Dukan Chopped Steak

Chopped Steak

We loved this recipe...and it's easy to adjust to your own taste!

For some reason, we craved an old time Hawaii favorite -- Chopped Steak.  Everyone had their version of it...this one is close to our grandma's except we thickened the sauce a little too much.  Next time we probably won't thicken the sauce this much.  Sunday was a PP day for me, so we made our Chopped Steak the "classic" way -- beef and onions.

Grandma sometimes added bean sprouts or celery and carrots.  The sauce is basically a teriyaki sauce.  It's quick, easy and you can change the beef out for chicken or even tofu.  The thickened sauce worked for me because I had it plain....the male half of this couple had his Chopped Steak with a scoop of red rice, so a runnier sauce would have been fine for him.

RECIPE:
Serves: 2-4 (we got three servings out of ours)
Prep Time: 10 minutes, plus 20 minutes to marinate steak
Cook Time: less than 10 minutes

1 lb. beef, thinly sliced (we used a NY Steak and removed the excess fat, not our favorite cut, but it was reasonably priced)
1 yellow onion, sliced 1/4 inch thick
1 t. cornstarch mixed with 1 t. water (optional or you can use less if you want a runnier sauce)

Marinade:
1/4 c. low sodium soy sauce (we used almost a 1/4 c. and filled the rest of the cup with water -- high blood pressure)
2 to 3 t. natural sweetener (we used 2 t., start with 1 t. and taste as you add your sweetener to find a taste you like)
1 t. vinegar
1 inch piece of ginger, grated
1 clove garlic, minced or grated

Combine marinade ingredients.  Add beef and marinate for 20 minutes.

Heat pan over high heat, spray lightly with non stick spray; add onions and cook until soft.  Remove onions and set aside.  Place beef in pan with marinade.  Stir fry until cooked through (ours took 3-4 minutes).  If you want to thicken your sauce, remove beef leaving sauce in pan, if you want to leave your sauce as is, skip this step.  Add your cornstarch/water mixture, stir constantly and lower heat.  Simmer until sauce thickens.

Return beef and onions to pan and stir to coat.  Serve as is or over a bed of brown or red rice.

If you're adding vegetables like bean sprouts, we would toss the veggies in after you remove the onions, cook until veggies are tender, remove veggies and continue with cooking your beef, etc.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Dukan Update, Voggy Skies and Sunsets

Voggy Skies of Honolulu - it was worse earlier in the week.  Our poor
tourist, we promise, it doesn't usually look like this!

Last week we decided we needed to throw in some Attack Days.  Whenever we restart the Dukan Diet, our formula always ends up being 4 days of Attack, so 4 days it was.  It wasn't as difficult as the very first time we tried the Dukan Diet.  The first time around - major sugar cravings.  We didn't mind cutting out the fat from our diet -- it actually made our bodies less sluggish, but the sugar cravings, eeek.  This time around, someone offered us homemade brownies of Day Two of our Attack Phase and without hesitation we politely declined the treat.  Hooray!

The first couple of days of Attack we really just ate store bought items due to our work schedules -- poke (seasoned fish), sashimi (slices of raw fish), AppleGate Farms sliced turkey (we like the taste, just not the price), etc.  This past weekend we made it a point to cook low fat meals that fit into the Dukan Diet.  We're prepping those photos and recipes for the blog!  After 4 days of Attack, we haven't seen any weight loss in numbers :-(, but a look in the mirror and taking some measurements shows improvement!

Oahu Sunset

Friday's dinner was a flop.  It wasn't horrible, but we didn't care for the taste.  Before we found out about the Dukan Diet we started collecting recipes from blogs -- we found a Thai woman's blog and the recipe sounded great.  One of the main ingredients is cinnamon but it's a little too much for our tastes.  We won't post the recipe, the end product didn't even look appetizing!

Instead we'll share with you a couple photos taken while we were preparing the flopped dinner!  As we cleaned our chicken, we peeked out the window and noticed how beautiful the sky was...a nice way to end our voggy week :-)

Oahu Sunset - HDR

Dukan Teriyaki Sauce - Hawaii Style

Teriyaki Sauce - Hawaii Style

We liked this recipe and had we not made it too sweet, we're sure we would have loved it.

Easy to make, easy to use to marinate meats (and seafood), use as a dipping sauce, use as a stir fry sauce, add some to your scrambled eggs before you cook the eggs to add flavor, add some to the water your brown or red rice cooks in to add some flavor, etc.

