WTF do I do with this: garlic scape edition

First, we probably need to address the question of "WTF is a garlic scape". Garlic scapes look like this:

Oooh, snakey! 

They're the stems that a bulb of garlic sends up out of the dirt as it grows. If they were left alone, they would eventually flower and die off, but of course we don't leave them alone because: HUMANS. Instead, we cut them off before they have a chance to flower because, let's face it, pushing up stems and making flowers is hard fucking work and takes a lot of energy. Energy that could instead be used to grow nice fat cloves of garlic underground! The garlic bulb will still grow if you don't whack off the scapes (ooh, phrasing...), but it will be a lot smaller and not as tasty, so that's not how we do it. OFF WITH YER SCAPES!

By the way, see those weird bulbous lighter-green things part-way up the scapes? Those are actually the beginnings of the flowers. They look like this inside:

It looks like one of those tree people spirit things at the end of The Dark Crystal. Kind of. If you squint. And are me.

You know...just in case you wondered.

Anyway.

So, in a not so shocking turn of events, garlic scapes taste...garlicky. They're not as pungent as garlic cloves, but they're still pretty damn garlicky and you can use them in place of cloves of garlic for just about anything - stir-fry, salads, sauces - just remember that because they're not as strong as regular garlic, it will take more of them to achieve an equivalent level of garlicky-ness. You can also grill them, pickle them, use them to keep vampires away (note: theory not tested, I cannot be held liable for any vampire related damage you may sustain)...all kinds of fun stuff.

One of the most popular ways to use garlic scapes is to make pesto. I like regular basil pesto, so I figured hey, why not, let's try garlic scape pesto. I took some pictures during the process so you can laugh at my ineptitude. I'm kind like that.

The first thing you have to do is wash and trim the scapes. I actually forgot to wash mine because I'm a bonehead, so if I die of dysentery or something later on tonight you'll know why. Anyway - so once you've theoretically washed the scapes, you want to trim off just below the bulbous flower bud part (which is technically edible but pretty stringy) and also a little bit at the other end if it seems dried out. My scapes sat in the fridge in a plastic bag for over a week with very little deterioration whatsoever, but conventional internet wisdom seems to be that you should use them within a week as they will start to go mushy and lose their flavor.

So curly and fun.

Next, you want to chop them. They're eventually going to go into your food processor or blender so you can probably get away with just a rough chop, but if you know your food-pro struggles with bigger pieces, obviously cut them smaller.

Now they just kind of look like green beans.

At this point, it's time to start gathering other shit you need for pesto-making. I don't know about you, but I can't damn well afford pine nuts these days, so I said screw it and decided to use pistachios instead. Yes, they're a pain in the ass if you can't find (or afford) shelled ones, but sacrifices must be made. I actually ended up liking the taste of the pistachios in the pesto MORE than pine nuts, for what it's worth. Pistachio companies, feel free to sponsor me if you're reading this!

I have never wished for stronger thumbnails so hard in my life as I did for the 20 minutes these took me to shell.

You're also going to need Parmesan cheese (if you like it, anyway - feel free to omit or substitute), extra virgin olive oil (this is where extra virgin really matters - use the good stuff!), and some kosher or sea salt.

Oh, and a food processor or blender. Or a mortar and pestle if you're hardcore, in which case I bow to not only your commitment, but your forearm strength as well.

I can't really wring too many fun-to-caption steps out of pesto making, folks. You just dump everything except the oil into the food-pro and let fly until it's all ground up, then slowly add the oil in, either while the food-pro is running, or you can stop it every couple seconds and drizzle more oil in. Fun fact: I actually started out dumping everything into my blender, thinking that it was going to do a better job of grinding everything up, but had to make a mid-course correction and switch to the food-pro when I still had inch-long pieces of scape knocking around after three solid minutes of blending. I am much more willing to do things like that now that I have a dishwasher. Weird how that works.

Anyway, you'll eventually end up with something that looks like pesto:

So green. Very garlic. Wow.

I won't lie...it's not like basil pesto. It's definitely good in that garlicky nutty cheesy fatty way and I wouldn't kick it out of bed, but don't go into this thinking it's going to be the same as the basil version because it will make you sad and I don't want you to be sad.

The four zucchini that I got in this week's CSA share were pretty much guaranteed to be made into zoodles eventually so I figured, why not toss them with some of my newly-made scape pesto?

Things got a little juicy. Ohh, err.

The white part is cod filet that I baked for 15 minutes at 325 degrees. Don't knock the pesto-fish combination until you've tried it - it's actually really tasty.


Here's a recipe for the pesto with actual measurements, if that's how you roll:

Garlic Scape Pesto

10-12 trimmed and chopped garlic scapes
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup shelled UNSALTED pistachios
kosher or sea salt and pepper to taste

- Put everything into a food processor except the olive oil. Process until uniformly ground up. Slowly add olive oil a little at a time, processing until incorporated. BOOM. Done.

carnitas

Carnitas are, essentially, chunks of braised pork butt. As the braising liquid slowly evaporates from the pot, the fat renders out of the pork and collects in the bottom of the pot (because fat is more dense than water. SCIENCE!). Eventually the water all cooks out and you're left with succulent spiced pieces of pork that crisp up in their own fat. It takes several hours and is all very torturous in that it fills the house with amazing pork aromas long before the meat is actually ready - but I assure you, it's totally worth doing.

