Running Rabbit: Art and Madness

Rabbit Cooks With Quinoa

I love quinoa (Keen-wa). While not the most low calorie "grain" out there it is the healthiest and most complete "grain" by a mile. Quinoa is not strictly a grain, it comes from the Amaranth family of plants and also sports the moniker "Inca Gold". It tastes like grain, cooks like grain and has a great nutty flavor. Its like couscous on steroids.

 
Quinoa in the fields of the Andes

Quinoa while having 626 calories in a cup, also has 11.9 grams of fiber, 10.3 grams of fat, the good kind, and get this: a whopping 24 grams of protein! Grain,with protein. Who knew? You don't even need meat with this stuff. Vegetarians: pay attention here, Quinoa is one of the few complete proteins in the veggie world, which means it fulfills all your dietary protein needs in one fell swoop. It is also stuffed with manganese, magnesium and phosphorus among other vitamin type things.

So as promised after that sinful crepe recipe here is a healthy recipe that will fill you up and leave you feeling good about what you ate.

If you are not a vegetarian skip to the chicken cooking part further down the page and get the chicken out of the way so it can cool.

 
Not a grain but it sure looks and cooks like one!

Cook the Quinoa according to package directions(available these days at most grocery stores with a health food section or at health food stores--heck my Ralph's Thriftway carries it right there with the regular boxed grains.) in chicken broth instead of water for extra flavor. Let it cool.

Inca Salad Ingredients:

Cooked quinoa

bunch fresh asparagus

1 red pepper--roast  it yourself or obtain in a jar

2 cups skinless roasted chopped up chicken breasts

1/2 c. chopped up purple onion

2 tablespoons olive oil

juice of one lemon

2 cloves garlic

salad greens

You can get a nice smoky flavor on your pepper--and low cal healthy cooking is ALL about flavor--believe me--if you toss the pepper cored and seeded on your bbq for a while. The skin should shrivel up and you can just scrape it off with a knife. You can also hold it with tongs over the flame of your gas stove until the skin starts to blacken bubble and peel. Scrape it off.

It's not that hard, and if you are lazy pick up red peppers roasted in a jar from the grocery store. I don't know about you but I hate biting into a cooked red or green pepper, bell type here, with the skin on.  After you cook it, Its like chewing wax paper. Yuck.

So you have your roasted pepper scraped and chopped up set aside. Clean the asparagus, and snap off the bottoms. Asparagus, that's a whole separate chapter in cooking. Hold the stem and snap the bottom off. It should break a couple of inches up which takes off the tough part. Don't cut it, snap it. Lay the aspargus down sideways in a microwave safe dish with a lid. Put just a tiny amount of water in and steam it with the lid on. Try six or seven minutes, test it--but don't scald yourself getting the lid off your "steamer". Put it back until its cooked through but God forbid--not mushy. You want it just past crunchy and well before squishy. Put it aside to cool and then chop it into about 1 inch pieces, a size you can neatly stab with a fork.

Chop up the red onion into nice small bites, you don't want a mouthful of giant onion, just a nibble in your flavor profile when you take a bite. Put that aside with your pepper and asparagus.

The chicken cooking part: I get chicken breasts--never Southern grown, those are just scary factory grown chemical chickens, look for local. Its your health and you are worth it. Pull off the skin and with your kitchen scissors cut off any fat blobules you see on your chicken (that's the yellow stuff). Get out a cookie sheet or your roasting pan. I have a teeny chicken sized broiler pan which I love and use a lot.

Easy clean up on the cookie sheet? Cover it with foil and spray it with cooking spray, unless you like scrubbing up burnt on chicken. Get out some salt, some garlic powder and some pepper. Massage the chicken on both sides with your spices. Put the spices into a dish first and stir them up, that way when your hands are all dirty and chicken-y, you don't have to touch anything but the chicken and the dish. Cut up a lemon into slices, squish the slices over the chicken to release the juice and then lay the squished slices on top of the chicken for extra flavor.

