Dukan Style Loco Moco

Dukan Loco Moco

Hmmm...we were torn on this one.  There were some things about this we both loved and some we were just okay with.  First, the male half did NOT like that we used so much mustard.  He doesn't care for mustard, probably for the same reason he doesn't care for much vinegar in his food.  He did like that it was something different and in Hawaii, who doesn't love an over-easy egg over your food ;-)  The female half loves mustard, so the sauce was delicious, but it could have use more spice.  We both didn't care for the not so tender beef, should have tenderized it first with a mallet.  The male half would have preferred chicken over beef because it's less fatty but we already had 3 chicken dishes planned for the weekend, so beef it was!

A Loco Moco is a very popular dish in Hawaii.  It was created decades ago...as far as we can remember, at least 30 years ago.  The original version consisted of white rice topped with a hamburger patty, then one or two over-easy eggs and smothered with gravy.  The male half likes to call it a "heart-attack on a plate".  Over the years many restaurants have offered variations of the dish including fish instead of a hamburger patty, chili instead of gravy, all kinds of meats and some even offer you a choice on how you want your egg cooked.  

The female half has had her share of loco mocos growing up in Hawaii...her favorites are the original (but only with a homemade hamburger patty), the fish moco and the chili moco...with an over-easy egg of course.  Since Dukan, we've given up loco mocos but still love to "bust" the egg yolk over our food...so we decided to add an egg to this beef dish and call it our Dukan Loco Moco or Dukan Moco!

RECIPE:

Serves 2 (during Attack, if we both ate brown rice, this would have served 3 or 4)

Prep time: 5-10 minutes

Cook Time: approximately 8 minutes, but it depends on how you like your beef cooked

1 lb. beef top round (we picked up a tray of pre-sliced beef strips)

1 serving of Skinnytaste's Garlic Dijon Herb Sauce (see recipe below)

2 T. Dijon mustard (if you don't want a strong mustard taste, omit this)

1/2 jalapeno with most of the seeds removed (we should have use the whole thing and left more seeds in)

1 T. fresh cilantro, chopped fine

1 egg per person

Skinnytaste's Sauce - mash together with a mortar and pestle or a mini food processor

3-4 cloves garlic

1 t. herbs de Provence

1 t. red wine vinegar

2 T. Dijon mustard

1 t. olive oil (if you are using it, we left it out)

Mix Skinnytaste's sauce and set aside.  As mentioned above, the mustard was too strong for the male half..the female half loved it.  If you want a lot of sauce, make double the amount of sauce instead.  Heat a grill pan over medium high heat, spray with some nonstick spray and place meat in pan.  Cook until a little over 50% cooked.  Flip meat over and quickly add half the garlic sauce on the meat.  Cook to your preference.  We are medium rare people, so our cooking time wasn't long at all.  Turn meat over again and add the rest of the sauce to the meat.  We turned it over one last time and serve with or without an over-easy egg over the beef.  

We cooked our eggs just before the beef was done cooking.

Enjoy...we both did...sort of :-)

Dukan Chicken Adobo

Chicken Adobo

We loved this recipe.

Pork and Chicken Adobo are popular dishes here in Hawaii introduced by the Filipinos.  You'll find it on many menus, even at the local plate lunch places.  Each person has their own way of making adobo...some like it with a strong vinegar flavor and some prefer a lighter vinegar flavor.   The female half loves the vinegar flavor but the male half prefers a lighter vinegar taste so Splenda brown sugar is added to cut down on the vinegar flavor when we're dining together or feeding other people.

Most restaurants and home cooks make their Pork Adobo with pork belly...lots of fat and if using chicken, they like to leave the skin on.  We usually make Chicken Adobo at home and have always used boneless, skinless thighs.  This is the first time we've Dukan'd our recipe...so we used Splenda brown sugar, trimmed 90% of the fat off our chicken thighs and browned the chicken using non-stick spray and it came out great!  Of course, the female half could have done without the Splenda brown sugar :-)

We like making a big batch of Chicken Adobo for leftovers...this can be eaten by itself, over brown rice, shred the chicken up and make quesadillas or sandwiches.  We probably would even use it for lasagna.   Note:  We've made this in the crock pot, before Dukan, removing the fat and it gets dried out.  We may try to adjust the cooking time, but we are happy with the over the stove method.

