Sides And Condiments | Be Nutritious

Sauted Spinach with Mushrooms

For those of you who are totally bored with plain boiled or steamed spinach I recommend this spinach sauted with a shallot, garlic and white button mushrooms. You’re still getting your super healthy greens but in a slightly new form. Mushrooms add different flavor and texture and it’s so good that I could eat it all without sharing.

The ingredients here are for 2 servings. When I was preparing it I was sure it would be enough for 4 people but spinach shrinks so much that a standard 9-10 oz bag can feed only 2 max 3 people as side dish. So obviously if you want to make it as a family side for 4 double the recipe.

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Orzo Greek Salad with Chickpeas

How I love salads, I cannot even explain. Perhaps I’ll try by telling you that even after eating out in many fancy restaurants, Sweet Tomatoes with its giant salad bar is still one of my favorites. Definitely in my top 5 favorite restaurants of all times. Salad bar is all I need to make me happy. Nothing more is required and nothing compares to a healthy and clean taste of fresh vegetables mixed with a tasty dressing.

This recipe is my take on a Greek salad but instead of preparing it with lettuce I used orzo pasta and chickpeas. That trick makes it more filling so you can have it as a main dish for lunch or you can take it with you to school or work for lunch break.

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Fried Green Tomatoes

Fried green tomatoes are one of those foods you have to try to satisfy curiosity. They are Southern specialty and if you happen to be in any of the Southern states you must give them a try, you won’t be disappointed. Crunchy on the outside with soft, almost melt in your mouth middle. Just make sure to buy really green, unripe tomatoes since they are firmer and won’t get mushy while frying.

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Low Fat Croquettes with Sauerkraut and Mushrooms

It’s been quite a while since my last post. No i didn’t forget about my blog or cooking. I mentioned before that I was about to visit my family in Poland so here I am in my home with my parents constantly eating Polish specialties. I would probably cook something before but my parents didn’t let me touch the stove. All the time they’ve been making yummy treats for me so I had to wait for my turn in the kitchen.

The meal I’m presenting today is one of my favorite Polish specialties. We eat tons of sauerkraut or cabbage and you can encounter them in many different forms such as the one here, wrapped in crepe and breaded. It is usually eaten as a side dish with borscht but I like to eat it alone as a main course. These croquettes are very filling and just 1 piece contains some protein from eggs, carbohydrates from flour and whole serving of vegetables. Furthermore my croquettes are much healthier and leaner than traditional ones because instead of frying them in deep oil, I baked them in the oven. I used only 3 tablespoons of fat for the whole dish (10 croquettes). It comes to be about 1/3 Tbsp per piece. Thanks to that simple trick I can eat much more of my delicious croquettes without feeling guilty that I consume too much fat.

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Hawaiian Purple Sweet Potatoes

Did I mention already that I love trying new things? If not, than I’m telling now, I absolutely adore trying new foods. Every time I’m about to take the first bite of something completely new to me, I feel like a kid before Christmas. Hawaiian purple sweet potatoes (also known as Okinawa potatoes) are one of those foods. Honestly I never even knew that anything like this exists until few days ago when I saw them in my favorite grocery store. A lady at the store was giving away samples of baked Hawaiian sweet potato to customers, so I tried a piece. At first I thought it tasted just like a regular sweet potato but after a second I started tasting something different. I find it hard to describe what kind of flavor was it but I would say that it was a bit like caramel and it was slightly sweeter than orange sweet potato. The lady at the store also assured me that it is the healthiest of all of the potatoes, it has the most antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. I loved it. I grabbed two of them and went to the cash register. You can imagine my surprise, when I had to pay 10 bucks for just two large potatoes, but it was worth it. For the purpose of my blog and excitement associated with cooking and tasting brand new food I decided to be a little bit less thrifty than usually. Normally I always look at the price of what I’m buying and I try not to be extravagant with food but this time I made an exception. I decided to simply bake them in the oven. I did not want to damage or overpower their rich taste by boiling them or combining with any other food. Just plain bakes potatoes, that’s the best way to experience their unique taste.

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Sweet Potato Wedges with Mango Chutney

Sweet potatoes are my favorite starchy vegetables. Not that I don’t have love for a regular potato, I’m all about potatoes but nutritionally speaking sweet variety has much more to offer. It gives you more fiber and much more vitamin A and C plus it doesn’t affect your blood sugar as much as white potato. That’s pretty surprising considering the fact that it’s sweeter in taste. Nevertheless old school regular potato still is a great choice and offers a lot of nutrients but it can’t really compete with a super healthy sweet type.

There are many ways to eat sweet potato, baked, boiled, mashed or pureed for a soup but my favorite way is to eat it just like fries, cut into wedges and roasted until crispy. I still haven’t mastered the art of making thin cut fries, whether they are sweet potato or regular ones, somehow they always end up sticking to my baking sheet but wedges always come out perfect. They’re a little bit less crispy that normal potatoes but it’s due to the sweet potato consistency. You can help it get crispier by dipping it in flour or cornstarch before baking.

I love to dip them in mango chutney. It might sound a bit odd but trust me, they perfectly match. Next time however I want to try them with tomato chutney or ajoli, that must be a nice combination too.

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Mango Chutney

Mango chutney is a type of a sauce that usually accompanies Indian dishes. It’s very often eaten with lamb or chicken curry but it doesn’t have to be eaten only with meat dishes and not necessarily only with curries. It is a great partner to cheese sandwich or baguette and fabulous dipping sauce for crackers. I actually like it with sweet potato fries. Somehow the flavors of both nicely complement each other, especially if sweet potatoes are seasoned with spicy cayenne pepper. A lot of people like to eat mango chutney with roasted meat and although I haven’t tried, I’m pretty sure it would taste amazing with baked or grilled tofu….hmm.

It is yet another recipe after Vegetarian Quiche that I am submitting for a contest on Mixing Bowl website. The recipe is based on a Mango-Ginger Chutney from Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook and if you’d like to vote on my recipes, you can do it here.

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Green Beans with Aji Amarillo Sauce

Aji Amarillo is a Peruvian yellow chili pepper. It’s very spicy and has a distinctive taste. In the recipe I used Aji Amarillo paste but you can use fresh pepper instead. If Aji Amarillo is not available in your supermarket you can always try to substitute it for regular yellow chili pepper but the taste might be slightly different. The sauce also tastes good with veggies like asparagus or cauliflower. Peruvians use it with chicken, fish, pumpkin and squash so go ahead and try it with different kinds of foods, vegetarian of course . Hmmm by the way, it might be nice with fried tofu or tempeh.