Cook the chicken until its done through. I usually go at 350 degrees for an hour and then cut open the fattest part of one of the breasts to make sure its done all the way through. Sacrilege! I know, but you are chopping these ones into cubes anyway. Cool the chicken, pull it off the bones and chop into nicely fork-sized bites.

Put the two tablespoons of oil in a pan with the garlic which you have crushed and chopped finely, warm the oil and garlic through on medium to low heat until you can smell the garlic releasing its lovely cooked mellow flavor-watch it, burnt garlic is evil in flavor.

Toss the asparagus, onion and pepper into the pan along with the chicken. Warm it all through, add salt, pepper or whatever spices you love most. You could take this oriental with some soy sauce or Indian with some curry powder if you wanted to. Toss in the quinoa and the juice of one lemon. Give it a taste, correct the seasoning and then chill in the fridge until serving time.

Personally, I love putting mine over salad greens. This is a great way to get more salad into my family because the salad becomes an integral part of the dish. Sprinkle the top with some slivered almonds for a little crunch, and it adds a nice note to the whole thing too.

Experiment! Try snow peas instead of asparagus, try tomatoes and mint instead of red peppers. I think this would even be great with small chunks of sweet potato and snow peas with a little fresh pineapple perhaps and a sprinkle of curry? You don't even need chicken for a complete, filling and yummy dinner!

This should serve 3 people at least, 4 if you are polite....

Cooking Rabbit Shares How to Make Your Own Yummy Crepe Cake

Blueberry and Lemon cream crepe cake 

I have been cooking for a really long time and I never plan to stop. The first thing I learned to make was Hollandaise sauce, standing on a chair by the Mixmaster when I was six years old. I could hardly read recipes butI loved being in the kitchen.

My mother was a demented tyrant, but boy could she cook, and she cooked with love and passion. My dad was a talented part-time pastry chef and my granny was a cook who worked every day but Mondays until she was well over 80.

 
Mon Cher Papa, who wore always wore a beret after visiting France!

 
My granny, cooking in her restaurant circa 1955

I come by my cooking chops honestly and I have actually cooked professionally in the restaurant world in my checkered past.

 

My Cowgirl Mama about 1944

My favorite things are dishes that are spectacular, pretty easy to prepare and will get the cook a lot of compliments!

I think there's a lot of mystery and almost fear around the art of cooking and cooking well. There are a lot of 'secrets' and 'shortcuts' that you only learn through trial and error, practice, or if somebody shares their 'ah ha' moments with you.

One of the things I am asked to make again and again is the crepe cake that is shown here. It is spectacular no matter what fruit and filling you use, tastes amazing and is a lot easier than it looks once you master a few tricks of the trade.

I worked at one of the first crepe houses in Houston a long, long time ago. Liliane's Maison de Crepe. Liliane was a cranky round Frenchwoman with a glorious accent, an amazing laugh and a chef who had tantrums. I think my experience at Liliane's is what made me fall in love with all things French.

 

The restaurant had a tiny old gay French piano player who tinkled the ivories in the dining room while wearing a velvet smoking jacket, a maitre d' who was always fighting with the waiters, and the best crepes I have ever tasted. My sons were small and I was working two jobs, but this job? I loved it... So in honor or Madame Liliane, Crepes!

 I chose to make Blueberry and Lemon crepes for this foray, but in the spring I get asked again and again for a birthday crepe cake stuffed with fresh strawberries, vanilla creme and almonds. In the summer, peaches with amaretto are amazing, and raspberries and nutella are another possiblity. If you can think of something yummy, you can take the basic concept and go crazy.

I always rummage around and gather up my ingredients first. Make your fillings--or in the lazy woman's world, peel the top off the vanilla pudding containers. hee hee. Today I did make lemon pudding--from a box. I used canned blueberry pie filling BUT I took about two cups of fresh blue berries, stemmed and checked them good for nasty berries, and  dumped them into a bowl with the filling. Canned pie filling is great for making your fresh berries stick in your crepe stack. You get the punch of fresh fruit and the cake doesn't slip slide away.