Most people in Hawaii were either raised eating Teriyaki something (beef, chicken, pork, salmon,  hamburgers, etc) or have been exposed to it.  We can't remember a local family picnic where teriyaki wasn't cooking up on the hibachi.  Our grandmother (as did a lot of other people) always had a jar of homemade teriyaki sauce in the refrigerator.

We found this recipe online and it sounded great.  We botched it by adding too much natural sweetener.  We did use only 3/4s of what the recipe called for, but it was still a bit too sweet for us.  We recommend you add in a small amount of natural sweetener and keep tasting to find a taste you like.

We've already tried the sauce as a stir fry sauce and hope to post that recipe next week.  We'll eventually make some Teriyaki Chicken and maybe some Teriyaki Turkey Burgers.  We took Larry's recipe and only made about a cup of teriyaki sauce...partly because we didn't want to store over 8 cups of sauce in our refrigerator and partly because we just don't eat teriyaki like we used to.  We also boiled the entire mixture because that's what our grandmother used to do!

We used this during Cruise.  The amount of oil didn't cause any weight gain for us.

RECIPE:
Makes: a little over 1 cup
Prep Time: less than 10 minutes
Cook Time: approximately 10 minutes, then let it cool

1 c. low sodium soy sauce (we usually fill our cup a little over 3/4s full, then fill the rest with water because one of us has high blood pressure...and yes, we do this to low sodium soy sauce :-))
3/4 c. natural sweetener (or less, depending on your taste)
2 t. Shaoxing wine or dry sherry
2 t. olive oil
1/2 in. ginger, peeled, sliced and crushed
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed

Combine soy sauce and wine in a bowl.  Add natural sweetener in little by little until you find a taste you like.  Set aside.  In a pan large enough to hold all your liquids, heat oil and brown ginger.  Add ginger to soy sauce mixture leaving oil in pan.  Fry garlic until fragrant, then add soy sauce mixture to pan.  Bring to a boil over high heat, then lower heat and simmer for 5 minutes.  Cool your sauce and store in refrigerator.

Enjoy!

Dukan Hong Siew Braised Tofu in Wine Sauce

Hong Siew Braised Tofu

 We loved this recipe...even though we overcooked the tofu and it was harder than it should be!  It was tasty!

We found this recipe on houseofannie.com, a locally based couple with a great recipe blog.  We just had to try this recipe.

A few changes were made since I believe we were in the Cruise stage...the amount of Chinese cooking wine you use didn't worry us.  Instead of oil, we used cooking spray, we used a teaspoon of sesame oil instead of a tablespoon and natural sweetener instead of sugar.

RECIPE:
Serves 2
Prep Time: 10 minutes or less
Cook Time: Sorry, I can't remember, we made this back in May, but it cooks up fairly quickly

500 grams firm tofu, drained
5 garlic cloves, minced
6 slices ginger
green onions, 2.5 cm pieces

Sauce:
3 T. low sodium soy sauce
2 T. Chinese Rice Wine or dry sherry
1 t. sesame oil (if you're not too worried about your oil intake, use up to 1 T.)
1 T. natural sweetener (add in half, then taste, most natural sweeteners taste sweeter than refined sugar)
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper
slurry made from 1 tsp. cornstarch and 1/2 c. water

Mix sauce ingredients and set aside.  Cut tofu into 5 cm square x 1 cm slices and drain on paper towels - we eyeballed our sliced.

Heat oil over medium heat.  When the oil is hot, add tofu and fry until golden brown on both sides.  We used our stir fry pan which was a mistake and the reason we cooked our tofu too long.  Use a shallow/flat pan where all your tofu will be heated evenly.  Removed golden brown tofu and drain on paper towels.

Add garlic, ginger and green onions to pan, fry until fragrant.  Pour sauce over the garlic mixture and stir well to combine.  Add tofu back to the pain, we spooned sauce over all the tofu.  Cover the pan, lower the heat and braise for 5 minutes.

Serve immediately.  Garnish with more green onions if you wish.  We had this dish with some poke (seasoned raw fish).

Enjoy...we sure did!

Dukan Cuban Style Burgers

Cuban Style Burgers

We liked this recipe.  It was tasty but if we were to make it again, we'd just make the burger part.  The ham and cheese part was a little too much for me...but it was delicious.  We had this on our Pure Protein Day, so we didn't have the pickle, it really needed the pickle.

