Chevy's Crab Enchiladas

My wife gave me a Chevy's restaurant cookbook for my birthday.   Chevy's used to be one of my favorite places to eat out.   I have written about Chevy's restaurant in a previous blog post. 

I decided to try to make the Crab Enchiladas using a recipe from the new cookbook.   This is not a light recipe... this is full fat!  I figured, though, that based on many months now of cooking lighter and healthier food, I could try the Chevy's enchilada recipe and if the dish turned out well, I could try making a lighter version of the enchiladas in the future.

The recipe for Chevy's Crab Enchiladas can also be found online in an article by Bay Crossings, a publication about maritime culture in the San Francisco Bay Area.

My crab enchiladas turned out really good.   It is really the sauce that makes these enchiladas so delicious.   The recipe yields about 6 enchiladas which made for 3 servings.   The sauce for the 6 enchiladas is very rich and includes 1 cup of heavy whipping cream, 4oz of cream cheese, and 1/2 cup of Monterey Jack cheese.   

Each serving ended up at about 800 calories.    I am sure I make a healthier version of this recipe without giving up a lot of flavor and will probably give this a shot in a couple of months.

Sesame Spaghetti with Chicken and Zucchini

The last time I made Sesame Spaghetti with Chicken and Zucchini was back in February.   One of my goals this year is to grow my repertoire of dishes.   I have made more than 50 different dishes for dinner so far this year.

Sesame Spaghetti was one of the first dishes I learned to make when I was learning to cook many years ago.   At that time, I was a vegetarian and got the sesame spaghetti recipe from a vegetarian cookbook called, Main Course Vegetarian Pleasures by Jeanne Lemlin.   If you want to do more vegetarian cooking, I highly recommend this book.   The recipes are simple and delicious, although not necessarily low fat or low calorie, but then when you cut out the meat, then generally, you are pretty far ahead of the game when it comes to cooking light.   Jeanne also has a cooking blog worth checking out.

Of course, as you might have guessed, my version of this dish now includes chicken (please don't tell Jeanne!)

My well worn copy of Vegetarian Pleasures

Classic Roasted Chicken

Classic Roasted Chicken is amazingly delicious.    I usually eat a whole chicken leg which I did tonight.   A whole chicken leg is about 6 ounces of meat which is almost 400 calories.   Combined with roasted potatoes and broccoli sauteed in olive oil, my dinner was around 600 calories.  I try to target around 500 calories for dinner, so I have to be careful about how much I eat the rest of the day when I make roasted chicken or I maybe I just need to eat less chicken at dinner!

I used  Cooking Light recipe for herb roasted.   The recipe calls for fresh chopped parsley and fresh chopped thyme.   The concept is simple and delicious, but it took me longer than I expected, almost 40 minutes, to get the potatoes into the oven.   I use only the leaves when I chop fresh time and pulling all of those little tiny leaves off the stems takes too long.

Photo: Johnny Autry/Randy Mayor; Styling: Cindy Barr/Lindsey Lower

I steamed the broccoli and then sauteed the broccoli in olive oil and fresh minced garlic and some salt.

 

Greek Beef Pilaf

The weather feels like it is starting to change here in San Jose, CA.   I was wondering if we might have to turn the heat on last night.   It got down well into the 50s last night and the house was chilly this morning when I woke up.    Tomorrow morning will be the coldest Monday in quite awhile when it will be about 57 degrees when we leave the house.   And, after the rain on Saturday, we were in the mood for a fallish kind of dinner.

Photo: Randy Mayor; Styling: Leigh Ann Ross

I made Greek Beef Pilaf which is based on a Cooking Light recipe for Greek Lamb Pilaf.   The main difference in my version is that I used ground beef instead of ground lamb per request from my wife and I use just a little less cinnamon and about half the salt than the Cooking Light recipe calls for.    I have made this dish a few times before, but I thought the version I made tonight for dinner was the best instance of this dish I have made to date.  

There were a couple of other minor deviations from the Cooking Light recipe, which I don't think account for much difference.   I was out of long grain rice so I used jasmine rice instead.   And, I didn't have any yellow onion, so I used a red onion.    I also serve this dish with about 1 tablespoon of plain, lowfat yogurt per serving.   I like to mix the yogurt in with the dish.  

The nutritional info in the Cooking Light recipe said this dish is 446 calories per serving, but when I added up the calories for all the ingredients, I came up with 364 calories (380 including the yogurt) per serving.   I used 90% lean ground beef.  I am pretty sure the difference in calories is due to the use of lean ground beef instead of lamb.   Using ground lamb would add 360 calories to the dish or about 90 calories per serving.

