Author: Keri Anne Johnson

Contrary to popular belief eating a low-carb diet doesn’t have to be bland and boring. You don’t need hours of prep time or specialty foods at gourmet prices. Eating a low-carb diet is easy. And to show you how easy I remade a few of my favorite recipes to create low-carb Italian dishes that you will love.

What is a Low Carb Diet?

A low-carb diet is a diet that looks to cut out carbohydrates like bread, tortillas, rice, potatoes, and pasta. People following a low-carb diet often look for ways to remake their favorite foods without heavy carbs. For example, enjoying a tasty burger, but instead of a bun, you wrap that burger in lettuce. Or a yummy spicy chicken burrito, but instead of a tortilla, you make it a burrito bowl. 

With a little creativity and a little know-how in the kitchen, you can make any meal a low-carb meal.

Benefits of a Low-Carb Diet

So why do people choose to eat a low-carb diet? Well, it is usually about losing weight and lowering blood sugar. Carbs are meant to power the body, but they turn to fat if we overeat and don’t burn them. The American diet is carb-heavy, and most of us, even those that go to the gym regularly, aren’t able to burn off all the excess carbs.

There are reasons to eat a low-carb diet besides just losing weight. Here are a few other benefits of a low-carb diet.

• Fewer carbs and more protein will keep you full longer and reduce appetite.
• Reduce the risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
• Control blood sugar and insulin levels.
• Lower triglycerides and lipid profiles.
• Reduce skin flare-ups like acne and rosacea.
• Increase your endurance.

These are great reasons to try a low-carb diet. The best way to get started on a low-carb diet is to choose a few recipes that you like and look for ways to make them into healthier low-carb versions.

Remaking Classic Italian Dishes 

Italian food is my favorite food. It’s delicious and is the ultimate comfort food. I have three low-carb Italian dishes that I remade into healthy low-carb versions of their traditional form. The first two are vegetarian, and the last one is a bit meatier. 

1. Low-Carb Italian Dish:  Cauliflower Gnocchi

Gnocchi is a pasta traditionally made from potatoes. It comes from Northern Italy, where potatoes are a staple, especially in the cold winter months. This version replaces heavy starch potatoes for cauliflower. These cauliflower gnocchi are pillowy and delicious. You won’t miss the potatoes, trust me.

Gnocchi

5 cups fresh or frozen cauliflower

⅔ c. of flour

1 tsp sea salt

Boil the cauliflower for 5-8 minutes. Drain and mix with the flour and salt in a food processor or blender. Knead into a dough, then separate into four parts. On a floured surface roll it out into long ropes and cut into gnocchi pieces, making them around an inch in size. Heat up a saute pan with olive oil and fry the gnocchi pieces until golden. Add your favorite sauce. You can use a simple red sauce or a pesto. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese. Or if vegan with nutritional yeast flakes.

This is a simple low-carb dish. If you are pinched for time, you can buy frozen cauliflower gnocchi at the most supermarkets.

2. Low-Carb Italian Dish:  Grilled Eggplant Parmesan with Zoodles

Eggplant is one of those vegetables that not many home chefs use. It’s a little intimidating and can sometimes taste bitter. The trick to taking the bitterness away is to cut the eggplant horizontally into round steaks. Lay them out on a cookie sheet, sprinkle sea salt on both sides, and let them sweat for 20 minutes. Then, rinse the eggplant pieces, and they are ready to go.

Traditionally, eggplant parmesan is breaded, but we will skip the breading and just grill the eggplant to make this low-carb Italian dish. 

Eggplant Parmesan

1 large eggplant or two smaller ones

1 egg

12 oz. tub of Ricotta

½ c Parmesan

2 c. mozzarella

⅓ c. parsley

1 jar of your favorite red sauce

After rinsing the salt from the eggplant, pat them dry and place them on a cookie sheet with a bit of olive oil. Bake them in the oven for 10 minutes then flip them for another 10 minutes on 450 F. While they are baking, mix the ricotta, egg, and parsley in a bowl. Then in a 9×12 baking dish. Layer the eggplant pieces, the ricotta, mozzarella, and red sauce. Repeat the layers two more times. Bake covered at 400 F for 35 minutes. Then remove foil and bake for another ten minutes. 

Serve this on a plate of zoodles (zucchini noodles.) If you have a spiralizer, you can make your own or purchase some zoodles from the freezer section of your supermarket.

This deliciously cheesy eggplant parmesan is low on carbs but high on taste.

3. Low-Carb Italian Dish: Spaghetti Bolognese

To make this classic Italian dish, we need to replace the spaghetti with zoodles. The bolognese sauce is a meaty red sauce that often serves double duty in Italy. It works with spaghetti, rigatoni, and even lasagna.

Bolognese sauce

1pound ground turkey

3/4 c. of chopped celery

½ a white onion

¾ c. of chopped carrots

1 16 oz. can crushed tomatoes

2 teaspoons dried oregano

2 teaspoons dried basil

Sea salt to taste

To make the sauce, start by browning the onions, carrots, and celery in olive oil. Remove the veggies and brown the turkey in olive oil. Then add back the veggie mix with the addition of a can of crushed tomatoes. Simmer for twenty minutes, stirring occasionally. While it’s simmering, add a teaspoon of oregano and basil with a pinch of salt.

Serve over a bed of zoodles.

