Monday, April 6, 2009

Who knew low-fat could taste this good??

So I'm following Dr. Dean Ornish's super-low-fat plan for a month to try to get my cholesterol in check, and I thought it would be much more painful than this. We've had some hits and misses, but the hits have been dang tasty. Like this red-pepper coulis:

2 small red peppers, cored, seeded, and diced
1 med. tomato, peeled, seeded, and diced (I used canned tomatoes with roasted garlic & onion)
1/2 large onion, diced
1 3/4 cups vegetable stock
1/4 c chopped basil (I used 2-3 tsp. dried)
Pinch of dried thyme

In a medium skillet, combine the red pepper, tomato, onion, and veg stock and cook until veggies are tender, about 10-15 minutes. Stir in the basil and thyme. Puree in a blender (I left it a little chunky) and pour back into a clean skillet. Reduce until about 1 1/2 cups remain.

I made this to go with some labor-intensive veggie cakes (not quite a hit, but close), and it was pretty good. But then I added plain nonfat yogurt to the leftovers, and it became FANTASTIC. The yogurt mellowed and blended all the flavors and elevated it to something I want to have in my fridge at all times. Seriously. I would have included a photo but I ate it all before I got around to taking a picture.

I put it on rice, on salad, in a veggie wrap, and it was fantastic in all of them. The only drawback is that veggie broth is ridiculously high in sodium, so maybe when I make it again I'll use reduced-sodium chicken broth and trade some of that sodium for a trace of fat.

If you make it, let me know what you think.

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