Category: Side dishes

Easy Egg Foo Young

It is not that many years ago, so my meeting with the diabetes dietician at our local medical clinic is still very sharp in my memory. I had done some research into foods low in carbohydrates after my doctor told me that I had type-2 diabetes, so I was prepared for the dietician.

She began by explaining that carbohydrates included sugar and starches found in common foods and drinks.

Holding up a test tube nearly filled with a white granular powder, she told me, “This is how much sugar is in the average can of a soft drink.”

“I don’t drink many cans of pop,” I responded.

She held up a tube only half full of the powder. “Here is the amount of sugar in an average serving of cake.”

“I like cake, but I don’t eat it very often,” was my answer. Fortunately she did not have a test tube stuffed with sugar from a large slice of cherry pie.

“Things don’t have to taste sweet to have lots of carbohydrates,” she said, ticking off a list on her fingers. “Soda crackers, potato chips, pretzels, bread sticks, Chex mix and tortilla chips all have significant quantities of carbohydrates.”

“I binge on potato chips and dip or tortilla chips and salsa once in a while,” I said, “but not very often.”

I could tell she thought I was exaggerating my will power. “Everybody snacks,” she said, “so what do you snack on?”

“Well, I really like dry-roasted peanuts and mixed nuts and a martini on the rocks while I am reading or watching the news on TV. And I enjoy one or two slices of good lunch meat as a snack. I have been checking out low-carb foods on the web, and these all look pretty good to me,” I answered.

I was feeling smug about my dietary research before she gave me a “gotcha” smile and announced. “You’re right about the carbs, but all those things have lots of calories. Calories lead to weight gain and excess fat.”

She stared pointedly at my rounded front and said, “Fat interferes with the body’s response to insulin. You might want to switch to celery and carrots and cut back on the martinis.”

Rather than taking such drastic steps I began looking for foods that were low in carbohydrates and calories to compensate for my afternoon delights. Here is a dish low in both of the “C’s” that I lucked into long before I began paying attention to such things.

Many years ago when I was still gainfully employed, there was a Chinese restaurant less than a mile from my office in Plymouth, Minnesota. Weekdays at noon they featured a luncheon special that let customers choose from several different menu items. The parking lot was usually nearly full, and there was inevitably a line at the serving counter. One got in the line and pointed to the items that he or she wanted for lunch.

That restaurant got me addicted to Egg Foo Young. I liked their fried rice, egg rolls, beef and mushrooms and stir-fried vegetables too, but it was the Egg Foo Young that kept calling me back to the place. There are many variations of the dish, which is a Chinese omelet made with eggs and other ingredients. The mixture is fried like a relatively thick pancake and served covered with a tangy sauce or gravy.

A generous serving of Egg Foo Young made with this recipe contains only about eleven grams of carbohydrates and fewer than two hundred fifty calories. You could eat all four servings and still be within the recommended carbohydrate intake for a meal. However, as the dietician lectured me, “They do have calories.”

INGREDIENTS:

For the omelet:
1 can bean sprouts (about 2 cups)
1/3 cup thinly sliced scallions
1/4 cup finely chopped celery
1 large clove garlic
1 cup salad shrimp or equivalent
5 large eggs
1 tsp. soy sauce
1/8 tsp. salt
About 2 T canola oil for frying

For the sauce:
1 cup water
1 tsp. instant chicken bouillon or 1 cube
2 tsp. sugar
2 tsp. soy sauce
2 tsp. cider vinegar
1 T cornstarch dissolved in 1 T cold water
Dashes of white pepper and garlic powder to taste

PROCEDURE:

Make the sauce first. Dissolve the bouillon in a cup of cold water in a small saucepan over moderate heat. Add the sugar, soy sauce and cider vinegar. Dissolve the corn starch in a tablespoon of cold water in a cup.

When the bouillon mixture has come to a boil, reduce the heat and whisk in the cornstarch along with a dash each of white pepper and powdered garlic. Bring the sauce back to a simmer and cook for about three minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary. Set the sauce aside while you make the omelets.

Drain the bean sprouts and put them into a colander. Clean and chop the scallions and celery and mince the garlic after removing its outer paper. Add the vegetables and shrimp to the bean sprouts. Let the vegetables and shrimp drain for fifteen minutes. Beat five large eggs in a small bowl until they are lemon colored. Season the eggs with a teaspoon of soy sauce and an eighth teaspoon of salt. and stir them into the vegetables and shrimp.

Heat about two teaspoons of canola oil in a non-stick frying pan over moderate heat and put two or three third-cup scoops of the egg and sprout mixture into the pan. Flatten the scoops slightly with a spoon or spatula. Turn the patties after three to four minutes and fry until both sides are lightly browned. Warm the sauce while you fry the rest of the patties. This recipe makes eight patties, which are enough for four generous servings.

Pass the sauce with the patties at the table.

NOTES: We seldom have salad shrimp in our freezer, so I usually chop larger shrimp into a half-inch dice. Incidentally, you can substitute cooked chopped chicken or pork for the shrimp. Any vegetable oil works fine for frying.

Egg Foo Young is a delicious low-carb addition to the menu. This entire recipe totals only about forty-four grams of carbohydrates. Complement the Egg Foo Young with a bowl of Hot and Sour Soup, LINK and you will be serving a meal with fewer than twenty grams of carbohydrates for each diner.

