Easy Thanksgiving dessert recipe

Easy Thanksgiving Dessert: Apple Parfait
By: Chef Cristian Feher
www.tampabaychef.com

Click HERE to watch the video

I'm driving back home across the Courtney Campbell and I'm talking to my wife on the phone. "Fox 13 asked that I come up with a dessert that is both healthy and good. Any ideas?" I asked.

My wife is not a chef, but when it comes to dessert, watch out! That little lady knows her sweets. Within seconds she came up with this delightfully tasty and healthy treat.

"Why don't you cook some apples with a little honey, cinnamon, glazed walnuts and dried fruit, and then put it in a cup with some fat-free vanilla yogurt!" And so I did! 

Different apples vary in sweetness and acidity, and different honeys have different levels of sweet. So I recommend that this recipe is done with a lot of sampling. Add a little of this or that, and taste as you until you reach a sweetness level and flavor that you like. 

Here is the recipe:

Yields: 4 servings

Ingredients:
- 6 apples of your choice (I used red organic apples)
- 1-2 tbsp of honey
- 1/2 to 1 tsp of cinnamon
- 1 tbsp of lemon juice
- 1/2 cup of glazed walnuts with dried berries of your choice (I found these in the salad section at Publix)
- A tub of fat-free, sugar-free vanilla yogurt
- Fresh mint for garnish

Instructions:

1. Core and dice your apples.

2. In a non-stick pan, cook your apples until they begin to get mushy. Then add the rest of the ingredients - minus the yogurt and the mint - and adjust the flavors.

3. Serve warm apple mixture over yogurt in a cup, and garnish with a sprig of mint!


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The easiest way to cook a thanksgiving turkey

Healthy Thanksgiving Recipes Part 2: Easy Turkey
By: Chef Cristian Feher
www.tampabaychef.com

Click here to watch video.

This recipe is dedicated to those who love Thanksgiving turkey, but don't have the time, skill, or patience to roast a whole turkey.

Last week I showed you how to make healthy stuffing using Ezekiel bread or sprouted grain bread. You will need to make up a small batch of it for this recipe.

The easiest thing - turkey-wise - is to stuff and roast a breast. You can buy boneless turkey breasts at your local grocery store. They are big, and can serve 3 to 4 people on average for a 2-3Lb breast. 

The breast that I prepared for this recipe was even cooked in a toaster oven at 400 for 40 minutes, and took under 5 minutes to prepare. Easy!

Yields: 4 servings

Ingredients:
- A 3Lb boneless turkey breast (skin-on)
- 1 to 2 cups of Ezekiel bread stuffing (see recipe)
- Goya brand Adobo seasoning

NOTE: If you're in the habit of cutting down on fat by removing turkey or chicken skin from your breasts, you may want to wait until just before eating it to remove the skin. Taking the skin off before cooking, will cause your meat to become dry in the oven. So you want to leave the skin on during the cooking process so that the meat will retain more moisture.

Instructions:

1. Put the breast skin-side-down on a cutting board. You should see the tenderloin of the turkey breast, which is a big tongue-shaped flopply piece of meat which is connected to the breast on one side. Just flop that over to the side without disconnecting it. Cut a pocket along the other side of the turkey breast (opposite from the tenderloin) so that you create a pouch. 

2. Fill the "pouch" with stuffing. As much as you can fit, without over-doing it. Tuck it in there. Then flop the tenderloin over the stuffing and place the breast skin-side-up on a non-stick baking sheet.

3. Rub the skin with a little olive oil and sprinkle with Adobo seasoning. 

4. Bake at 400 for 30-40 minutes or until internal temperature is 165-170.

5. Let it rest for a few minutes before carving into slices and serving! 



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Healthy Thanksgiving Recipes: Sides, part 1

Healthy Thanksgiving Recipes
By: Chef Cristian Feher
www.tampabaychef.com

 CLICK HERE TO WATCH VIDEO

Thanksgiving signifies the beginning of the Holidays. That means: social functions, shopping, and family get-togethers. It also means high-calorie holiday foods. 

Although turkey is rather healthy, the accompanying posse of sides for a typical Thanksgiving dinner tends to be high in carbohydrates, sugar and calories.  They say it's the turkey that makes you sleepy - I think it's all the other stuff! I don't know about you, but I enjoy my Thanksgiving dinners and I don't exactly practice portion control. 

If you watched my cooking segment Sunday morning on the Good Day show, you saw me prepare a low-glycemic stuffing along with some healthy sides.  I have taken traditional Thanksgiving sides and leaned them up by lowering their caloric value and taking out sugar and carbohydrates wherever I could - without sacrificing taste. All these recipes have been tested and enjoyed!

A note on artificial sweeteners: When I was planning this segment with Mark, a producer on the Good Day show, we were discussing using artificial sweeteners in some of the recipes to replace the sugar. However, I don't personally feel that artificial sweeteners are "healthy", and I tend to avoid them as much as I would avoid high fructose corn syrup. There are studies out there for, and against, artificial sweeteners. But studies are just that - studies.  I just follow my own common sense on this and surmise that adding highly refined chemicals to food can't be considered healthy.

Here are the healthy Thanksgiving sides recipes.

