Lemon Chicken Soup with Spaghetti

I like spaghetti.  I will not stop eating spaghetti.  These are facts.  I suggest that you look at the facts of food in your life.  Maintaining a healthy life, and lifestyle should be about balance, and knowing where certain foods stand in your eating habits.  Like anything else, pasta is not bad for you, depending on the type that you buy, and the quantity that you eat it in.  I can honestly say that as a child, it seemed abnormal not to eat at least half of a box of pasta to my face.  And I wonder how I ended up overweight!!!


This recipe intrigued me because I love chicken noodle soup, and the citrus made it sound so light and refreshing.  Likewise, the small amount of pasta in the dish (remember, this is compared to the half of a box I would eat in one sitting), seemed like a great way to get the taste and texture of my pasta craving, but not in over abundance.  I know you'll all be shocked to find out that I found this recipe on Food Network while watching Giada at Home, and it only took about two days to experiment with it in the kitchen.


Ingredients:

6 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice (about 2 lemons)

• 1 dried bay leaf
• 1 (2-inch) piece Parmesan cheese rind, optional
• 2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced into 1/4-inch pieces
• 1 cup (about 2 1/2 ounces) spaghetti, broken into 2-inch pieces
• 2 cups diced cooked rotisserie chicken, preferably breast meat
• 1 cup grated Romano cheese
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• Kosher salt

In a large stockpot, bring the chicken broth, lemon juice, bay leaf, and Parmesan rind, if using, to a boil over medium-high heat.

Add the carrots and simmer until tender, about 5 to 8 minutes.

Add the broken pasta and cook until the pasta is tender, for 4 to 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the chicken and heat through, about 2 to 3 minutes. Remove the bay leaf and the Parmesan rind and discard. Stir in 1/2 of the cheese and the parsley. Season with salt, to taste. Ladle the soup into serving bowls and sprinkle with the remaining cheese.

When choosing your pasta, read carefully.  You'll most likely find your best choices in the health food isle of your grocery store.  As much as Barilla pasta seems like a good choice because it's boasting "whole wheat grains" and "enriched" with something or other they're trying to sell the healthy shopper with, it's usually not much better than picking up a regular box of 99 cent store brand crap the next shelf over.  The pasta you choose should contain ingredients like: kamut, buckwheat, whole grains etc.  I spent about 10 minutes holding two different brands of pasta, reading ingredients and checking out nutritional facts.  Find the brand that fits the best into your diet.  Also, be aware that pasta will go bad if you only use part of the box and leave the remainder sitting in your cabinet,  especially the kind with all natural ingredients. If you don't have a pasta container that is air tight, I suggest cooking the remainder of the box, and freezing it until you need it for another recipe.  

In regards to the chicken in this recipe, I had roasted a chicken earlier in the day, and therefore had no problem with finding, or including fresh cooked chicken in the recipe.  If it's easier for you, I don't see why you couldn't add two chicken breasts in place of rotisserie chicken.  Although most grocery stores do have a section where they offer a "fresh cooked rotisserie chicken", be aware, that many of them use sugars in their rubs and marinades.  Only you can decide exactly how much control you want to have over the ingredients in your dishes.  

Beef Osso Bucco Over Parsley Parsnip Puree

Who doesn't love Osso Bucco???  Veal, pork, beef, whatever.  Slow cooked meat with vegetables is just plain ol' delish!  The restaurant I work in has done several different versions of an Osso Bucco appetizer, and at some point a light bulb went off and I decided that I absolutely needed to try making my own.  I ended up going with beef primarily because it was what was available in my grocery store at the time that I was inspired to try this recipe, and I already had most, if not all, of the ingredients, outside of the meat, available in my house.  

The Osso Bucco recipe is inspired by a dish I found on Food Network's website, and of course, was a Giada recipe, however, mine is so drastically different, that I can't even give you the link because you won't recognize it.  Likewise, the Parsnip Puree was also inspired by a Tyler Florence recipe, but I changed it up quite a bit by substituting soy milk and parsley in order to carry the parsley flavor throughout the entire dish.  This was, indeed, a huge hit in my house, and is something that I will continue to make over the years.  Give it a try, and if you want, take my recipe, mix it up a bit, and call it your own!

Ingredients:
Osso Bucco:
3 whole Beef Shanks, trimmed
1 tbsp. Whole Wheat flour
2 tbsp. Extra-virgin Olive Oil
1 small White onion, diced
2 Carrots, diced
2 Celery stalks, diced
2 Vine tomatoes, diced
1 tbsp. Tomato paste
4 c. Beef stock
2 whole garlic cloves
1 dried Bay leaf
1/4 c. Parsley, chopped

Parsley Parsnip Puree:
1 lb. Parsnip, peeled and coarsely cut
1/2 Unsweetened Soy milk
Salt and pepper to taste
2 Garlic cloves, sliced
1/4c. Parsley, lightly chopped
2 tbsp. Extra-virgin Olive Oil

Pat dry the beef shanks, and trim.  Cover all sides of the shanks with whole wheat flour.  In a 4-quart pot, heat 2 tbsp. of oil, place the beef shanks in the pan, and brown on all sides.  Remove the meat from the pan, and place aside.  

