Citrus Soy Sea Bass and a Pamelo

It’s been quite a buys week for me. It’s been a busy week, between work and home; I’ve hardly had a minute to relax. Our company is going to be showing at trade show in Las Vegas, and it’s me job to get all the goods ready for it. Throw in a last minute buying trip and you’ve got chaos, as well as me working both the Saturday before and Memorial Day. (Don’t worry; I’ll be getting well compensated in July)

I did some cooking and baking this week, as well as fitting in a few reviews, which I have yet to write. I’ll start with the Citrus Soy Sea Bass that I made last Sunday and I’ll try to follow up quickly with Glutino’s wafer cookies and Pamela’s chocolate chunk cookies.


Last week Whole Foods had a special on Chilean Sea Bass, intrigued, I ran a little search on Epicurious and found an interesting cirtusy ginger marinade for sea bass. It sounded great to me, although I wasn’t sure how my boyfriend would like it. So, after my trip to the Green Market I got down to business, making the marinade and then preparing his turkey burgers and my hamburguesas de tres carnes.

Rather than spending more money on ingredients that I didn’t have I decided to substitute a pamelo that one of our contractors had given me to try. He claims that they are the original grapefruit, and opening this thing up was an adventure. The skin is super thick, and the fruit itself was about the size of a softball. One section alone was bigger than my ear. Opening it was exciting but the fruit itself was a little disappointing; it was dried out and crumbly and not very good eating. It did however serve very well in the recipe, where I substituted it for orange.

The bass turned out wonderfully, soft and flaky, almost as though I had cooked it in butter. I loved the bold, spicy, ginger pineapple sauce. My boyfriend ate the fish but proclaimed the sauce “too spicy”. I had suspected he might, but he told me to fix what I wanted, so I did. I’ll just have to save this recipe for folk with less delicate tastes. However, if you choose to accept the challenge, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Citrus Soy Sea Bass

½ c. pineapple chunks
½ c. grapefruit sections

¼ c. soy sauce, gluten free of course
3 tbsp fresh ginger
1 tbsp sesame or other oil
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper

1- large bass steak, or other cut of bass

Put all ingredients, except bass, in the blender and puree. Place bass and marinade in a glass container, make sure the fish is covered, stir occasionally, let sit for at least two hours.

Heat a pan, cover the bottom with marinade, put in fish and cover with the rest of the marinade. Cover and steam until the bass is white and cooked all the way through. Time depends on how thick the bass cut is.

Remove the fish when it’s done. Cook down the marinade until it is caramelized.

Serve and enjoy.

Turkey Burgers, or How to Hide Vegetable Where They’re Least Expected

I started today with a little bit of a cold and a mission. Stepping out into the chilly air, I hoped I would be warm enough. After doing my homework on the web and studying mapquest I felt like I had a pretty good handle on where I would find our ‘local’ green market.

New York has a number of green markets around the city and in the boroughs. I’ve been to the one in Union Square and the one in Brooklyn is close to where I used to live. But up until today I had been unable to locate either of Queen’s two elusive markets. Armed with my shopping bag and list I struck out for the subway station.

As in turns out, the green market is not far from one of the stops on the #7 train and the NYSC gym that my boyfriend and I work out at in Sunnyside, so I didn’t have too much trouble finding it. It’s not a large market, not like the others I’ve been to, but the food was fresh and local and the people were very friendly. It’s still early in the season and I’m sure they’ll have more in the coming weeks.

I was able to get all the fresh veggies in my list. Just look at this bounty of baby greens. I even got red spinach, which I’ve never heard of before, it’s supposed to be a little sweeter than green spinach, I’ll find out soon enough. Now that I’ve found it, and since it’s so close to the gym, I’m adding the green market to my list of errands.

All the goodies I got lead me to my recipe of today: Turkey Burgers. Since the first meatloaf I made my boyfriend has been requesting different variations. First it was a beef and turkey meatloaf for the whole family and then it was an all turkey meatloaf for him to take for lunch at work. Now, the last turkey meatloaf I made he sliced up and took in sandwiches, but each slice was much smaller than the bread and I suggested that I could make turkey burgers that would fill out a sandwich better. Ever since then he’s been asking for turkey burgers.