Closet Cooking is another of our favorite recipe blogs.   He's very creative and we like his "trying not to eat the same thing over and over" style.  We love Cuban sandwiches so we knew we would enjoy Closet Cooking's Cuban Burger recipe.

We didn't have these on buns so we skipped the mayo and mustard.  The male half of this couple had his burgers with red rice and I had mine plain.  Next time I think we'll use some fat free mayo and mustard just to add flavor to this dish.  We also used a lower fat ham and reduced fat Swiss cheese.  We made ours with ground turkey only because we don't care for the ground pork sold at Safeway, has a funky taste.

RECIPE:
Serves:  Makes 6-8 smaller burgers or 4 large burgers (there's just two of us, we had leftovers)
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: Approximately 10-15 minutes, depending on how many burgers you can cook at once)

2 cloves garlic, minced
1 handful cilantro, chopped
1 t. lime zest
1/2 t. oregano
1/2 t. ground cumin
1 lb. ground turkey (or pork)
1/4 c. oat bran
1 egg
salt and pepper to taste
2 slices of low fat ham per burger
1 slice of reduced fat Swiss cheese per burger
2 -4 slices of dill pickles if it's your PV day
Dukan bread if you prefer eating this as a burger on a bun.
If you're using a bun or even if you're not, mix 1 mashed garlic per tablespoon of fat free/Dukan mayo (use 1 T per burger) as a dressing.  You may also use 1 T. dijon mustard per burger if you wish.

Mix the garlic, cilantro, lime zest, oregano, oat bran, egg and cumin into the ground turkey.   Form 4 larger patties or 6-8 smaller patties.  Spray a grill pan with a little bit of non-stick spray and over medium high heat start grilling your patties.  They should take approximately 3-5 minutes per side.  We wrapped our cheese in our ham, folded them up and grilled them along with the last two burgers just to melt the cheese and heat up the ham.  Serve burgers with ham/cheese on it.  Add dressing from above recipe if you wish.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Dukan Nabe (Meat and Veggie Hot Pot)

Nabe - Not Traditional

It's been getting colder here...we actually had a few days in the high 60's (early in the morning and late in the evening) but that's gone away and we now have voggy humid weather again.  When it started to get colder, I started to crave nabes and shabu shabu...all Japanese style hot pots.  They can be very healthy and Dukan friendly if you don't over do it with the sauces.

Decided on a nabe a couple of weeks ago after dining at Ichiriki, a nabe/shabu shabu restaurant here in Honolulu.  Nabe's are basically seasoned broth with veggies and meats to cook in the broth.  You can find already prepared Nabe broth's in asian stores and some asian food sections in grocery stores, but it's easy to make your own broth too.

I'm embarrassed to say I never wrote down my late grandmother's nabe recipes but back when I was a child, nabe's were really simple broths.  I don't recall my grandmother making kimchee nabes, etc.  This recipe seemed close to what I remember my grandmother using (minus the gochujang).  We followed this recipe but it wasn't very hot nor was it very flavorful.  It could have used more spice and probably more soy sauce.

At the time we made this recipe, we couldn't find any shabu shabu cuts of beef or pork so we went with the batayaki which is still thin, but too thick for our tastes.

RECIPE:
Serves 2 (with lots of leftover broth which we used to make a stir fry and added to our scrambled eggs)
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: less than 10

Broth:
1 liter water
1.5 T. dashi powder (fish powder but you can use chicken boullion if you don't like the taste of fish)
1 T. gochujang (Korean chili paste -not Dukan, but you don't use a lot) or some other spice you prefer - add it in little by little until you find a taste you like)
1-3 T. natural sweetener (again, add little by little until you find a taste you like)
3 T. light soy sauce

Veggies and Meat:
1 block firm tofu, cut into cubes (not too small or your tofu will fall apart)
1 bunch bok choy, choy sum, spinach, or Chinese cabbage (other veggies will work too, even regular head cabbage)
1 package enoki mushrooms (or other kinds of mushrooms like button, shiitake, etc)
1 package shirataki noodles (we've never used the tofu shirataki noodles, but you can certainly try it)
1 or 2 packages of shabu shabu cut meat (pork or beef)

Boil water, add the other broth ingredients to the boiling water, mix well.  Let boil about 10 minutes, then simmer.

