Vegetarian Crab Cakes

My god mum Ing Ing is having a vegetarian diet for two weeks so I decided to post some vegetarian recipes for her to try out. This recipe is from allrecipes and it's sorta a vegetarian style crab cake. While it might not taste totally like crab cakes, it's a healthy alternative and tastes great too!

Photo by Connie, Allrecipes.com

INGREDIENTS

• 2 1/2 cups grated zucchini (it's good to squeeze out the excess water first)
  
• 1 egg, beaten
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 cup bread crumbs (you can use seasoned bread crumbs: recipe here)
  
• 1/4 cup minced onion
• 1 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning TM (This is specially to give it a crab cake taste but you can use your own style seasoning. I personally used curry powder with garlic salt and fresh group pepper and some dried parsley)
  
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil for frying

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large bowl, combine zucchini, egg, and butter or margarine. Stir in seasoned crumbs, minced onion, and seasoning. Mix well.
2. Shape mixture into patties. Dredge in flour.
3. In a medium skillet, heat oil over medium high heat until hot. Fry patties in oil until golden brown on both sides.

Bright Sunshine Smoothie

Feeling blue and moody? Try this for a mood lifting drink. I called it a bright sunshine smoothie . Technically it's a blend of mango and banana smoothie. As like the previous post, I would prefer to freeze the chunky fruits first before blending for a cooling and slushy feel to the smoothie. YUM! This drink has a bright orangy colour and chucked full of nutrients to lift your spirits!

INGREDIENTS

• 1 mango - peeled, seeded, and cut into chunks
• 1 banana, peeled and chopped (or two small ones)
  
• 1 cup orange juice
• 1 cup nonfat yogurt

DIRECTIONS

1. Place mango, banana, orange juice, and yogurt in a blender. Blend until smooth. Serve in clear tall glasses, and drink using a straw. You can even put a tiny paper umbrella if ya want ;)
   

Peanut Butter and Banana Smoothie

My dear readers. I am lucky to be born in a place where bananas are in abundance and available for very cheap prices. I am a big fan of bananas for their numerous health benefits. I even blogged it's numerous benefits and a strong believer in the saying that having a banana a day keeps the doctor away.

Bananas are very useful in smoothies. Whenever I throw in a banana, I automatically omit cream from my smoothie as bananas help thicken it. Therefore, by using bananas, I actually cut down the fat content plus taking in the health benefits of the banana.

Today I'll post one favourite of mine. Technically, adding peanut butter increases the fat content but hey, I didn't add ANY cream. Thank you banana! Here you go. Simply EASY to make.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 banana (2 small bananas)
  
• 1/8 cup peanut butter
• 1/2 cup soy milk (or low fat milk)
  
• 2 tablespoons honey

DIRECTIONS

1. In a blender, combine banana, peanut butter and soy milk. Blend until smooth. Pour into glasses and drizzle with honey for garnish.

Big tip: If you want cooler smoothies. Cut your bananas into chunks and freeze them in the freezer for 45 minutes before hand. This will result in a cooling smoothie. Frozen Fruit Power!!

Happy Mother's Day

Dear mum

Thank you for all the good food you have cooked for me all these years. Thank you for all the love and care you have shown be from the crying little baby to the crying grown up baby. LoL

Here's a comic script just for all the mothers out there. Thank you for always sacrificing yourself for the comfort of your little babies.

Vegetarian Lasagne

Vegetarian Lasagne

Ihsan has been looking for a nice and healthy version of lasagne. A good reason to eat veggies yet low in fat. After doing some research, I found this vegetarian lasagne, and if you look at the ingredients, they try to make it as low fat as possible! So here you go Ihsan! Hope this will become popular and give your housemates their weekly dose of fibre!

Ingredients
1 bunch spinach, washed and stalks removed (500 g)
200 g instant durum wheat lasagne sheets
10 ml (2 t) grated Parmesan cheese
125 ml (½ c) grated, low-fat mozzarella cheese

Vegetable sauce
5 ml (1 t) canola or olive oil
2 onions, peeled and chopped
4 cloves minced garlic
250 g (1 punnet) mushrooms, sliced
½ small green pepper (capsicum), seeded and chopped
1 x 410 g tin mixed beans, drained
1 x 410 g tin tomatoes with juice, mashed
5 ml (1 t) dried mixed herbs

Cheese sauce
5 ml light margerine(reduced fat margerine)
375 ml (1½ cup) low-fat milk
20 g flour
60 g low-fat cheese
pinch of ground nutmeg
a pinch of salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 Lightly steam the spinach until just wilted, then drain well.

2 For the vegetable sauce, heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan. Add the onions and garlic and cook for about 5 minutes.

3 Add the mushrooms and green pepper and cook for a further 3 minutes. Add the beans, tomatoes and herbs. Simmer for 15 minutes.

