Soba Salad with Chicken and Cabbage

Can we just raise a collective cheer for weeknight dinners that are fast, easy, tasty, healthy, and relatively inexpensive? My list of meals that fit all those criteria is pretty short. These last couple of weeks have been pretty crazy in my life, so finding healthy dinners I can whip up easily has taken top priority. The beginning of May is always a little extra busy in our family, since two of my kids have early May birthdays, but this year there’s been the added crunch of trying to finish up this semester’s courses toward my nutrition degree and preparing to head to the Nutrition and Health Conference in Dallas this Sunday (which I’m super excited about and plan to blog about soon!). So basically fast and easy are my best friends right now in all areas of life.

Fortunately, I happened to place this soba chicken salad on the roster of dinners for this week. As a perpetual fan of Real Simple‘s cookbooks, I’ve been working my way through this one that I got for Christmas and had been meaning to try this recipe for some time. I’m glad I finally did–it’s one of those one-dish meals that’s perfect for a weeknight when you’re slammed. With chicken for protein, noodles for starch, and cabbage and carrots for vegetables, you’re set. The sweet and sour dressing of soy sauce, rice vinegar, and ginger gives it a mild Asian flavor that even my kids enjoyed.

So sayonara for now–look for a post next week on all the cool stuff I’m expecting to learn at the Nutrition and Health Conference!

Soba Salad with Chicken and Cabbage
(Adapted from Real Simple)

Ingredients:

8 oz. soba noodles
8 small chicken tenderloins
salt and black pepper
6 Tbsp. canola or vegetable oil, divided
3 Tbsp. rice vinegar
3 Tbsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. grated fresh ginger
3 c. shredded red cabbage
1 large carrot, shredded
6 scallions, sliced

Directions:

1. Cook the noodles according to package directions. Drain and run under cold water to cool.

2. Meanwhile, season the chicken with salt and pepper to your liking.

3. Heat 3 Tbsp. of the oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the chicken until golden brown and cooked through. Cut into strips.

4. In a large bowl, whisk together the remaining 3 Tbsp. of oil, the vinegar, soy sauce, and ginger. Add the noodles, chicken, cabbage, carrot, and scallions and toss.

Serves 4.

Spinach Lasagna

Doncha just love the Internet? Where else can you find so many useful “true facts” about anything you desire, including your favorite foods? Like this gem about spinach:

Who knew? Little-known facts: spinach also gives you increased resistance to awkward conversations at parties, superior hopping ability at Q-Bert (arcade version only) and temporary bioluminescence. I swear it’s true; I read it on the Internet.

The obsession over connecting individual foods with highly specific health benefits can get a little excessive–especially when the marketing touts a benefit that’s totally obvious and/or off-topic. Milk with a gluten-free sticker affixed. “Apples: a naturally fat-free food!” “Cheerios: may help lower cholesterol.” (Um, since cholesterol only occurs in animal products, doesn’t any non-animal product food lower your cholesterol?) I might as well walk around wearing a sign that reads “Will not give you a skunk as a pet.” I won’t, but that’s sort of irrelevant to who I am as a person.

Incidentally, the typical association most of us have with spinach–that it’s high in iron–actually stems (pun intended) from a recording error German chemist Erich von Wolf made when analyzing the vegetable’s nutrition content. Von Wolf misplaced a decimal point, accidentally recording that spinach contained 35 milligrams of iron per serving, rather than 3.5. The error went unchecked and persisted to such a degree that amidst the creation of the super-strong cartoon character Popeye the Sailor Man, studio executives suggested he should have a propensity for spinach. The rest is history: the myth of the elevated iron content of spinach persists to this day.

In reality, of course certain foods benefit particular aspects of health, and it’s not wrong to eat them with this in mind. Spinach, while not the world’s iron panacea, does contain a respectable 21% of your recommended daily iron intake in a 100 gram serving. More impressively, it’s an excellent source of Vitamin A, folate, Vitamin K, and manganese. Still, from my point of view, for most people seeking merely to eat a balanced diet, an overly fussy fixation on which foods supply which nutrients is unnecessary. Eat (healthily), drink (healthily), and be merry (healthily)… And if you happen to want to eat spinach (which you should because it’s good for you in general), why not try this delicious spinach lasagna? I’ve made it numerous times for dinner guests and plates are consistently cleaned. Though, to my knowledge, no one has gone on to breathe underwater.