There you have it, three classic Italian dishes remade for the low-carb dieter. If you are new to the low-carb journey, it is easier than you think. You may need to get a little creative, but there are many ways to make low-carb delicious.

What’s your favorite low-carb dish?

What are Chile Rellenos?

Chile Rellenos are a classic Mexican dish. They are traditionally made from roasted Poblano peppers and can be filled with meat, vegetables, or cheese. These stuffed peppers are then covered in egg wash and deep-fried to greasy perfection. Poblano peppers are the star of this dish. They look like a large, wrinkly cousin to the jalapeno pepper.  Famous in the state of Puebla, where they come from, nowadays you can find them anywhere. They are not considered a spicy pepper, but you should still remove the seeds before cooking.

The Most Well Known Chile Relleno

Chiles rellenos are considered a staple in Mexican cooking.  There are many different variations depending on where you are in Mexico, and the size of your pocketbook usually determines the filling.

The most famous version is chiles en nogada: a Poblano pepper filled with minced meat and covered in a white walnut sauce topped with sprinkled parsley and pomegranate seeds. It’s a patriotic dish associated with Mexican culture and Independence Day.

The legend is this dish was created by nuns in Puebla to celebrate a battle in the war for independence from Spain in 1810. The white of the sauce, the green of the parsley, and the deep red of the pomegranate seeds resembled the Mexican flag; thus, it is now seen as a patriotic dish and seen on menus in August and September to coincide with the Mexican Independence holiday, which falls on September 15 at midnight. At midnight on this night, locals gather in the city center to hear la grita, which is the shout of Viva Mexico, followed by Viva and names of various figures from the war.

At other times of the year, you can find a variety of chile rellenos made to your taste. They can be meat-filled, vegetarian, or even vegan.  Vegan and vegetarian chile rellenos are not traditional, but there seems to be a movement of the younger generation and the international community to remake traditional Mexican dishes in a healthier way.

Why I Learned How to Make Them

I learned how to make chiles rellenos a couple of years ago. I always thought it would be too difficult and time-consuming. So I hadn’t bothered learning and would usually get them as take-out food from a restaurant a few blocks from my house.

This little restaurant has many different local Mexican dishes, and they are all on display behind a glass sneeze guard. You choose the dishes you want, and they package them up for you to take home to enjoy. The menu changes daily, but a few staples, like chile rellenos, are always available. The place is always packed with locals and foreigners, and in Mexico, the general rule is only to eat in places filled with people. Maybe that’s a rule everywhere. I don’t know. But in Mexico, if a restaurant doesn’t have many people, they usually reuse food and won’t have the freshest dishes, which can lead to food poisoning, which is a real concern here.

The last day I ate there, I brought some chile rellenos home. I was eight months pregnant and didn’t feel like cooking. As I was sitting at the table, enjoying them with my family, my partner found a fingernail in his chile. And it wasn’t just a little fingernail but a gnarly thick yellow toenail. Needless to say,  we stopped eating there and eating chile rellenos for a while. Then, after the yuck factor passed, which took maybe a year, we had a craving and decided to learn how to make them at home.

My Healthy Version

I wanted to make a healthy version that would taste good and not take all day to make. I experimented with a few ideas and tried different veggies/meat/cheese combination finally found one that I think this is the best version.

This one is filled with tuna, peas, potatoes, carrots, red onion, and manchego cheese. The sauce is a mushroom cream sauce. Although a walnut sauce is delicious, it can sometimes be hard to find walnuts in my small town, so I made a creamy mushroom sauce that I can use on pasta as well, which is a win-win.

Now, the first and most crucial step in making them is to roast the peppers. You can do it on the stovetop flame, and once they are blackened, put them in boiled water with a pinch of sugar. This will cut any heat. Poblano peppers usually aren’t hot, but as my Mexican partner says, son enganosos, meaning they are deceptive, so they may look mild, but sometimes they can be hot.

After they are in the sugar water for about ten minutes, take them out, and the skin will easily fall off. Then, put aside to cool.

Now, it’s time to make the filling. I usually use about two cans of tuna (packaged in water) for three peppers. Mix the canned tuna and peas together. Grate the cheese. Add finely chopped red onion and chop the boiled carrots and potato into cubes. The filling doesn’t have to be exact. This time, I used two carrots, one large potato, and a small handful of peas. And a big man handful of grated cheese. But feel free to experiment. If you don’t like any of these veggies, you can use shredded zucchini or minced mushrooms, which would work, too. If you are a vegetarian, you could use wild rice instead of tuna. The possibilities are endless.

Pepper Assembly

Now you are ready to fill these guys. It helps to have toothpicks to keep them together. At this point, if you want to fry them, you can do a flour dredge and egg wash and fry in about an inch of oil, but I don’t do that. Obviously, they will probably taste better; everything deep-fried is delicious, but they won’t be good for your diet. And, well, the whole point is to make them healthy.

As for the sauce, it’s a reasonably simple mushroom cream sauce. I use Mexican crema, which is sort of like a watery sour cream as a base. First, saute the mushrooms and garlic, add a pinch of salt and black pepper. After it cools, toss in the blender with the cream. Simple.

I’ve also seen some places make a red sauce, almost like an enchilada sauce, but that is usually for minced meat chile rellenos.

So there you have my take on a classic Mexican dish.

100% approved by my 100% Mexican partner.

My next project is to make healthy empanadas, which may just be an oxymoron.