Mid-week Indulgence

Just because I am a nutritionist, does not (note the italics--good for emphasis) mean that I eat leaves every night of the week. I'm glad that's out in the open. Now I feel better.

Tonight my boyfriend and I were deciding on what to make for dinner. He was in the mood for one of his favorites, tortellini carbonara. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for a good, heavy cream sauce every once in a while. But tonight? A weeknight?! That's the kind of dish that see myself eating on a Saturday night at some down-home type of an Italian place. (Recommendations to come in future posts.) Tonight is a weeknight, so I wanted to lighten it up a bit.

We started with cheese tortellini. Unfortunately, I have yet to find a healthy version of this stuffed pasta, so we went with the real thing. I made a "cream" sauce, sans cream. It's also called a white sauce or bechamel, if you want to be all sorts of fancy. Take some butter--I'm not talking a lot, maybe about a tablespoon (remember, this is a sauce for an entire dish)--and melt it in a sauce pot. Add an equal part of flour and stir the two together, allowing the mixture to cook for about one minute; this ensures that your sauce won't taste like, well, flour. !Congratulations--you've just made a roux! Then stir in low-fat or fat-free milk, and keep stirring to obliterate any clumps that dare to swim in your sauce. Season with salt, freshly ground black pepper, and nutmeg, or mix it up with fresh/dried herbs of your choice. Okay now, let that hang out and thicken, adding more milk as desired to get it to the consistency that's right for you. Whisk whisk whisk...

Pour the sauce over the tortellini. Now here's where it gets good: instead of peas, use edamame (soybeans). They come frozen in your local market, so don't tell me you can't get them. They have a sort of meaty quality and are a good source of protein, providing us with all the amino acids our bodies cannot. Experiment with the types of meat you throw in there. Yes, ham is traditional, and proscuitto may be considered gourmet. Tonight we used Black Forest ham from the deli counter. Its smokiness combined with the heartiness of the edamame and the creaminess of the tortellini...it worked. Nicely.

And I don't feel the least bit guilty!

Especially because my boyfriend made one of my favorite vegetable sides of all time: grape tomatoes and zucchini. Thinly slice the zucc and put them in a saute pan with the whole tomatoes, toss with extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning (you know, the one with all the stuff in it: rosemary, basil, parsley, an Italian grandmother pinching your cheeks). Let it cook until the zucchini is slightly brown. Perfection.