RECIPE:
Serves 4-6
Prep Time: 5-30 minutes (depending on how much fat you're trimming from your chicken)
Cook Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes

2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken thighs (remove as much fat as you like)
1/2 red onion, sliced (you can use more, the male half wrinkled his nose when he saw the onion, but it melts down a lot during cooking)
1-2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 t. kosher salt (optional)
1/2 t. peppercorns (or ground pepper)
1 lg. bay leaf, crushed
1/4 c. apple cider vinegar
1/2 in. ginger root, crushed
1/2 T. Splenda brown sugar (optional, if you prefer a stronger vinegar taste, omit sugar)
1/4 c. soy sauce, low sodium
1 t. cornstarch, plus 1 t. water if you want your sauce thicker

In a pot over medium high heat, saute onions and garlic a couple minutes, do not burn garlic.  Remove onions and garlic, brown chicken on both sides, then add garlic and onions back to pot.  Add the vinegar, salt, peppercorns, bay leaf, ginger root and brown sugar.  Simmer for 30 minutes over medium low heat, stirring occasionally.  Add soy sauce and simmer another 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.  If the sauce is too salty, add water in 1/8 c. at a time to taste.    Add cornstarch slurry in if you want your sauce thicker.  This is the first time we've made it with cornstarch and we prefer it without.

Before Dukan, we used to make this with red potatoes too adding in the cubes of potatoes in with the soy sauce.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Pure Protein Weekends

Well, the weekend of Pure Protein days (4 days - we included Friday and this past Monday was a Hawaiian holiday) was a success.  The female half is wavering between 3-4 pounds loss and the male half is feeling better about the eating.

The week we had our uncle over, wow, we were bad.  We had lots of treats and it seemed like every meal was a Celebration meal...not good for our weight.  He only visits once a year, so there are quite a few family gatherings.

The Pure Protein weekend felt good....we were feeling a bit sluggish from all the bad eating although every bite was delicious!  We love eating great tasting meals like the Grilled Garlic Dijon Herb Salmon we had this weekend which filled us up but didn't put us into "Kanak Attack"mode.

This week we'll be doing more of a modified Cruise Phase week....mostly Pure Protein and Protein/Veggie days and if we have time to meal plan for this weekend, we may do a 3 day Pure Protein weekend!  Pure Protein or Attack Phases really only work for us when we meal plan.  Last summer, we tried to start the diet with no meal planning for the Attack Phase and after a day and a half, we failed.  The second time we tried it, we planned our Attack Phase meals and made it through...we had cravings, but at least we knew what we were going to eat.

We are still working on trying to lose the vacation weight, but are still maintaining the after vacation weight (meaning no real weight gain).  That's where we are at...still happy we tried the Dukan Diet and are happy we are choosing to cook lower fat meals.  We must admit though, we've been slowly increasing the fat and sugar intake which doesn't really work when you aren't getting your daily exercise in.

Our Dukan reboot includes the above meal adjustments, plus we are trying harder to work Zumba back into our weekly routine.  The hikes are great, but once or twice a week really isn't enough.

Skinnytaste's Grilled Garlic Dijon Herb Salmon (It's a Dukan recipe!)

Skinnytaste's Grilled Garlic Dijon Herb Salmon

Wow, we LOVED this!

If we remember correctly, Dijon mustard is ok during Attack.  This recipe came from one of our favorite lowfat recipe blogs, Skinnytaste.   While not all of Skinnytaste's recipes are easy to Dukan, quite a few of them are and there are a lot of them that fit into Consolidation or you could have them as a lower fat Celebration meal.

