Tilapia Française and Creamed Spinach

This is a two for one special. I did both a fish recipe, Tilapia Française, and a side recipe, Creamed Spinach. Normally, this would run around 900 calories.

There's a bit of a story to this dish. This was supposed to be red snapper, not tilapia. Unfortunately, I couldn't get red snapper. I looked at Market Basket and Hannaford's. Finally, I called Whole Foods and they said they had it. They did. The problem is that they sold it as whole fish, not as a fillet. I have never deboned a fish and thought that this would be a very bad idea if I tried. Anyway, long story short, tilapia was on sale at Whole Foods. So, that is what I bought. The funny thing is, many restaurants that claim to sell red snapper actually give you tilapia. So, maybe I made a lucky guess for a substitution.

So, the fish was pretty easy. a coating of whole wheat flour, some egg, toss it in the pan. The sauce was just as easy. I'm just not sure I did it right. It had kind of a brownish color, which made me nervous, because it wasn't what I expected. I thought it would be be runnier and a lighter color or something. The taste was great, though. I did check online and discovered that the sauce was the correct color. I'm now able to cook fish in the Française style. Oui oui!

My wife volunteered to the do the creamed spinach. I had some left over spinach from the dip I made the other day. We chopped up the other necessary ingredients, and while the fish cooked, she finished up the creamed spinach. It came out very good as well. If I didn't tell you it was low calorie, you would never now. It did have a "different" taste from the cheese based creamed spinach I usually do. However, it was definitely a keeper.

All together, these two recipes added up to around 320 calories. You can't complain about that.

Hot Artichoke Parmigiano Dip

I love dips. My favorite is Heluva Good Bodacious Onion Dip. Sit me down with a back of Market Basket Chips and Bodacious Onion Dip, and I could probably eat the whole thing.

Many restaurants have a great Hot Artichoke Dip. It's usually served with tortilla chips. Rocco's version called for a sliced whole wheat baguette, but I didn't have access to this. I used what I had, which was a whole wheat pita. Slice this up in triangles, toss in the oven for 6 minutes at 450°, and you got yourself some great chips. I also sometimes season these with olive oil, garlic or onion powder. I just season these with salt and baked them. No olive oil because I was trying to cut the fat. I've made these many times. Sometimes I'll bake these up as a late night snack and dip them in hummus. Anyway, enough about that.

The dip itself is pretty simple. 1 can of artichoke hearts in water, some garlic, spinach, low fat mayo, some parm cheese. Toss in the oven for a few minutes. Rocco says 2 minutes. In my oven it was more like 4 minutes.

The result is fantastic. I would have no idea that this was so low in calories. The restaurant style of this dip comes in at 900 calories. This version, which truly is as good, comes in at 200.

General Tso's Chicken

The classic greasy American Chinese food get's a makeover in this recipe. And it avoids the greasy, fried goodness, and instead uses a baked chicken that's soaked in a yummy sauce. Whole wheat panko bread crumbs, whole wheat flour and baked to a nice crunchiness. And the sauce was incredibly simple, but everything I used was fresh. No dried spices. All real, cut fresh. Like all Rocco's recipes, the more you do by hand and make fresh, the better it is. I'll rank this dish in greatness with the pizza. Something I could eat everyday.

Chocolate Mousse, aka Dessert Disaster

You know how at grocery stores, how they sell egg whites in a container? DON'T use those to try to whip eggs. I discovered that it doesn't work. Who knows what they put in to those "egg whites" to keep it fresh. Whipping eggs needs real fresh egg whites, not egg whites from a milk carton.

Anyway, this chocolate mousse tastes great. It will cure anyone with a chocolate craving. It's only 145 calories. It's just that mine came out like soup instead of mousse. I promised I'd try a recipe every week, I didn't promise that it would come out like it was supposed to.

Deep-Dish Pizza

Why would anyone mess with pizza? It's perfect in in concept: cheese, bread, meat, sauce. Rocco decides to tackle this high calorie challenge. The results are amazing.

Yes, what you see on the left is a whole wheat crust (actually, I used 80% wheat because I'm trying to use up some white flour). But what you also see is homemade sauce, home made dough, turkey pepperoni, low fat cheese, some pineapple, and lots of basil. The result is awesome. The basil really pushes it to the next level. It makes it a fancy pizza instead of a normal pizza joint pizza. I also used a little cornmeal on the pan and that kept the crust from sticking to the pan. It added a nice texture to the crust.

I could eat this everyday, if I was allowed. It's filling, it's not greasy, and it has great flavor.

Note: I've pulled out my decent camera for the last two posts and I hope to continue using it. My camera phone camera doesn't have all the bells and whistles my Nikon has. I think you will notice that the pictures look much better.

A New Feature in the Kitchen!

So, based on the recipes I've tried, and curiosity as to whether I could make things better, and the advice of friends who know a lot more about cooking then I do, I decided to get some fresh herbs. First, I went online here, and discovered a suggestion as to how to keep herbs fresh for around 2 weeks. Then, I went to the grocery store. Almost all produce sections have fresh herbs in these little containers. These things are way too expensive. They also have herbs in big bunches. So, I bought both fresh basil and parsley.

Then I went home, cut an inch of stem off both, and put them in glass jars with a little water. You can see the photo on the left. The basil looks a little anemic but it tastes great, as you'll find out in my next post. The parsley looks like it will do fine here.

The flowers were an easter gift to my wife. They haven't opened yet, hopefully soon.

Note: I now realize that one of the recipes I'm trying this week calls for flat leafed parsley and I got curly parsley. Oops.

Rocco Dispirito's Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies