Low-Carb
109 recipes found
Bright Green Pesto and Its Many Uses
I’ve been making pesto forever and have never been able to keep it bright green. It has such promise, such flavor, and I know that the pasta or whatever else I use it in will taste wonderful. But I’ve always been frustrated by how quickly the basil oxidizes and the color goes from bright green to drab. So I decided to try blanching the leaves very briefly to see if that would solve the problem and voilà! It did. You need to blanch the basil for only five seconds, and you don’t want to blanch it for more than 10. Doing this leaches out a wee bit of the basil’s vivid flavor, but not enough to change that of the pesto significantly. The texture and color are wonderful, and the pesto will keep for several days in the refrigerator (but it’s best to wait until you’re ready to use the pesto before adding the garlic and cheese).
Asparagus Frittata With Burrata and Herb Pesto
Frittata, the savory Italian egg dish, can be thick or thin, flipped in the pan or finished under the broiler. This one, slathered with creamy burrata and drizzled with herb-laden oil, is a rather deluxe version of the ideal, worthy of a weekend lunch or a late dinner.
Lobster Salad With Avocado And Hearts Of Palm
Twice-Cooked Pork Tenderloin
Here's a surprising and flavorful way to prepare tenderloin, one of the leanest and most economical cuts of pork. Brown the whole tenderloin. Let it rest for a few minutes, so the meat firms up a bit. Then slice the tenderloin into medallions, about an inch thick. Brown the slices on both sides and top with a quick French-style sauce made of heavy cream and Dijon mustard, lemon juice or Calvados.
Grilled Flank Steak With Worcestershire Butter
Grilled steak covered in melting herb butter is a cornerstone of summer cooking. Here, both the steak and the compound butter are spiked with Worcestershire sauce, fresh thyme and garlic for an intensely brawny flavor. Then, the steak is garnished with a mix of charred tomatoes, scallions and basil, which gives everything a juicy sweetness brightened with lemon. You can use any cut of beef here; the flank steak has a deeply mineral taste and chewy texture that’s at its best sliced thin. But rib-eye, skirt steak and sirloin also work; just be sure to adjust the cooking time for thinner or thicker pieces.
Stuffed Rond de Nice Squash Poached in Olive Oil
Cucumber Raita
Serve this raita as a refreshing side dish with grains or with any curry. Or enjoy it on its own for lunch.
Grilled Flank Steak With Kimchi-Style Coleslaw
It is easy enough to take the basic ingredients and flavors of kimchi and create a fast cabbage salad that puts ordinary coleslaw to shame. Use it as a bed for grilled beef – or anything else that has the flavor to stand up to it – and you have a great summer dish. All kimchi packs a punch, thanks to plenty of garlic and chili peppers, and appropriate quantities are listed here. Increase the amounts if you like, though these should be strong enough. If you can get to a Korean market, buy some of the ground chili powder labeled co chu karo, which is hot but also flavorful. Otherwise substitute any good ground chiles or crushed red pepper flakes. Fish sauce is traditional, although you can use soy sauce if you prefer.
Butcher’s Steak With Leafy Greens Salsa Verde
Butcher’s steak is the name of a specific cut of steak, also known as hanger steak (and, occasionally, bistro steak). It’s a cut that hangs off the cow’s diaphragm, resulting in a steak that has the beefy flavor of a short rib, the fat marbling of a rib-eye and the tenderness of filet mignon. There is only one per animal, making it somewhat exclusive but not especially expensive. It is also a term used for the secret-ish cuts typically available only to butchers and restaurants; but a good butcher will gladly help you unlock those secrets. Other lesser-known, surprisingly affordable cuts that work well here include boneless short ribs, Denver steaks and center-cut top sirloin. These cuts are great with little more than salt and pepper, so you can truly assess their flavor. But a tangy, garlicky salsa verde made from dark leafy greens doesn’t hurt. Serve with a squeeze of lemon and a bowl of salty potato chips for a truly faux-bistro experience.
