Tag Archives: portion control

Artichoke and Spinach Pie

WebSA

We usually have this dish as a side for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. I thought it would make a good entrée as well, so I worked up this version. Small size, no meat, it makes a perfect light dish for summer with a salad. If you need a larger, casserole style for a big dinner, just double or triple the ingredients, skip the Filo dough and just put some bread crumbs on top to brown. We like to add some fresh cilantro to it, that brightens the taste and adds a little zing. Makes about three 8 oz. ramekins.

Ingredients

1 14 oz. can of whole Artichokes
1 Pkg. frozen Spinach
4 oz. Cream cheese
4 Tbs. of Butter, warmed
¼ cup of bread Crumbs
¼ cup chopped onion
2 Tbs. chopped cilantro leaves (optional)
Salt & pepper to taste
1 pkg. frozen filo dough
PAM spray
Cilantro or flat parsley

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees f. and spray two or three ramekins with PAM

Defrost the spinach and cook it in the microwave until it is hot. Then put it into a strainer and rinse with cold water. Press the water out of the spinach. Rinse and drain the artichokes, cut off the stems if they have any. You want these to stand up in the cup. You can add the stems to the spinach mix, if you wish for flavor. Press the water out of the artichokes between paper towels.

Cream the spinach, onions, chopped cilantro, butter, bread crumbs and cream cheese together.

Place two sheets of Filo in each ramekin and let the sides droop over the top. Stand up enough of the artichokes in the ramekin to cover the bottom of each. Put a layer of of the spinach butter combination on top. Fold the filo dough over on top of the ramekin. Bake for 30 min. or until the top browns well. Pick the package out of the dish using two forks, plate it and I like to put a leaf of cilantro or flat parsley on top as a decoration, a slice of a small tomato works well too.

Serve with a salad and a good Pinot Grigo, Enjoy!

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Stand Up Lasagna!

LasagnaHead

I know, I did Lasagna in the first book. But I didn’t do it as a roll up, kind of an Italian Futo Maki. I thought it would make an attractive, different presentation for lasagna. You can also individualize the lasagnas, one meat, one veggie, one broccoli, etc. This also has the advantage of not making a huge amount of leftovers for you to gobble up at some later date. So grab your ramekins and let’s cook Italian.

Ingredients

8 Lasagna noodles (not the no boil kind)
¾ cup of hamburger and/or veggies you might prefer like finely chopped peppers,
spinach, broccoli flowers, etc.
1 garlic clove crushed
¼ cup finely chopped onion
2 eggs beaten
2/3rd cup shredded and chopped small, mozzarella cheese
1/3rd cup shredded and chopped small, Parmesan cheese
¾ cup ricotta cheese
½ Tbs. Oregano
½ Tsp. Basil
salt & pepper
¼ cup Italian Bread Crumbs
¼ cup spaghetti sauce (1 cup or so more for the side sauce)
3 ramekins sprayed with PAM

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

In a large pot of salted water, boil the lasagna noodles until they are flexible. Sauté the hamburger in a little oil, breaking it up into small bits. Add the garlic and onion (sweet red peppers) and cook until they soften. Drain the pan and place the ingredients onto a paper towel to drain. Chop any other vegetables finely and reserve.

Beat the egg and add to it the cheeses, breadcrumbs, spices, etc. and spaghetti sauce. Salt and pepper this to taste. Lightly spray 3 ramekins with PAM

20222324Take two of the lasagna noodles and overlap the second noodle about an inch over the first to make a very long noodle. I make two holes with a small knife in this and jam a toothpick into each. Don’t try going thru with one toothpick as the noodle just breaks. Pull these toothpicks out when the roll is ready to place in the ramekin. Coat one side of the noodle with a very thin coat of the mixture. Lightly sprinkle this with the meat or veggie mixture, pat this down flat.

Roll the noodles up. Don’t be afraid if it oozes out the side or it is crooked. You can pat the filling back

27into the top and bottom and press it between two hands to reform it. Place it in a lightly sprayed ramekin. Put a little bit of the meat or veggies on top so you know which is which. I stick a toothpick into the seam in the roll to insure that they don’t unroll as they cook. Bake at 350 for 30 mins. Let them cool for 5 min. or so to harden up. In the meantime, heat up the side sauce. Then using two forks pick the roll out of the ramekin and put it on the plate. Serve it with some of the sauce on the side, a cool caesar salad and a good Valpolicello wine.