It looks totally unappetizing at the beginning. I posted this picture on Facebook and had people guessing it was everything from bean soup to vomit (I'm not sure about that person, honestly...but we won't go there):

Not winning any beauty contests.

The end product is much more attractive, though - well, if you're into crispy pork bits, anyway...and if you're not, you've probably come to the wrong place:

Mmm, looking better!

The carnitas are very tasty just like that, honestly. I like them with eggs for a hearty weekend breakfast, or you could easily toss some into sauteed greens for a bit of flavoring. They are excellent on top of a baked sweet potato as well.

Or, you could use them in the more traditional way. No, not rubbing them all over your naked body while you groan happily (wow, that got weird) - rather, piling them on tortillas with lots of fixings:

Winner winner, carnitas for dinner.

My favorite combination of toppings for carnitas is raw shredded cabbage and radish, because they offer a nice crunchy fresh counterpoint to the rich pork. A little bit of avocado on top makes it even more pretty and acts as a built-in dressing. I don't usually go for salsa on carnitas because they already have a lot of acid in them, but don't let that stop you if you want to try it.

Also, a note about tortillas - I use corn tortillas, and I warm them up one at a time in a ripping-hot pan so that they blister a little and get a bit black in places. You could just warm the tortillas up in the oven or microwave, but I really like the smokey note that the toasted bits of tortilla add.

Here's the recipe for the carnitas themselves:

3lbs pork butt, cut into large-ish pieces - mine are like 3" square-ish chunks, usually
1/2 cup orange juice
1/4 cup lime juice
 crushed garlic cloves to taste - I usually use 4 or 5 good sized ones
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1.5 tsp salt (I use kosher salt - if you're using regular salt, adjust the amount down by 1/4 tsp or so)

Put everything in a big pot, bring it to a boil, then turn down the heat and let it simmer, uncovered, for about 2 - 2.5 hours. No stirring, no poking, no nothing. Leave it alone! After a couple hours, you can turn the heat up a little and let it cook more briskly for another 45 minutes or so. Again, don't mess with the meat at all. The water will cook out completely and the pork will start to sizzle in its own fat - this is when you want to really pay close attention. When you notice the edges starting to get crisp / brown, you can carefully start turning the pieces of pork over to crisp up on the other sides. It will be very loose and want to fall apart at this point - that's ok, just be gentle with it and don't worry if it comes apart some. As the pieces get browned and crisped to your liking, remove them to a bowl for serving. I like to aggressively scrape the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon once all the main chunks of meat are out of it in order to make sure I'm getting up all the really crisp bits off the bottom, as well. Those are, in my opinion, the best bits!

Serve on warm tortillas with preferred toppings, or throw into any number of other dishes for happy-making porky goodness. This also freezes very well.

This recipe is gluten-free, and assuming you skip the corn tortillas, would be Paleo- and Primal-compliant.

pork all the things - a stir-fry odyssey

This past week, boneless pork loin was on sale at the grocery store, so I bought a huge one and we've been having pork for dinner every night this week. I did pan-fried chops one night, I did a roast another night, we had the leftovers from the roast with some braised cabbage the following night, and last night I used the last of the loin to make stir-fry:

I like stir-fry, because not only is it a good way to get in plenty of vegetables and protein, but it's also a pretty high culinary pay-out for a small amount of effort. Also, anything that I can cook with the burner cranked up to high is automatically exciting in my book.

Pork loin is nice in a stir-fry because it's got a little extra fat as compared to tenderloin, so it offers more porky flavor and stays a bit more moist. I like to give mine a bath in a combination of tamari, sesame oil, honey, grated fresh ginger and a splash of water:

The meat sits in the marinade while I chop up my veggies. This is my go-to combination of broccoli, red bell pepper, onion and mushroom:

When the veg is all chopped, it's time to fry! I crank the heat up under my favorite heavy-bottomed saute pan and after a minute or so, I add some coconut oil. Once the coconut oil is melted, I throw my veg in, starting with the ones that take the most time to cook. In this case, broccoli goes in for about a minute, then I dump everything else in because the onions, peppers and mushrooms all basically cook at the same speed. I swear by tongs for stir-frying - I have a pair with silicone tips on the ends so that they don't scrape my pan up, and they're great.

The veg comes out when it's crisp-tender:

...and in goes the meat, working in batches so as not to over-crowd it and end up with steamed chewy pork bits of sadness:

The remainder of the marinade goes into the pan with the last of the pork and I let it cook down to a glaze consistency, then add all the pork back in and toss it to coat. It gets quite dark because the sugars in the honey caramelize with the soy, but that's exactly what makes it taste awesome. Don't fear the caramelization!

When the meat is cooked through, toss it on top of your dished-up veg and voila, Paleo-friendly stir-fry, no rice needed!

glazing my thighs

No, I will never tire of post-title innuendo (in YOUR end-o!). Not even sorry.

Anywho.

I've been kind of obsessed with the half-stove-top, half-oven method of cooking chicken thighs lately. It's an easy and reliable way of getting super crisp skin on the thighs without having to coat them in something like panko or cornmeal. I'll admit, it's kind of messy if you don't have a splatter shield, but even so, it's totally worth an extra wipe-down of the stove-top, in my opinion.

When I was making up my menu last weekend and saw chicken thighs on sale again, I thought to myself, "Self...why couldn't we use the stove-top-then-oven method to make some super crisp chicken thighs, then stir up a little batch of the glaze we use on chicken wings and dump it over the thighs instead? Doesn't that seem like a good idea?" It DID seem like a good idea, so I rolled with it, and this is what I ended up with:

So crispy. Much nom.

