Halibut with Romesco sauce — hold the nuts

Halibut is a luxury fish, one more commonly eaten at restaurants than at home because many people are afraid to try preparing fish themselves. But this recipe sounds worth trying, albeit without the almonds mentioned if, like me, you can’t stand nuts.

Halibut on a carrot puree at a restaurant in Milwaukee which is, sadly, no longer there.

Here are the basics, from the site lovelyfoodblog.com, minus changes I would make:

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 pounds halibut fillets
3/4 teaspoon salt (leave out the salt)
1/2 teaspoon pepper

Sauce

1 large red bell pepper
3 garlic cloves, peeled
1/4 cup slivered, toasted almonds (only if you like them, I don;t so would omit)
1 thick slice of bread, torn into pieces (find the lowest salt bread you can)
1 teaspoon salt (omit, fish is salty as is, no extra is needed)
1 teaspoon paprika
1 cup drained canned diced tomatoes (buy low- or no-salt ones)
2 tablespoon red wine vinegar

To create the dish:

To make the sauce, preheat the broiler. Quarter the bell pepper and place it, cut side down, on a baking sheet along with the garlic cloves. Broil, turning the garlic once, until the garlic is browned and soft and the skin of the bell pepper blackened and blistered. Removed from the boiler and set aside cool slightly.
peel the blackened skin from the pepper and remove the core and seeds. Put the bell pepper and garlic in a food processor along with the almonds, bread, salt and paprika. Process to a paste. Add the tomatoes and vinegar and process until the tomatoes are small and fully incorporated.
To cook the fish preheat a broiler to high. Season the fish with the salt and pepper and broil about 4 minutes. Turn and broil for another 4 minutes, or until the fish is cooked through. Serve the fish immediately, with the sauce drizzled over it.

Enjoy. And if you love halibut, try this other recipe on my site, halibut with wine and herbs.

March 17, 2023 0

When Mrs. Dash can’t help, make your own spice mixtures

I’ma. Bog fan of Mrs. Dash salt-free spice mixtures and its spice packets or such offerings as taco and fajita seasonings.

But lately, the Healthy Heart Market where I order such items has not had the Mrs. Dash fajita mix in stock, so I started looking for a recipe of my own.

I found that, like everything else I suppose, there are lots of options for such recipes online.

*Some of the results of my search. You can find many more.*

I did a search for “mixing your own fajita seasoning salt-free” and the results poured in.

You can easily do the same, then pick one that appeals to you.

March 7, 2023 0

10 more salmon recipes to add to your files

In another sheet of aluminum foil, place your four pieces of salmon and separate with aluminum foil. Then rub in marinades for each. — *Soon it will be time for grilling salmon outside again in my Midwest home. Can;t wait. In the meantime, check out these baked salmon recipes.*

I’ve written in the past that you can never have too many salmon recipes. So here are 10 more from MyRecipes.com. All are baked, which is healthy, ut check recipes to see if you need to eliminate any salt, fat or sugar that ingredients may bring.

Salmon with Green Beans and Smashed Potatoes, the first recipe listed, looks simple to make and tasty, I’d leave out the salt and go with a fat-free mayo. If you’re worried about sugar intake, substitute red potatoes too. This recipe shows its nutrition info, which is always helpful.

Not all the recipes have nutritional information however. Crispy Sheet Pan Salmon with Lemony Asparagus and Carrots sounds tasty too but has no nutrition info, sadly. I may try it anyway.It also includes mayo, get that fat-free. And again, leave out the salt, you don’t need it for fish.

March 1, 2023 0

Save money, buy whole fish; then use the discarded parts for fish stock

One way to save money as prices rise at the supermarket is to buy whole fish and fillet them at home rather than buying more expensive fillets.

Filleting a fish was once intimidating but there are scores of videos online these days that can lead you through the process.

Once you’ve created the fillets, you have the head, tail and spinal column left over. If you just throw these out, there goes your savings from buying a whole fish. So why not make fish stock from them instead?

I did that recently with a salmon I bought at a local supermarket. I found this relatively simple recipe for fish stock using salmon on delectabilia.com.

