Littles' Bites

Emeril’s Cheese & Beer Soup with Spicy Popcorn Garnish - Food Network

Limey says: After yesterday’s lighter fare, it was time to get seriously self-indulgent with a meal that virtually requires extra gym time to work off, and when it comes to indulgences, it’s hard to beat an Emeril Largasse recipe and this soup from the Food Network proves that rather handily.

As alluded to above, this recipe is highly calorific, clocking in at an eye-watering 988 per bowl. A figure not helped by us deciding that it was four and not six servings, but not reducing the ingredient proportions accordingly.

As to those ingredients themselves, did we make many changes? Not really. We did substitute Italian Blue Cheese crumbles for the Stilton because our local grocery store didn’t have Stilton. We also used Victory Dirt Wolf Double IPA as our two cups of “amber or pale ale beer” which is arguably not a change, and was mostly done to use up the beer in our refrigerator, as I, at least, find Dirt Wolf a little bit too hoppy to drink comfortably.

This was a fantastic soup, and I would never in a million years have thought of pairing it with popcorn, not even the Cajun-spiced savory popcorn used here. It’s a combination that worked incredibly well together, though some of that was because the soup itself was so creamy and good that I think it would pair with literally anything you can name without an issue.

Easy Indian Lemon Chicken - Soni’s Food

Limey says: More citrus recipes abound, and after hitting China for inspiration yesterday, we went with India for our inspiration today with this very light chicken recipe from Soni’s food.

In what is a frankly shocking move for the Little’s Bites kitchen, we didn’t make any changes to the recipe, and ended up with four bowls that clocked in at a mere 227 calories each.

I will say that despite lemon being in the name of the recipe it wasn’t a particularly strong note in the overall flavor of this, which tasted like a less creamy than usual mild chicken korma to me. That’s still good, because I don’t think there’s really any bad Indian style curry recipes, but it was a minor disappointment due to our little citrus-y theme.

Orange Beef - New York Times Food

Limey says: We were still doing citrus-themed recipes, and had decided to do a Chinese inspired meal. Specifically this beef recipe from the New York Times food section.

If you don’t count the white rice (which I didn’t have with mine, but FoFacy did), it came to 555 calories a bowl and tasted just great.

As has become increasingly common here in the Little’s Bites kitchen, we made minor changes to the recipe. Basically, switching the ribeye beef for a cheaper London Broil, since the meat was going to be battered and tossed in a sauce so it didn’t need to be the highest quality meat in the meal.

And since the recipe called for two to four dried red chiles, we went with three as a good number. also, our definition of “neutral oil” as the recipe called for was to use the canola oil we had in the kitchen.

Thai Grapefruit Salad - Lands & Flavors

Limey says: I felt like it had been a little while since we had done a non-pasta salad, and our Facebook group was still doing citrus-themed recipes, so we combined both with this recipe from Lands and Flavors.

We did make a couple of changes to the recipe, both in the dressing, for streamlining purposes. Most notably, rather than make vegan fish sauce, I just used the regular fish sauce we had in the cabinet (sorry vegans/vegetarians, but if it’s any consolation, we do have plans for a vegan recipes “week” coming soon). Also, I didn’t have palm sugar, so we just used regular brown sugar.

We also fried the shallots in thee tablespoons of peanut oil, and used a Serrano pepper as the “small chile.” These changes made each of these salads 360 calories a bowl.

The Asian-style (I guess Thai, but not sure if it’s actually Thai style) flavors to this salad were great, and the acid of the grapefruit counteracted the spice of the Serrano pepper nicely and the fried shallot and chopped peanut garnishes worked really well.

Healthy Chicken Piccata - Healthy Seasonal Recipes

Limey says: For tonight’s meal, we had a couple of goals we wanted to achieve. It’s a Trivia Tuesday Night, so we wanted a dish that would take under thirty minutes to cook. Also, the Facebook cooking group we belong to was having a citrus themed competition for this particular fortnight. This recipe from healthy seasonal recipes met both of those targets.

We made a single change to this recipe, in that we added the bed of fettuccine to serve it on. That addition pushed the calories all the way up to 461 per plate, so still pretty light.

This tasted utterly fantastic, but I’m biased in that lemons, capers and pasta are three of my absolute favorite foods and this contains decent amounts of all three. 

It was also super easy to prepare, especially with FoFacy and I teaming up to attack the prep together, so I’d guess this was maybe twenty-five minutes from prep to plating.

Curried “Shepherd’s” Pie - New York Times

Limey says: For tonight’s dinner, after the relative lightness of yesterday’s ratatouille, we wanted something a little heavier, a little more feeling, and dare we say it, a little more comfort food. Enter this slightly misnamed recipe from the New York Times. (I say slightly misnamed as a point of pedantry. Technically if it’s made with beef it’s cottage pie, it’s only shepherd’s pie if it’s made with lamb, but I’m probably the only person who gives a fig about that.)

As ever, the recipe didn’t survive the Littles’ Bites kitchen unscathed. The only changes to the ingredients were switching the chicken broth to beef broth, because we had left over beef broth and 85/15 ground beef is the meat here. Also, I’m never sure how minced garlic translates, so we used three chopped fresh cloves of garlic as our equivalent of the tablespoon. We also decided that the recipe yielded four BIG servings rather than the six to eight it alleged. These changes meant each serving came in at a whacking great 871 calories, but as a comfort food, I’d say it was worth that.