For the glaze, I used a mixture of fresh grated garlic and ginger, some tamari, some honey, toasted sesame oil, and a splash of water. I always add the water thinking that the glaze needs to be thinned out, and I always regret having added the water when I go to taste the glaze and it tastes...watered down. Welcome to my life. In retrospect, I could have reduced the glaze down in a pan to cook some of the water back out, but that sounds like a lot of work.

I started the chicken thighs out in a hot pan with a little coconut oil in it (skin-side down, duh), and let them fizzle and splatter happily for about 8 minutes until the skin was good and crispy and brown. Then I flipped the thighs over in the pan, turned off the heat, and spooned my glaze mixture over the meat. The pan then went directly into a 425 degree oven (use an oven-proof pan, friends...I will not be held responsible for you melting the handles off your pans) for about 15 minutes until the thighs read 165-170 degrees, at which point they were done. Huzzah!

The veggies were very simple: I cut up carrots, onion, radishes (I had some hanging around I wanted to use up), and two broccoli crowns, and quickly stir-fried them in a very hot pan with a little coconut oil. The broccoli was being slightly uncooperative and didn't want to cook through as fast as everything else did, so I threw a lid on the pan and let it steam for a few minutes to finish it off.

This dish is gluten-free (as long as you use tamari rather than soy sauce), and if you wanted to be super-strict Paleo you could sub the tamari for coconut aminos and get extra, uhh...dinosaur points.

Get it? Paleo? Dinosaur? Nevermind...

spice-crusted pork tenderloin

You all know of my deep and abiding love of all things pork, but I have been keeping a dirty little secret from you: I am not a fan of pork tenderloin. I love the texture of it, but similar to beef tenderloin, it has very little flavor in and of itself, and to a card-carrying meat lover, that's kind of sad-making. That, along with the fact that tenderloin is super lean and easy to over-cook have led me to just basically avoid buying it for many years.

Until this past weekend.

Sexy meat.

I found a recipe for spice-crusted pork tenderloin in a Cooks Illustrated collection of "skillet dinners". They showed medallions of rosy moist pork heavily crusted with spice and served with a sexy golden-brown potato roesti (which, for the unintiated, is basically a giant pan-fried hash brown and is one of the best things you can make with potatoes. Which is saying a lot, in my book, because I love me some potatoes). I was sold. I needed to try it. I tried to talk myself out of it, but it just wasn't working. The hook was firmly set and I surrendered to the pull.

The recipe calls for rolling the tenderloins in a mixture of spices (caraway seeds, ground coriander, nutmeg, allspice, salt and black pepper), then searing the meat off on all sides in a hot pan with a bit of melted butter. The meat then goes in a baking dish in a 425 degree oven for 12-15 minutes until it hits 140 degrees. You take the meat out at that point, tent it with foil, and let it rest until it hits 150. I ended up having to leave mine in the oven for about 22 minutes to get it to 140 degrees, but that was entirely my own fault because I didn't pull the meat out of the fridge until like 20 minutes before I wanted to cook, which is a rookie move.

Even with the added cooking time, the meat stayed super juicy and tender, though. And when I say tender, I mean like...you could cut it with the side of your fork. No knives necessary. Redonkulous. I think next time I make this, I'm going to pre-rub the meat (hurrrr) with the spice mixture and let it sit for a while before I cook it, just to see if the flavors sink in more. I suppose you could brine the tenderloin ahead of time if you were feeling really fucking ambitious about it, but a) I'm never that ambitious and b) I'd be a little worried that brining might turn the meat mushy rather than impart more flavor. I don't know. If you try it, tell me what you think.

The roesti was a little more work - I opted to shred my potatoes by hand rather than using my small and finicky food processor, so I got a good triceps workout holding the box grater at a weird angle in the bowl. You then have to rinse the excess starch off the shredded potato, then scoop it into a clean dish towel and wring as much water as you can out of it. You season the potato with salt and pepper, add a little corn starch to help bind the potato together better (there was a reason for this given in the write-up about the recipe but I was skimming so...yeah. No science today, sorry!), then plunk it all into a hot pan with some melted butter and keep squishing it down until it's a nice compact disc. It gets all GBD (golden brown delicious) on one side, then you flip it (which is a delicate operation, I tell you what), and let it get GBD on the other side. BOOM. Giant hash brown heaven. I will say, with regard to the roesti, that I should have had my heat turned up higher when I started, so it ended up kind of greasy. EVEN SO. Giant hash brown. So crunchy, much nom.



I steamed up some green beans with almonds to complete the plate. In retrospect, I could have made them more fancy with like some orange zest and cranberries, but...eh. I'm the weirdo who likes green beans even raw, so they don't need much fancying up for me to shove them in my nom-hole.

God, nom-hole sounds dirty. I'm keeping it. I love it. Heeeeee.

Anyway - this dinner is gloriously gluten-free (assuming you're doing your own due diligence on your spices). If you're going the Paleo or Primal route, you'd want to omit the corn starch and white potatoes, depending on how strict you're being.

take your sweet potatoes and stuff them.

The meat-department gods saw fit to put pork butt on sale this week, my friends. You know what that means: another installment in the "what do I do with all this leftover pulled pork" files! Today the answer happens to be, "Stuff it in your sweet potatoes", which sounds like not only an awesome euphemism but also a good culinary idea.

