10-minute Pantry Meal - of Awesome!

The things one can do with a fully stocked pantry of awesome.

Seriously guys, it's amazing!

I got back from a multi-hour errand trip with my roommate and was STARVING. I'd defrosted some ground beef to use, not really sure what it was going to turn into, but planning on something today anyway.

Since I was starving, it had to be fast. With my dietary restrictions, fast isn't always easy to make if I want it to taste amazing as well. I eat mostly whole foods, and a minimal amount of processed food when necessary. Usually that means cutting veggies and preparing stuff before cooking. That wasn't going to work today - I needed food NOW!!!

So, I put the beef on to brown. And then went in the pantry. [Note: best not to do this unless you're sure you can find something in the pantry pretty quickly. Otherwise you'll end up with burned meat and nothing to do with it!]

First: I saw pasta. Sweet! Pasta's fast! I put on a pot of water to boil.

Hmm, still need something to do with the browning meat...back to the pantry I go! Of course, my problem is that I can't use tomatoes or cheese - which are generally the two things you'd use to cook with beef and pasta, right? Hmmm...

Second: I spied my peach salsa (tomato-less! yes!). I wonder what cooked ground beef and peach salsa over pasta would taste like? My thoughts: delicious. And, even better, I don't have to worry about choosing spices because the salsa is fully spiced already! Score!

And thus, I came up with a simple yet delicious 10-minute pantry meal:

1 lb ground beef
3/4 qt of peach salsa (or whatever salsa you have around)
pasta, cooked (your choice)

Brown the beef, and when it's just about done, mix in the salsa and keep on the heat until the beef is done and the salsa's nice and warm. Pour over pasta. Eat.

Simple, easy, and my belly is one happy camper! Yay!

[Notes on filling a pantry:

Obviously not everyone has the enormous space for a pantry that I do. But some of the staples that I suggest having around for easy meals are:

1. Canned beans. Multiple varieties: black, kidney, great northern (or some other white bean), etc. I have a secret love affair with black beans, so I have more cans of those kind than any other.
2. Dry beans/grains. Multiple varieties: black, kidney, white, lentils. Brown rice, barley, groats, rolled oats, millet, quinoa, wild rice.
3. Canned veggies. We keep corn in our pantry.
4. Canned tuna or salmon. Always have a can on hand. You'd be amazed at how refreshing it can be to see the can of tuna and know your meal is minutes away!
5. Pasta. At least two varieties. One short (like bow-tie or penne) and one long (like fettuccini or angel hair - or spaghetti, but my personal preference bars spaghetti from my shelves).
6. Salsas and sauces. My roommate has a couple of jars of tomato sauce on hand all of the time. He also has a number of curry sauces. And we have plenty of tomato-less, dairy-less sauces for me.
7. Fruit sauce/syrup. It goes well on any meat. Blueberry syrup on meatloaf or meatballs. Peach preserves or apple sauce on pork chops. Cherry chutney on pork chops or ham. The list goes on and on!
8. Fresh garlic and onions. And potatoes. All of these make meals pretty quickly because they're easy to cook.
9. Then all of the normal staples: flour/sugar/baking supplies, condiments of whatever variety you prefer, spices, oils.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of what you should have in your pantry, but merely a small list of what I find especially helpful in my pantry. When I need a meal quick, I have but to grab from the shelf, and off I go!]

A New Twist on an Old Favorite

So, Easter to me has always meant Grandma's baked ham. Mmmmm. But, this year, Grandma's all the way out in Minnesota, and I'm nowhere near there. Thus, I'm on my own if I want Easter ham. Now, my kitchen has been bubbling and stewing and steaming all afternoon long: fruit sauces, pears to puree, a new bean soup (see future post, provided it turns into something delicious). And then I remembered I needed to make myself some ham for dinner. Right.

Got the ham steak? Check.

Baking dish? Check.

Recipe? ...oops, crap, how am I gonna cook this ham anyway?

Umm. To the cookbooks! I pulled out my trusty Joy of Cooking and Better Homes & Gardens cookbooks. They've never let me down. And sure enough, they had some pretty nice ideas - ideas that are very classic and therefore somehow boring today. I guess maybe since I was making my own Easter dinner today, I wanted something a little different. Or maybe I was just feeling adventurous in the kitchen with that new bean soup simmering on the stove.

Whatever the reason, I decided I needed to combine some ideas from both cookbooks and come up with my own glaze for baking my ham steak. The result? Success! A ridiculously simple, totally delicious little glaze.