This will definitely go into the next book.

Enjoy!

 

 

 

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Two Color Stuffed Pepper

Small Pepper

Red and Green Stuffed Peppers

This is a pretty easy stuffed pepper recipe. The only trick to stuffed peppers is to make sure that you do cook them enough, you don’t want them raw inside! I use one red and one green pepper. Fill half the ramekin with one color and the other half with the other. It’s very colorful. Cut the tops off and remove the seeds, then the bottoms. Then slit one side and lay it out flat. Trim off the remainders of the white gills and cut the pepper into 2 in. strips. Peppers need to be dressed up, otherwise they just look like a mound of brown meat. I defrost a few sheets of filo dough, roll them up into a tube and cut rounds out of it. Break up the rounds and you have a topping to brown and look excellent!

Ingredients

1 each medium red & green pepper
PAM
About ½ lb. of Hamburger
1 egg beaten
½ cup of mushrooms, chopped and cooked (1 min. in the microwave)
½ cup chopped onions
3 Tbs. of Ketchup
2 dashes each garlic powder and sage
1 pinch of celery seed.
¼ cup of seasoned Italian Bread Crumbs
1 Tsp. Worcester Sauce
Pepper to taste

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees f.

SmallinCup

Core, clean, flatten and slit the peppers. Spray 2-3 ramekins with PAM. Cut enough of green pepper strip to just go half way around the inside of your ramekin. Then cut the red pepper strip to fill the other half.

Mix the hamburger and the remainder of the ingredients thoroughly. Form a ball of hamburger mix about the size of a tennis ball and place it inside the peppers. It should just fill the cup leaving a little room for the topping. If you have someone who is really hungry you can mound up the mix, although we like to leave it level to control the portion. Place the ramekins in your oven on top of a cookie sheet as they may run over a bit.

Cook the peppers for about ½ hour. Remove the ramekins and using a spatula or a fork to hold the pepper in, drain off some of the fat. Put the topping on the ramekin and place it back in the oven for 15 min. more. Pick the pepper out of the ramekin using two forks, one on each side, tap the bottom on a paper towel to dry it a little and place it on your serving dish. I’ll bet you’ve never seen a green pepper like this before! Serve this with a green salad and you got a low carb dinner. Enjoy!

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Beef Tips as Small Foods

 

BeefTip1I’ve been trying for some time to make a beef wellington in a ramekin dish. This would be for the next version of Small Foods. Just rolling a chunk of steak into a taco shell or filo doesn’t work. Even with the best cut of beef it just comes out over cooked and chewy. I had the same problem with beef stew in the first book. The stew beef has to cook for hours to become tender. The Beef Wellington would have to be a big chunk of beef to cook with some amount of rareness.

 

BeefTipPkg

When I did the Beef Stew I found that I had to use frozen precooked beef tips. They worked perfectly providing the fall apart in your mouth tenderness the stew needed. I decided to try them in a Wellington-ish beef dish for Small Foods Too and here it is.

ROASTED BEEF TIPS

Ingredients

1 Pkg. Frozen PreCooked Beef Tips
2 Large Pats of Butter
1 Tbs. Red Wine
3/4 cup of coarsely chopped mushrooms
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup defrosted and chopped frozen potatoes
1 Grande Flour Tortilla
2-3 dashes of garlic powder
Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions

Preheat Oven to 350 degrees
Heat up a saute pan and cook the onion and mushrooms until they are tender. Add the defrosted potatoes. Cook for a few more minutes and add the beef tips & gravy, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Mix it well and remove from the heat. Cut a 3″ slice across the edge of the tortilla, form it into a circle and pin it together with a toothpick.

BeefTips5

Spray two ramekins with PAM and put the rolled up tortilla into them. Fill the tortilla with the mixture being careful not to break the band. Don’t fill it to overflowing, leave about an inch or so exposed at the top to brown. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes or until the top edge browns. Serve with a green veggie and a salad maybe a good Red Burgundy.

These were so good that I broke the portion control aspect of Small Foods and I ate all three!

 

 

 

 

 

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