4 For the cheese sauce, melt the margarine, and stir in the milk.

5 In a 500 ml glass bowl or jug, mix the flour with 45 ml (3T) water to a smooth paste. Remove the hot milk from the heat and gradually add the milk, 45 ml (3T) at a time, to the flour paste, stirring after each addition until smooth. Pour the sauce back into the saucepan.

6 Return to heat and stir until sauce is smooth and thickened. Remove from heat and stir in cheese, nutmeg, salt and pepper.

7 To assemble, pour half the vegetable sauce over the base of a lasagne dish. Cover with a layer of lasagne sheets, then half the spinach. Spread half the cheese sauce over the spinach. Top with remaining vegetable sauce and lasagne sheets. Cover with remaining spinach and finish with the remaining cheese sauce. Sprinkle with Parmesan and mozzarella cheese.

8 Bake in a preheated oven at 180 °C for 45 minutes to 1 hour until bubbly and brown.

A good look at MSG

There's a saying, if MSG is really bad for you, why isn't everyone in Asia getting headaches?

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonthly/story/0,,1522368,00.html

I stumbled onto this article and found it really interesting. I'll highlight the interesting bits.

Quote:

The anti-additive movement (check out the excellent and informative www.truthinlabeling.org) admits that 'natural' and 'industrially produced' glutamate are chemically the same, and treated by the body similarly. So why doesn't anyone ever complain of a headache or hyperactivity after a four cheese and tomato pizza (where there's easily as much glutamate as in an MSG-enhanced chicken chow mein)?

MSG actually occur naturally in many foods such as parmesan cheese and ripe tomatoes. Vegemite or Marmite contains a lot of MSG as well even when it's naturally fermented yeast extract.

Quote:

My friend Nic came round. He told me about a Japanese restaurant he'd been to that gave him headaches and a 'weird tingling in the cheeks' - until he told them to stop with the MSG. Then he was fine, he said. I nodded and I served him two tomato and chive salads; both were made using the very same ingredients but I told him one plate of tomatoes was 'organic', the other 'factory-farmed'. The organic tomatoes were far better, we agreed. These, of course, were the tomatoes doused with mono sodium glutamate. Then we ate mascarpone, parma ham and tomato pizza. Nic felt fine. So did I. I had ingested, I reckoned, a good six grams of MSG over the day, and probably the same again in free glutamate from the food - the equivalent of eating two 250g jars of Marmite.

This shows that MSG should not be the main cause of the problems.

Everything we eat SHOULD be in moderation. Even if you drink too much soy milk, it's actually not healthy. Moderation is the key.

Crabmeat Cheesecake

Another wacky idea to try out. Savoury cheesecake. Worth a try. I can't find cream of shrimp soup so I substitute cream of chicken soup instead.

Crabmeat Cheesecake.

500g cream cheese
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon dry minced onion
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons chopped tomato
1 teaspoon oregano
1 ½ teaspoon fresh lemon juice
500g crabmeat
1 can Cream of Chicken soup

Preheat over to 350 degrees
Butter 4 – 2/3 cup individual soufflé dishes

1 Beat Cream Cheese until fluffy
2 Beat in eggs
3 Fold in the rest of the ingredients except crabmeat and soup.
4 Fold in ½ of the crabmeat
5 Salt and pepper to taste
Divide the mixture between the four 2/3 cup soufflé ramekins
Bake until the centers are set – about 30 minutes

Meanwhile, heat the Cream of Chicken Soup

When the cheesecakes are set – take out of oven and cool slightly
Mix the remaining ½ lb. of crabmeat with the cream of chicken soup

Gently remove the cheesecakes and put inverted onto individual serving plates

Top with two Tablespoons of Crabmeat-Creamy Chicken soup mixture

Top with some salmon egg (ikura) or with red lumpfish caviar.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Cheesecake

Just stumbled on this recipe and I might try it out since I love peanut butter.

Ingredients:
1 ½ cups finely crushed peanut butter biscuits.
1 cup caster
½ cup melted butter, cooled
680g Cream Cheese, room temperature
4 large eggs, room temperature
½ cup melted semi-sweet chocolate, cooled
2 teaspoons grated orange zest
2 cups Sour Cream
1 cup chopped salted, roasted peanuts
½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions
1. Heat over to 350 degrees.
2. Mix the cookie crumbs, ¾ cup sugar and melted butter and press into a 9” spring form pan, chill for 10 minutes.
3. Beat the cream cheese, eggs, melted chocolate and orange zest until smooth.
4. Pour into chilled crust
5. Wrap the side and bottom of your pan with aluminium foil then place it on a water bath(a big pan of hot water) inside the oven. This is to ensure cheesecake doesn't get too dry.
6. Bake for one hour.
7. Remove from oven (do not turn oven off) and let sit for 15 minutes.
8. Mix together the sour cream & remaining ½ cup sugar and spread onto cheesecake. Sprinkle with chopped peanuts & chocolate chips, return to oven for an additional 10 minutes.
9. Cool to room temperature and then chill for four hours.