Hope everyone (who celebrates) had a nice Easter dinner of their own! Mine was ham steak with delicious new glaze and some steamed green beans. And a fantastically tall glass of water.

Baked Ham Steak

1 ham steak (1-1 1/2 lbs)
1 Tbsp reduced sodium soy sauce
1 Tbsp honey (preferably pure honey, not the processed stuff)
~1 Tbsp water (or less if you want a thicker glaze)
1 tsp brown sugar
Pepper to taste
Spray olive oil

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Position rack in bottom 1/3 of your oven.

1. Lightly spray glass baking dish with olive oil - very thin coating is all that's necessary.
2. Mix together soy sauce, honey, brown sugar. Add water to desired consistency. (Using the full Tbsp will make the glaze a little thicker than the consistency of water).
3. Spread thin layer of glaze on one side of the ham steak (this will be the bottom, so don't apply too thickly). Put this side down in the baking dish.
4. Pour the rest of the glaze over the top of the ham steak in the baking dish. Try to make it evenly dispersed over the whole steak. Sprinkle pepper to taste over the glazed top of the steak (I used 3-4 shakes of my pepper shaker).
5. Bake for 20 min. Take out the dish and reapply the glaze from the bottom of the baking dish to the top of the ham steak. Bake for another 10 min.

Enjoy!

[You may have noticed that this recipe uses brown sugar, and if you've kept up with this blog at all, you'll know this is one of my new favorite recipes because it uses brown sugar!]

New Meatball Sauce of AWESOME!

Chris was here last weekend, and for dinner on Monday night before he left, I made meatballs with rice and steamed green beans. Simple, easy, yum. Except that as the meatballs were baking (yes, I said baking, check this recipe), I was thinking about what I could put on the meatballs, since just meatballs and rice alone is a little dry.

And then I had an idea, the lightbulb above my (suddenly cartoonized?) head went on. I used to make this beef stir-fry with broccoli, celery, and carrots. [Ha, notice that this is a baaaaad meal for me these days: stir-fry, broccoli, celery, and carrots. Out of the 4 main parts of the description of that meal, only the non-bolded one is the one I can still eat. *sigh*]

But, back to the topic at hand: my awesome idea stemming from this stir-fry I used to make all the time. The sauce for the stir-fry is a thick brown sauce - really good for beef. And since my meatballs are made out of beef, I figured I'd just adjust the balance of ingredients a little and see what I came up with.

3 words: It was delicious! (Score!)

And so, today's post is short and sweet, but with a killer new meatball sauce! [Sorry kids, no pictures this time.]

Meatball Sauce
used in a meal of meatballs (half-size from linked recipe) & brown rice with steamed green beans and homemade honey-oat bread - mmm!

2.5 Tbsp reduced-sodium soy sauce
<1/2 cup water (but >1/3) [hooray for non-exact measurements!]
1.5 Tbsp brown sugar, packed
1 Tbsp + 1 tsp cornstarch

1. Mix together thoroughly.
2. When meatballs are about 2-3 minutes from being done, put the mixture on very low heat in a small saucepan.
3. Stir constantly until mixture thickens. [If you want it a little thicker, add a pinch more cornstarch perhaps, but a little goes a long way!]
4. Serve hot over top of the meatballs - it will be too thick to drizzle over the rice as well, but the heat and moisture of the rice softens the sauce up a bit.

Enjoy!

[Okay, let's be serious. The reason I like this sauce so much is because I've found a way to incorporate a small amount brown sugar into my cooking again. I have a rather large infatuation with brown sugar when it comes to cooking and baking. No joke!]

How to Make Fruit Puree

So, this seems like a rather easy task, right? But, if you're like me, and had never done it before, you might think to google it or check in a cookbook or something... Yeah, bad idea. Every "how-to" on fruit purees I found assumed some knowledge of making fruit puree or cooking fruit for said puree or didn't give me adequate amounts of # of fruit to use, how to cut it up, how much water to use, etc. - which is frustrating when you have never done this and need to know the whole process, not just one piece of the process! [Isn't that what a How-to is for? To show you how to do something from start to finish? Just sayin'...]

After about an hour online (that's not a joke nor an exaggeration), I hit upon this video for making a fruit puree that very nicely breaks down the whole process. I highly suggest watching it in addition to reading any "how-to" (mine or someone else's) for making your own fruit puree.

