Prime Rib for Two with Asparagus

This week's New Thing was a prime rib recipe in the Cooking for Two section of Cook's Country magazine (Dec/Jan 2012 issue, page 5). This was a 2.5-pound bone-in rib eye steak that was browned on all outside edges over medium high heat in an enameled cast iron skillet, and then finished very slowly in a 200F oven until medium rare in the center (about 122F on the meat thermometer). After resting, it was cut on the bias for serving. Since we did not make any significant changes to this recipe I refer you to the magazine for details. We won't do much differently the next time we prepare this meal other than to brown the outside of the meat a little longer and take steps to make the sauce a bit thinner and more like a classic jus.

The "prime rib" from this recipe was accompanied by asparagus that we cooked with lemon juice, shallots and garlic. We sauteed for a few minutes and then added a dash of water and cooked covered until just crisp-tender. Simple and delicious.

Good meal for week three!

French Style Onion & Mushroom Soup

This week we adapted a low sodium French onion soup recipe to our tastes by adding mushrooms and changing up how the bread and cheese are used in the recipe (because I don't dig soggy bread). The soup was rich, tasty and surprisingly filling. Here is how we made it:

RECIPE: French Style Onion & Mushroom Soup (4 servings)
Sodium = 325 mg/serving

For the croutons --

1/2 french bread loaf (about 6-8 slices), slightly stale, cut into cubes
4 T unsalted butter
1/2 t dried thyme

Preheat oven to 425F. Melt butter in baking dish in hot oven. Add bread cubes and thyme, toss to coat evenly. Bake, stirring often, until light golden brown and crisp. Remove from oven, set aside to cool.

For the soup --

1 lb onions, sliced into half rings
8 oz mushrooms, sliced
4 T unsalted butter
4 cups organic low sodium beef broth
1 T Worcestershire sauce
1 t low sodium soy sauce
dash of hot sauce (optional)
1/4 t No Salt (KCl)
freshly ground black pepper
4 oz Swiss cheese, shredded
Croutons (see recipe above)

Melt butter in dutch oven on medium heat. Add mushrooms and onions, stir. Cover and cook on medium low for about 15 minutes on medium low heat, stirring occasionally. Uncover and reduce liquids for about 5 more minutes. Add beef broth, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce and hot sauce, KCl and black pepper, then bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5-10 minutes. Preheat broiler while soup simmers.

To serve --

Ladle soup into oven-proof bowls. Layer with croutons and top with shredded cheese, then place under broiler for a couple of minutes, until cheese is melted and just starting to become spotty brown. Handle hot bowls with care, placing them on a plate for transport. Serve immediately.

The Mother of All Recipe Conversions: Spicy Pasta Bake with Sausage

This used to be one of our favorite "go to" recipes for winter comfort food. It was tasty, filling, and not much trouble to prepare. Unfortunately, it was also the one recipe we had been completely unable to alter enough to bring the sodium down to a reasonable level. The original recipe (from the Feb/March 2008 issue of Cook's Country) had five significant sources of sodium. Here they are in order, along with our lower sodium substitutes:

1. The sausage. Big, big problem, no matter what variety you choose. The recipe calls for one pound of chorizo, but we also used to make it with andouille or other smoked sausages. The amount of sodium in one pound of smoked sausage varies widely, but the range would be 3200mg on the low end to 5500mg on the high side. This was the toughest ingredient to substitute. We cut the sodium by a factor of 10-15 (yes!) by making our own andouille sausage using a recipe found in Dick Logue's 500 Low Sodium Recipes cookbook. This homemade version contains just 330mg of sodium from the pork meat itself. If you aren't feeling ambitious enough to grind your own sausage (although it is not difficult), you could also substitute Trader Joe's chicken Italian sausage, which only has 787mg/pound.

2. The cheese. We used to grate 8 oz of pepper jack cheese to add to this dish, which contributes 1440mg of sodium. I have not been able to find a lower sodium version of this type of cheese, so I cut the amount of pepper jack to 4 ounces and substituted 4 ounces of grated swiss to cut the cheese contribution down to an even 1000mg of sodium while keeping the flavor and texture the same. Swiss is the lowest sodium variety of hard cheese.