 
I always rummage up my ingredients first in case I am out of something, I find out in time to fix it

Basic Sweet Batter Ingredients:

4 eggs

2/3 cup half & half (or milk)

2/3 cup water

1 1/2 cups flour, all purpose presifted

2 tablespoons butter melted

4 tablespoons sugar

4 tablespoons of appropriate liquor, such as cognac

2 teaspoons vanilla

 For your crepes:

In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs, a whisk works wonderfully well, add half and half and water and whisk until its all blended.

 

Gradually whisk in the flour.

 

Add the rest of the ingredients and beat until the batter looks like melted ice cream in thickness and consistency. Thick, creamy  but not too thick is what you are going for.

 Alcohol: I choose the liquor based on A) what I’m making and B) what I have on hand.  In this case, I chose triple sec because I liked the flavor profile with the lemon layers. I like Amaretto with peaches and cognac with strawberries, don’t be afraid to experiment.

 

Adding my alcohol of choice, it gives a little flavor but mostly helps add color to the crepes as they cook

Okay, you have your batter made, your fillings prepared and waiting in bowls for use in a little while. This is the part where it gets fun. I am lucky enough to have the World's Most Fantastic Crepe Pan. I have had it since before son Joshua was born and he is well over 30 at this point, so the pan is well seasoned. Its a Taylor and Ng pan and they probably don't even make them anymore BUT there are nice crepe pans out there. If you like crepes, go buy one. My entire family knows there will be blood shed if they wash my pan. It only needs wiping off and hanging back up at this stage of its life.

 
Not a crepe pan doesn't begin to cover it...

I am assuming you don't have a pan like I do, so I wanted to prove to you and to me that you can make great crepes with a junky pan. I got out my most evilly used old teflon warhorse that suffered through years of teenage cooking and should probably be thrown away at this point. When you start hunting through your skillets the trick is choose one that is NOT heavy. You have to pick it up and move it around so weight is one of the secret tricks. You don't need a great big huge skillet, just a fairly flat one with about a six inch wide bottom.

I always melt a little extra butter when I'm melting the crepe batter butter. Dip a paper towel into the butter and swab your pan/skillet with it. Put the pan on medium heat and let it sizzle. Choose a measuring cup that is about 1/3 of a cup. Fill it with batter use trick number two: PICK UP the pan and remove it from the heat while you pour in the batter. This keeps the batter from cooking and sticking instantly so you can roll it around to cover the pan bottom.

 
the good pan and the good little helper on the floor in the background

Rotate the pan, roll it around in your hand to spread the batter around the bottom. Yes, the first two or three crepes will be a mess until you figure out the motion that lets you swirl the batter around the pan bottom.

 

Put the pan back on the heat.

Wait until the top of the crepe looks dry, crepes don't have holes that bubble up like a big fat flapjack so dry is your key word. Use a really good METAL spatula to flip the crepes over. Plastic spatulas just don't get the job done here. They tear your crepes and don't slide under neatly. The crepe is going to flip just fine, you can even use your fingers. ow! hot! hot! to straighten out any that do an El Foldo on you. Relax, enjoy, find the rhythm. It only takes about 10 or 15 seconds to get the second side done.

Use your spatula to pick it up and put it on a plate. Stack your crepes any which way, they don't stick together and you can unpeel them when you build your cake. Start again, get your batter, pick up pan, rotate it, put it down, etc.etc. Re-butter your pan when you need to, about every 3rd or 4th crepe for a 'virgin pan'. You are done with this phase and you have a lovely big stack of crepes.  

Move to the assembly process, the best part--no wait, that's eating it. Put down a crepe on whatever plate you are serving from, spread a layer of the first filling. Plop down another crepe, spread a layer of the next filling, keep going. Trick 3: If you are using fruit filling, mound it in the middle and put the next crepe on top of it. Use your hand and push straight down to spread the filling. If you do it this way you won't have filling running out the sides and plopping on the plate.

