Dukan Jalapeno Cheddar Turkey Burgers

Jalapeno Cheddar Turkey Burgers
These were juicier than they look in this pic

We loved this recipe.

The male half of this couple doesn't get excited about food...he eats to live, not lives to eat :-)  Once in a great while when asked the question "what would you like me to make for dinner?", he will suggest something.  It's usually spicy salmon bowls or a pasta dish.  This past weekend the female half said "ground turkey's on sale, what kind of turkey burgers shall we have?" and without hesitation the male half said "how about jalapeno turkey burgers?".  Whoa, he had an opinion about what we'd be eating.  It really only happens 2-3 times per year!

That was it, we had to make jalapeno burgers.  We actually had a can of diced jalapenos for a while, so we were happy to finally use it.  We also had a little less than a 1/4 c. of fat free cheddar cheese from our Christmas Eve Baked Rigatoni (forgot to post the recipe).  The recipe turned into Jalapeno Cheddar Turkey burgers.  The female half decided to do another PP day (and probably a couple more this week to get lose her vacation weight), the male half ate his with some rice.

This was another quick and easy recipe.

RECIPE:
Makes 8 burgers
Prep Time: 20 minutes or less
Cook Time: approximately 20-30 minutes (we have a small pan, cooked 2 patties at a time)

1 1/4 lb. ground turkey, as lean as you like
1 4oz. can of diced jalapenos, drained (ok to use fresh jalapenos also, approximately 2, with or without seeds depending on how much spice you want, we usually leave a few seeds in)
1/8 c. oat bran or less (we prefer less since it tends to dry the turkey out)
1 t. adobo seasoning
1 egg
fat free cheddar cheese, grated (we used approx. 1/2 T. in each burger, but you can use more or less)

Mix all ingredients together except the grated cheese.  Form eight balls of turkey.  Form a crater in each turkey ball, add the cheese in the crater and pinch the edges together forming a ball around the cheese.  (Reminds us of making dim sum).  Gently flatten your turkey balls into patties and pan fry or grill them.  We usually cook them for approximately 3-4 minutes on one side, flip them over and cook until the juices run clear.  Try not to overcook the burgers or they will dry out.  We used a little bit of nonstick spray also.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Dukan Leftover Salmon Omelet

Salmon Omelet

We loved this omelet.

It's not often we actually make breakfast since we usually have yogurt with oat bran and that's enough to fill us up.  This past weekend the female half of this couple said "shall I make some omelets?".  The usual response from the male half is "nah, yogurt is enough", but this time the answer was "yeah, sounds good!".

Next time we'll add some tobiko or flying fish eggs for texture.  We had some leftover Phoenix Salmon (a little less than 1/4 lb.) which wasn't quite enough for a meal so we decided to chop the last piece up and make an omelet out of it.

(NOTE: This is a scheduled post)

RECIPE:
Serves 2 (he usually eats a 3 egg omelet and I usually eat a 2 egg omelet)
Prep Time: 5-7 minutes
Cook Time: 5-10 minutes (depending on how you like your eggs done)

5 eggs
about 1/4 lb. of leftover salmon or less, chopped
1 T. green onions, chopped
1/4 t. adobo seasoning
1 T. grated parmesan cheese

Whisk eggs with adobo seasoning, we like to get air into the egg mixture for light fluffy omelets.   Turn your stove on to just above medium, spray heated pan with a little bit of nonstick spray.  Add your salmon (ours was cooked so we just needed to heat the salmon up).   Distribute salmon evenly around the pan, not too close to the edges.  Pour egg mixture into pan (we make one omelet at a time).  After the bottom has set a little, take your spatula and gently push in the edges while tilting the pan to allow the liquid eggs to flow underneath the omelet until there's no liquid left.  Gently flip your omelet.  Cook a few seconds.  Add cheese to the omelet and fold in half.  We usually cook our omelet until it's a bit underdone (not runny) since the heat will finish cooking the omelet by the time we serve it.  If you prefer your eggs very well done, cook the omelet in your pan until it is completely cooked.

