So how do we prepare a culinary event and keep the calories low? I have discovered the "small plates platform combined with my low calorie cooking to work wonders. The small plates ensure that you have variety but keep the quantity low. I usually go with five dishes (including dessert) served on my dessert plates to ensure quantity control. The low calorie cooking has taught me ways of bringing out flavor without too much fat or calories.
Another benefit of this menu is that the vast majority was prepared ahead of time with minimal preparation just before serving.
The Menu
- Mexican style shrimp salad
- Indian style vegetable stew
- Braised swiss chard and egg Spanish style
- Braised pork Hungarian style
- Fruit parfait
Flavor base - red chile powder, garlic, Mexican oregano, cumin, lime juice. The first four ingredients are pounded together to make a paste. Lime juice is added to loosen everything up.
Shrimp - Marinated in flavor base for an hour then sauteed quickly, cooled and cut in half
Vegetables - Jicama, celery, cucumber, red bell pepper, pickled mini-corn in large dice
Mix ingredients and add flavor base. Let marinate for about an hour. Add more lime juice to taste just before serving. The only oil in this dish is about a tablespoon for the shrimp. Shrimp are low cal and measured carefully how many I put in.
Indian Style Vegetable Stew
In this recipe there are three components to the flavor base
Flavor base one, the spices - whole allspice, whole fenugreek, small piece of cinnamon stick, one dried chile arbol, whole cumin seeds, whole coriander seeds, whole anise. Toast these for a couple of minutes in a dry pan until the smell starts arising. Then put into a coffee grinder and grind to a powder.
Flavor base two - green onions, garlic and ginger (both fresh), some ground nutmeg
Flavor base three - vegetable oil, whole mustard seeds, whole cumin seeds
Heat the oil. Add the mustard seeds. When they pop like popcorn, add the cumin seeds. Add the other flavor bases immediately. Lower heat to medium and stir fry for about 3-5 minutes until green onions start to soften. Add a little coconut milk (I used lite - yuch - but it is a third of the calories), a little chicken flavor base and a little water. Let the flavors combine for another 5 minutes. Add your vegetables. In this case I was using zucchini, mushrooms, turnip greens and some white beans (not many beans - high calories). Let the stew cook until the veggies are soft adding water if it starts to dry out. The only real high calorie items are the initial oil and the beans. This whole dish can be done ahead of time a reheated in the micro just before serving.
Braised Swiss Chard and Egg
Flavor base - Olive Oil, pancetta, garlic, pimenton (Spanish smoked paprika
Parboil the chard about 4 minutes for the stems and 2 minutes for the leaves. Put in cold water to stop cooking, drain, squeeze out excess water, and chop.
Fry 1 ounce of thinly sliced pancetta (Italian salted bacon) in a little olive oil to flavor the oil and end up with some crispy pancetta thins. Add sliced garlic and cook until garlic just starts turning golden. Add pimenton. Add the chard, salt, pepper and a little bit of chicken or beef broth. Let chard cook over medium low heat for about 15 to 20 minutes. This can be done ahead of time.
Fry one egg for each serving in olive oil and put it on each serving of chard. Crumble up the pancetta and sprinkle over the top of the egg.
I get a lot of rave reviews for this dish even from those who don't usually like greens. The egg yolk mellows out the bitter tendencies of the green and the little bit of bacony goodness from the pancetta adds salt and crunch. You are getting some calories from the two sets of oil, very little from the one ounce of pancetta spread in this case over 4 servings, and about 70 calories for each egg.
Braised Pork Hungarian Style
OK this is not low cal at all. I justified it because I wanted one splurge dish and I made sure in the small plate format that the portions were small. I used bone on pork chops for this.
Flavor base - Bacon fat, onion, green pepper, garlic, Hungarian paprika, caraway seeds, beef broth.
Brown the chops in bacon fat (not too much!). Set chops aside, saute the onions, green pepper, and garlic until soft. Add paprika - a lot! Add salt, pepper, caraway seed (go light -these are very potent). Add beef broth. Let the braising fluid cook for about 10 minutes to let the flavors combine. Add your chops, cover tightly and braise at a low heat for around 1.5 hours or until the meat comes of the bone. Remove meat into shreds or chunks, toss the bones and put meat back into braising liquid. I did this the day before.
Next day, drain the meat and braising veggies saving the braising liquid. Cook the braising liquid down so it is a lightly thickened sauce. I did this before the guests arrived. Touch up the sauce flavor with some more paprika and caraway seed. Reheat the sauce before serving.
I made some mashed potatoes flavored with slow cooked leeks that made it through the winter in our garden (in spite of the 0 degree weather in February!) ahead of time of course and used those as the base. Put the meat vegetable mixture artfully to one side and finished with the sauce plus a liberal amount of new crop chives from the garden.
As I said, this was the splurge dish of the meal. No caloric redeeming features :(
Fruit Parfait
This is Mrs. de-I's creation and she pulls it off to perfection. Put about 1.5 ounces of pound cake into the bottom of a large wine glass. Sprinkle with a tiny amount of fruit liqueur (Wife likes to us her homemade raspberry). Add two or more complementary fruit. We are using peaches from our last harvest with blueberries. Add a very small amount of fresh made whipped cream.
This ends up tasting much more luxurious than one would think from the very small amount of high caloric components (cake, liqueur, whipped cream).
And how did my dieting guest take this? He had a great time and texted me the next day that he had still lost weight!
3 comments:
How terrifically awesome! This shows what a great host you are, since you can even cater to the dieting crowd to produce tasty food.
sounds amazing!!!!
An international meal! It sounds delicious and doesn't seem at all like a low-cal meal. I guess that's because I associate low-cal with a lack of taste. But you've clearly got lots of flavor in your menu. And the dessert sounds to-die-for.
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