You can use what veggies you find on sale, feel free to vary the recipe a bit. Also leave out the butter, using olive oil to saute the veggies works fine. I liked this recipe because it doesn’t have a lot of fat or salt in the ingredients it recommends. Remember to get the lowest sodium vegetable stock you can find too.

Here’s a short video taking you through all the steps, enjoy.

February 23, 2023 0

A five-ingredient salad option you may want to modify to cut salt

Salads are my go-to lunch most days of the week, so I’m always looking for new ideas to brighten up my daily lettuce. So how could I not read a story headlined, I wasn’t a salad lover until I tried this recipe?

It turns out the actual salad is called Fall Chopped Salad with Spinach, Butternut Squash, Apples & Cheddar on Eatingwell.com.

Spinach is the main ingredient along with an apple, butternut squash and even maple syrup.

One of my salads with salmon, fat-free feta, mushrooms, tomatoes and a variety of lettuce types.

The full ingredient list:

1 small (1 1/2 pounds) butternut squash, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch dice (about 4 cups)
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
½ teaspoon salt, divided
½ teaspoon ground pepper, divided
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon maple syrup
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
8 cups packed baby spinach, roughly chopped
1 medium Honeycrisp apple, diced
½ cup diced sharp Cheddar cheese
½ cup toasted chopped pecans

I’d leave out the pecans, the salt, maybe the squash and certainly the syrup to cut the sugar. I’d also add some spring mix lettuce to flesh it out a bit. The apple might be a nice touch.

If you try it, let me know what you think of it.

February 20, 2023 1

Eggplant and kale parm, sounds intriguing

I’m always looking for new takes on classics that are low in salt, fat and sugar. This Food Network recipe for eggplant parm with kale thrown in intrigued me as a possibility I would like as would my vegetarian daughter.

Sadly, there is no nutrition information for it, but I’m guessing the cheese is high in salt and fat. The recipe calls for part-skim mozzarella, I’d look for fat-free instead to help a bit. One of the ingredients specified is no-salt, kudos for that.And egg whites are used instead of whole eggs, another plus.

The ingredients listed are:

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

Kosher salt

One 28-ounce can no-salt whole tomatoes, crushed well by hand

1 small bunch curly kale, stripped from the stems and chopped (about 6 cups)

1 cup torn fresh basil leaves

1 cup almond flour

1/2 cup whole-wheat breadcrumbs

2 large egg whites

2 medium eggplants, sliced into 1/2-inch rounds, ends discarded (about 2 1/2 pounds)

Freshly ground black pepper

1 cup shredded part-skim mozzarella

1/4 cup grated Parmesan

2 tablespoons fresh parsley leaves, chopped

Instructions for preparing:

Position 2 oven racks in the middle and upper third of the oven, and preheat to 425 degrees F. Line 2 rimmed baking sheets with parchment.
Cook the oil, garlic and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a large skillet over medium heat, stirring, until the garlic just starts to turn golden, 4 to 6 minutes. Add the tomatoes; rinse the can with about 1 1/2 cups water, and add the tomato water to the skillet. Add the kale and basil, bring to a simmer and cook until the sauce thickens, about 25 minutes.
Meanwhile, combine the almond flour and breadcrumbs in a medium bowl until evenly mixed. Whisk the egg whites and 3 tablespoons water in another medium bowl until frothy.
Lay out the eggplant slices on a clean surface, and season with 1/2 teaspoon salt and a few grinds of pepper. Dip the eggplant slices in the egg whites, then press into the almond-breadcrumb mixture to coat. Place the eggplant pieces on the baking sheets. Bake until the eggplant is tender and the crust is golden brown, about 30 minutes. Rotate the baking sheets if the top one is browning too quickly.
Turn the oven to broil. Spread a little of the sauce on the bottom of a broiler-safe 9-by-13-inch baking dish. Arrange half the eggplant in the dish in as close to an even layer as you can without overlapping too much. Spread half the remaining sauce on top, then 1/4 of the mozzarella. Top with the remaining eggplant, sauce and mozzarella and the Parmesan. Place the baking dish under the broiler until the cheese is melted and browned, about 1 minute. Serve immediately, while the cheese is still warm. Sprinkle the top with the parsley.