I agree with this dude in the video: I like the simplest recipes for fruit puree - the ones that keep the natural flavors of whatever fruit you're pureeing. So, I offer up my process for fruit purees, with the caveat that after you've done it once, you will find it's very easy to do and you should start playing around with combinations and textures to make your own favorites!

Fruit Puree
(thus far I've only done apples and pears, so the process below is best suited for fruits similar in texture/hardness to those fruits)

1. Get 4 medium to large sized pieces of fruit. Peel and core them.
2. Chop into pieces - about 1 to 1.5-in size. Throw these in a large pot.
3. Cover with water that just barely covers the top of the fruit. I often don't quite cover the top pieces, since the fruit floats. So, push the fruit pieces down, and if the water covers them, then you've got enough.
4. Bring water to a boil, then cook over medium heat until done (about 45-50 minutes). "Done" means the fruit is soft enough to mush up with a spoon or masher or whatever (no need to actually mash). The water will also have reduced quite a bit. You want to have some water left over, so don't reduce it all the way, but leave about a 1/4-in of water at the bottom of the pan (this is a rough estimate).
5. Let fruit cool - I generally do this with a lid on the pan so that the water doesn't evaporate!
6. Once it's around room-temperature or a little above, put fruit into food processor. The first time you do this, I suggest not putting all the water in yet - you can always add more, but you can't really take it away... If the fruit isn't liquidy enough, add some of the water until you get the desired consistency.
7. Let cool all the way before transferring to a container and refrigerating/freezing. I've found that puree lasts for about a week in the fridge, if you don't eat it all first!

Boiling apples:


Pureed!


Some tips for choosing fruit for purees:

They taste richer if you use a mixture of types, but if you don't want to buy different kinds, I recommend going with a strong-tasting variety of apple or pear.

For apples: I generally use two varieties of apples in my apple purees: one pungently-flavored apple good for eating, and one less pungent, but still pretty strong flavored apple that's touted as a good baking apple. My favorite combination is Jonagold+Mutzi apples (from the Farmers' Market!), but in the off-season, Fuji+Cortland or Fuji+Golden Delicious are good alternatives. Play around with combinations.

For pears: I prefer Asian pears to Bartlett or Bosc pears. I've been using a mixture of two types of Asian pears that I get from my local Farmer's Market lately, so I don't have any good ideas yet for off-season pear purees. The ones I use are just a regular Asian pear+this variety of Asian pear that tastes like it has honey in it! Mmm...

[The most important part to remember - hot boiled apples or pears are even more delicious than their plain chopped counterparts. Just make sure you blow on them to cool a bit - they burn tongues fast! ...might be speaking from personal experience here...]

How do you define "comfort food?"

I sometimes wonder what exactly makes a dish worthy of the label "comfort food." While I realize that it's a very personal classification, I have to wonder what exactly makes a person call something "comfort food?"

I feel like it has a lot to do with family and family traditions. And what Mom fed you when you were ill. (Campbell's Chicken Noodle and cinnamon-sugar toast - yum!) Foods that bring with them pleasant memories from days gone by, or from what our brains have labeled as "simpler times."

But, that's the obvious classification tool for comfort food. What about other types? New dishes you've had since childhood days? Different tastes you've developed over the years? Just how does one decide something is one of their "comfort foods?"

I would like to put out an hypothesis - which is pretty much entirely based on my own perspective and experience.
Comfort food is food that can brighten a bad day, that is easy to make, and that carries with it a pleasant memory - be it of family, friends, just spending time alone...

Think about it - you've had a bad day and now you're hungry. You just want something fast but satisfying that will make things feel not so bad, and you have very little energy to give up to creating said 'something.' You go for what's always on the brain - that recipe for your own comfort food. And even the preparation of it makes you start to feel better, cozy, safe, comfortable (or insert your own adjective here). The smell of it brings back nice memories, brings a smile to your face as you play back the memory in your mind. And then you sit down and eat it, and the taste is beyond amazing! Perhaps another person would not agree, but to you it's the best taste in the world!

That's, I guess, how I personally classify comfort food. Some favorites that come to mind from my own childhood are my mother's mac-n-cheese (not from the box), Angel Cookies (family recipe), meatballs in BBQ sauce + grape jelly (yummy), and my grandmother's lefse (I am so Norwegian, what can I say?). --Alas, most of these are off-limits now on this new diet. And that was the stuff that was hardest to give up - all that comfort food that I'm used to eating when I feel bad or sick or whatever. I've been spending the past few months learning to create new comfort foods that remind me of my old comfort foods, but are made of things I can eat. [For the record, lefse is currently not allowed, but my food-introduction plan will be shaped such that, by Christmas, I will once again be able to eat it. It's that good!]