I’m currently congested with a bit of a heavy cold, so I couldn’t fully taste whether the curry flavor to the meat was there (FoFacy tells me that it was…), but the stick-to-the-ribsness of a good cottage pie was definitely present. And since I couldn’t decide whether a picture of the baking dish or a serving was the better option, I’m going with both.

Ratatouille - Allrecipes.com

Limey says: We wanted something a little lighter after yesterday’s soup, and this cheeky little vegetarian recipe from allrecipes.com provided that. This was extremely light, coming in at under 300 calories a plate. I’s also pretty colorful, which always adds a nice bit of dynamism and “pop” to proceedings, after all “the first bite is with the eye.”

No changes were made to the recipe at all, and it was an excellent and tasty little dish, I was a little disappointed in how poorly it held together, I think that’s mostly a consequence of my slicing the vegetables a little bit thicker than they needed to be so they didn’t anchor themselves in the tomato paste quite as effectively as I would have liked, but that’s being very nit-picky.

Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that this was from a saved list of “media-inspired” recipes we’ve built up over the last few months. The media this was inspired by should be pretty obvious, but just in case it isn’t here’s a clue:

(And yes, I did refer to the meal as “rat patootie” a time or two whilst preparing it.)

Slow Cooker Pasta e Fagioli Soup - The Recipe Critic

Limey says: Well, it was Slow Cooker Saturday (It’s A Thing™) once again, and since it had gotten significantly colder again after the weather had lulled us into a false sense of hope on Thursday and Friday, a warm soup seemed like an excellent bet. Enter this recipe from The Recipe Critic.

We didn’t make many changes to the recipe. In fact the only one I can think off was switching from two fourteen and a half ounce cans of beef broth to one thirty-two ounce carton of the same. Also, we decided that it was four servings rather than eight. This meant that each bowl was 675 calories, a number that was probably boosted by using 85/15 ground beef rather than the “lean” the recipe requested.

This was really good, but some of that might have been circumstantial, as we ended up eating it later than planned, and after spending a little more time walking outside than we had initially planned due to a slight misunderstanding between ourselves and the schedule for our local buses..

Rumbledethumps - Food.com

Limey says: I’ll be honest, 90% of the motivation for making this hearty recipe from food.com was how hilarious I find the name to be. Rumbledethumps! It’s impossible to say without laughing. Rumbledethumps!

The other 10% motivation was mildly more complex. Back when we were making the Horseradish Pot Roast, I couldn’t find parsnips initially, and turnips were recommended as a substitution. Subsequently, I did find parsnips, and so the turnips were now superfluous in our vegetable basket. This recipe happened to incorporate turnips, so we were able to use them up.

This was really good, and definitely filling. This came in at 509 calories per bowl, mostly because of all the butter and potatoes involved. The only change that we made to the recipe was to use regular green cabbage instead of savoy cabbage, as we couldn’t find the latter.

Also, I tried to some research into the name Rumbledethumps and drew a blank. It’s apparently a Scottish variant on the English “bubble and squeak,” but no origin or etymology. I like FoFacy’s scholastically dubious theory that “it’s named for the sounds that come out of your butt after eating it,” but didn’t notice any significant upturn in flatulence myself.

Spicy Thai Basil Chicken Kebabs - The Flavor Bender

Limey says: I don’t recall the initial impetus for this recipe from the flavor bender, but what better way to follow up a salad than with big lumps of meat on a stick?

Well, by giving those lumps of meat a decided Asian-influenced flavor, that’s one way, and the way these kebabs went. After marinading the chicken for a while, it imparted some real spiciness to each kebab, despite the strongest, hottest flavors being cracked black pepper and red pepper flakes. This was on top of good old faithful ginger and garlic of course.

Some slight deviations from the original recipe were using regular basil instead of Thai basil, because I couldn’t find the latter, using metal skewers rather than soaked wooden ones, because that’s what we had available, and lastly switching from a grill to the oven broiler and broiling these at six minutes a side on high to simulate grilling. That was mostly done because January’s not a good month for grilling, as well as a vain attempt to avoid our smoke alarm going off. The concierge of our building who came up to investigate the smoke alarm to make sure that we weren’t on fire (that’s more of a brisket thing) was rewarded for his diligence by FoFacy presenting him with one of the skewers of spicy chicken.

Each of the skewers came in at 108 calories, which meant each serving was 315 calories. Of course, we ended up eating two servings each because it was so good. this also meant that we didn’t have to deal with the minor palaver of unskewering and reskewering meat for reheating since metal skewers and microwaves don’t make for a happy combination.

FoFacy says: Yeah, I feel bad because every time we do something with the broiler or sear steaks on the stove top, we inadvertently set off the alarm and if it goes off long enough, the concierge will come and investigate. So I went downstairs and said, “I promise we’re not trying to set the building on fire, we just cook a lot.” 

These were VERY tasty and I wished we’d had some peanut sauce to soak them in. I’m so glad I bought these stainless steel skewers. As they’re flat it keeps items from twirling around willy-nilly, and because they’re pointy it’s easy to puncture things onto them. These are definitely a repeater. 

I just wish we could find an easier way to keep the smoke alarm from going off while we’re cooking.