Since I’m cooking for him, I feel partially responsible for his nutrition. He’s a personal trainer and really wants to take care of his body. But the food his mother cooks, traditional Ecuadorian fare doused in corn oil, is pretty light on the dark green leafy veggies and he has some inbred aversion to eating greens. Their idea of a salad is few pieces of iceberg lettuce along with a meal. So I formulated these turkey burgers to be very similar to the meat loaf and I tried to sneak in some dark greens. Hopefully he won’t notice. As long as it’s high protein, low fat and low carb he should be happy.

Turkey Burgers
1 ¼ Lb. ground light meat turkey
1 small onion, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
½ c. fresh baby spinach, chopped
½ c. fresh parsley, chopped
1 tsp. poultry seasoning mix
1 egg or egg white
salt and pepper to taste

mix everything together with your hands until well mixed. Form into 4 or 5 patties and grill or pan-fry.

Grain Free Sweet Potato Almond Butter Bread

A few weeks ago Simply…Gluten Free posted a recipe for grain free muffins, and then grain free zucchini bread. Then I was bopping around and I found Straight Into Bed Cakefree and Dried’s recipe for sweet potato pitas. My boyfriend and I are both trying to cut carbs and I thought the idea of a grain free bread-type product sounded really interesting.

I’ve been wanting to try to grain-free peanut butter banana muffins, but I’m still not sure if I’m really allergic to them, and I’m not ready to try just yet, I was looking for an alternative fruit. The grain-free zucchini bread looked great until I ran the nutrition: with the almond butter and almond meal it ended up being pretty high calorie and fat. A comment on the muffin post made me think of pumpkin, but since it’s not pumpkin season, that was out. After seeing the sweet potato pitas, a plan began to form in my mind.

When I was at Trader Joe’s, deliberating in the nut aisle, I opted for almond butter because no one else in my house will use it and contaminate the rest of the jar with bread knives and such. With these recipes all open in my Firefox tabs and with my previous meringue research in mind, I created this Grain Free Sweet Potato Almond Butter Bread.

4 eggs- separated
1tsp cream of tartar
¾ creamy almond butter
2 small sweet potatoes, steamed and skinned
1 Tbsp agave syrup
1 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg
2 Tbsp NutriBiotic rice protein powder (optional)*

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Prepare a loaf pan with greased parchment paper or wax paper.

In a large mixing bowl beat egg whites and cream of tartar with an electric mixer until stiff peaks form

In a second bowl beat the egg yolks until they lighten in color. Add almond butter, sliced sweet potato, agave syrup, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg. Mix until well blended.

Take a spoonful of egg whites and mix into sweet potato mixture. Mix sweet potato mixture into the egg whites and fold in well, until there are no white streaks.

Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 45-50 minutes, until slightly brown on the sides and puffy on top. Cool in pan for 10 minutes. Remove from pan and paper and let cool on a rack.

So far everybody in my house has liked it, and they’re a hard crowd to please when it comes to trying new foods. And it’s a really pretty color!

*I added this to add a little extra nutrition.

†A special thanks to Simply…Gluten Free and Straight Into Bed Cakefree and Dried. You ladies are great!

Tilapia on a Whim

Last weekend, while watching TV, my boyfriend asked me what tilapia was. He had read in his Flex magazine that some professional body builder was helping to train another and he recommended eating lots of tilapia. So naturally, my boyfriend wants to try tilapia too.

I did a little web research and learned that tilapia is not only on the “safe” list, it’s low calorie, high in protein and low in fat compared to, say, sea bass or tuna.

Never one to turn down a challenge I decided to give it a shot. I thought about what would be fairly fool proof, in terms of my boyfriend trying new foods: nothing fancy or spicy, and what ingredients I already had at home: the end of a bottle of white wine from my last seafood project.

On the way home I stopped at the local grocery, grabbed what looked good and threw this together.