This is all, obviously, leading to a new type of comfort food that I've hit upon in the past month. Partly discovered through friends, partly discovered by my continuing internet search for recipes I can tweak to work into my diet. It's easy, it's simple, and makes fabulous leftovers for the rest of the week. Scrumptious.

Meatballs with Fruit Compote
Ha - see? It even has a simple name!



Meatballs
...they're adorable as only little meatballs can be - and they smell fabulous as they cook!

1 lb. 93% lean ground beef (thawed)
2 oz (1/4 cup) whole wheat bread crumbs [Note: so many brands of bread crumbs are made with hydrogenated oils - it's ridiculous. Panko is the only brand I've found that doesn't - I recommend them.]
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp salt
spray cooking oil

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Please a large non-stick skillet in the oven.
2. Knead bread crumbs, oregano, basil, and salt into ground beef until well blended.
3. Roll beef mixture into a large ball and cut in half. Roll each half into a ball and cut in half. Continue until you have 32 meatballs (they'll be about an inch in diameter). [Note: I think this is the most fun I've ever had making meatballs - maybe because they come out so symmetrically?]
4. Spray hot skillet lightly with olive oil. (Take skillet out of oven first!) Place meatballs on skillet and return to oven.
5. Cook for 12-15 minutes, until meatballs are firm to the touch.

Fruit Compote
...of AWESOME! No, really, this stuff is out of this world.

[Note: this recipe is far from exactifiable (that's totally a word) - it's more an art of putting stuff in the pot and eyeing the balance of amounts of the different fruits. Yeah. Have fun!]

1 large apple
[I recommend a full-flavored apple that you'd eat, not a baking apple. It makes the compote's blend of flavors a lot richer.]
a couple handfuls of green grapes
["couple" meaning 2-4?]
approx. 4-5 oz of organic pitted dates
[measured based on using half of the 9 oz. container I buy at Whole Foods]
organic 100% apple juice
[spend the extra money and get the foggy stuff - the clear stuff is weak and less flavorful]

1. Core and peel the apple. Cut into large chunks (roughly 1-inch cubes - as much as you can "cube" a spherical fruit). Put apple pieces in a medium pot.
2. Add grapes until it looks like there's a good balance of color between the apple pieces and the grapes. Halve them if they're really large grapes.
3. Cut dates in half width-wise. Add to pot. Toss fruits in pan a bit to mix them all together.
4. Add enough apple juice to barely reach the top of the fruit - but don't drown the fruit in juice, some should be sticking up above the juice.
5. Bring to a boil over medium heat, then turn to low heat and simmer until apple juice has almost completely reduced.

Mine is always a brick red color - but doesn't turn so until about 5 minutes before it's done. Not sure why, but it's a nice indicator that I discovered while making it.

[As mentioned above - this is totally an art. It generally takes about 45 minutes for mine to cook - probably could take less time if I turned up the heat, but I like savoring the aroma in my kitchen. If you want a soupier compote, don't reduce apple juice as much. If you feel that the fruits don't saturate and soften enough, add more apple juice and cook until reduced again. And once you taste it, if one flavor over-powers, add some more fruit and juice and cook some more - or remember to not add as much of that fruit next time around. The important part is to make sure you lick the spoon you use to mix it - and lick out the pot once it cools and you've transferred the compote to a container. No really, it's important - because it tastes so good!!!]

A couple of meal notes:
1. I generally pair this meatball & sauce concoction with half of a Sweet Dumpling Squash, some steamed green beans, and a slice of my homemade bread - for lapping up the excess sauce from the plate/bowl after eating all of the meatballs. Talk about the best meal ever! The squash is filling enough to satisfy any hunger, the meatballs and compote steal the show, the green beans give me my green veggie fix, and the bread and leftover compote are sweet enough to be like dessert! Mmm.
2. Store the meatballs and compote in separate containers in the fridge. To reheat, put some meatballs and compote in a dish, cover, and microwave. I use about 1.5 minutes for 4-5 meatballs and a couple spoonfuls of compote.
3. The compote makes fabulous "jam" for sandwiches. Or yummy sauce for mashed potatoes. Or over roasted chunks of squash. Or mixed with some of my favorite grain recipe. Or just licked off your finger!