The photo about is the female half's omelet...forgot to clean the pan before making the second omelet!

Enjoy!

Dukan Peruvian Chicken Stir Fry

Peruvian Chicken Stir Fry

We loved this recipe.

Another easy, peasy dish.  This recipe was posted on skinnytaste.com as a Peruvian Roasted Chicken dish, but we decided to use it as a stir fry dish - partly because already had a package of chicken tenderloins.  This still tasted great.  If you don't care for lime, you may want to use less lime or try it without the lime.

Almost made these on the Foreman Grill but we opted to go on a hike through Koko Crater Botanical Gardens instead and went with the quick and easy stir fry method instead.  Next time we make this will be with thighs on the Foreman Grill!

(NOTE: This is a scheduled post)

RECIPE:
Serves 2-3 (depends if you're eating this with something else)
Prep Time: 15-20 minutes (plus marinating overnight)
Cook Time: 10 minutes or less

1 lb. chicken tenderloins, sliced into thin slices for stir frying
4 oz. light beer
1/4 c. white vinegar
1 lime, juice of
2 t. ground cumin
2 t. garlic powder
1 t. dried oregano
kosher salt
paprika

Wash chicken, pat dry and slice.  Place in a large ziploc.  In a bowl mix beer, vinegar, lime juice, garlic powder, a pinch of kosher salt, cumin and oregano.  Pour marinade into ziploc with chicken, massage chicken, seal bag, place bag in a bowl or pan and place in refrigerator.  Marinate overnight.

Remove chicken from bag, discard marinade (as much of it as you can).  We stir fried ours in two batches in a very hot wok until chicken was no longer pink.  Do not overcook or your chicken will become dry.  Sprinkle a little paprika and a little more garlic powder before stir frying.  Serve immediately.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Dukan Lomo Saltado (Peruvian Beef Stir Fry)

Lomo Saltado

We loved this recipe.

Well, it was love at first taste with lomo saltado some 12 years or so ago.  There is a great Peruvian restaurant in Torrance, California called El Pollo Inka and in our opinion, they have the best saltado.  We've had it with beef and chicken.  It is so tasty, mmm.  It also has french fries...bad.   Several years ago we tried to cut out most carbs which led us to making this dish at home (also because there are no Peruvian restaurants here in Hawaii) without the french fries.  We can't get the taste exactly the same as El Pollo Inka, but it's still a great tasting dish, even without the fries.

For the past few weeks we've enjoyed following Flamidwyfe's blog and she's mentioned several times "beef with cilantro".  Mmm..that made "lomo saltado" pop into our minds.  We knew after the holidays and our vacation we just had to make it.  We usually make pollo or chicken saltado because we try not to eat a whole lot of beef, but eye of round was on sale at our local market and honestly, we were too lazy/tired to stand in the kitchen cutting off fat from boneless/skinless chicken thighs.  The eye of round on sale were very thin slices of meat, we probably won't go with these super thin slices again.  Cooks too fast and dries out easily.  Most recipes have you cut the meat into 1/4" thick pieces which works much better.

We always forget how tasty and EASY this dish is to make.  So, thank you to flamidwyfe for jogging our memory!

Notes:  We usually make this dish once or twice a year and each time we try a new recipe in hopes to come as close as possible to El Pollo Inka's recipe.  This dish is usually made with tomatoes, but as mentioned in previous posts, the male half of this couple doesn't care for tomatoes, so we left them out. If you want the tomatoes, cut your tomatoes into thinnish wedges and removes the seeds before cooking.