February 18, 2023 0

Check FlavCity — lots of recipes but no salt-free choices

I’m always on the lookout for new recipe sites, so I’ve been asking friends where they find their recipe ideas. One suggested a site called FlavCity, so I checked it out.

FlavCity is a massive site, so much so that it sells some of its own products such as cookware and cookbooks.

And it has a very large recipe section. You can search recipes by main ingredient or by diet/eating preference. But, alas, there’s no way I could find to search for no-salt, no-fat, no-sugar recipes. Or even to search for low-salt, low-fat, low-sugar ones.

There is a clean-eating category but those aren’t necessarily what we’d need to find. I also didn’t see nutritional information for the recipes I reviewed.

So while this site is a great source of recipe ideas, you’ll have to modify them to take out the salt, fat and sugar. In the meantime, find low-salt, low-fat, low-sugar recipes on our recipe page.

January 27, 2023 0

For Indian food lovers — two recipes from Spicemode, tested by my Indian-food-loving daughter

I recently received some free samples of Indian spices from Spicemode which I passed on to my Indian-food-loving daughter for her evaluation.

She tells me she tried two recipes from Spicemode’s website: Madras Sweet Potato + Spinach and Mattar Paneer. Her verdict was they turned out well, although not as flavorful as she was expecting. Using the prepared mixes was easier than creating the dishes from scratch, she notes, so that’s the tradeoff. When you cook from scratch you can adjust the flavor to any extreme you like.

That considered, she called the Spicemode spices and ingredients “pretty good” and an easier way to make the dishes than starting from scratch.

Here’s a picture of how hers turned out. She mentions that she didn’t have the marsala sauce called for in one recipe and so substituted vindaloo sauce. Indian food aficionados will understand what that means, I hope.

My wife, who studied Indian cooking in London years before I met her, also kept some of the Spciemode offerings. When she creates a recipe with those, we’ll post about it too.

December 21, 2022 0

Say hello to Multo

I started this blog in 2013 because of heart health issues that began in 2012 when I almost died from a blocked artery.

The upshot was that I had to completely change how I ate, finding recipes with no salt, no fat and no sugar. As part of my road since then, I started a local chapter of Mended Hearts, a national support group for heart patients.

At our latest online meeting, we had a demonstration of a new cooking appliance, the Multo Intelligent Cooking System. It’s designed to replace a lot of tools you already have in your kitchen and bring some high-tech to your cooking. And it can create heart-healthy recipes which use little to no salt, fat or sugar.

Cookingpal, the Hong Kong company that markets Multo, was kind enough to send me one to try out in my kitchen. I’ll be doing that in the coming days.

It comes equipped with its own smart pad that has recipes you can make with the Multo. Or you can go into manual mode to create your own. The Multo can steam and saute. It can also create dressings, something I may start with.

In our Mended Hearts demo, Multo Chef Jamie Foy from Hong Kong made us salmon with asparagus, a breakfast smoothie and a pomegranate salad.

You can see the salmon and asparagus, along with some cauliflower also made in the Multo, here.

As I become more adept at using it, I’ll be posting other recipes I try from its recipe library as well as my own creations.

My thanks to Multo for allowing me the opportunity and for bringing Chef Foy to our Mended Hearts online meeting in December.

If you want to learn more about Multo, or buy one, just click here.

December 16, 2022 0

A classic use for Thanksgiving left-overs — low-sodium turkey soup

I always hate throwing away my turkey skeleton after Thanksgiving because I would think about using it for soup. This year, I took the extra effort and made the soup, low-sodium of course.

I started with a recipe I found online, but then generally winged it, adding what I needed to give it flavor in the absence of salt.

I had two boxes of low-sodium chicken broth (see photos here) in my fridge, having opened them to use for basting my turkey on Thanksgiving. What was left went into a soup pot after I had sauteed some celery and onion bits. I was lucky enough to get those already cut at a local supermarket that was selling big boxes of celery and onions for only a dollar after Thanksgiving. They were packaged for making stuffing.

Continue reading →

November 29, 2022 0

Category: recipes