Shout out to my friends N & F, who had me over for dinner about a month ago and introduced me to this compote. I am forever grateful for this new comfort food. Thanks guys!

The Savory Side of My Pumpkin

(continued from previous pumpkin post - alliteration totally intentional)

So, after making all sorts of baked goods with that pumpkin, I still had a bunch of pumpkin left! [Note to self: buy smaller pumpkin next time...]

Feeling that I'd done a pretty good job of venturing into the world of baked goods pumpkin-style, I thought I'd peruse the internet for pumpkin meal recipes (low fat, healthy, non-spicy recipes of course - making the internet recipe search quite an adventure as always). I found this lovely recipe for pumpkin-sage pasta sauce.

The little voice in my head instantly started screaming:
Pumpkin pasta sauce? Wow - you mean, I could actually eat pasta with sauce again? No way! I gotta try this!

Unfortunately, the recipe wasn't quite something I could eat, so I wrote down the main parts of the recipe and the amounts, and then made some notes about how to manipulate the ingredients so that I could eat it. And I thought I'd try adding some apple puree to it... because, hey, pumpkin and apple taste good together, right?

[You may get the sudden impression that there's a little sarcasm behind my words...and that perhaps this idea went a little awry? If that was your sense, you were right! Gold star.]

Here are the ingredients from my first attempt at "amazing pumpkin pasta sauce":

1 cup veggie broth
1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree
2 apples - pureed
1/2 cup soy milk (plain)
1 1/4 tsp dried sage
1/2 tsp dried onion flakes
1/2 tsp garlic granules
salt to taste

I tried making it on a Thursday evening. All I can really say about this endeavor: EPIC FAIL. I cooked it all together - the sauce was rather thick, so I added a bit of water, a few more drops of veggie broth, a little olive oil (something that was in the original recipe). The flavor was all off - so I tried adding a bit more onion flakes, some more of the garlic granules, some more pumpkin. But no, it really didn't work at all. It was horrible! It had turned this sickening green color... I realized that the real problem was that I'd put too much apple in it, which overpowered the subtler flavor of pumpkin, and for every one's future reference: apple + sage = ew. And once there was too much apple, trying to cover it with more of the other flavors was a recipe for only one thing: DISASTER.

Right. Dumped that out. Ate something else that night. Ew.

I waited 'til the weekend to try again - needed a few days to nurse the wound of creating something that hideous on my beautiful stove.

This time, I decided to follow the recipe a little closer - and under no circumstances would I be adding any apple to it this time.

The updated recipe ingredient list:

1/2 cup veggie broth
1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree
1/2 cup plain soy milk
1 1/4 tsp dried sage
1 tsp onion flakes
1 tsp garlic granules
salt to taste

This time, it worked. Tasted pretty nice on the stove. So I cooked up some pasta, and poured some sauce atop the pasta with some meatballs I'd also made that day (see future post for meatball recipe). And it tasted... bad. [What? This is supposed to be pasta sauce!!!]

The problem this time: the meatballs were herbed up with some oregano and basil - and totally powered out the sage and pumpkin. *sigh*

And now we come to the second part of this adventure: what this sauce actually tastes good with?

Obviously the meatballs were a no-go. So the next night I tried the sauce on just pasta - whole wheat rotini. Yeah, no. This time, it was missing something!

I also tried it over my grain mixture (Grandma's Grains). And that ended up working as a really nice chip dip. But chip dip is not a meal.

My next thought was to pair the sauce with a very simple baked white-meat fish. So, I bought some tilapia fillets, and broke out the Joy of Cooking - the real hero of this story. I found a very simple way of baking the fish, and then topped it with my warmed up pumpkin-sage sauce. SUCCESS!!! It was so delicious, I made it two nights in a row. And my stomach loved me for it!

And so, to wrap up, I offer the recipe for this pumpkin-sage sauce, and the uses I found worthwhile. The bottom-line: it's a subtle blend of flavor, so it must be paired with things that will enhance but not over-power it.

Pumpkin Sage Sauce

1/2 cup veggie broth
1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree
1/2 cup plain soy milk
1 1/4 tsp dried sage
1 tsp onion flakes
1 tsp garlic granules
salt to taste

1. In a medium-sized pan, simmer first 6 ingredients (all but the salt) over low heat until well-combined. (About 8-10 minutes, perhaps 12 - depends on your stove. Taste it, you'll know when it's "well-combined.")
2. Add salt to taste.