RECIPE:
Serves 2
Prep Time: 15-20 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes

1 lb. lean beef, cut into 1/4" thick, 2" long pieces
1/2 red onion, cut into thin slices (or wedges - whichever you prefer)
4 T. cilantro, rinsed and chopped (leaves only)
a few drops of red wine vinegar
1 t. ground cumin
a pinch of cinnamon
1/2 t. black pepper
1/2 T. garlic, minced
1 aji amarillo (peruvian hot pepper or your choice of pepper, the peruvian one is about the size of a medium sized jalapeno), deseeded and sliced into thin slices
3 T. soy sauce, low sodium

In a bowl, toss sliced meat with 1/2 T. soy sauce, ground cumin and cinnamon.  Chop onions and peruvian pepper.  Over medium high heat, spray a wok with nonstick spray.  Saute garlic and half of your peruvian peppers for a minute or two.  Raise the heat to high and add beef slices.  Stir fry until meat is about 70% cooked.  Remove everything from wok and set aside (juice included).   Spray your wok with a little more nonstick spray and stir fry onions until barely soft.  Sprinkle between 4-8 drops of red wine vinegar (depending on your taste).  Continue to stir fry until vinegar evaporates (should only take a minute or less).  If you are adding tomatoes, remove the onions and repeat the onion process with the tomatoes.  If you are not adding tomatoes, add back the beef with all the juices, the rest of your Peruvian peppers and the remainder of soy sauce.  Stir fry for 30 seconds.  Add 2 1/2 T. cilantro.  Mix well and serve.  Garnish with remainder of cilantro.

His was served over white rice.  If you are making rice with this, add in a few drops of olive oil and a few dashes of garlic powder to your uncooked rice.

If making this with chicken, we usually cut our thighs into bite sized pieces, not strips.  We've also seen this dish made with shrimp.

Enjoy...we always do!

Dukan Phoenix Salmon

Phoenix Salmon

We loved this recipe.

It was light, tasty and easy to make.  Plus, we love salmon.   The salmon we used was frozen, from a slab of fresh salmon we bought a couple of months ago.  We washed it, dried it, wrapped it in paper towels and then in a gallon sized freezer ziploc.  We've seen most of our fishermen friends do the paper towel thing.

The original recipe came from the Electric Kitchen's website.  The Electric Kitchen was a cooking show sponsored by our electric company, Hawaiian Electric.  It is no longer on the air, but we've used quite a few local recipes from the site.  The recipe called for oil, but this is another recipe where the oil wasn't missed.

RECIPE:
Serves 2
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 8-12 minutes, depending on how well you like your salmon cooked and how thick your salmon filets are

1 lb. salmon filet (we cut ours into 3 pieces to fit all pieces into the pan at once)
1 t. garlic, minced
1/8 t. dried ginger (or 1 t. grated ginger)
1 t. cornstarch
1 T. white wine or whiskey
1/4 t. salt
dash of Chinese five-spice powder
dash of red chili pepper flakes
1/2 c. green onions, chopped

Rinse and pat dry your fish.  Mix the remaining ingredients together in a small bowl and set aside.  In a pan over medium heat sprayed with a little bit of nonstick spray, add salmon.  Turn salmon over after a minute and pour sauce evenly over your fish.  Cover pan, lower heat and cook until salmon is done to your liking.  We prefer ours just cooked and sometimes a little under done if the fish is very fresh.

If you're eating this dish with rice or quinoa, it would probably feed 3 people.  We used more than a pound of fish since it's what we had and we didn't want to leave a quarter pound piece in the freezer.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Vacation Pig Out, Hiking and a Necessary PP Day

Vacation photo collage

Happy Belated New Year everyone!

We are back and rested from our New Years vacation - and boy did we need the rest.  It was great catching up with family, meeting new friends and exploring trails on the neighbor islands.  We live on Oahu and while Oahu has a lot to offer, each island has something (plant, animal and/or site) unique to that island.

Each day we intended to read Dukan blogs since we do enjoying reading about everyone's progress but after being out from 7AM until about 10PM each day, we were just too tired to turn the computer on.   The weeks before our trip it was very rainy and windy around the islands.  We planned out what we wanted to see during our vacation and of course a plan b in case we were rained out.  Luckily the weather changed and we had blue skies almost the entire time!

