I'm embarking on a Paleo journey and I'm posting all of my thoughts and ideas to this blog. I'll have recipes, links, articles, and just general thoughts about the whole paleo lifestyle.
It went from 30 and rainy to 90 and sunny in about 48 hours in Chicago. The drastic change finds me far from acclimated and I wanted something cool and refreshing to drink.
Quick "recipe" today:
Grab one cucumber and one lime. Dice the cucumber (removing the skin) and add it to a container with enough water to cover the cucumber. Blend the cucumber and water with the zest and juice of one lime. Strain it and you're done. Now all you have to do is dilute your concentrated juice into some water. It's a really refreshing flavor to add to tap, mineral, or soda water. You'll have to do this to your own personal taste. I decided to freeze some of my juice into ice cubes for a really hot day in the future.
I'm clearing out the fridge. Inspired by Primal Chat's recent twitter questions asking for ideas on how to save money, I'm trying to not throw any food away. Everyone always says organic produce is too expensive or that Paleo foods are too expensive (check the links to see otherwise), but if you don't eat what you buy, you're literally throwing money away. Part of saving money is simply not wasting it.
That's where fridge clearing dishes come in. What do you do when all you have left is 1/4 head of cabbage, 3 eggs, an onion, and a couple strips of bacon? You make Okonomiyaki! This is one of those it looks weird, but I promise it tastes good dishes, so trust me on this one.
You're probably sick of hearing about it, but my fiance and I discovered a ton of really cool food while traveling around Asia and some of it fits perfectly into a Paleo way of eating. Okonomiyaki is one of those dishes. It's kind of like a veggie heavy omelet, but a little more savory.
Here is what you need: 1 small yellow onion ($0.25), 1/4 head of cabbage($0.50), 5 green onions ($0.50), 4-5 strips of bacon ($1.60)and 3 eggs ($1.00). That's $3.85 for 1 XL or 2 medium sized servings
Next, take your 1/4 head of cabbage and take out the core by slicing into the cabbage at an angle. Chop it up into strips and cut 3 of the green onions into small pieces.
In a mixing bowl, beat 3 eggs and add just a little water (like 1/2 a second under a faucet). Toss the cabbage, green onions, and eggs together, trying to get at least a little egg on every piece of cabbage.
By now, the bacon should be about half done. You don't want it to be all the way cooked yet because the pan is staying on the stove for quite a while longer. Add the cabbage mix on top of the bacon and onions. Don't mix it together, just let it sit on top. The egg will drip through and make a bacon-onion crust on the bottom.
It may take almost 8-10 minutes on each side, so be patient. The egg in the center should steam while the bottom crust is forming. When you're finished, garnish it with some green onions. I had some olive oil mayo and spicy Thai sauce (no sugar!) that I mixed together to make a tangy sauce for dipping. Traditional okonomiyaki is topped with bonito flakes. Bonito flakes are smoked fish shavings that smell like a barn and are really delicious. The coolest thing is that when they are over steam, the shavings move like they're alive. It's a really cool ingredient worth checking out if you have time and access to an Asian market. Ok, enough geeking out on food. Check out the video under this picture to see our last okonomiyaki in South Korea!
With Cinco de Mayo coming up, Mexican food has been on my mind more than normal. Something I've never cooked with is poblano peppers, so I decided to change that. To get you excited, here is what I made:
4 poblano peppers (0.88), 3 cloves of garlic (0.06), 2/3 of a cup of cream (0.60), 1 bunch of asparagus (3.59), and 3 salmon fillets (6.10 - farm raised, I know, yuck). This made 3 servings with the fish, with enough sauce/soup leftover for use in several more applications. That's a total of 11.23, or 3.74 per meal, with extra sauce to spare!
This recipe calls for a small amount of dairy, but it is far from the amounts I was using last week. I feel much better about the amount that is consumed with each serving of this recipe. Ok, with that off of my chest, let's get to it.
