Well it is about time that the Government agrees with me. On Monday, the Dietary Guidelines were published. Basically we are to eat less and cut our sodium intake. Much easier said than done.
I tried to apply the Government’s new dietary guidelines to a recipe that I saw Rachael Ray make last week, Curry Beef Noodle Bowls. When I went on-line to print out the recipe there were 12 reviews, mostly favorable with some suggestions for replacing the beef with chicken or Tofu marinated in basil and fish sauce then grilled on a Panini grill. I didn’t have Tofu but I did have left over rotisserie chicken. Normally I make my Lazy Woman’s Chicken Soup with left over rotisserie chicken, but I decided to try this instead and am I glad I did. It was fantastic. But there were problems with the recipe. First of all Fish Sauce has between 1,000 and 1,300 milligrams of sodium in a tablespoon, an entire day’s sodium in just one dish. Secondly, one pound of pasta to serve 4 is way too much pasta. And, last but not least, two cups of chicken stock makes for a dry curry. Also, skip the shallots fried in ½ cup of oil, for crunchiness use bean sprouts instead.
So, here is how I changed the dish. First of all, I did not use fried, crispy shallots. I wanted to use crispy bean sprouts, but due to the terrible weather we have been having in New York, I was unable to find any, so I skipped them. Instead of a pound of pasta, I used about 5 ounces cooked rather soft. My head spun around on my neck in the supermarket when I saw the amount of sodium in 1 tablespoon of Fish Sauce. But not to worry, I went to my local gourmet shop and there I found KAME Fish Sauce, which has only 380 mg of sodium in a tablespoon. If you don't want to use Fish Sauce, use House of Tsang Soy Sauce instead. I also found Patak's Curry Paste. I bought the mild curry paste and used only 2 tablespoons. The dish was really hot enough, so taste it before you add three tablespoons of the Curry Paste.
I followed the recipe, using only 1 TB of oil for sauteing the garlic, mushrooms and red pepper. I substituted a small Jalapeno pepper for the red hot chile pepper. I removed the seeds from the Jalapeno pepper and did not cut it up so that I could remove it before serving. I removed the skin and deboned the left over chicken, cut the chicken up into small bite size pieces and added it to the vegetable mixture to heat up. When I added the low sodium chicken stock, I realized that 2 cups was not enough so I used 4 cups instead. Once everything was cooked, I drained the pasta and put it directly into the soup broth and let it cook for another two minutes so that the pasta picked up the flavors of the broth and added the juice of one lime. This was a delicious, fairly low sodium way to use up left over chicken.
By my calculations, I saved about 1,000 mg of sodium per serving by doing a little leg work and shopping around for a lower sodium fish sauce. I also saved about 200 calories per serving by cutting down on the pasta and I can't even calculate how much I saved by not frying the shallots in 1/2 cup of oil.
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