Everything is better with cheese. FACT.

Obviously, this project starts with the assumption that you have some leftover shredded pork butt. Mine was just plain, not sauced, but I'm sure that sauced-up pork would be just as delightful in this application.

You're also going to need some sweet potatoes, obvs. I used two medium-sized ones to feed myself and the Ginger Beast, and honestly, it was a lot. Next time I'd either just serve half a potato each, or use smaller potatoes.

Anyway - you can bake the sweet potatoes ahead in the oven if you're fancy, but I'm personally really fucking lazy about shit like that, so I just cut a slit in each of mine and throw them in the microwave on the "potato" setting until they're done. These two took about 12 minutes total, and I flipped them over halfway through.

Once the potatoes are cooked, split them in half and scoop out all but a little bit of the flesh from the skin (that sounds totally sinister, sorry). You want to leave a little rim around the edges so that the skins keep their general shape. The scooped-out flesh should go into a bowl big enough to mix some other stuff into. Also, side-note between you and me? This whole flesh-scooping thing is WAY fucking easier to do if you let the potato COOL DOWN a little first, says she who now sports steam-burns on her left. hand. Yes, that type of thing is probably obvious to most people, but a) I am the queen of impatient and b) I am not most people. So I'm just throwing it out there.

Where was I? Oh, yes, potato flesh in the bowl. To that, you're going to add the pulled pork. I used like two cups or so of pork because we are hungry, hungry hippos. Use less if you're on a diet or you hate the world or something. I also added a pinch of kosher salt, a shake of black pepper, a teaspoon-ish of ground cumin and a half a teaspoon-ish of ground coriander seed. Also, and this is KEY, the juice of one fresh lime. It's really good, trust me on this.

So, mix all that stuff up in the bowl until it's well-combined. At some point you should have pre-heated your oven to like 450 degrees - I should have mentioned that earlier, sorry. You also need a baking dish. Surprise! This is how my ADHD-addled brain actually works when I cook, by the way. All these recipes I post where I have measured nothing, timed nothing, and can only remember half of what I put in the pan? Welcome to my life, pumpkins. This is how I roll.

Side-tracked again, sorry. So, yes. We're stuffing the pork-mash mixture into the hollowed-out potato skins. It's probably best to do this once you've placed the skins IN the baking dish, otherwise you might end up with one falling apart, pork and sweet potato all over your floor, and the happiest dog in the history of life (assuming you have a dog. We do. He would have been ecstatic, trust me). Once you've stuffed the skins, you can sprinkle some shredded cheddar on top for extra tastiness. Put that whole mess in the oven and let it fester for...oh...I don't know, like 15 or 20 minutes? Long enough for the cheese to reach golden-brown deliciousness status. When you've achieved said crispy cheese enlightenment, BOOM...you're done. Well, the potatoes are done, anyway.

If you want to experience the delight of the side-dish as pictured, that's super simple as well. It's just a baby mixed greens blend (I like the Olivia's Organic saute blend, personally) that has been sauteed with some onion and chopped radish (JUST TRY IT, OK?! Stop making faces. I would not lead you astray. Much...). I use a dab of bacon fat as my saute medium for this, and I add the onions and radishes first to let them caramelize a little before adding the greens in, because those cook really quickly. Oh, and a pinch of kosher salt. Unsalted greens are sad greens, yo. The better your bacon fat, the better the greens will be, as well. Mmm, smokey!

AND, for anyone playing the Paleo / Primal game at home, this meal would easily be considered Paleo if you left off the cheese, and is Primal-compliant as-is. It's also gluten-free, cha-cha-cha!

pork magic

Pork is my favorite meat. Shocker, I know. There's just something about pork, though. Something delicious. I could never be a vegetarian, because pork. Any other type of meat, I could easily do without - but take my pork away and I would be a sad panda indeed.

Last weekend I did a bone-in pork rib roast slow and low, and it turned out fantastic. I didn't take any pictures of it because I wasn't in a blogging mood (doing some work getting my brain-meats sorted out lately, hence the absence), but it was good enough that I was quite happy with the idea of a repeat performance today. When I found a blade-portion roast all ready to go AND on sale at the meat counter during my shopping trip, I did a little happy dance.

 I was thinking about doing some sort of cumin-crusted application with the pork, but one of the things I managed to forget whilst shopping was, in fact, cumin. Standing in front of my spice rack, I was starting to scheme about another rub to do when it hit me - I had a tub of ras el hanout, which is cumin-based, still sitting on the shelf from a previous spice-mixing venture. Hooray! I gave the roast a good rub of the spice mix, plus a little extra sprinkle of kosher salt, then popped it into a 250 degree oven. I checked the temperature after an hour, and down by the bone it was registering 90 degrees. Definitely not done, but that was to be expected. I bumped the oven up to 275 and left it for another 45 minutes. When I came back to check it again, it was reading at 140 by the bone. I pulled the roasted, tented it with foil, then let it rest for about 35 minutes while I roasted off the veg for my side.

When I went to carve the roast, I knew I was on to a winner. It was ridiculously tender, and the little rind of fat on top of the roast had crisped up beautifully. The rich, spicy, orange-y smell of the ras el hanout combined with pork fat was fabulous. Such a good combination!

Mmm, roasty.

