Bless you Chef Kerr

In my teens I was obsessed with Chef Graham Kerr's eponymous TV show. Now, once upon a time, Chef Kerr had been known as the Galloping Gourmet.

Photo credit: the Everett Collection, via Watching What We Eat

The GG was an advocate of local, fresh, and seasonal ingredients. However, his recipes all called for mountains of butter, cream, and fat, and virtual rivers of wine. I looked him up on Wikipedia and found this marvelous tidbit:

He was once called the "Most Dangerous Man in America" from the Heart and Stroke Foundation due to his high fat, high calorie recipes featured on his influential cooking programme.

Flash forward to the 90's. Graham is getting to middle age, and his wife has survived a heart attack. He develops a new show in which he re-imagines old GG recipes with a healthier bent. To this day, I credit the Graham Kerr show with my love of garlic and cilantro, and my general aversion to heavy salt.

This is all just background to set up my latest experiment.

Let me start by saying, I love ranch dressing. LOVE it. Pizza, chips, veggies, gimme some. I am also a total ranch snob. I pick restaurants based on the quality of their ranch. I do not like low-fat ranch. It's usually watery, and that fake fat they use can cause, er, let's say digestive complications.

I gave up the bottled stuff in favor of packets last summer. It's tastier and way cheaper, but get this. It calls for a cup of mayonnaise. You heard right, a CUP! Do you know how gross a cup of mayonnaise looks in a bowl? I do.

Thinking on this, I remembered a trick Chef Kerr used to use all the time: substitute strained yogurt. He used it in place of cream cheese, sour cream, mayo -- just about any rich, fat-laden dairy-type product. So I gave it a try. Why not, right?

What you need:

• Plain yogurt (important: NOT vanilla)
• Cheese cloth (available from any fabric store; I used 2 yards)
• Large mixing bowl
• Large strainer (I used my flour sifter)

Ok, all you need to do is, fold up the cheese cloth and use it to line your strainer.

 Here's where I thought, maybe the sifter wasn't the best choice.

Put the strainer over your mixing bowl, and dump in the yogurt.

 

Here's where I was sure. Gotta get a proper strainer.

Wrap the whole thing in plastic, put it in the fridge, and forget about it for several hours, or even better, overnight.

 Glass bowl is important so the plastic wrap will stick.

While you're off doing all the other shit you gotta do, the whey will be draining through the cheese cloth and into the bowl. Note: the yogurt will lose about half its volume through this process, so adjust your measurements accordingly.

I'm usually vehemently anti-waste, but I couldn't think of a thing I could do with yogurt-whey. I just discarded it.

 Any ideas for using this?

What's left behind in the strainer is the solid part of the yogurt. I was amazed. It was fluffy and thick, almost like whipped cream cheese.

See where this is going? I substituted the yogurt solids for mayo in my ranch. With deep trepidation, I gave it a taste...

 Don't judge. My hands were clean!

Are you kidding me?! YUM!! I think I like this better than mayo! Who knew? Well, I guess Graham Kerr knew, like 20 years ago. I busted out some celery sticks and ate some right out of the bowl. Couldn't resist.

 Momma's got a brand new ranch, y'all!

Some numbers, in case you're curious.

• One cup of plain yogurt has 150 calories, 8g fat.
• One cup of mayo? A ridiculous 1440 calories, 160g fat.
• This way, the entire bowl of dressing had 360 calories, 13g fat.
• A 2-tablespoon serving has roughly 22 calories and less than 1g fat.
• By way of comparison, with mayo a serving has 103 calories, 10g fat.

If I may belabor the obvious, there's room for trimming these numbers even more. Using 1% or skim milk would help, as would a nonfat yogurt. I might actually try nonfat next time. I'm feeling brave now.

One last tip from my inspiration, the erstwhile Galloping Gourmet. Try to avoid yogurt with gelatin added; it apparently interferes with the straining process.

I'll be experimenting with this trick some more. If any of y'all do, please comment and let us know how it goes!

Oh Metropolis (Also, are you kidding me?)

On Tuesday I dragged out all my winter clothes (read: the clothes I usually only get out when I visit Peoria in the winter), loaded up my car, and headed home to Metropolis (Illinois) to see the family. The schedule was jam-packed. Which, when combined with my relatives' general Internet-impairedness, explains my absence from this blog for six days. I don't wish to make a habit of this... Stay tuned...

My sister got this brilliant idea that, since I would be in town, we should take advantage of my brother's employee discount and get some pictures made at Sears. Just us kids, like when we were little. Except they didn't have to squeak the ducky to get us to smile. In fact, I'm really excited to see the final product. All we did was crack each other up the whole time. So that -- when you include all the beauty-fying I had to do -- took up most of Wednesday.

The past three days I hung out with various familial factions. But most of all I burned up the Wii at my mom's house. Fat ladies and Wii fit? I'll be working that into a standup set. Not that I do standup, but I write sets all the time. Weirdo...

Best night? Thursday. Cooked chicken fajitas at mom's house, which, even my picky 4-year-old nephew didn't spit out. Success! Here's the breakdown...

Cut the following ingredients into strips:

• One big green pepper
• One big sweet yellow onion
• Two or three Roma tomatoes
• Three butterfly-cut chicken breasts
  

NOTE: This is the extra-meaty recipe. Perfect for Southern folk. :)

Also, I used about a half a bulb of garlic. You can use a garlic press, but I prefer just to mash each clove on the cutting board using the flat side of a chef's knife. I cut these into fairly large pieces and remove any green shoots. Not everybody likes this much garlic, so let your palate be your guide. Also, if you don't want to get spicy bites of garlic, you can chop it really small.

(Here's where I would have put in the picture my mom took while I was cooking. Would have, if I had remembered to get it out of her camera before I skipped town. Dumbass...)

Add 1-2 tablespoons of olive (or your favorite cooking) oil to a hot skillet. I actually used two skillets, totally necessary when cooking for a big family!

Toss in the garlic and onion, and stir. Cook until the onion starts to turn transparent. Try not to scorch them. I say try, because I almost always scorch some of them.

Add the chicken and green pepper. Also add salt and pepper according to your taste. You need to add at least some salt, as this helps the juices come out of the meat and veggies to make the sauce.

Keep stirring occasionally. Once the outside of the chicken strips aren't pink anymore, I add the tomatoes. Put them in too early and they'll totally melt. Which is fine, you just end up with fajitas in tomato sauce. Still yummy.

About now is when you'll want to put your tortillas in the microwave. Wrap them in a damp paper towel to get a steamed effect.

I usually search out the biggest chunks of chicken, and cut them in half with my stirring spoon. Once they're good and done all the way through, serve the fajitas! I like them with just a little sour cream and cheddar cheese. However, if you skip these last two ingredients, this is an extremely low-fat, high-veggie, all around healthy meal!

RE: Are you kidding me?

I got home this afternoon to find a summons for jury duty. For February 2. There's no box you can check that says, "Hey, I'll be living in another state that day!" So I guess I better go down there. Like I didn't have enough to do this week.

Eye roll...