Spiced Chicken Wings
Sesame-Miso Chicken Salad
There’s always room for another chicken salad recipe, especially if the assembly is quick. This one calls for a whole cooked chicken, which you can roast or boil gently several hours ahead or up to 2 days in advance. (Some may choose to buy a precooked rotisserie chicken, but it can sometimes be hard to find one that is seasoned or cooked properly. If you can find a good one, go for it.) The creamy miso dressing can also be used to dress a green salad, or to replace mayonnaise on a sandwich. It also makes a great dip for vegetables.
Grilled Sardines
What to do about seafood? Nutritionists say we should eat more, that many types of fish are nutritious and contain fats that seem to protect the heart. I know from experience that many of them can make for fine meals. If you’ve only had sardines from a can, you may turn up your nose at them. Fresh ones will change your mind. Brush them with olive oil, toss a few sprigs of rosemary onto a hot grill, and grill them. Sardines take two to three minutes to grill and about that long to eat. They’re a rare treat and a great nutritional package, containing omega-3 fats, selenium, vitamin B12, calcium, niacin and phosphorus.
Salmon Rillettes
A light but rich tasting spread made with fresh and smoked salmon. This is my adaptation of David Lebovitz’s adaptation of Susan Loomis’s salmon rillettes, a recipe that I have been wanting to make for years. A more buttery version is in Susan Loomis’s wonderful book “Cooking at Home on Rue Tatin,” and on David Lebovitz’s eponymous website. David uses a mixture of steamed fresh salmon and smoked salmon, and I have followed suit, changing the proportions slightly. I used much less butter – 1 tablespoon, and a tablespoon each of olive oil and crème fraîche, as well as some Greek yogurt, and I still came up with a mixture that I can call rillettes. You can serve the spread with sliced bread or crackers, spoon onto endive leaves, cucumber rounds or squares of red and green pepper, or use as a filling for miniature bell peppers. You can also substitute these salmon rillettes for the smoked trout rillettes in the recipe for “Lentils With Smoked Trout Rillettes” from earlier this week. As always, use a fork, not a food processor, to make this.
Cod Fillets With Cilantro Yogurt Sauce
This cooling herbed yogurt sauce is adapted from the chef Yotam Ottolenghi in London, who serves it with leek fritters. But it’s wonderful with mild fish like cod. The fish, while delicious, is utterly simple: fillets baked in a 300-degree oven until opaque, 10 to 20 minutes depending on the thickness of the pieces. It is the sauce that is the star, and that comes together quickly in a food processor. Combine roughly chopped cilantro and parsley, garlic that has been mashed to a paste, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and yogurt. (Whole-milk yogurt would be best for body and flavor, while low-fat is O.K., and nonfat untenable.) Process until the mixture is smooth and green. There will be sauce left over, which you can use on yet more fish, or as a dip for vegetables or fritters, anything that would thrive when dunked in the refreshing, herb-graced sauce.
Roasted Tomatillo-Poblano-Avocado Salsa
One of my favorite new cookbooks of this season is “A Mouthful of Stars” (Andrews McMeel), by Kim Sunée. The book is a memoir, travelogue and cookbook all rolled into one, written by an author who earlier published another compelling memoir with recipes, “Trail of Crumbs.” Kim is a poetic world traveler who loves many cuisines. She is a big fan of taco trucks and loves salsa, the spicier the better. This salsa is based on her recipe for roasted tomatillo-poblano salsa. I love its balance of char, heat, acid and creamy. I’m a moderate when it comes to heat, but you can make this hotter by adding more chiles.
Lemon Chicken With Garlic-Chile Oil
Jarred chile-garlic oil is available from many brands and in many incarnations, but it’s also extremely easy to make at home. The trick is to cook the garlic in the oil slowly and gently so it doesn’t blacken and burn, which will make the whole thing acrid and unpleasant. This pungent and nutty chile-garlic oil recipe was inspired by one published in David Tamarkin’s wonderful cookbook, “Cook90” (Little, Brown and Company, 2018). Here, some of it is used as a sauce for chicken cutlets with lemon and capers. But keep leftover oil in the fridge to drizzle on hummus, steamed or roasted vegetables, or on top of avocado toast for a nutty, spicy kick.