The veggies on the side are a combination of roasted parsnips, Brussels sprouts, shallots, and a few carrots I had hanging around that I wanted to use up. The Brussels sprouts, for the record, were ENORMOUS. The largest one was almost as big as a lightbulb, and they were all bigger than an extra large egg. I was a little worried that they'd be bitter, but they weren't at all, which was a relief. I roasted the veg very simply - I just tossed them with salt, pepper and olive oil and spread them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (makes a big difference in terms of things not sticking). They went into a 425 degree oven for 30 minutes, then I stirred them a little and put them back in for another five minutes or so just to brown a little more. If you've never had parsnips, this is the way to try them, seriously. I grew up in a non-parsnip household because my mom hates them, but I've grown quite fond of them since my husband talked me into cooking some for him a few years back. Roasted parsnips have a sweetness to them - their astringency melts away and they end up mellow, almost fruity tasting. The more brown, crisp and caramelized they get, the more delicious they are.

For anyone playing along at home, this dish is not only completely gluten-free, but also Paleo- and Whole30 compliant. 

fridge-emptying Paleo breakfast bake

I am not a morning person. That's not to say that I don't LIKE mornings, because they're actually my favorite time of day - but I do not like being expected to function in any sort of productive manner before about 10am. Trying to feed myself and my husband a decent breakfast tends to be at odds with my desire to maintain a sloth-like morning agenda.

Most mornings lately, I've been having a pumpkin smoothie for breakfast because a) it's fast and b) it fills me up. There's also some nutrition in there somewhere I'm sure - but the simple fact is, dumping things in the food processor doesn't take a whole lot of mental fortitude. That's key in the blurry pre-10am hours around here, trust me.

However, this coming week we're going to be traveling, which means two things (well, more than two, but for the purpose of this blog post, I'm saying two) :

 1. I need to use up some leftover food in the fridge, and

 2. I want to create as few dirty dishes as possible, because the less dishes I have to wash the night before going on holiday, the better.

To be fair, the less dishes I have to wash EVER, the better...but you know what I mean, I'm sure.

This breakfast bake checks both those boxes. Not only did it use up all the leftover bits in my fridge, but since I did the washing up directly after making it, it becomes very un-dish-intensive. Also, it gets bonus points for me not having to do anything TO it in the morning except put it on a plate and warm it up. BREAKFAST LAZINESS GOLD MEDAL! Literally the only thing lazier would be, like, cracking raw eggs into my mouth, which...no.

So, what I had hanging around was:

half a red bell pepper
half an onion
half a box of mushrooms
about 3/4 of a pound of pork sausage
nine eggs
one large Russet potato

Aside from the chopping involved, this could not be easier. I browned the sausage, then scooped it out to drain on paper towels while I sauteed the chopped veg in a little bit of the leftover fat. I washed the potato, poked it with a fork a few times, then stuck it in the microwave for about nine minutes. While the veg was getting soft in the pan, I cracked the eggs into a bowl and whisked them up. When the veg was read, I scooped it and the sausage into my baking dish (which I had swiped with olive oil just to ensure things wouldn't stick). When the potato was almost done, not quite cooked through, I pulled it out of the nuker, chopped it up (HOT POTATO, be careful, learn from my mistakes), tossed it with a little kosher salt and then threw it into the frying pan with the rest of the leftover pork fat. I cranked the heat up and let the potato get kind of brown and crispy in the pan, then scooped that into my veg and sausage mix. The egg got dumped over the top, dish got a little shake, then it went into a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes.

Ta Dahs:

It's like a craggy landscape of nom.

As long as you use a sausage that doesn't have added sugar, gluten or processed weirdness, this is a Paleo- and Whole30-compliant dish. If you don't like sausage, you could use bacon, ham, ground bison, really whatever floats your canoe. There's also no saying that you have to eat it for breakfast - you could stick some in your facehole when ever...I don't judge.

brussels sprout curry, aka: colon-blow curry

Truth time. I had a pumpkin smoothie for breakfast, rather a large amount of broccoli at lunch, and then washed this curry down with a glass and a half of porter. I predict things are going to start getting musical (and fragrant) around here in about, hmmm...let's say four hours or so. The effect will of course be doubled because the Ginger Beast had the same dinner as me (and is generally far more prone to flatulence in general). So basically what I'm saying is, you're probably not going to want to visit any time in the next 8-12 hours. You have been warned.

ANYWAYYYY.

This curry was very much an on-the-fly thing. We had company coming for dinner and all I had for protein was a package of defrosted meatloaf mix (ground beef, pork and veal combination). Trying to come up with what to do with that, a box of shredded Brussels sprouts and a can of fire-roasted tomatoes (I love you, Muir Glen!)  made for an entertaining ride home, but then it occurred to me that curry could in fact be the answer to my problems. Well, some of them...possibly the root of others, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Mmm. Fiber.

Basically, this is just a standard mince curry with a few cups of shredded Brussels sprouts added when I added the tomatoes. I also used a can of coconut milk, but I only used the solidified cream from the top of the can, not the watery part. And yes, that's a little bit of rice at the bottom of the bowl there. This is the first rice I've had in...I can't even remember how long. Many months. It was just there for filler because I was feeding a non-Paleo-eating person who is accustomed to a starch with dinner. My portion size was about 1/4 cup of the rice with about a cup and a half of the curry over top.

Minus the rice, this is Paleo compliant. The glass and a half of porter I drank with it , of course, are not. Is not? NOT. Beer am good. I wonder if there's any left...

guacamole all the things

Sometimes the rest of your dinner has nothing to do with guacamole, but you just have to say fuck it, and make the guacamole, because it's delicious.

