A low-carb recipe inspired by lunch with Batya

Yesterday I had lunch with Batya at her home in Shilo. Batya has lost quite a bit of weight and champions a low carbohydrate diet. Indeed we had fish cooked with vegetables and salad for lunch. It was very tasty. Inspired (and a little jealous) I decided to try my hand at a low carb dish for lunch today. Having hosted the Kosher Cooking Carnival this week, I noticed that although I enjoy reading everyone else's food posts I haven't really shared my kitchen adventures. All that's about to change. Here goes:

• 3 medium eggplants (the dish is the size I use for the first course so you can get an idea of what I mean by medium sized) 
• 500 grams ground chicken 
• 1/3 cup ketchup (or tomato sauce and add spices) 
• 2 eggs (separated)
• 1 cup chicken soup (on hand, left over from Shabbat or water) 
• salt, pepper, basil, parsley, garlic to taste 

1. Rinse the eggplants, cut them lengthwise in half and scoop out a well. 
2. Dice the eggplant that you cut out to make the well. 
3. Cook the diced eggplant with the chicken soup, ketchup and spices until it's soft. (I did this in the microwave.) 
4. Mash the cooked eggplant and add the ground meat/chicken.
5. Beat the egg whites till stiff. 
6. Mix the egg yolks with the meat mixture. 
7. Fold the egg whites into the meat mixture..
8. Arrange the eggplant shells in a baking pan. (It probably should be lightly greased but I forgot to do that.)
9. Spoon the meat mixture into the shells. This will make mounds but since the shells fit snugly in my pan they supported each other. 
10. Bake at 175° C (at least that's what it says on my oven, I have never checked if it's true) for about 20-25 minutes. 

This dish got good reviews from 2 other people who were home for lunch today. I think it might not have been necessary to separate the eggs and next time I will try that way. 

Update: I made this again this week. I tried three changes.

1. I used ground meat instead of ground chicken. It tasted very good this way too. 
2. I didn't separate the eggs. The result was that it still tasted great but wasn't as high. It looked pretty much the same. 
3. I made half in the microwave (12 minutes at 70% power with some liquid in the container so it doesn't get too dry). It came out very good but not brown on top. 

Half Way to Hanuka!

Why is this man smiling?

We are at the half way point between the end of Succot and the beginning of Hanuka. Today we announced the upcoming month of Kislev and on the 25th of Kislev we light the first candle of Hanuka.

What has that got to do with my smiling man? Well, he holds a cake made with the grated rind of an etrog (citron fruit). Since this year was shmita we had to treat our Israel grown etrogim with special respect and we couldn't just let them dry up as usual. We were advised to use them in food. So we did. I made a cake like this right after the holiday (also many of my neighbors 'donated' their etrogim to the effort and received a small cake in return). But we put away 1/2 a cup of grated rind in the freezer and today we are having a festive half-way mark before Hanuaka as the month of Heshvan (sometimes called mar-heshvan or bitter heshvan for lack of holidays) wanes.

Here's the recipe:

Cream:

1/2 a cup of margarine with 1 1/2 cups of sugar then add 4 eggs (beating them in one at a time)

Stir in:

100 grams (4 oz) grated semi-sweet chocolate

1/2 cup finely shaved citron peel (the recipe I took it from says you can also use candied orange or lemon peel)

Add:

2 1/3 cups of sifted flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of cloves

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

alternatively with one cup of water or orange juice

Beat until smooth.

Bake in a moderate oven.

I usually bake this in loaf pans but this time I wanted to put half of it away so I used two small heart shaped pans which I have around. It also comes out nice in a bundt pan.

Usually I serve it with powdered sugar on top but the man found the other chocolate bar and melted it on top of the cakes. It tasted good but in my opinion the cake is sweet enough without the chocolate icing.