3. Low-sodium chicken broth. Yep, even the "low sodium" variety has 450mg/cup. This is better than the regular kind, which has about 760mg/cup, but since we need 3 cups this adds 1350mg to the pot. Fortunately you can easily find organic low-sodium chicken broth that has only 80mg/cup, bringing this ingredient's share down to 240mg.  If you really wanted to get stingy, Wyler's makes an instant chicken flavor broth that doesn't have any sodium (and probably doesn't have any real chicken either, but still tastes pretty good in recipes). Sometimes we use it half and half with real broth.

4. Next up is the 1/2 teaspoon of salt. That adds 1180mg to the total. We ended up reducing the sodium level enough with our other substitutions that we were able to leave this in for flavor, but you could also substitute KCl salt, which contains zero sodium. I added about 1/4 teaspoon of KCl to bump up the salty flavor.

5. The last problem child is the 10 oz can of Ro-Tel tomatoes, which contains 1040mg of sodium and has no low sodium alternative from the same manufacturer. We got around this by using a 14.5 oz can of Eden Organic Diced Tomatoes "Just Roma Tomatoes" that we purchased at Whole Foods and adding hot peppers into the recipe as a separate item. It contains only 20mg of sodium. If you can't find this product, most grocery stores carry no-salt-added diced tomatoes that contain 175mg for the whole can.

So... how did we do? The original recipe states that it serves 4, although in practice we usually get 6 meals from it so I will divide everything into 6 portions. The dish as made in the past contains anywhere from 8340mg to 10640mg of sodium depending on what sausage is used, which works out to 1390mg - 1773mg per serving. Way too high! Our version as cooked last night contained 2820mg in the pot, which is 470mg per serving. (If you use the Trader Joes's chicken sausage and regular no salt added diced tomatoes this would become 572mg per serving, which is still quite respectable.) I seasoned my plate with Mrs. Dash Table Blend and about a tablespoon of Hillside Orchard Farms Habanero hot sauce (add 43mg to my serving for that).

Bottom line - this conversion was very challenging, but I would call it a success. The texture and taste were nearly identical to the original recipe, although it definitely tastes less salty and needs more of the other seasonings to compensate.

LOW SODIUM CHEESY PASTA BAKE**

1 lb homemade "andouille" sausage (Logue, page 412)*
1 T vegetable oil
2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and diced fine
3 habanero peppers, seeded and diced fine (optional, but we like it extra spicy)
1 onion, diced
5 cloves garlic, minced
3 cups organic low sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 14.5 oz can no salt added diced tomatoes
12 oz penne pasta
4 oz swiss cheese, shredded
4 oz pepper jack cheese, shredded
4 scallions, sliced thinly
1/2 tsp salt - optional
1/4 tsp potassium chloride ("NoSalt" or other brand) - optional
freshly ground black pepper to taste

Preheat broiler. In a large dutch oven, cook sausage in batches until browned. Remove to a paper towel lined plate and set aside. Add the vegetable oil to the pan, then cook the onion and hot peppers until they begin to brown. Add the garlic and stir until fragrant, then add the sausage back to the pan.

Pour in broth, cream, tomatoes and pasta and bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Add salt, KCl, and black pepper to taste. Cover and simmer until pasta is done, stirring often. This should take about 15 minutes.

Turn off heat and stir in the swiss cheese. Sprinkle the pepper jack cheese on top, then place pot under broiler for a few minutes until the cheese is spotty brown. Place into serving bowls and top with a handful of scallions.

*A worthy substitute is Trader Joe's chicken Italian sausage, if you do not wish to make your own andouille flavored sausage from scratch. If you decide to make the sausage yourself, we followed the Logue recipe for the most part, but we prefer to grind our own pork in a food processor rather than purchasing ground pork because you can control the fat content by selecting an appropriate cut of meat - Boston butt works well, but you can use other cuts. Pork tenderloin is not recommended because it is too lean.

**RECIPE UPDATED 5/3/12 because it just isn't the same without real Andouille sausage. We found a way to make it work. Hooray! Changes are detailed here: Cheesy Pasta Bake, Revisited.

Project: 52 New Recipes for 2012

We're five days into 2012, and while I don't do resolutions, I do enjoy a year-long project. This year's new venture is food related -- namely to cook one "new" recipe every week this year.  This could mean trying one of the low sodium recipes from our cookbooks, converting an old favorite into a low sodium version, or inventing something entirely new. The only rule is that the meal has to meet my sodium restriction and must be something that we haven't made before in its current form.