Spinach Lasagna
(Slightly adapted from Allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
2 10-oz. packages frozen chopped spinach
1/2 onion, chopped
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 tsp. dried basil
2 garlic cloves, crushed
32 oz. spaghetti sauce
1 1/2 c. water
2 c. cottage cheese
8 oz. shredded mozzarella cheese
1/4 c. grated Parmesan cheese
2 Tbsp. + 2 tsp. dried parsley
1 scant tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. black pepper
1 egg
8 oz. lasagna noodles, uncooked

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a large pot over medium heat, sauté spinach, onion, oregano, basil, and garlic in the olive oil until spinach is completely thawed. Pour in spaghetti sauce and water; simmer 20 minutes. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, mix cottage cheese, mozzarella, Parmesan, parsley, salt, pepper, and egg.

3. In a 9 x 13 glass dish, layer as follows from bottom to top:

Sauce (bottom)
Noodles
Sauce
Noodles
Cheese Mixture
Sauce
Noodles
Cheese Mixture
Sauce
Noodles
Sauce (top)

(or some variation thereof that uses all your sauce and cheese mixture)

4. Cover with foil and bake in the preheated oven for 55 minutes. Remove foil and continue to bake another 15 minutes. Let stand 10 minutes before serving.

Chicken Tetrazzini

Here in Mesa, it’s been raining. It rained for two days in a row, which by Phoenix-area standards is nothing short of miraculous. We here in the desert tend to get extra excited by rain. We tend to think of it like that old Weather Girls song It’s Raining Men, if you take out the word “men,” as in:

“It’s raining! Hallelujah, it’s raining!”

The reason, of course, for our unmitigated joy over the mysterious wet stuff that comes out of the sky is that (being in a desert) we don’t tend to see a lot of it. I vividly remember the record dry spell of 2006. After 143 days without rain, it was as if the clouds had been saving it up and rained so hard and so much there was SNOW on Superstition Mountain. In March. When it’s usually 85 degrees and you’re hoping you remembered to take your sunscreen with you to the Renaissance Fair.

The reason I remember all of this is that I was scheduled to run a 5K at the Phoenix Zoo that day, and since apparently the race planners had not considered rain a possibility, I ended up running wearing one of the black garbage bags they passed out instead of rain ponchos.

That’s what I’m talkin’ bout. P.S. Friends don’t let friends have bangs this awful.

Garbage bag ponchos aside, I really do love the rain. And when it rains, I always crave comfort food, don’t you? So last night, after almost an entire day of rain (hallelujah!) it was time for something warm, hearty, and creamy: chicken tetrazzini, one of my favorites. I didn’t grow up eating this dish–in fact, I had never heard of it until my husband made it for me on my 23rd birthday. We were living in our ghetto first apartment with a tiny kitchen, irrepressible cockroaches, and the claim to fame that the management gave all new residents The Club car lock as a welcoming gift.

Welcome to your new home! We’re freely admitting that thugs will try to steal your car here!

Upon tasting it, I was instantly hooked. Eight years later, this meal is still in my rotation. You might look at the recipe and wonder how it could be at all flavorful, since the only spices it contains are salt and pepper, and the other ingredients wouldn’t appear to add much in the flavor department. All I can say is you’re gonna have to trust me on this one. The richness of the roux (butter and flour heated to bubbling) combined with cream and chicken broth make this a melt-in-your-mouth dish that needs no additional seasoning. Additionally, it boasts the interesting trivia of being named after the turn-of-the-century opera star Luisa Tetrazzini (who looks like she probably ate quite a bit of it in her time, if you know what I’m saying). All in all, it’s a perfect dinner for those rare and wonderful Arizona rainy days…when you have an opera singer on your mind. Or something along those lines.

Chicken Tetrazzini
(Adapted from Betty Crocker’s Cookbook: Bridal Edition)

Ingredients:
7 oz. spaghetti, broken into thirds
1/4 c. butter
1/4 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 c. chicken broth
1 c. heavy cream or 1/2 and 1/2
2 Tbsp. dry sherry or water
2 cups shredded cooked chicken
1/2 c. grated Parmesan cheese

Directions:

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Cook spaghetti as directed on package.

While spaghetti is cooking, melt butter in a 2-quart saucepan over low heat. Stir in flour, salt, and pepper. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture is smooth and bubbly; remove from heat. Stir in broth and cream. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Boil and stir 1 minute.

Drain spaghetti. Stir spaghetti, sherry or water, and chicken into sauce.

Pour spaghetti mixture into an ungreased 2-quart casserole. Sprinkle with Parmesan. Bake uncovered about 30 minutes or until bubbly in center.