My favorite ways to use this:

Chip Dip
Mix about 3/4 cup grains with a little more than 3/4 cup sauce (I didn't measure these exactly). Basically, add sauce to the grains until the consistency is similar guacamole. Microwave until warm (1.5-2 minutes?). Dip baked tortilla chips in it for a nice low-fat snack or appetizer.

As Sauce over Baked Fish
To bake fish (single-serving):

1 fish fillet - white fish like tilapia, cod, halibut, about 1-inch thick or less
1/2 tsp of olive oil
salt to taste
butter

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F.

1. Grease bottom of glass baking dish with butter (I use non-dairy butter).
2. Rinse fillet and pat dry. Place in baking dish.
3. Brush top of fillet with olive oil. Sprinkle salt to taste on top. (I realize that "salt to taste" on raw fish doesn't really make sense. I used a salt shaker and sprinkled lightly back and forth twice over the fillet.)
4. Bake 8-10 minutes per inch of thickness, until fish fillet is opaque in the center. (Check Joy of Cooking for doneness factor of different types of fish. This time span and check for doneness comes straight from my copy for white fish fillets.)

Place fish on plate, and spoon warmed up pumpkin-sage sauce over top of fillets. I paired this with a serving of grains sprinkled with raw sugar, and a serving of steamed green beans with a few drops of my "fake" butter.

Mmm!

[PS - For the actual pasta sauce recipe, go here. Maybe you'll have better luck with is as an actual pasta sauce?]

I finally embrace the ocean state I live in...

I've never been the biggest fan of seafood. Growing up in MN, you can't get it fresh, because no matter what ocean it comes from, it'll have to be shipped to our landlocked state. And when it comes off the ice from the packaging, it gets that gross fishy smell. That's what I've always associated with seafood. "Gross fishy smell." It's as ingrained in my head as "knee high by the 4th of July" for a good corn crop. Just something that's always been true in my world. [And no, I never lived on a farm, I grew up in the suburbs... but that little rhyme is something every MN child grows up knowing. Go figure.]

So, when I moved to Boston 4+ years ago, that idea of seafood still resided in my brain. I couldn't do the seafood thing. Even when it's fresh, to me it still smells fishy because of that lifelong association. Funny, that I should denounce an entire world of regional food here just because of something I never liked as a child - food associations are strong and run deep.

Once I went on this diet, however, meat suddenly had to be really lean. And [newsflash Nina!], fish is a very lean meat. And full of nutritional value. And every site I hit upon on the internet that touts low fat recipes and lean meals always has a bunch of fish recipes.

About a week and a half ago, I finally decided to embrace the seafood side of Boston's cuisine. (Well, at least, the fish part. I'm still not all that keen on other seafood...) I found a recipe for baked white fish with a sauce I can actually eat, and bought myself a cod fillet at Whole Foods - fresh (the frozen stuff is too close to the stuff I'm not too keen on).

And I baked it. [Haha, using a frying pan in the oven - I think I giggled every time I opened the oven - it just looked so odd!]

And it was delicious!!! Satisfying, filling but not stuffing, tasted good. Yum! Apparently I've been missing quite a bit by not partaking in this whole fresh fish part of my wonderful Boston...



The fish recipe (with sauce) came from Dr. Gourmet's website, which is a great resource for recipes that work well for low fat diets and GERD (acid reflux) diets (as well as a bunch of other diets that I miraculously am not on). It calls for halibut, but Whole Foods didn't have any fresh, so I just used another white fish instead.

Fish:
2 4 oz fillets of cod (or 1 7-8 oz fillet, cut in half - you can save the other one for a different night!)
1/4 tsp salt
spray olive oil

Preheat oven to 425 deg. Place a medium-sized skillet in the oven. [snicker]

While oven heats, rinse fillets in cold water and pat dry with a paper towel. Place on cutting board skin side up. Cut shallow slits in skin, approx 1/4 inch apart. Sprinkle salt over top.

When oven is hot, spray pan lightly with oil. Place fish in the pan skin side down. Return to oven and cook for about 10-12 minutes.

Serve skin side up with 1.5 teaspoons of basil oil sauce.

Sauce:
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves

Place olive oil and basil leaves in a food processor (or blender) and process until smooth.

I also roasted up some tri-color carrots and butternut squash that I got at the Copley Farmer's Market in some olive oil and seasoned it all with a touch of salt and thyme, and also used some of my ever-present stash of "Grandma's Grains" with a bit of sugar to round out the meal. Delicious.