Vegetarian Corn Quesadillas

When the Laurentide Glacier retreated from northern Wisconsin about 10,000 years ago, it left behind the landscape we know today. At first the only plants were lichens, mosses and low shrubs now found much further north of us in the tundra regions of Canada. In the next few thousand years, larger trees appeared until Wisconsin was covered with the great forests of white and red pine that furnished the lumber to build houses in cities from Chicago, Illinois, to Dodge City, Kansas, as well as thousands of homes and outbuildings on farms in Wisconsin and across the great plains.

As glaciers retreat, their ice turns to water that deposits sand, gravel and rocks downstream from the face of the ice. If the water collects in rivers flowing from the glacier it can sculpt the land in very impressive ways. A first visit to Interstate Park on the banks of the St. Croix River at St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, and Taylor’s Falls, Minnesota, left a lasting impression on me, as it does on most visitors. When Glacial Lake Duluth (more than 500 feet higher than Lake Superior today) dumped billions of gallons of water into the Glacial St. Croix River, the water carved more than a hundred potholes in the hard basalt “trap rock.” You can stand in some that are twenty feet across, and one that was excavated is nearly sixty feet deep, the deepest glacial pothole known in the world.

The glacier didn’t leave such spectacular evidence of its power in the Namekagon Valley, where I grew up. It formed the hills that border the valley and left some impressive landmarks such as Telemark, a kame formed by a glacial stream piling sand and gravel into a cone-shaped hill east of Cable, Wisconsin, where the American Birkebeiner starts each year.

The glacier left a lot of sand and rocks that I helped Gus Gauch pick from his fields when I was a boy. Our land didn’t have a lot of rocks, but it made up for it in sand. As long as it is mixed with organic material, sand is a good material for raising potatoes and corn. To mix the organic material with the sand, my father used the pioneer’s approach: Clear a half acre, plow the smaller brush and leaves under and fertilize with well-composted cow manure in following years.

Because the newly plowed field was filled with roots that had not yet decayed, Dad planted sweet corn the first year or two to let the roots decay enough so that a person could dig the potatoes. Thus we always had enough corn to supply our family for the year. He would plant the first eight or ten rows as soon as the ground had been plowed and disked. A week later he would plant the rest of the patch. That way we had plenty of corn on the cob for a couple of weeks and ripe ears ready for Mom to can over a two or three-week period for the winter.

Dad and I picked the first sweet corn of the season as soon as possible. He taught me how to feel the ears of corn to detect the full kernels that meant it was time for corn on the cob. “Not yet,” he would tell me. When the big day came, Mom would have the canner half-filled with water heating on the stove. Dad would pick the ears he judged ready. We did not shuck them at the corn patch, because he said the corn shucks attracted crows and raccoons.

Instead, we shucked the ears in the back yard and tossed the leaves into the chicken pen before taking the ears into the house. Mom knew how to boil them just long enough, and we all ate our fill of the first corn of the summer, usually with fried chicken or hamburgers and bread.

A day or two later, Dad would get me up at dawn to help pick corn for canning. The first couple of years, I found it exciting to be helping my father while my sisters were still asleep. We would load washtubs and a wash boiler and carry them back to the house. I felt like a grown-up then, but the excitement wore off as I grew up. Still, I enjoyed bringing in the corn with Dad every summer until I left for the university.

Mom, my sisters and I would help shuck the corn, and I helped my mother cut the corn from the ears. The corn was freshly picked, the kernels were carefully cut whole from the cobs and packed lovingly in pint jars. I think of those jars lined up on shelves in the basement whenever I make these vegetarian quesadillas.

INGREDIENTS:

8 oz. extra firm tofu
12 corn tortillas
1 tsp. vegetable oil
3/4 cup whole kernel corn
3 – 4 jalapeño peppers
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
Medium salsa
Butter

PROCEDURE:

Start by baking the tofu. It’s easy and turns tofu into a great snack if you should have some left over. Here is a link which will take you to a post that explains how to bake it. Just scroll down to the bottom of the page.

While the tofu is marinating and baking, drain the corn and put it into a small frying pan with a teaspoon of vegetable oil. Clean and chop the onion and cilantro medium fine and add them to the corn. Wash and quarter the jalapeños, cut off the stem ends and remove the white membrane and seeds. Chop the peppers into a quarter-inch dice and add them to the other vegetables along with the quarter teaspoon of salt. Cook the vegetables, stirring frequently, over medium heat for four or five minutes until they just begin to get tender. Remove the pan from the heat.

Shred the cheese and make sure you have the butter and salsa at hand. Put a twelve inch skillet over medium heat. I find it easiest to make two quesadillas at a time in my skillet.

To assemble the quesadillas, butter four tortillas. Put two tortillas butter side down in the skillet. Spread a tablespoon of salsa over the tortilla, spoon a quarter cup of the vegetable mixture over the salsa and arrange four or five pieces of tofu on the vegetables. Top everything with a couple tablespoons of cheese and cover the cheese with the two other tortillas butter side up.

Cover the skillet and cook for two to three minutes until the tortillas are lightly browned. Press down on the quesadillas and turn them to brown the other side. Remove them to a cutting board, plate or platter and cut them into halves or quarters. Repeat until you have made all six quesadillas.

Serve as appetizers or for a light lunch or dinner.