I will post recipes that we have created (or modified substantially enough to call them our own) here on the blog. If we make something straight from a book or other copyrighted source I will indicate where you can find the recipe. First up is a winter comfort dish that formerly clocked in at 1400-1800 mg of sodium per serving, depending on what kind of cheese and sausage was used (and how much of each we threw into the pot). We used to make this dish a few times a month and I have really missed it. Stay tuned...

Too Much vs Not Enough: Is Stealth Sodium Throwing Off My Count?

According to most sources, >1500-2000mg of sodium is too much and <1200mg is not enough. Recent experience has me questioning these numbers - specifically the 1200mg one.

My Meniere's symptoms had all but disappeared during the summer when I was making a concentrated effort to keep my sodium intake as low as possible. It was probably not even consuming 800mg a lot of days (if my calculations were correct). No dizziness or vertigo, no sense of aural fullness, and most days I did not have any noticeable tinnitus. Went to my first recheck with my doctor and mentioned all this. He warned me not to go too low on sodium, so I started to relax a bit to bring up my daily consumption to around 1200mg. About a month later I was having tinnitus nearly every day and then had a string of horrible vertigo episodes.

After the really bad week of nausea and vertigo, I cut way back on the sodium again. Now that a week has passed with no dizziness, I have had two straight days of quiet. No tinnitus! When my ear doesn't ring, I know I won't have any problems with vertigo. It is a nice feeling.

There are only two conclusions I can draw from this experience. Not sure which one (if either) is correct. Either my daily sodium consumption to prevent Meniere's attacks is much lower than the recommended 1500mg, or I am consuming more sodium than I think I am. The second option seems more plausible. Fresh foods that do not come with a nutritional label may be the problem - especially meats. It is much easier to figure out my sodium intake when the info is there on a nutritional label. I am going to have to compile a list of sodium content for fruits, meats and vegetables so I can make sure I am including it in my sodium counts. Will also have to be more vigilant about buying organic meat that hasn't been injected with salt or MSG.

My other thought is why are the sodium recommendations the same for everyone? Shouldn't it matter what a person weighs? Active vs sedentary? How much water they drink? How much they sweat? For now, I am taking the 1200mg floor with a grain of salt (pun intended). If I am feeling good with 800mg a day and don't have any symptoms of sodium deficiency then that is how I will be eating from now on. But just in case, next time I see my doctor I will request that they order a lab test to make sure my body's level of sodium is within the normal range.

Pizza 2.0 - grinding it out

We made another Italian sausage pizza tonight and managed to cut roughly half the sodium from our previous attempt. The main two changes: no salt used in the dough for the crust (I used the herbed pizza dough recipe from Dick Logue's 500 Low Sodium Recipes book), and we made the sausage from scratch using 1/3 the recommended amount of salt. PDM consulted our low sodium cookbooks and his "normal" cookbooks and kind of split the difference in the recipes for the sausage. He made three pounds and froze most of it in 12 ounce portions for future use. It was some of the best Italian sausage I've tasted and the missing salt didn't cause any loss of flavor. If I didn't know it was "lower sodium" I would not have guessed it.


The pizza made six servings. I ate two and PDM ate four. My share of sodium was about 500-600mg. We still have about 6 ounces of sausage and about half the sauce left to use for supper tomorrow night. I am thinking of picking up some fresh tortellinis on my way home and another can of no-salt-added canned tomatoes and we are back in business! Got plenty of fresh basil growing in the garden, and we'll make some homemade garlic bread to go with.

Vacation Report

Pretty sure I didn't blow my sodium budget, although I probably came close a few days. The sodium restriction did make things much more difficult. It was much harder to find a place to eat that had something which could work for me. We had much less spontaneity than we are used to. My breakfasts were a bit monotonous - had fresh fruit and granola with yogurt every day. We always eat bananas and trail mix for lunch, which was not a problem since we chose the trail mix carefully (thank you Trader Joe's). But dinners were sometimes a challenge, especially in remote places (and also on the airplane). If all else fails, portion control is a viable option.

Other than the food restriction, we had a great vacation (if a bit overscheduled). Once we got to Seattle, we drove more than 1300 miles and hiked over 36 miles of trail. Not a lot of downtime. Very pretty scenery though, and we have this weekend at home to recover.