There aren't many ingredients, but there are a few steps. Before getting started, set aside a plastic container big enough to fit the poblanos in, a hand blender or food processor, aluminum foil, and some paper towels.
The first step is to cut the poblano peppers in half. Take out the seeds and the stem. Flatten all of the peppers out on to your broiler pan. Use the aluminum foil to make cleanup easier. Broil those for 10 minutes.
While the peppers are broiling, cut up the asparagus into fourths. Throw away the root of the asparagus. It's too tough to use. Throw all of the asparagus into a pot of boiling water.
By now, the peppers should be finishing up in the broiler. Pull them out and place them into your plastic container while they are hot. Set that container in the fridge and the peppers will steam themselves while you work on the asparagus.
After the asparagus has boiled for about 10 minutes, it should be fairly tender. Separate the tips (they're the best part!) and put the stalks into a container for blending. Make a puree and set that aside.
When the peppers have had a while to steam, pull them out of the refrigerator and you should be able to pull the skin off. It will feel like someone wrapped the pepper in cellophane. Blend the peppers up into a puree.
Combine the asparagus puree, poblano puree, 2-3 cloves of garlic, and 2/3 of a cup of cream into a pot. I allowed that to heat up to help the flavors blend.
The last part is easy. I cooked a salmon fillet in butter until it had a nice crust on each side and topped it off with some of the asparagus sauce and a few of the tips as a garnish. As always add salt and pepper to your taste.
My sauce was almost like a soup, so I may have some like that. I may also combine some with some frozen spinach I boiled to make a creamy spinach side dish. It seems like a versatile sauce that has a lot of veggies inside, so feel good about putting it on everything!
The batch I made produced A LOT of sauce, so if you're making this for yourself, you can cut this recipe in half or even by a fourth.
As I said in my last recipe, I'm really trying to cut back on the dairy. I feel I've been a little to lax, starting to venture more towards Atkins territory than a paleo or primal way of eating. So this recipe is an attempt to get back to basics.
Let's start with the Mediterranean salad. You'll get better flavor if you let it marinate for a while, so I made mine a couple hours beforehand.
You'll need 20 grape tomatoes, 1 handful of chopped parsley 1/4 of a red onion, 2 cloves of grated garlic, 4 oz of sliced black olives, 1 cucumber, 1 tbs of lemon juice, 2 tbs of olive oil, salt, and black pepper. Basically, you just chop everything up and mix it in a bowl. Add the salt and pepper to your taste. It took about 5 minutes to make.
A quick tip - When working with the chopped parsley, put it in the bottom of your mixing bowl and place the lamb on top. Chopped parsley has a way of getting everywhere, making a huge mess. It looks like an Italian Rip Taylor came through your kitchen. (Wait for the 20 second mark)
Mix up all the ingredients really well. If you leave big clumps of garlic, it might burn and get really bitter. If it's spread out evenly, the fat from the lamb will help infuse the meat with the garlic flavor. I like a good crust on my lamb, so I decided to make little lamb "balls" so I could get the most surface area possible, ensuring as much crust as possible.
Grill them until you're happy with how they look and plate everything up! You should be able to get about 3 or 4 servings with this recipe, depending on your appetite.
Enjoy this recipe, because I'm going to try and cut down the dairy for a while. I feel like I've gotten a little out of control with the dairy lately and need to get it in check. This will be the last cowjuice hurrah for a while. This recipe makes some compromises adding up to about 10 grams of sugar being spread across 5 servings. That's 2 grams of sugar per serving, so be warned if you are sticking to a strickly paleo diet. There is also a lot of dairy in this recipe, but man, I just really wanted some Indian food, so I went with it.
Here is what you'll need: Yogurt, cumin, paprika, a clove of garlic, cilantro, 1 cup of cream, 1 can of tomato sauce, a jalapeno, cinnamon, cayenne, black pepper, ginger, and chicken thighs. I lost my receipt from the groceries, so no price breakdown today. Sorry everybody.