Place the onion, carrots, and celery in the pot and saute until soft, about 8 minutes.  Add the tomatoes, tomato past, beef stock, garlic cloves and bay leaf.  Return the beef shanks to the pot, and bring to a boil.  Reduce to a simmer, and allow to cook for approximately 1 1/2-2 hours.  Add chopped parsley within the last 15 minutes of cooking.  Remove bay leaf before serving.

In the meantime, you can either cook the parsnips by placing them in a pan and covering with water, and bringing them to a boil, then simmering until tender (about 15 minutes), or steam them until cooked through.  When cooked, (a fork should easily pierce them), place the parsnips into a food processor.  In a saucepan, place the soy milk, garlic cloves and parsley over medium-high heat.  Reduce heat and allow to simmer for about 5 minutes.  Remove from heat, and strain out the garlic and the parsley.  

Puree the parsnips in the food processor until smooth.  Slowly at the olive oil while pureeing.  When smooth, then add the soy milk, garlic, and parsnip mixture to the food processor while pureeing.  Puree until it is a texture you like.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

To present, place about a 1/4 cup of the parsnip puree in a bowl, top with part of the beef shank (it should be falling apart at this point), and then ladle over some veggies and stock from your pot.

This is such an easy dish to execute, although there may seem to be a lot of steps.  I would recommend trying it if you want to impress your in-laws or friends.  If you plate it right, they'll think they're dining at some fancy restaurant instead of sitting at your dinner table!

Tofu Cabbage Rolls

Why are we talking about Tofu, and also, why cabbage?  Well folks, here's the real deal.  Tofu, Soy, Tempeh; they are all Superfoods, and well, as they say, them's the breaks.  Therefore, fitting these foods into your diet at least a couple times out of the week is a very good idea.  I've never been a huge cabbage fan, however, my husband is Polish, and therefore, Gwumkis were a staple in his house growing up, which made it easy for me to fit this one into a dinner without the nose up at Tofu.  Also, like Tofu, Cabbage is yet another sidekick in the Superfoods group.

The good thing, and the bad thing, about Tofu is that it really doesn't taste like anything at all, that is, until you season it on up. So, you can make it taste however you want.  Hooray! This particular recipe came out of The Eat Clean Diet Cookbook and it's something that both my husband and I were unusually happy about.

In a medium saute pan place 1/2 onion chopped, 3 cloves of garlic pressed, 1 c. of carrot grated, and one celery rib finely chopped.  Saute until soft, add 1/4 c. of basil and 1/4 c. of parsley and crumble 1 block of medium firm tofu in the pan.  Cook until heated through and add 3 tablespoons of low-sodium soy sauce.  Remove from heat and set aside.

Take 6 large green or Savoy cabbage leaves (I recommend doing a couple extra in case they tear) and place in boiling water until it just changes color.  Remove immediately and run under cold water.  Put the tofu mixture into each or the leaves, wrap them tightly so the mixture does not fall out, and place in a steamer basket for ten minutes.  Serve nice and hot!  

The best part is that you are pretty much using the cabbage as a wrap, so you can switch this recipe up by rolling whatever you want in the middle of them, as long as it's clean and healthy of course! 

Who Needs Carrot Cake, When You Can Have Carrot Cake Pancakes???

My husbands loves Carrot Cake.  He won't eat Chocolate Cake, Vanilla Cake, or any other type of cake (OK, maybe Ice Cream Cake), but he will eat Carrot Cake, all day, every day.  With his birthday falling in the middle of March, and with our focus on eating healthy and clean, regardless of what day it is (although I should enter here that we went out to eat and he ate a burger, which was his one request, and who could deny anyone that on their birthday?), I wanted to give him Carrot Cake sans refined wheat and nasty refined sugar.  And so, in my quest to find a recipe that I could modify to achieve this, I turned to my old faithful, Food Network. I urge everyone, once comfortable and knowledgeable enough to do so, to check out their favorite recipes, and modify them to a "cleaner" version.  I should mention that Bobby Flay is my Chef crush.  I have several crushes, depending on fitness and food, as you'll learn through this blog over time, however, this special ginger is one of my FN favs, and when I found this recipe, I had to start here:

Carrot Pancakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

How, you ask, does one start to "clean up" a recipe?  Well, first off, I automatically took out the AP Flour.  Although it's lighter, and fluffier, it is so because all it's natural, good for you qualities have been removed.  Will the texture change?  Yup.  You'll get over it, believe me.  I substituted Whole Wheat Organic Flour there.  I also replaced the granulated sugar with Stevia.  It's a sweetener you learn to work with over time, and I say this because it tends to be much sweeter than regular refined sugar, but it's not unmanageable.  

Lastly, the Cream Cheese Frosting.  How is it possible to make this taste delicious and make it healthy?  Well, sometimes, you have to realize, that although Fat Free products aren't the best option, gosh darn it, you need freaking Cream Cheese to make Cream Cheese Frosting!  So I used Fat Free Cream Cheese in place of regular, substituted Stevia again for sugar, and used soy milk for regular milk.  Voila, a healthier cream cheese frosting!  

I might add, that these may have possibly been the best pancakes that I have ever made.  I'm just throwing that out there!