Black Pepper Sauce

Chop garlic, onions and mushrooms into fine pieces.

Fry the garlic, onions and mushrooms in olive oil.

Then add the grinded black peppers.

Pour some water to make a paste.

Add some oyster sauce. Stir till you obtain a good mixture. The add more water until is becomes slightly watery. Now add some sugar so that not the sauce is not too saltish due to the oyster sauce that was added earlier.

Black Pepper Chicken with Vegetables

A lot of my friends tell me that they just love Chinese or Thai food. When eating out, I find that people tend to pick Chinese or Thai retaurants over others with the mistaken belief that such food is a better dietary option than fattening American food like hamburgers, pasta or pizza, or rich and creamy Indian curries. After all, many of the popular stir-fry dishes contain enticing colourful vegatables. I do not wholly disagree with them. But I do not think that Thai or Chinese food, the way it is cooked in restaurants, is healthy either.


And there are fat and unhealthy Chinese people just as there are fat and unhealthy American people.

Too often, Chinese and Thai dishes in restaurants contain copious amounts of oil, salt and additives like cornstarch and MSG. The average adult needs around 2,000 calories a day and 2,300 milligrams of salt, which is about one teaspoon of salt, according to government guidelines. A report showed that a plate of stir-fried greens has 900 calories and 2,200 milligrams of sodium. And eggplant in garlic sauce has 1,000 calories and 2,000 milligrams of sodium! Scary stuff indeed.

It has been years since I ate out at a Thai or Chinese place. Yes, seriously. Instead, I do my own cooking at home.

Here is a recipe I often do at home. Stir-frys are easy, quick and healthy, if you know how to do it right, the un-restaurant way.

Black Pepper Chicken with Vegetables

Cooking chicken dishes typically takes time for me - I have to clean the chicken, cutting away the unwanted fat, for example. So I usually cook chicken dishes over the weekend. But saving the breast meat to use in quick stir-frys for the weekdays is a huge time saver!

So last Sunday, I saved the breast meat from a whole chicken, and then cut it into small cubes. I then marinated the chicken cubes overnight in the refrigerator to use for dinner on Monday night.

Marinade:

2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons crushed ginger
1 teaspoon crushed garlic
1 teaspoon chicken curry powder

This week, I used the black pepper sauce from Trader Joes. The total calories from 2 tablespoons is 60, and the fat calories is 20. But when I have the time, I make my own black pepper sauce.

Ingredients:

Marinated chicken cubes
Black pepper sauce, 2 tablespoons
Olive oil
Red onions
Carrots, sliced thinly
Broccoli
Snow peas
Mushrooms
Black pepper, sprinkle.

Add the marinated chicken cubes into a wok with heated olive oil, or something similar. Stir-fry until chicken is half-cooked. Then add the red onions. Add some of the liquid from the remaining marinade. Stir-fry until chicken is almost cooked. Add the carrots, mushrooms and snow peas along with the black pepper sauce. Cook to desired level (I like my veges a little crunchy, so I don't cook them till they are too limp). Then add the broccoli and black pepper.

You will notice that I did not add any salt to this dish. That is because the marinade contains salt from the soy sauce, and the black pepper sauce also has salt.

Tandoori Baked Wild Salmon

Salmon is a versatile fish. It is one of my favourite fish to cook because it is firm enough to grill, and it does not break off into pieces when handling or turning over. It can also be baked because it does not dry out as easily as other fish. I usually use wild salmon becuase it can eaten without fear of contaminants or mercury, and it has a very high nutrient content, especially the all important omega-3 fatty acids.

I tried doing something different with my wild salmon yesterday. I wanted to "indianize" the recipe by using tandoori spice powder, but I did not want to add the yoghurt as the typical Indian recipes call for. I did not use any oil for this recipe. I added mushrooms, honey, and crushed garlic and ginger. It turned out very well indeed. I served the salmon with mixed sauted vegetables and white rice.

Tandoori Wild Salmon

Wild Salmon Fillet
Mushrooms

Marinade:
1 teaspoon Tandoori spice powder
1 teaspoon fresh ginger,crushed
1 garlic cloves, crushed
1 teaspoon honey
salt

black pepper powder, to sprinkle
lemon juice, to drizzle

Mix all marinade ingredients together with enough water to make it liquid. Put the salmon fillets in dish and cover completely with the marinade. Turn the fillets over a couple of times, cover and leave to marinate in the fridge for 30 to 45 mins.

Heat the oven to its 420 F. Take the salmon fillets from the marinade, place onto a baking dish and drizzle it over with the marinade. I added the excess marinade onto the fillets because I like my salmon juicy. Then I drizzled lemon juice and sprinkled some black pepper over the fillets.

Add the mushrooms. Bake for 15 - 20 minutes.

The tandoori spice powder in this recipe gives the salmon a wonderful red colour!

Strawberry Sherbet

Summer is fast approaching, and making this strawberry sherbet for your family and frineds will find you most popular indeed. I made this for myself yesterday - it took me all of 10 minutes, and it was just so refreshing.

Strawberry Sherbet

I bought a carton of fresh strawberries from a farmers' market recently. I froze them, and use them now and then to make fruit-protein smoothies, and sherbets, as in this recipe.

1 box of frozen strawberries
1/2 cup orange juice
3/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon vanilla whey protein

Place all of the above into a blender, and blend until frozen strawberries are properly broken down. The consistency should be slightly thicker than as in a smoothie drink.

Make the sherbet moments before serving because once the frozen strawberries are melted, the mixture becomes diluted, turning it into a smoothie drink.

But whichever way you go, sherbet or smoothie, this is a delightfully easy recipe. Enjoy.





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