We found this recipe, thought it sounded good but we didn't realize it would be this good :-)  Oh, forgot to mention...on Thursday we discussed how we keep forgetting to have our Pure Protein day.  There are weeks we plan for it, then something happens and we push it back, push it back again until it's been forgotten.  So, the female half decided she would play catch up and have about 4 Pure Protein days in a row.  The male half's weight has been good, so he's only doing 2 Pure Protein days.  This is how this recipe was chosen, as part of our weekend of Pure Protein days.

NOTE: the asparagus in the photos are for the male half :-)

We're definitely making this again.

RECIPE:
Serves 2 (as a Pure Protein meal)
Prep Time: 5-10 minutes
Cook Time: about 10 minutes

4 garlic cloves
1 tsp. dried Herbs de Provence (if you don't have any, you can make your own following this recipe)
1 tsp. red wine vinegar
1 tsp. olive oil (optional, we left it out)
2 T. Dijon mustard
1 lb. salmon fillets, 1" (we had a couple 1" and a couple about 1/2")
kosher salt and pepper to taste
lemon wedges for serving

Using a mortar and pestle or mini food processor, mash garlic with herbs, vinegar, oil if you are using it and Dijon mustard until it becomes a paste.  We didn't have either kitchen tool so we minced the garlic and herbs up really well first.  Set sauce aside.

Season salmon with a pinch of salt and pepper.  Heat a grill pan or grill over high heat until hot.  Spray pan with a little bit of non-stick spray and reduce heat to medium-low.  Place the salmon on the hot grill pan and cook without moving for 4-5 minutes (we cooked ours until it was just over 50% done).  Turn and cook the other side for an additional 3-4 minutes spooning on half of the garlic sauce evenly.

Turn and cook one more minute spooning the other side of the fish with remaining sauce.  Turn once again and let the fish finish cooking about one minute.  Fish cooking time should be approximately 9-10 minutes per inch.  If your fish is thinner, reduce the total cooking time.  We prefer our salmon slightly undercooked, so we cooked it for about 8 minutes or so.

Serve with lemon wedges.  The male half had his with brown rice and asparagus grilled in the same pan with the same sauce and some kalamansi (similar to lemon).    We're thinking about using this sauce on our meatloaf...well, the female half would like to, but the male half doesn't care for mustard...although he did like this recipe!

Enjoy...we sure did!

Dukan Cuban Pork Stir Fry

Dukan Cuban Pork Stir Fry

We liked this recipe...it was a bit dry, had we not overcooked it, it probably would have tasted better. Cooking lean pork has always been a challenge for us. It's the, "gotta be sure it's cooked properly thing". We probably should've opted for chicken or beef since the male half of this couple tries not to each a whole lot of pork...but we have 2 or 3 other chicken recipes we wanted to try this weekend, so pork it was!

We did enjoy the flavors of this dish and it was very easy to make.  We found this recipe on La Cocina De Nathan which has a LOT of great Hispanic recipes.  The original recipe made by Nathan is a pork chop recipe but we decided to turn it into a stir fry.  We used less onions since the male half said he wouldn't have any.

We made this as an Attack/Cruise recipe, so we used our non-stick spray, but next time we will use some olive oil to cook the pork and onions.  We also trimmed the fat from our already very lean, thin pork chops...next time, we'll probably leave a little bit of the fat on to help keep the pork moist.   Nathan notes some of the garlic may burn, but it's fine for this dish.