Savory Sweet Potato Casserole Recipe

There is a difference between sweet potatoes and yams. Although they both look the same, and are often mistaken by the produce clerks at the grocery store, there is a difference in nutrition. Yams are a ball of starch and sugar. Sweet potatoes have starches and sugars too, but they also have vitamins, minerals, beta-carotene and have a lower glycemic load than yams (they release sugar more slowly into your blood stream - this is a good thing!). 

In this recipe, I remove half the calories by taking out the sugar, molasses, and whatever other carbohydrate people usually add to sweet potatoes. This makes them a healthy carb and they taste great as a savory (salty) dish.

Use this recipe losely, as your quantities may change according to how many people you have at your party. I'm going to do this recipe for 4 people so it's easy to multiply.

Yields: 4 servings

Ingredients:
- 6 sweet potatoes about the size of a large baking potato, cut into 1-inch pieces
- 1 medium yellow onion, diced
- 5 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 handful of fresh parsley, chopped
- 1/2 tbsp of Italian herbs such as oregano thyme and basil, dried
- Sea salt to taste
- Black pepper to taste
- (optional) a swirl of extra virgin olive oil, or butter flavored spray to taste

Instructions:

1. Boil the chunked and pelled sweet potatoes in a large pot of salted water until the potato chunks break up easily when you mush them up against the side of the pot with a spoon.

2. Drain and let it sit in the strainer for a couple of minutes while a lot of the water evaporates from them Do not run them under cold water. You want to get as much water out of them as possible before you mash them.

3. In the same pot, or a large pan, fry the onions with a little olive oil or cooking spray until they are well cooked (10-15 minutes). Don't burn them.

4. Add the sweet potatoes, garlic, herbs, and parsley and mash with a masher or an electric mixer. 

5. During the mixing process, add salt and pepper to taste. Serve and enjoy!

NOTE: Once cooled, this mixture freezes well in small batches.


Cauliflower Mash Recipe

This is a great substitute for mashed potatoes. Cauliflower is virtually carb-free, and very low in calories. But there is a lot of flavor to it, and it mashes up similar to potatoes. Add a little butter flavored cooking spray to it (or a small amount of real butter) and you may never go back to mashed potatoes again - you will, I know - but it's a good side dish!

Yields: 4 hearty servings

Ingredients:
- 2 heads of cauliflower (fresh) OR - 2 frozen bags of cauliflower, cut into florettes
- Water
- Salt
- Pepper
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- Butter flavored cooking spray or a little piece of salted butter

Instructions:

1. Boil the pieces of cauliflower in salted water until it's very mushy (20-25 minutes).

2. Drain very well.

3. Add the garlic, butter (spray or piece), salt and pepper to taste and mash it up with a masher or electric mixer. Enjoy!

Thick Low-Carb Gravy

Yields: 4 cups -+

Ingredients:
- 4 cups of beef stock, turkey stock or chicken stock (made from bullion, so make it strong and tasty)
- 1 dozen or two cremini, baby bella or white mushrooms
- 2 oz of dried porcini mushrooms
- Kikkoman japanese soy sauce


Instructions:

1. Put the Porcini mushrooms in a little bowl of hot water until they get soft. Discard the water and keep the mushrooms.

2. Bring the stock to a simmer.

3. Cut the raw mushrooms into small pieces and simmer them in the stock for 15 minutes.

4. Add the porcini mushrooms.

5. Puree the sauce with a hand-blender, or put it in a regular blender. The mushrooms should thicken up the sauce. If it's not thick enough, you need to add more mushrooms, cook them and blend them until the sauce is thickened by the mushrooms. 

6. Season with salt, and a little bit of Japanese soy sauce if necessary. Enjoy!


Sprouted Grain Bread Stuffing

Stuffing is usually made with white bread, which packs a lot of calories and carbs, but very little protein, or fiber. It's not that healthy. But bread made with sprouted grains packs a large amount of protein, amino acids, vitamins and minerals, fiber and it's basically really good for you! Fortunately, it works great for stuffing, you won't miss the white bread at all.

This is a good base recipe which you can add lots of other stuff to, like: almonds, raisins, walnuts, chicken livers, sausage, bacon, etc.

Yields: 4 portions
- Half a loaf of Ezekiel or Sprouted Grain Bread (sold sliced and bagged at your local grocery store)
- 1 cup of diced onion
- 1 cup of diced celery
- 1/2 cup of diced carrots
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced
- Chicken stock
- Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. Cube the bread into small cubes. This is easier when the bread is slightly frozen.

2. Begin to fry the vegetables in a pot with a little olive oil until the onions are translucent (7-10 minutes).

3. Add the bread. Toss.

4. Add just enough chicken stock to make the bread slightly moist. Toss. Add a little more. Toss. Do this until you get the bread just soggy enough to resemble stuffing (every one knows what stuffing looks like, right?)

5. Once you do this, season with salt and pepper. Cook for another five minutes at med-low heat and:

a) Stuff your bird with it
b) Put it in a baking dish and bake at 350 for 30 minutes or until golden brown on top.


I hope that you enjoy all these recipes. Please tune in next Sunday on Fox 13 for my easy turkey cooking segment. 


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