2 fillets Tilapia
1 medium Vidalia or yellow Onion, sliced
2 cloves Garlic, sliced
1 Tomato, diced
3 sprigs fresh Rosemary, partially chopped
White Whine
Olive Oil
Salt and Fresh Pepper

Wash the tilapia and lay on a plate. Sprinkle salt, fresh ground pepper and chopped rosemary over fish. Clean and slice garlic and onions. Sautee garlic, onions and rosemary with salt and pepper until onions are translucent. Push onions to sides of pan, lay tilapia fillets in pan to sear on one side. After 3 minutes flip fillets and cover with onions. Add diced tomato and enough white wine to cover bottom of pan. Cover and cooked until fish is cooked through, about 7 minutes.

We had this with brown rice. I started the rice before I started to prepare the fish and they were done at just about the same time.

My boyfriend really liked it, the only thing that slipped my mind in the mad-dash for groceries was the lemon, luckily we always have limes in the refrigerator. I expect I’ll be making tilapia in ever more creative ways in the future.

Fennel & Eggs

As I was reading a health food magazine on the subway I found an article extolling the virtues of fennel. I don't see fennel very often, but I remember my Nonna loved it. It's indigenous to the Mediterranean and I'm sure that she ate it growing up in her Italian family; she used to call in fenochio.

Fennel is a winter vegetable, available from autumn to early spring. It has lots of vitamin C, folic acid, potassium and antioxidants. Historically it’s been used for bad breath and indigestion, intestinal spasms and cramps (maybe it’s the celiac’s best friend?)

I’ve almost exclusively had it in salads; it’s great with some walnuts, cranberries, citrus fruit and just a little vinaigrette. This article had some good ideas, but I wanted to try something a little heartier.

It’s hard to use many of the recipes I find, since I’m really only cooking for one. The rest of the folks in this apartment won’t try anything new, so whatever I make gets eaten by me. This was my first attempt, and although it doesn’t look like much, it is delicious! And quick.

Makes 1 Serving:
3 Eggs or egg whites
½ bulb Fennel
1 clove Garlic
1teaspoon Olive Oil
¼ cup shredded Mozzarella cheese
Salt and Fresh Pepper to taste

Thinly slice fennel and garlic, sauté in a large skillet until fennel is soft. Add eggs and stir, cook until eggs are set. Top with cheese, cover and turn of heat. Serve warm.

This is really filling, it makes a great breakfast. I think it would work well with just about any type of cheese. It could also be made to serve more; a larger batch could be baked in the oven.

Beyond Rice Cakes

When you learned that you could no longer eat gluten, did visions of rice cakes pass before your eyes? I think at one time another us celiacs, and many dieters have thought we’d only be able to eat rice cakes. But really, they’re not that bad, with a little work the lowly rice cake can make for a great meal.

While staying with my cousins on short notice I faced with this rice cake only prospect. After searching the kitchen for safe foods I found an unopened bottle of Smucker’s Natural Peanut Butter, Quaker Rice Cakes and a pear. The result was fantastic! Quick and easy: 1 rice cake smothered in peanut butter and topped with sliced pear. All the bases covered, carbs, protein and fresh fruit. And I wasn’t hungry till the afternoon.

Another recipe to be filed away for when I’m stuck in a place that doesn’t have all my usual food.

**Note: not all Quaker rice cake products are gluten free**

Gluten Free Meat Loaf

Last week a friend of mine made his first meat loaf, for friends, and was so excited and proud of himself. This got me thinking, I haven’t had meat loaf since going gluten free. My mother made hers with rolled oats, and all along I have simply assumed that all others were too.

I had this sample of Nueva Cucina seasoning that I wanted to try, so after consulting with my mother, Jeff and his copy of the Good House Keeping cookbook I formulated my own recipe. Which turned out really well. It’s been perfect for lunch at work all week.

½ Lb. Ground Sirloin
¼ Lb. Ground Veal
¼ Lb. Ground Bison
1 small Onion, finely chopped
¼ bunch Parsley, chopped
2 Egg Whites
Crumbs of 1 slice of Gluten Free Bread
½ c. Tomato Sauce
Nueva Cucina Chipotlé Taco seasoning

Preheat oven to 350 F

Mix bread crumbs, onion, parsley, 2/3 packet seasoning, ¼ c. tomato sauce and egg whites until everything is moist. Mix in ground meats by hand. Form into desired loaf-like shape and place on pan or baking sheet. Mix remaining seasoning and tomato sauce and spoon onto top of loaf.

Bake at 350 F for 75 minutes.