Cut and clean your veggies.  Try to cut your items into similar sizes or at least sized so they will cook in the same amount of time.  Place them in your nabe pot (we have a modern one...my cousin inherited our grandmother's clay pot) - see our photos.  I usually prefer the two of us sitting down and eating straight out of the pot...what you'll see in Nabe restaurants is your pot of broth, a plate of uncooked food nicely laid out, a chawan or small bowl of rice and a bowl to hold your cooked food.  You'll notice a lot of people picking food out of the pot laying it on their rice and then eating it.  It was a busy day for us, so I cooked everything in the pot, then put food and broth into two bowls....I ate while finishing up some work and the male half ate his while working on the photography stuff.  There's no wrong way to do this in our opinion.  Same goes with the veggies, use what you like to eat and what will hold up in boiling water.  NOTE: I rolled up our beef thinking it would be a good idea, but hindsight, it boiled into a little ball which wasn't too appetizing when it came out of the pot.  Next time I will just lay it in the pot or cook it like you would cook meats in shabu shabu by swishing it in the boiling broth.

Once you have everything in your pot, pour enough broth into your pot to almost cover the food in your pot.  We have an electrical pot, so we turned our pot on, let the food boil several minutes until the veggies were soft enough, the tofu was heated through and the meat was cooked.

Again, eat straight from the pot or you can place food and broth into your bowl.

Enjoy...we always do!

Dukan Spaghetti Meat Sauce

Spaghetti Meat Sauce

We both liked this recipe and would use it again, but wish we followed No Recipe's recipe closer.

Just before we started the Dukan Diet, we came across Marc's blog called No Recipe.  What caught our eyes were the unique recipes he's posted.  Everything looks yummy on his site and we've saved quite a few of his recipes but this is one of the few recipes of Marc's we've actually tried.

His posts which are part of a PBS special are easy to follow for people like us...less experienced cooks. Our version of Marc's "Best Spaghetti Recipe" did not come out looking anything like his!  It was still very tasty, probably one of the tastiest spaghetti sauces we've made at home.  It was very easy and really was ready in about 30 minutes.

The changes we made are: left out the carrots (next time we'll splurge and use the 1/2 a carrot), we used turkey bacon and ground turkey instead of pork bacon and ground beef, we used lower sugar ketchup.  Oh and we also simmered the sauce too long.  It looked very similar to Marc's sauce when it was first ready but I left it on the stove simmering while the male half of this couple finished washing his car.

The male half of this couple had his sauce over whole wheat spaghetti noodles and I had mind over the Nasoya Shirataki Fettucini noodles.

RECIPE:

Prep Time: 10 minutes (we're not as fast as Marc!)
Cook Time: 25 minutes
Serves: 4

Pasta - depends on what you're making.  For me, one package of the Nasoya Shirataki Fettucini noodles made me full.

8 slices of turkey bacon, chopped into small pieces (you can use less, we had 8 in the freezer and decided to use the whole thing)
9 ounces of ground turkey
1 small onion, diced into 1/8 inch pieces
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1/2 c. dry white wine
400 grams of crushed tomatoes (use diced tomatoes, we used crushed because the male half of this couple won't eat tomatoes unless they are sauce-y)
2 T. low sugar ketchup
1/2 t. kosher salt
1/4 t. pepper
1 t. oregano

According to Marc, you can prepare your noodles the same time you're making this sauce, but if you're using Shirataki noodles like we did, boil your noodles just before your sauce is ready.

Over medium high heat, add bacon to your pan and fry until a good amount of oil has been released from the bacon.  Then add the ground turkey breaking up the meat, fry until cooked.  Remove meat mixture from pan and set aside leaving oil in the pan.  If you have more than one tablespoon of oil left in the pan, remove some oil.  If you don't have one tablespoon of oil, add olive oil. Turn the heat down to medium low.  Add onions and garlic (if you're using carrots, add those in now too).  Saute onions and garlic around 10-15 minutes or until onions are soft.  As Marc mentioned in his post, do not skimp on time here.  Turn the heat up to high and add meat mixture.  Then add wine, stir constantly until the there's almost no liquid left.

Turn the pan down to medium low and add the tomatoes, ketchup, salt and pepper.  Put the oregano in the palm of your hand and rub your hands together in a circular motion to crush the oregano into a powder.  Add oregano to the pan.  Mix well.  Simmer for another 10 minutes and serve on your choice of noodles.

Enjoy...we sure did!