bake it. Stick it in the oven and see what happens. I chose three.
When I was kid i used to make drop biscuits. I thought maybe these could be drop scones. I grabbed two spoons and started plopping -- my batter? my dough? -- whatever you want to call it onto parchment lined pans. I placed them in a pre-heated 375 degree oven and to see what would come out.
15 minutes later I opened the oven and found round, browned, bread like things. I put my creation on cooling racks and they smelled okay, but it wasn't scones. Scones should be a little crumbly, tender. Whatever I pulled out of the oven were none of those things. In fact, it reminded me of a deflated dinner roll.
I'm going to recreate what low fat?
If you watch a lot of Food Channel, which I do, and read cookbooks, which I do as well, then there is one thing you hear a lot -- baking is a science. From what I understand baking doesn't naturally lend itself to bold experimentations. At least not for the inexperienced or casual baker like myself. So, naturally the other day when I read recipe for scones that weighted in with 258 calories this conversation ran through my head:
Me: Can I take that recipe and lower the calorie count?
Myself: Well, if you break the recipe down you can replace the sugar with splenda saving yourself almost 100 calories. But, what to do about the 1/2 cup of butter?
Me: Well, I've read about replacing butter and fats with unsweetened applesauce, pumpkin puree, and other fruit things
Myself: Hmmm could be good. So, what do you think? Can you take the scone recipe and lower the calorie count?
Me: I can so do that...
And like that the decision was made. My first official attempt at creating a for a lower calorie, lower fat, better for me recipe would be for scones.
You should know I love scones. I spent a semester in England in college and have never really given up the 4:00 pm tea time, but I had given my scones in the name of weight loss. My there was a way for me to have my scone and lose my fat, too.
I started this adventure by firing up my computer and going online to do a little research on how to replace butter in recipes. I came across this article from TLC. http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/low-fat-baking.htm. It was pretty useful and this is my plan of attack:
In place of butter I would use unsweetened applesauce. The applesauce should give me the moisture of butter and help control the gluten in the recipe.
Instead milk I would use low fat buttermilk which should lower the calories and give me more flavor.
Splenda in place of sugar
And add cornstarch to the recipe to help control the gluten even more.
But, how much applesauce, buttermilk and splenda should I use? Ha! I have not idea!!! Well, that's not exactly true. The splenda can be a 1:1 substitution. But, how much applesauce for butter? How much buttermilk for milk? How much cornstarch? That's the experiments, friends, that's the experiment.
Next post I'll let you know how it goes.
Me: Can I take that recipe and lower the calorie count?
Myself: Well, if you break the recipe down you can replace the sugar with splenda saving yourself almost 100 calories. But, what to do about the 1/2 cup of butter?
Me: Well, I've read about replacing butter and fats with unsweetened applesauce, pumpkin puree, and other fruit things
Myself: Hmmm could be good. So, what do you think? Can you take the scone recipe and lower the calorie count?
Me: I can so do that...
And like that the decision was made. My first official attempt at creating a for a lower calorie, lower fat, better for me recipe would be for scones.
You should know I love scones. I spent a semester in England in college and have never really given up the 4:00 pm tea time, but I had given my scones in the name of weight loss. My there was a way for me to have my scone and lose my fat, too.
I started this adventure by firing up my computer and going online to do a little research on how to replace butter in recipes. I came across this article from TLC. http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/low-fat-baking.htm. It was pretty useful and this is my plan of attack:
In place of butter I would use unsweetened applesauce. The applesauce should give me the moisture of butter and help control the gluten in the recipe.
Instead milk I would use low fat buttermilk which should lower the calories and give me more flavor.
Splenda in place of sugar
And add cornstarch to the recipe to help control the gluten even more.
But, how much applesauce, buttermilk and splenda should I use? Ha! I have not idea!!! Well, that's not exactly true. The splenda can be a 1:1 substitution. But, how much applesauce for butter? How much buttermilk for milk? How much cornstarch? That's the experiments, friends, that's the experiment.
Next post I'll let you know how it goes.
Because I thought I'd share?
So, a little about myself I'm a 30-something woman living in Souther California and I work freelance. This has not been a good year for freelancing. I don't think I'm alone in saying this has not been the greatest year, financially at least. in addition it's also been the year of the wedding. My sister and one of my closest both got married this year. (They were beautiful weddings by the way and I'm thrilled for them both.) For my sister's I was the maid of honor and can I just say I loved my dress. I did, until I saw the photos. It was the proverbial smack in the head. I know I'm not the first person who saw themselves in a bridesmaid dress and said, "Oh lord, how did I get that big." I had several crying fits over the fact that my sister's beautiful wedding will always remind me that I had gotten shape would. So, this has has also become the year of weight loss. And the year of weight loss has lead to the year of experimenting with cooking and baking with no recipe at hand.
I know there are great cookbooks I could buy and classes I could take, but you know paying work is non-existent, and bills are many. And there are many recipes online, but I think it might be more fun to try some of this on my own. So, instead I'm jumping feet first, with the only the guidance of my full fat cookbooks and online advice, into kitchen experimentation. My goal is to take dishes and sauces and deserts and all those wonderful foods that are way too high in calories and turn them into lower calorie, lower fat, higher fiber and just as satisfying versions. This is my record of that endeavor. (Although I'm sure other of life's endeavors will pop up in these posts as I go along.)
If anyone has tips or tricks please let me know. I need all the help I can get.
I know there are great cookbooks I could buy and classes I could take, but you know paying work is non-existent, and bills are many. And there are many recipes online, but I think it might be more fun to try some of this on my own. So, instead I'm jumping feet first, with the only the guidance of my full fat cookbooks and online advice, into kitchen experimentation. My goal is to take dishes and sauces and deserts and all those wonderful foods that are way too high in calories and turn them into lower calorie, lower fat, higher fiber and just as satisfying versions. This is my record of that endeavor. (Although I'm sure other of life's endeavors will pop up in these posts as I go along.)
If anyone has tips or tricks please let me know. I need all the help I can get.
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