This was that dinner.

Look at that guacamole, hiding in the background. Sneaky.

Pretty simple - seared chuck steak, sweet potato mash, sauteed baby kale with mushrooms, and the aforementioned random guacamole.

fancy fish bags

Hehehehe. Fish bags. It's fun to say, try it! Fish bags, fish bags, fish bags. I'm not high, I swear to you.

ANYWAY.

Whilst grocery shopping yesterday, I spied with my little green eye some parchment bags made for steaming shit in the oven. Well, not shit, but you know. I was immediately entranced with the pretty picture of perfectly cooked fish and veg on the box, and I had to have them. HAD TO. I am weak. It is known, khaleesi.

I've done "en papillote" fish preparations before and enjoyed them - all except the part where you have to fight with the parchment paper to stay crimped, while evil Alton Brown's voice keeps ringing in the back of your head, maniacally laughing and saying, "IT'S SOOOO SIMMMPLE!"  Maybe he's right - maybe it IS really simple and I just fucking fail at parchment origami, I don't know. What I DO know is that what's even easier than farting around with parchment for 20 fucking minutes while your stomach rumbles and you see stars from hunger? PRE-MADE PARCHMENT BAGS, bitches.

Mystery baaaag...are you ready for your mystery baaaag? It's not full of dog poop. OR IS IT? (it's probably not)

Told you.

You guys. I can't even. These bags? Are my new favorite thing. All I did was lay a couple pieces of cod over some asparagus, green beans and sliced red pepper, add a little poorly-cut basil on top, seal the bag with a couple folds over, and it was ready to roll. I did two bags (because the Ginger Beast needs to eat, too) on a cookie sheet, stashed them in a 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes, and lo, the fish, eet was done!

The asparagus is being a tease in this one.

Now...I will be completely honest with you here. First of all, I really like the taste of cod, so I don't usually fuck around with it much. You could easily gussy this up with all kinds of fancy herbs and citrus and whatever, but...I really like cod. Second of all, the next time I do this, I will NOT lay the fish directly on the veg unless I have significantly thinner pieces of fish. These were some big, manly cod pieces (see what I did there? Manly? Cod pieces? OMG, somebody stop me. No, really...), and the veg underneath didn't cook as much as it could have. We like our veg pretty al dente here at Chez OGC and that asparagus was borderline even for us. So, yes - next time, I'll spread the veg out around the fish for more even cook-en-ings...or maybe even just steam it separately...although honestly, that would take like half the fun out of the whole dinner-from-a-bag thing.

If you care, or even if you don't, this meal is Paleo and Whole-30 compliant, and as gluten-free as the day is long. Tra-la-la, healthy food.

pan-fried chicken thigh amazingness

Have you fully accepted the amazingness of chicken thighs into your life? If not, you should. Yes friends, I am here today to preach the gospel of chicken thighs. They are cheaper and more forgiving than your mom, and they taste better too.

Seriously, though. Chicken thighs are hardly ever more than $1.89 a pound at my local Hannaford. That's for the bone-in ones, mind you. The boneless ones are more pricey, and they also have the skin removed. In my opinion, there's no point in eating chicken if you can't have the crispy, delicious skin as well, so just buy the bone-in ones and be done with it. Unless you like sad chicken. You don't like sad chicken though, right? I didn't think so.

De-boning chicken thighs is actually really easy. I would have done a little picture tutorial for you, but I don't have a tripod for the camera and I don't want to get it all smegged up with chicken juice, so...yeah. Anyway - it's really easy. You just take a good sharp knife and zip down one side of the bone, then the other, pull the flesh away to the end and then give it a twist to remove. Tra-la-la, de-boned chicken thigh...with bonus skin! Well, not BONUS skin, because that would be weird..but you know. Sorry, I'm tired.

So, yes - what I did with these lovely chicken thighs after I de-boned them was as follows:

- pat dry with paper towel
- sprinkle with kosher salt
- put them in a hot pan SKIN SIDE DOWN for about ten minutes, then flipped and cooked on the other side until cooked through (took about another seven minutes for mine).

So simple. So delicious. Thank you madam, may I have another!

They look small because they're far away, but trust me, they were not.

 The majesty that is pan-fried chicken thighs was complemented on this plate by slices of the best damn tomato I've had in YEARS, which came from just down the road at Long Wind Farm, and a variation on this salad - I say variation because her recipe calls for snap peas but I used green beans, and it calls for lemon juice but I used white wine vinegar. And I didn't measure anything. So it probably tasted totally different, but whatever, it was delicious and I never would have thought to put that combination of things together had I not read her recipe first.

"But the bones," you say..."what about the bones you took out of the chicken thighs?" You may not actually be saying that but I'm putting words in your mouth so that I can make a point. You could chuck the bones if you wanted. You could throw them out for the wild animals. You could string them onto a necklace and wear them as a fashion statement, but they'd probably get kind of rank after a couple days. What I do is put the bones in a freezer bag, scrawl the date on it, seal it up and stash it in the freezer. Later on, when it's not 2073 degrees outside and I feel like making soup, I use the bones to make stock. It's just a suggestion.

Also, for anyone playing along at home, this meal is Paleo compliant, Whole-30 compliant, gluten-free, and all kinds of tasty.

the squash chronicles: curry

Sometimes I throw random vegetables into my curry, just to see how it tastes. I've yet to do this and end up with something I didn't want to eat, which is a plus...but sometimes I hit on a combination that's not just edible but actually really tasty. This was one of those instances.

