Monday Recipes - Thai Omelets and Shrimp Rice Salad

Broke out the Thai cookbook today. My recipes were limited by the fact that I didn't want to buy 2 dozen ingredients, and I don't like coconut. I briefly considered making spring rolls, but didn't want to deal with the wrapping and frying. I figured an omelette would be pretty easy, and a salad even easier.

I had to improvise a bit. The store I went to did have lemongrass (and let me tell you, it's very bizarre to cut up something that looks like a dry scallion and have it smell like lemon), but they didn't have lime leaves or thai basil. Also, I forgot to buy cucumber, but the salad recipe says that you can pretty much throw anything in there and it'll work. Also, I used frozen shrimp instead of dried shrimp with shrimp paste.

Thai Omelet
8oz pork (I actually used a pound, and the flavors still came out just fine)
2 tomatoes, diced
onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2T sugar
2T fish sauce (doesn't actually taste like fish, so don't let the name deter you)
1-2T cilantro, minced
2T peanut/grapeseed oil
5 eggs
2T fish sauce

Pour oil into pan and saute onion and garlic until soft (but don't let the garlic brown or it can become bitter). Add pork and cook until slightly browned. Add tomato, cilantro, 2T fish sauce and sugar and cook until liquid (from the tomatoes) has thickened a little bit (or, until you get tired of cooking it, like me, and just use a slotted spoon to remove it from the pan).

Beat eggs together with 2T fish sauce (what I did was to do three eggs at a time, as that was one omelet and when I make the rest of the pork into the omelet, I'll crack more eggs). Pour the egg mixture in a thin layer into a medium-large pan and cook until slightly browned on the bottom and no longer runny on top. Spoon pork mixture on top. Using a spatula, serve on a plate. The recipe said to fold the egg over the pork into a packet. However, I put too much pork and it just didn't fold easily (it'll come out of the pan more easily if you lift it a little on each side to loosen before sliding the whole thing out). So I just had a pork sandwiched in egg, and it was tasty.

Shrimp Rice Salad
3C cooked rice (I used brown rice)
20 frozen shrimp, defrosted and cut into small pieces (I'm guessing at the amount, this is flexible)
2 lemongrass stalks, sliced into small pieces
C toasted slivered almonds
avocado, pitted and diced
juice of 1 lime (the recipe called for 2 lime leaves)
2 Thai basil leaves (I left this out all together)
1 Asian pear, cored and diced
1 1/4C water
2T sweet chili sauce
1 spicy green/red pepper, minced
2T brown sugar

While the rice is cooking, put the water, sugar, 1/2 stalk sliced lemongrass, lime juice, and shrimp in a small pot and bring to a boil for about five minutes. The original recipe said to strain the liquid and use that as dressing, discarding the rest (given that the dried shrimp would not be included and therefore not discarded. I chose to add the shrimp to the dressing, and therefore didn't strain it).

Put the rice in a large bowl and let it cool. Remove dressing from heat and let cool. While cooling, cut up the pear, the rest of the lemongrass, and the avocado (and 1/2 cucumber, if desired). Toast the almonds.

Add the pear, lemongrass, avocado, almonds, sweet chili sauce, Thai basil (if desired), chili pepper and dressing. Mix thoroughly.

To be honest, I haven't actually tried it yet, but will be eating it for lunch. I'll let you know how it turns out!

Debunking the Bunk - Eggs

So there are foods out there that we were raised "knowing" were bad for you. Based on the nutrition research of the day, some foods at one point in time were thought to have a decidedly negative effect on your health. Among them: eggs, olive oil, coconut, chocolate, cupcakes (ok, that last one was wishful thinking). And now we start to hear more recent research about potentially positive effects of these very same foods. Whether that will be born out by time remains to be seen. However, some of these foods just aren't the evils they were made out to be.

First up: Eggs.

I grew up in the era of the Bad Egg. The Bad Egg was a super injection of bad cholesterol that put plaque layers directly onto your arteries. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. Prior to the discovery of cholesterol, eggs were considered "the perfect food, the centerpiece of solid breakfasts, the hearty garnishes atop salads and side dishes" (Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy). After the discovery of cholesterol, eggs became a poor choice for nutrition, and correspondingly, the sales fell.

New studies, however, tell a different tale (this information again cited from above linked book).
Here's what these new studies state:

1. Eggs are low in saturated fat
2. They contain protein, polyunsaturated fat, folic acid, and vitamins B and D
3. Their effect on heart disease can't be predicted based on their cholesterol content

There are two types of people: Responders (R) and Nonresponders (NR). Rs reflect the amount of cholesterol they eat in the amount of cholesterol in their bloodstream. NRs can eat cholesterol with only very small changes in the cholesterol in their bloodstream. And eating eggs has very little effect on LDL (bad cholesterol). No research has shown that eating more eggs translates into a higher chance of heart disease (unless you have diabetes).

For a much less scientific, but much more fun to read, test of the effect of eggs on health (of two Aussie men), go here.

This doesn't mean eat all the eggs you ever wanted, especially if they're doused in butter and cheese and fat. But eggs aren't the evil that I always thought them to be, and I won't feel quite so guilty about having some deviled eggs or some scrambled eggs on the rare occasion when I actually feel like having it.

Just for the sake of balance, I plugged "eggs" and "health" into google, to see whether there were any opposing viewpoints in the first page of hits. And all the top results came back with eggs being nutritious and good for you. So, as with anything, eat them in moderation, use common sense, but don't worry about all those Bad Eggs everyone always warned you about (unless you crack them and they're green and shriveled, then they might be bad in a very different way...)

Feta Garlic-Scape Scramble Eggs
3 eggs, whisked
5-10 garlic scapes (can be found in June-July at farmer's markets)
goat cheese feta (as much as desired)
roasted baby red potatoes (optional)
oil
salt/pepper

I basically made scrambled eggs with what I had leftover in my fridge when I got home from the gym one night. If you're short on time, you might not want to include the potatoes, as they generally take forever and an age to roast. They do add some tasty (if high-glycemic) carbs to the eggs, but if you wanted to go more the whole grain route, you could omit the potatoes and put your eggs on top of some multi-grain toast instead.

Potatoes (easy): chop up potatoes in bite sized pieces and lay out on a roasting pan. Sprinkle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast until soft.

Potatoes (complicated): chop up potatoes in bite sized pieces and lay out on a roasting pan. Sprinkle with a mixture of lemon juice, olive oil, chopped parsley, mustard, salt, and pepper. Roast until soft. (I only call this complicated because it requires a cutting board and a little bowl for mixing)

Scrambled eggs preparation: chop up the garlic scapes into bit sized pieces. Saute in a pan with olive/grapeseed oil until fragrant, but not until limp. While these are cooking, wash eggs, then crack and whisk yolks into whites. Add eggs to scapes and cook until softly scrambled. Add potatoes and feta and cook until eggs are firm. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and serve.

One note about garlic scapes: later in the season (or if they're sitting in your fridge for a while, since they do keep a long time), the scapes can become pretty fibrous. You only want to use the end from the thin tip to the bump (I don't know how else to describe this, but there's a bump about halfway up). The thick end is a lot tougher and stringier to chew.