Roasted Mushroom Base
At this year’s Worlds of Health Flavors conference in Napa, Calif., Pam Smith, a culinary nutritionist, presented delicious recipes by the chef Clifford Pleau featuring a finely chopped roasted mushroom mix (chefs refer to it as simply “The Mix”), that she combined with beef for a delicious burger with half the meat, and with tuna for a wonderful tuna burger. Inspired, I made up a big batch of my own version of the mushroom base when I got home and had a lot of fun using it all week in adaptations of classic meat or fish dishes with the animal protein cut by half or more and replaced with the mushroom base. I recommend using pre-sliced mushrooms for this – then the mix goes very quickly. It is very easy to make and keeps well for several days in the refrigerator.
Coconut Shrimp Curry With Mushrooms
This simple curry, infused with spices, has a pleasant flavor with a hint of coconut. Use whatever kind of cultivated mushrooms you can find, from button-type white ones to golden oyster mushrooms. Feel free, too, to skip the curry leaves, but if you can find them, they add a nice depth of flavor.
Cod With Chanterelles and Parsley Sauce
Chanterelles are extremely costly, but they are very light, so you get a lot of volume for your dollar. You only need an ounce or two per serving here. This is inspired by a delicious main dish I had at a wonderful fish bistro in Paris, L’Ecailler du Bistrot. There the dish was made with brill, a flat white fish with thick, delicate fillets. Brill is not a fish we find easily in the United States (it is a North Atlantic fish but it lives on the European side). I substituted Alaskan cod, which is not nearly as fine a fish, but the dish is still a winner. Halibut and sea bass will also work.
Leek, Kale and Potato Latkes
These delicious cumin-scented potato pancakes are laced with leeks and crispy kale, adding a putatively healthy touch to the standard fried latke. You can serve them with Greek yogurt, sour cream or crème fraîche. But a chutney or yogurt blended with cilantro, mint and garlic would make for excellent eating as well. You might even try a salsa.
Flounder With Brown Butter, Lemon and Tarragon
The flatfish family is comprised of numerous popular fish, including sole, halibut and flounder. But all the various boneless fillets are relatively interchangeable and can be prepared in more or less the same way, adjusting cooking time according to size. These pan-cooked fillets are quick, simple and elegant.
Avocado and Roasted Tomatillo Salsa
I have been making tomatillo and avocado salsa for years, but I usually simmer the tomatillos rather than roasting them. Roasting the tomatillos, chiles and garlic – toasting really, as I use a skillet for this, on top of the flame – produces a salsa with a delicious charred flavor. I learned something recently from the chef Iliana de la Vega, who demonstrated the recipe at the “Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives” conference in Napa Valley in March: she says, in no uncertain terms, that you should not add water to tomatillo salsas. Without the water, this is a more intense salsa with pleasing density.You can use it as a sauce to serve with chicken or fish, or as a dip with chips or other vegetables.
Red Pepper Rice, Bulgur or Freekeh With Saffron and Chile
This mildly spicy Lenten vegetable rice is prettiest when made with rice, because the saffron will have more of an impact on the color. But I also love it with bulgur, and especially with freekeh, which is very compatible with the peppers, chile and paprika. If you make it with rice, remember that in the traditional Greek dish the rice is very soft, as it is here. If you don’t want the dish to be spicy leave out the chile pepper.
Pan-Seared Hake and Asparagus With Aioli
In this light, flavorful weeknight meal, mild hake fillets are pan-fried in butter with plenty of sweet scallions, and served with crisp green asparagus cooked in the same pan. Then, everything is drizzled with a thin, garlicky aioli, which acts as a pungent sauce. If you can get green garlic (often in season at the same time as asparagus), use it in the aioli. It gives a more rounded, gentle flavor, but regular garlic works nicely, too, packing more of a punch. If you can’t get hake, this dish will work with cod, flounder, black fish and the like. Just be sure to adjust the cooking time, adding or subtracting a minute or two if the fillets are thicker or thinner.