Hi.  My name is Mark and this is my cooking blog.

I get asked a lot for my recipes, so I decided to start this cooking blog.  What you’ll find here will be my recipes and my variations on others’ recipes, my cooking tips and who knows what else. 

I should say up front that I’m lactose intolerant (check out my lactose intolerance site www.nowhey.org) and I also try to live a low-carb lifestyle.  So the recipes you’ll find here will generally be devoid of milk and milk products and try, wherever possible, to be low in carbs.

I hope you enjoy the site and the recipes.

Mark

This was inspired by the salad dressing they use at a local Japanese restaurant.  Some places have a dressing that resembles thousand island, but this dressing is nothing like it.  It’s chunky and spicy from ginger and garlic, and it’s very healthy having almost no fat and being very low in carbs.

Ingredients:

1 cup of cut peeled carrots (approx. 6 ozs)
2″ piece of fresh ginger (approx. 2 ozs)
1 clove of fresh garlic, peeled
3 tbs light soy sauce
1 tbs Mirin (cooking sake)
1 tbs rice wine vinegar
1/4 tsp sesame oil

Place the carrots (I use baby carrots that are pre-peeled), ginger and garlic in the bowl of your food processor with the standard chopping blade and puree until it’s about the consistency of sawdust.  I use a mini food processor because the volume is pretty small – even so I have to stop several times and push the mixture back into the blade area.  If you use a standard size food processor then you’ll have to do this even more.  (No food processor?  You can grate the carrots and ginger with a microplane grater and mince the garlic.)

Transfer to a small mixing bowl and stir in the remaining ingredients.  While you’re doing this, check for chunks of ginger that the food processor missed and remove them.

If you don’t have Mirin (a sweet Japanese cooking sake) you can substitute cream sherry or just add some sugar or splenda to taste.