Shrimp with garlic and soba

I love Spanish tapas and one of my favorites is the classic Gambas al ajillo, or shrimp with garlic. I like it really garlicky with lots of crushed red pepper and a bit of lemon to finish it off. It is great on its own but just as nice tossed with soba noodles.

The great thing about this is that it is easy and quick to prepare. I heated up my wok and added butter and olive oil. I threw in a half teaspoon of a nice crushed red pepper in oil. This was an Asian jarred chili in oil that I found in my local market. You could use just dried red pepper flakes too but I find the chili in oil tends to infuse in the cooking oil better. In went the shrimp and lots of chopped garlic. This was tossed in the pan for a minute or two until the shrimp were just cooked and then a couple tablespoons of lemon juice were added. The cooked soba noodles were mixed in and everything was plated up.

Four Courses

I was inspired reading food blogs to make a light and healthy multi-course dinner that would please the palate but not pack on the pounds. I think I succeeded.

First up: Tomato and Rhubarb Salad with Taragon

This salad exceeded all my expectations. For two servings I used one half of a tomato, chopped, and two thin stalks of celery. To this was added a couple tablespoons of fresh French tarragon - the kind that has that nice anisey bite to it. A couple tablespoons of olive oil, a splash of rice vinegar, a sprinkle of sugar, salt and pepper and that was all it took to create this salad. I served it on a bed of shredded romaine lettuce. The tarragon married beautifully with the tomato and rhubarb.

Second course: Eggplant and Tomato over Shiratake Tofu Noodles

I have fallen in love with Shiratake noodles. They are made from soybeans, have very low carbs and essentially no calories (20 per serving). I took one Asian eggplant and the other half of that tomato and stewed it up with salt, pepper and garlic. I added a splash of balsamic vinegar and finished the dish with fresh oregano.

Third course: Chicken and Herb Sausage with Sprouted Peas and Carrots

I have been experimenting with sprouts lately. One of the things I have discovered are the dried green and yellow whole peas from my local Indian market sprout beautifully. I just soak them overnight in water, drain them and then rinse the peas two or three times a day. After a few days the start to show their roots. I love them at this stage. They are not quite as sweet as a fresh pea but not as starchy as the dried peas. They are alive and the starches are being acted upon by enzymes to convert the starch to the plants food, sugar. They cook up nicely. This dish was a simple sauté of the peas, carrots and sausage. What really made the dish was the addition of dried chipotle pepper. It provided a wonderful spicy smokiness that tied it all together.

Last but not least: Spicy Garlic Shrimp and Soba

I just threw together some shrimp, garlic, commercial chili flakes in oil, salt and pepper and flash sautéed them. Just as the shrimp were about done I threw in cooked soba noodles and tossed them all together in the pan. YUMMY!

Hope you enjoyed this. You CAN make great tasting food without the fat and calories.

Eggplant Curry with Tilapia and Shrimp

Hello dear cooking blog. I have to tell you about an experiment I made tonight that turned out pretty darn good. Oh, certainly there are ways to make this even better and some of them would up the calories and fat, but this was quite satisfying.

You may know that I am trying to cook light and healthy and take off some of this winter blubber. It is possible to cook healthy but still have tons of flavor. I stopped by my local Asian grocery on the way home from work and happened to find some of those small little round purple eggplants. So I grabbed some. All the way home I was trying to figure out how to make a curry without the fat. I came up with this.

For my curry paste, I made a purée of one onion, 6 cloves of garlic, 2 tbsp of ginger and a couple of thai chilis. This was simply thrown into a hot pan along with a tbsp of oil, a tbsp of curry powder, salt and pepper.

I cooked the paste down for about 5-6 minutes with constant stirring until most of the water from the onion had been cooked out and it began to brown a bit. This gives great color and flavor. You want to cook out the raw onion bitterness. This paste will help thicken my sauce. If I had thought ahead, I would have also thrown in a couple of the raw shrimp into the purée. This would have added another level of flavor to the overall dish. This is a great trick to do in dishes where you want the flavor of ingredients that you really don't want to stew for a long time.

Once the paste was cooked out I added a cup of water and 6 small eggplants cut into quarters.

The eggplant and sauce mixture was cooked covered for about 15 minutes until the eggplant became very tender and the sauce thickened a bit. About 3 oz of tilapia and 4 oz of peeled raw shrimp were added to the pan. This was covered and cooked for just a few minutes until the seafood was cooked through.

I think the dish turned out great. You could make this even better if instead of water added to the cooked paste you added a can of coconut milk! I thought about it but I didn't want the added fat tonight. That would take this dish over the top! If I do this again I would also add some fresh curry leaves when I throw in the eggplant and finish it off with some fresh cilantro leaves and a squeeze of lime. Oh, some Thai basil would be a great last minute addition too.

Garlic Shrimp

Here's an other classic Spanish tapas that I served on New Year's Eve. It couldn't get simpler. I just heated some olive oil in a pan, added some red pepper flakes and lots of chopped garlic. This was cooked for just a few seconds and the shrimp was tossed in. It only takes a couple of minutes of stir frying to cook the shrimp through. Near the end I squeezed a lemon over the shrimp and plated it up. It is important NOT to skimp on the olive oil. Use a good amount so you'll have a little bit of heaven to dip your crusty bread into.

Sendai Eats

On Sunday I traveled from Narita to the Tokyo station and then took a shinkansen fast train to Sendai. Here is the local Narita station on a beautiful sunny morning

Here is the Tokyo station shinkansen platform. See everyone queuing up for their cars? You have to know the Japanese system in order to understand it. Instead of questioning it you jut have to go with the flow and everying is ok.


On the way to Sendai it is apparent that every inch of space is utilized in Japan.

Near Sendai you an see mountains in the distance.

They are crazy for this game here.

This is a food blog, after all. So I guess I should talk about some food. Below the Sendai train station there are many restaurants. I found one in particular that did not have a picture menu. I had to drag my server outside to point at the food I wanted in order to place my order. As you can see I found some pretty good shrimp tempura and noodle soup for a very reasonable 880 yen. That's less than $10 US. Pretty good deal.

Seafood and Barley Risotto

This evening I have been prepping some things for tomorrow's thanksgiving feast. I was trying to decide what I could make easily for dinner. Then I happened upon a bag of pearled barley in my pantry. Hmm, what to do with it? I wonder if I could make a risotto out of it. It would be healthier than rice. As long as I could get that creamy texture from the starch, it should be ok. So, I sautéed some onions and garlic in olive oil until softened and then added a couple cups of the barley. I added a few cups of heated seaweed broth I had leftover from a shabu shabu dinner last week. The first picture shows the risotto in the early stages after the first addition of broth. I also added some dried thyme, dried parsley and some Spanish saffron to flavor the dish.

I continued to cook it slowly adding a cup of broth whenever it got dry. This took about 50 minutes until the barley became tender and a creamy texture was developed. I then added two tilapia filets (thawed and cut into pieces), about a cup of small frozen bay scallops and about 20 medium sized shrimp. I made sure to have enough liquid present so I could cook it covered for about 5 minutes. This was the result!

The risotto has a wonderful toothsome texture while maintaining a creamy quality that you would expect from a risotto. Not exactly the same as an excellent starchy rice but pretty good. The tilapia was nicely mild enough in flavor so as to not overwhelm the subtle saffron aromas. The seaweed broth provided a nice flavor of the sea. I forgot to mention the broth was also seasoned with a bit of a clam dashi (broth powder) that I picked up at my local Asian market. Overall I would have to say this was a successful and satisfying substitute for a classic risotto.