I had a bunch of kabocha squash hanging around that I needed to use up. It was all cleaned and sliced, but I only got around to roasting half of it last week, so I decided to chop it up and chuck it into my chicken curry. It makes sense, really - I often roast kabocha with all the same spices that are in my garam masala anyway.

This was the result:

chicken coconut milk curry with squash

I used half a can of coconut milk in the sauce so the color turned out a little less than spectacular, but the smell was divine and the end product was very yummy. And yes, we do in fact eat bowls of curry like stew around here! Every once in a great while we eat rice with it, but for the most part we choose not to have the extra starch.

Also, for anyone curious about whether this recipe is Paleo-compliant, the answer is yes! Ingredients were as follows: ghee, onion, garam masala, garlic, chicken breast, kabocha squash, tomatoes, coconut milk and a little water. This curry is full of healthy fats, protein, fiber and potassium!


 UPDATE 11/14/2013

I have been asked for an "actual recipe" for this - you guys and your wanting me to measure things and keep track of cooking times, sheesh!

Chicken Coconut Milk Curry with Squash
serves 4-6 in a stew-like application. Can easily be stretched for more servings if you eat it over rice.

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cups chopped kabocha (aka: buttercup) squash - NOTE: you could easily sub butternut or acorn here - if you use butternut, make sure you peel it. Acorn and kabocha don't need to be peeled
1 28-oz can of organic diced tomatoes, undrained
2 tbsp ghee or coconut oil
2 tbsp garam masala
1 cup coconut milk
1 cup water


1. Heat the ghee or coconut oil over medium-high and add chopped onion. Cook onion until golden with some dark spots / edges (you don't want it straight-up burnt, but a little charring is good).

2. Add garam masala to onion / fat mixture and stir. Let this cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds - 1 minute.

3. Add diced tomatoes WITH their juice, chicken, squash, coconut milk and water, stir well to combine.

4. Bring mixture to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer uncovered about 15 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through and squash is tender, then serve.

chicken thighs with tomato olive tapenade

Last week when chicken thighs were on sale, I bought a whole bunch and froze some. This week when I was menu-planning, I was trying to think of something quick and yummy to do with the chicken thighs and decided I'd try them with the tapenade that I usually make for fish. If it works for fish it ought to work for chicken, right?

Right.

tapenade-tastical!

 

It actually worked really well. The greens are braised collards, and the tapenade is my standard shallots / grape tomatoes / capers / kalamata olives / splash of balsamic vinegar mixture. For the chicken thighs, I wanted to try something different so I seasoned them with sea salt and then put them skin-side down in a pan with a little olive oil and let them sear for about 5 minutes until they were golden brown. I flipped the thighs over and gave them another 5 minutes or so in the pan, then put the whole pan (oven safe handle, yay!) into a 375 degree oven for another 20-ish minutes. When the thighs were done, I just added them to the beds of collards and spooned some tapenade over the top.

Easy, relatively quick, and delicious!

meatloaf porn

Husband's birthday is Tuesday and I told him that I would either take him out for dinner, or make him a meal of his choosing. He decided that rather than go out, he'd like meatloaf. Since meatloaf is fairly labor-intensive, he was amenable to the idea of having his birthday dinner a few nights early. Thus, this is technically husband-birthday-meatloaf-porn.

I've now said "porn" twice. I'll just sit back and watch the hits roll in...

Ahem.

Anyway - this meatloaf is my standard "green meatloaf" recipe - I don't put breadcrumbs in it, but instead use minced mushrooms and spinach for fillers. Sounds weird and like it wouldn't work, but I've yet to have a meatloaf fail to hold together since switching to this method. What you want to do is saute the minced mushrooms for just a few minutes to get them to release their liquid, and squeeze the excess moisture out of the spinach (I use frozen chopped spinach - I just defrost it and squeeze the bejeezus out of it before adding it to my mix). A couple eggs, some salt and pepper, grated onion, garlic and carrot, a little dry mustard, a 50/50 mix of ground beef and ground pork, and all it needs is some serious squishing together and a nice bacon jacket.

Yes, bacon jacket. Come on, if you could wrap yourself in bacon you know you would.

Bacon jackets for all!

That is also real-deal mashed white potato, for the record. Birthdays call for indulging in a little extra starch, at least around here.

lemon parsley pork chops

Pretty much what it says on the tin.

Quick and easy week-night supper - it took me longer to prep the Brussels sprouts than it took to prep and cook the pork chops! The chops were seasoned with salt and pepper, then seared in a pan with a little bacon fat. After a couple minutes cooking on each side, I added some water and covered the pan, letting the chops cook for about 8 more minutes. The topping is a combination of minced lemon zest, parsley, chopped garlic, kosher salt and black pepper. I spooned a little bit of the pan juices from the pork chops over the whole kit and caboodle right before we ate. Yum!

ginger-soy glazed chicken wings

The NFL is the center of our world on Sundays. Whether it's watching the Patriots play, obsessively checking our record in the picks pool, or flipping between games to cheer on our fantasy football teams (I have one, my husband has...a lot more), it's all football all the time.

Often times, I'll make a roast on Sunday because it generally takes very little attention (more time to devote to football!), and it's also good to have leftover meat hanging around for lunches or dinners. This week I wasn't really feeling the roast love though. I wanted something football-y, for lack of a better term - some kind of finger food that was fun and different. Typical football fare around these parts includes chicken wings, pizza, nachos and chili. Pizza and nachos were out (we don't need the grains), and since I'd already had a dose of chili at brunch with a friend, chicken wings were sounding like just the ticket.