We braced ourselves for non-Dukan meals since we were meeting up with family, attending a New Year's Eve bonfire and knew we'd sometimes be in relatively remote places with little to no food choices.  There were also the necessary traditional New Years foods we wanted to consume like mochi.  We allowed ourselves one mochi each even though we both love mochi and it really was enough.  Also had to try one of my uncle's homemade cookies, fresh baked.  Being on the Dukan Diet has helped with cravings and food splurges.  We no longer consume a lot of sweets.  We treat ourselves to one or two pieces once in a while and we're satisfied.  We don't even feel the need to have a sweet or dessert with every celebration meal.

It wasn't an entire week of pigging out though.  We did make healthier choices when we could and we hiked approximately 2-4 hours each day over all kinds of terrain.  Sometimes hilly, gravel paths.  Sometimes over lava beds.  Sometimes up mountains (not too steep).  We expected to gain at least five pounds each, but the hiking must have helped, the female half of this couple gained about two pounds on vacation and the male half lost two pounds!

By the last two days of our vacation we were really wanting to eat healthier.  This past weekend we did a PP day and it was great.  Made some quick, but tasty meals and looking forward to more.  We are also making it a point to hike more on Oahu.  It's not that we don't like to hike, we just never set aside the time to hike.

Dukan Easy Chinese Pork Stir Fry

Easy Chinese Pork Stir Fry with Rice (his portion, mine = no rice)

We loved this recipe.

Happy New Year everyone!  The holidays are over and it's time for us to get back on Dukan.  For us, it'll happen next week :-)

This recipe was quick, easy, and tasty!  You can make this dish with or without veggies, with pork, beef, chicken, turkey or fish.  We took a simple Kung Pao sauce recipe and made some adjustments.  We actually made this before New Year's but haven't had much time to blog.

We were pigging out over the holidays and didn't have many PP days during the last three weeks of December.  Yike!  Decided a PP day was a must and luckily we had two lean, uncooked pork chops left from one of our other meals.  The two small pork chops were actually not quite enough for a PP meal for two people, so we are adjusting the recipe to make a meal for two.  If you're having this with brown rice or quinoa or adding a lot of bulk veggies like broccoli, two thick cut pork chops should be enough for two people.

RECIPE
Serves 2
Prep Time: 45 minutes (30 of those minutes are for marinating)
Cook Time: less than 10 minutes

3/4 - 1 lb. lean pork chops (no bone), thinly sliced (slice at an angle)
2 Thai red chili peppers or something similar (deseeded and cut into thin strips)
5 thin slices of fresh ginger (skin removed)
2 garlic cloves (we used minced since we have the Costco bottle or you can thinly slice your garlic)
1 stalk green onion, chopped (next time we'll probably do two inch strips)

Marinade:
3 t. cornstarch
2 t. soy sauce
1 T. Shaoxing rice wine or your choice of substitutes

Sauce:
1 1/2 T. soy sauce
1 t. natural sweetener
1/4 t. black vinegar (or regular white vinegar)
2 T. water
1 t. cornstarch

Rinse pork slices and pat dry.  Mix marinade ingredients, we usually mix ours in a ziploc baggie, then add meat, mix again (using your hands on the outside of the baggie), then refrigerate for 30 minutes.  Mix your sauce ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.  Heat up a stir fry pan (high heat), spray a little bit of  non stick spray (we use a coated nonstick stir fry pan), cook marinated pork until 70% cooked.  Set aside.  Clean pan, spray with non stick spray again.  Add ginger and garlic to pan, stir fry for a few seconds, then add red chilies.  Stir fry until it is aromatic (about 20-30 seconds).  If your pan starts sticking, spray a little more non stick spray.  Add pork back to pan and continue to stir fry.  For a celebration meal or during consolidation, add cashew nuts or peanuts.  Add in sauce and continuously stir fry until pork is coated with sauce.  Turn heat off, add green onions, stir and serve immediately.

Enjoy...we sure did!