RECIPE:
Serves 2 as a Pure Protein meal (or 4 with a side of brown rice)
Prep Time: 5-10 minutes
Cook Time: 7-10 minutes

6 thin, lean pork chops, sliced into thin stir-fry pieces (remove as much fat as you want, note, you can cook your pork chops whole, you don't have to stir fry yours, be sure to cook your pork well)
4-5 garlic cloves, mashed into a paste using a mortar, garlic press or mini food processor
juice of 1 1/2 limes
1 t. ground cumin
1 t. kosher salt
1/2 red onion, sliced (optional, if you're ok with onions, the female half recommends you not leave them out)
juice of 1 lime (for onions)

Mash garlic with salt, cumin and lime juice (our garlic ended up minced due to lack of time and tools).  Rub mixture on pork.   Heat pan over high heat, spray some non-stick spray (or olive oil if you're using oil).  Note: If you are cooking your pork whole, use medium high heat, not high heat.  Cook pork until 75% done.  Set pork aside.  In same pan, add more spray (or oil) and add onions.  Saute until soft (we left ours a little crunchy since that's the way the female half likes her onions).  Deglaze pan with lime juice.  Add pork back in to heat everything up and serve after pork is cooked through.

The female half ate this as a Pure Protein meal and the male half had his with rice.

Enjoy!

Dukan Clean Out the Fridge Salmon

Clean Out The Fridge Salmon or Salmon Poached in Wine

We had an uncle in town the other weekend, so not much cooking again.  We did host a family dinner and made our Dukan Asparagus Chicken which was a hit.  We made it with chicken tenderloins and we definitely prefer chicken thighs for this recipe.  Our uncle made a fabulous salad...we will post the recipe later, but it's NOT Dukan!  It made a nice treat though.

The night before he arrived we were trying to clean out our fridge knowing he would be bringing over his salad ingredients so the leftover white wine and stuffed olives turned our salmon into a quick but tasty dinner.

If you are following Dukan rules to a tee, you probably won't want to use this much wine in your cooking unless you're well into Consolidation or in Stabilization.  This is something we probably would have made during Cruise though.  It's still low in fat.

RECIPE:
Serves 2 (without any type of carb)
Prep time: 5-10 minutes
Cook Time: approximately 10-12 minutes

1 1/2 lbs. salmon filet, we cut ours into 4 pieces
3/4 c.  dry white wine
1/4 c. water
1/4 c. stuffed green olives
1/2 t. adobo seasoning (the garlic powder type, not canned chili type)

You'll be poaching the fish.   We used our stir fry pan which is small on the bottom and allowed the liquid to just cover the fish.  Add wine, water, olives and adobo seasoning to the pan and bring to a boil.  Turn heat down and simmer the fish in the wine mixture until cooked.  We like our salmon slightly undercooked.  Cooking time will depend on how thick your salmon filets are.  Check them periodically.  If this is a Celebration meal for you, go ahead and use more wine.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Dukan Grilled Balsamic Asparagus

Grilled Balsamic Asparagus

We loved this recipe!

Asparagus is on sale again...that means $4.00 per lb. off the normal price...woo hoo!  We usually use a bit of lemon juice and adobo seasoning to season our asparagus but we decided to try this recipe we found and we're glad we did.

Besides the marinating time, it's fast and easy.  We cut the recipe in half since there's just two of us.  If we were in Cruise, we probably would have omitted the 1/2 T. of olive oil we used.

RECIPE:
Serves 2
Prep Time: 5-10 minutes, plus 30-60 minutes to marinate
Cook Time: 8-10 minutes (we prefer our asparagus crunchy so we cooked ours about 6 mins)

1/2 lb. asparagus, ends broken off and rinsed 2-3 times
1 1/2 T. balsamic vinegar
1 T. fresh lemon juice
1/2 T. olive oil (optional, but it's just 1/2 T.)
1/2 T. soy sauce, low sodium
1/2 a garlic clove, minced
1/4 t. kosher salt
pepper, to taste

Place asparagus in a ziploc bag (we cut our asparagus up).  Add the rest of the ingredients.  Seal bag and turn to coat.  Marinate at room temperature for 30 - 60 minutes (we did 60) turning bag occasionally.  Heat a grill pan over medium high heat, spray some non-stick spray, add asparagus and cook 3-5 minutes per side, depending on how well you like asparagus done.  Ours started to char a bit so we turned it often....the female half doesn't mind the char, but the male half doesn't care for the taste of charred food :-)

Enjoy...we sure did!