Creamy Curry Sauce

Here's what I did for supper tonight.  The only thing home made about this is the sauce.  The corn is just Green Giant's steamed vegetables.  The sweet potato fries are pre-cut and cooked to package specifications.  The steak is just a 6 oz pre-tenderized hip steak.  But I've been playing around with white sauces and I think I finally have it down.  The whole thing is 4 weight watchers points on the old system.  I used curry and cumin because I really like the flavour of curry and think it goes well with beef.  The recipe below is what I did.  After that is what I learned.

Creamy Curry Sauce

Ingredients

2 tbsp 64% less Becel Margarine (the pink tub)

1 1/2 tbsp corn starch

1/2 cup 1% milk

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp mild curry powder

1/4 tsp ground cumin

(The curry and cumin can be replaced with whatever seasonings you like and the quantities adjusted to your tastes.)

In a small saucepan over low heat, melt butter. Add milk and stir

Add salt and your other seasonings. Stir to mix.

Slowly add corn starch, stirring all the time to mix.

Continue cooking over low heat until sauce is smooth and thickened.

What I learned

1. It's too salty.  The salt overpowered the curry flavour.  So that should be cut down to 1/4 teaspoon.
2. This makes enough for 2-3 people if you are going to top meat with it.  Me being the glutton that I am, I used the whole thing and bathed my steak and fries in it.
3. When you are cooking the sauce to let it thicken, don't stir it too much.  Let the low heat do its work.  It will seem like it is getting lumpy but you can stir all that out once it thickens.
4. On my stove, low heat is about 2-2.5.  Yours may be different.

Baked Scallop Rigatoni in White Sauce

Serves 3-4

This is by far the most ambitious thing I've ever tried.  It is the first time I have ever used all four of my oven burners at the same time.  As per my M.O., I will give you the recipe as I did it and tell you what I learned at the end.

Ingredients

2 tsp virgin olive oil

110 gm scallops (defrosted)

½ cup sliced mushrooms

½ cup chopped onion (I used Walla Walla sweet onion)

2 slices turkey bacon (cooked and crumbled)

3 tbsp butter

3 tbsp flour

1 cup 1% milk

¾ tsp basil

¾ tsp dillweed

½ tsp salt

255 gm uncooked rigatoni

60 gm shredded partly skim mozzarella cheese

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

White Sauce:

In a small saucepan over low heat, melt butter. Add milk

Add dillweed, basil and salt. Stir to mix.

Slowly add flour, stirring all the time to mix.

Continue cooking over low heat, stirring frequently until sauce is smooth and thickened.

Scallops:

In an skillet (or similar), heat oil over medium-high heat

Add onions and cook, stirring, for three minutes

Add scallops and continue cooking for two minutes

Add mushrooms and continue cooking for one minute or until mushrooms are cooked

Remove from heat and add bacon. Stir to mix

Rigatoni:

Cook according to package directions and drain

Bake:

In a large mixing bowl, combine rigatoni, sauce and scallop mixture. Mix well

Pour mix into a 7 cup baking dish

Top with the shredded cheese

Bake for 20 minutes or until cheese is golden brown

What I learned:

1. White sauce takes a long time to thicken and cook.  It would be a good idea to just make it first and then do all of the other stuff after.  Having four burners going at once was a bit overwhelming.
2. This recipe doesn't need the scallops to be good.  But I like the flavour of scallops so I will keep using them.  But the recipe needs more of them.  They are overpowered by everything else.  So I would use about 1.5 times as many next time.
3. There's too many onions in the recipe.  I would probably cut it down to about 1/4 or 1/3 cup of onions.
4. If you do not want to bake it, you wouldn't have to.  You could just pour the sauce with the scallop mix on cooked pasta and that would work.
5. While my white sauce recipe works, it is a bit bland.  I'll have to play with the seasonings and see what works.  It also has a bit too much of a flour taste.  If anyone can tell me how to get rid of that, I would be in your debt.
6. There is a lot of rigatoni (3x the portion size on the package).  Cutting that to about 200 grams would probably work too.

Vanilla Almond Dutch Bunny

I was at my girlfriend's place last weekend and we were watching the Food Network.  I saw this thing called a Souffle Pancake and thought it looked good.  On further investigation, I found out it is called a Dutch Bunny.  So I found a recipe and decided to tweak it and make it my own.  The original called for bananas and icing sugar.  But I'm on Weight Watchers and am always looking for ways to cut out a few points.  I really like the flavour of almonds and vanilla so I did that.  I ended up with about 5 pancakes in one heavy cake-like patty.  Overall, this was really tasty, easy to make and, with my tweaks, fits right into my Weight Watchers plan.  I will definitely do this one again.  This is what I did:

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• ¾ Cup skim milk
• ¾ cup Robin Hood Nutri Flour Blend flour
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ tsp pure vanilla extract
• ½ tsp pure almond extract
• 2 tbsp Splenda
• ½ cup (120 gm) Becel 64% less margarine (pink tub)
• Aunt Jemima Lite Syrup

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 450
• Beat eggs and milk until well blended
• Add flour, salt, vanilla, almond, Splenda and mix with a fork until just mixed. It will be lumpy.
• Melt butter in an oven-proof skillet.
• When butter is melted, pour the batter on top.
• Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes.
• Serve immediately with syrup

What I learned

1. Nobody needs a full one of these.  It is very rich.  I ate a whole one and feel like I'm going to get the sugar jitters.  So I would make one to share and also some sausage or bacon and maybe potato fritters for a good, big breakfast.
2. It gets a very buttery taste that, at times, overpowers the vanilla and almond.  Maybe next time, I should cut down on the amount of butter.
3. There were little pockets of brown vanilla inside due to it not mixing properly.  Next time I will mix those in with the eggs and milk before the flour and see what happens.
4. If presentation is important to you, it is important to pour it evenly over the butter and try to cover the whole area.  I found that it baked quickly and, the parts of butter that didn't get the batter just dissipated and I ended up with a lopsided (yet no less tasty) dish; as you can see from the picture.
5. This may be just as good and healthier with about 6 egg whites.  If I do try that, I will let you all know how it turns out.