Lemon Garlic Grilled Chicken with Quinoa and Toasted Pine Nuts

I was in the mood for some grilled chicken today before I went grocery shopping.   After searching through my list of recipes, I decided to make Green Beans and Quinoa with Toasted Pine Nuts to go along with the chicken.  

Photo: Johnny Autry; Styling: Cindy Barr

I sprinkled the chicken with salt and pepper and then marinated the chicken in a little bit of olive oil, lemon juice, and garlic in ziploc bag in the fridge for about 2 hours.   I grilled the chicken on charcoal grill using my technique of banking all of the hot coals around the outer edge of the grill and placing the meat in the center so that it is not directly above any of the hot coals.   I put the chicken on the grill, covered the grill, and let the chicken cook on one side for about 3 minutes.   Then I turned the chicken over, covered the grill again and let the chicken cook for another 8 minutes and then turned it again and let it cook for another 3 minutes.   The chicken turned out perfectly.   There is a similar Cooking Light recipe on myrecipes.com.

I snapped 4lbs of green beans and then steamed them for about 10 minutes.   I sauteed about a quarter cup of shallots in 2 tablespoons of olive oil for about 2 minutes and then added the green beans and sauteed the steamed green beans for another 5 to 6 minutes.   While the green beans were in the pan, I added about between 1/4 and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.    This makes about 8 servings of green beans and they were delicious.

I have made the Quinoa with Toasted Pine Nuts before.   For, its the toasted pine nuts that really make this dish.  I use about 1 oz of pine nuts for 6 servings.   This is a Cooking Light recipe I found on myrecipes.com.   I really like this dish.

With about 4 oz of cooked chicken, 1/2 cup of cooked quinoa per serving, and about a cup of green beans, this is about a 400 calorie meal.  

Thai Red Curry Tofu and Shrimp Cakes

I have been thinking about making shrimp or crab cakes for quite awhile now and decided to try a Cooking Light recipe for Thai Shrimp Cakes.  

Photo: Brian Woodcock; Styling: Cindy Barr

 I bought frozen, wild-caught, pink Key West shrimp from Whole Foods in Campbell, CA.  The shrimp were lovely and I hesitated to chop them up for the shrimp cakes.   I forgot to add the egg to the shrimp cake mixture and I used all of the shredded coconut in the mixture and had to add more coconut to the breading later.   I also needed a bit more oil when I cooked the shrimp cakes than is called for in the recipe.   Still, the shrimp cakes turned out to be pretty good.   My wife really liked them.

At only 83 calories per shrimp cake (per the recipe), I needed something else to make this a dinner, so I made the shrimp cakes a side dish to one of my favorite Thai dishes-- Thai Red Curry Tofu.

The Red Curry Tofu recipe is based on a Cooking Light Recipe for Thai Red Curry Shrimp.   I marinated the tofu in some Sarachi hot sauce, salt, and a little sesame oil for about an hour and then sauteed with a little more oil before adding the tofu to the curry mixture.   I served the Red Curry Tofu with plain rice.

This was a higher calorie dinner than I usually eat and the fact that I used more coconut than I should have and more oil, my shrimp cakes came out to around 150 calories per cake.   The tofu dish was around 320 calories per serving and with 3/4 cup of rice at 181 calories, the complete dinner was 650 calories!

Halibut with Peach and Pepper Salsa

In the San Francisco Bay Area, our peaches came in kind of late this year.   It seems like locally grown, ripe peaches didn't show up in the stores until just a few weeks ago.   Its been a long wait.

Photo: Gentl and Hyers; Styling: Kendra Smoot

I saved this Cooking Light recipe for Halibut with Peach and Pepper several weeks ago and have been waiting for the right opportunity to try it.   I thought it might be too soon after I made the pineapple salsa with pork, but I just couldn't wait any longer and I wasn't sure if the peaches could wait any longer.

The ingredients of the salsa are fresh peaches, red bell pepper, fresh oregano, arugula, green onions, lemon juice and garlic.   I added a little sugar as well which was not in the recipe.   You could serve just about anything with this salsa and it would taste great, I'm sure, but the salsa with the halibut was wonderful.  

I served this with zucchini sauteed in olive oil and buttery corn on the cob.   My wife and I really enjoyed this dinner.

5oz of cooked halibut per serving, plus about 3/4 cup of the salsa, half an ear of corn with some butter, and a quarter cup of zucchini came out to about 400 calories.