 
Fruit filling piled in the middle of the crepe

 
Press down on the piled up filling firmly and evenly through the next crepe

 
Lemon layer

 Keep going until your stack is stacked. I always save one crepe and enough filling to roll it up and have a good taste of my efforts.

 I keep those handy dandy little roasting skewers around and stick four or five into the finished cake top. It keeps it from sliding until it gets good and chilled and it also helps when you have to transport a crepe cake. Bamboo skewers work just as well and they keep the plastic wrap from clinging to your pretty cake top. I put one last dollop of filling and some slivered almonds on mine and popped it into the fridge to cool thoroughly.

 
Skewers help avoid the sliding cake catastrophe

Here is how it looked three hours later. The fun part is when you slice one of these and carefully slide a slice out. They are so pretty! They look archaeological with all their layers and people are always so surprised when something that looks like a pancake is so stunningly beautiful. They also taste amazing. This one is light and airy with the berries and lemon, not heavy at all. I'm  sure being so light and airy it has no calories at all....bon appetit!

 
Lovely slice of crepe cake 
 
The finished cake ready to serve

Rabbit in the Kitchen

 
all things in moderation, sayeth Ben

I have been challenged by my niece the wonderful, Hed, to come up with a tasty and low-fat dish for her contest. As a fallen member of Weight Watchers who is doing her damnedest to crawl back up on that wagon, I know that just low-fat doesn't cut it. For example, sugar has no fat but that crap is seriously unhealthy for those of us with food issues--and for those of us who still possess our own teeth.

It's also bad news to try to cut out all fat, having been there done that and lost my gall bladder as a consequence, I can truly testify. Like Ben Franklin said, all things in moderation except moderation. I loathe and despise "diet" foods. I want to blow things up with my chemistry set not eat from it. Diet foods that make wild claims usually taste hideous on top of everything else. Have you ever actually tasted diet cheese? I'd rather eat the wrapper and throw out the cheese. I get cold shudders just thinking about it that rubbery squeaky excuse for food. There are actually cheeses us cheese hounds can sample--in moderation. Again with that word.... I would rather have a small piece of exquisitely lovely Cantalet than a whole vat of chemical cheese. I'll just have a serving of low cal fresh fruit with my small serving of real cheese and a few raw almonds and be very happy.

And while I'm ranting, diet salad dressing. Retch. Barf. Nasty stuff. Instead why not measure a tablespoon of your favorite ORGANIC dressing into a small cup and dip your fork into the dressing and then into your salad and then into your mouth? The trick is not to give your salad a dressing bath. Just enjoy the flavor in a smaller way and you won't feel quite so deprived or indeed, punished, as you will with evil diet dressing.

 
So on to the recipe! Shrimp are high in cholestrol so those with cholestrol issues might want to give them a nice wide berth, for the rest of us shrimp are one of those wonderful low cal tasty foods we can truly enjoy.

Shrimp Jambalaya
1 package large shrimp (cooked according to package directions) Six shrimp are ONE serving by the way.
Put the shrimp aside while you saute in a pan:

 one medium onion, chopped- less if you are not a fan.
several cloves of garlic, chopped finely-to your own taste
one green pepper, dice finely  and do the same for three stalks of celery

Saute all your vegies with one tablespoon extra virgin olive oil. You can use more if you need it but don't forget to measure it so you can get an accurate calorie count: 120 per tablespoon.

When the vegies are softened and successfully sauteed, add your shrimp, salt and pepper and two middle sized cans of tomato sauce, or you can use a low fat pre-packaged red marinara sauce if your prefer a little more flavor. Heat everything together and serve over brown rice.

1 cup brown rice=218 calories, 6 shrimp=110 calories, vegies are pretty much free foods and add 120 for the olive oil, even if you didn't eat the whole tablespoon all by yourself. Not too bad for a filling meal. Yes, its not haute cuisine because I didn't go out and pick the tomatoes and make my sauce from scratch but most of us work and just want things that are really yummy, fast and easy before we get tempted to munch on bad stuff because we are STARVING. Serve with a nice green salad and enjoy.