You'll need to marinate the chicken for a day to make it taste correctly, so make sure you plan this meal in advance. Combine the ingredients listed below the picture into a container and make sure as much of the chicken is covered in the marinade as possible.
1 cup of yogurt, 1 tbs of lemon juice, 2 tsp of cumin, 1 tsp of cinnamon, 2 tsp cayenne, 2 tsp black pepper, and 1 tbs of ginger. Keep that covered for a day before moving on to the next step.
Place your marinated chicken on a broiler pan covered with foil. Trust me, use the foil. The marinade will carmelize and be a huge pain to clean if you don't. Put the chicken in the broiler for about 20 minutes, flipping them at the 10 minute mark.
While that cooks, melt 1 tbs of in a large pan and sautee 1 clove of grated garlic and a chopped jalapeno (I kept the seeds in for heat) for a minute. When the garlic looks clear, add the tomato sauce, 1 cup of cream, 2 tsp of paprika, and 2 tsp of cumin and mix it together until it is one uniform consistency.
By the time that's done your chicken should be about done. If not, turn the heat off of the sauce so it doesn't burn. Whenever your chicken is finished, cut it into bite size pieces and toss it in the sauce.
Let that simmer for a few minutes and then plate it up! This recipe is about 75% truly paleo, but man is it good. It's better than an all out cheat, so if you're into Indian food, give it a shot. Also, this dish is great with my cilantro chutney.
I've been excited about making this all week. Stick with me with the pictures, I didn't get everything photographed because I usually start off with a general idea about how to make a dish then make stuff up as I go.
Starting at the pepper grinder going clockwise: Pepper, 2 lbs of button mushrooms(4.00), olive oil (0.25), green olives (0.85), capers (0.10), anchovy paste (optional) (0.05), black olives (1.39), parsley (0.10), 5 garlic cloves (0.10), 85/15 grassfed beef (5.99), 1/4 lb of feta cheese (1.08), *not pictured 1/8 of a yellow onion (0.30), and red pepper flakes (0.02). That's a total of 14.23 for 4 servings @ $3.56 each.
Before starting, go ahead and get your oven preheated to 375. Start by removing the stems from the mushrooms. They should come out easily. Be careful to not break the mushroom caps as you'll want them to catch all the tasty beef juices later.
Put a little olive oil in your hand and dip each mushroom cap in your hand. This step may not be necessary, but it's something I decided to do. Like I said, I make this stuff up as I go. Next, lay out all your mushrooms on a cooking sheet with some parchment paper or foil underneath.
After that, I mixed my beef with 4 grated garlic cloves, 1/8 (1 slice) of an onion, a few shakes of red pepper flakes, and black pepper. Make sure you slice the onion up as fine as you can. If the chunks are too large, it will make the beef watery and it will fall apart. We want it to stay in one big clump on top of the mushrooms.
Portion out the meat and cover each mushroom. 1 lb of beef portioned into balls a little smaller than golf balls worked pretty well for me. When they're all covered, you can put them in the oven at 375 for about half an hour. Remember, your oven is different from mine, so check after 25 minutes and see if they look finished and adjust your time from there.
Now, for the tapenade. Tapenade is a kind of like an olive and caper relish. It's super easy to make. It's a chop 'n' mix topping. Mix 4 oz of drained black olives (I got mine prechopped), 4 oz of drained and chopped green olives (I used the black olive can to measure 4 oz), a small bunch of parsley, 20 capers, and a clove of grated garlic. You may want to add a little olive oil to help keep everything moist. I used about a tablespoon. If you want, you can add a couple drops of anchovy paste or an anchovy fillet. I know a lot of people hate anchovies, so I kept it optional. Also, if you have basil, you can add basil to tapenade as well. It depends on what herbs you like.
When the mushrooms are finished, they should be releasing some delicious beef juices onto the feta, softening the cheese up. Plate the mushrooms up with some tapenade and eat up!