Lo and behold, when I got to the grocery store they had fresh chicken wings on sale! Jackpot! I picked up a dozen and then spent some time obsessing over teriyaki sauces. They were all full of sugar, or worse, HFCS. Do not want! I know traditional teriyaki is supposed to have pineapple juice in it, but again...way too sweet, at least for me. I decided screw it - teriyaki minus the sweetness is just basically a combination of soy and ginger. I'd subscribe to my own personal motto of "how bad can it go?" and just wing it with a soy ginger marinade from scratch.

For the marinade, I used:

1 tsp dark sesame oil
1/4 cup tamari (wheat-free soy sauce)
1.5 tsp fresh grated ginger
1.5 tsp fresh grated garlic
1 tbsp white wine (I used some chardonnay I had lingering in the fridge - dry sherry would be really good here, too)
2 tsp dark brown sugar
3 scallions, green and white parts both, chopped

I whisked it all together and threw the chicken wings in to marinate for about 20 minutes. Yes, yes, I hear you screaming about how there's added sugar, but a) it's a SHITLOAD less sugar per serving than in all the bottled sauces I looked at, b) it's real sugar, not HFCS pseudo-sugar, and c) the sauce needed a little bit of sugar to cook down to a glaze-y consistency. Besides, I never said I wanted totally un-sweet wings - I said I didn't want gratuitous amounts of sugar or a sickly-sweet end product.

ANYWAY.

The wings soaked for about 20 minutes, then I put them on a rack on a cookie sheet in a 375 degree oven for 20 minutes. When the 20 minutes was up, I turned the cookie sheet around to ensure even cooking and set the timer for another 15 minutes. I also took the leftover marinade and brought it to a boil for a few minutes, letting it reduce down to about 1/3 its original volume. This glaze then got spooned over the wings as they baked for their last ten minutes. I steamed some broccoli to go with, and when the wings were done it was time to eat!

Wings and football!

I was really pleased with how these turned out. I could have easily let them marinate for longer, and I think that starting them off in a hotter oven to crisp the skin up more would have been a plus, but the important part was that these had great flavor without the sickly sweetness of bottled teriyaki. A+, would nom again!

curry burgers

I love burgers. Burgers with bacon and avocado, burgers with blue cheese and mushrooms, teriyaki burgers, pot-sticker burgers, taco burgers...you name it, I will happily try to burger-ize it. So when I was making my shopping list this week and the idea of curry burgers struck me, it was on like Donkey Kong!

For these prototype curry burgers, I just added a tablespoon of garam masala, half a grated onion, some garlic powder and some salt to a pound of ground beef. I mixed it well with my hands and formed it into patties, then cooked them off in a hot pan. I served them with roasted cauliflower and a salad, thus:

I love radishes, by the way.

While the method of "grate onion, mix with meat and spices" produced a burger that was perfectly enjoyable, it wasn't quite as curry-tastic as I was looking for. Part of making a great curry is getting good color on your onions, because it gives a really nice depth of flavor. Another part of great curry is letting the spices toast in the fat with the onions briefly before adding the meat and coconut milk - that releases the essential oils and really opens up the spice flavors. The way I made these burgers threw both those elements out the window, and the dish suffered for it. Next time, I'm going to take the little extra time to brown the onion and toast the spices, THEN add them to the burger meat. I'll let you know how it turns out.

the squash chronicles: Acorn

I've been on kind of a squash kick lately, partially because it's in season right now and partially because every time I come up with a better way of cooking / flavoring it than just the old stand-by "bake and then mash with sweet spices and butter", it makes me happy. To that end, today I decided to try something I HATED as a kid - acorn squash. There was just something about the texture of mashed acorn squash and the strange shade of tan it always ended up. Blech.

What I wanted was a way to make acorn squash likable again. I decided to try roasting it and see how it turned out. The results were quite tasty, and I think the texture would have been better had I roasted it on a larger pan so I had less overlap (less overlap means more squash touching the pan and getting all roasty-toasty. That's a legit technical term, BTW. Look it up). Acorn squash is super bland on its own - it doesn't even really have much inherent sweetness, at least not compared to something like butternut or kabocha. I jazzed it up with a little fresh rosemary and some shallots and the caramelizing there-of brought out some really nice nutty flavors.

I can safely say that I did NOT hate this acorn squash, and I'm looking forward to eating the leftovers tomorrow.

Squash! Not mashed!

The kale was quick-braised by rendering some chopped bacon in a pan, then pouring off all but about half a tablespoon of the fat, adding the chopped kale and about a quarter cup of chicken stock. I turned the heat to low, covered the pan tightly and let it cook for about 10 minutes, stirring a couple times in the middle. Crispy bacon was sprinkled over top at the very end so it wouldn't get soggy.

The pork was on sale last week at the grocery store and I got sucked in because it was a deal. I should have known better. It's a loin. See that ridge of fat across the top of the slices? That's all the fat there is on the entire roast. Some people may be into super-lean meat, but I am not one of those people. I'm pretty sure the only reason this didn't turn into a 5lb log of shoe leather is because a) it was one of the vacuum-packed ones from Smithfield and I think they inject salt solution into the meat as well as packing it in a kind of weak brine solution, and b) I cooked the meat at quite a low temperature (325 degrees). It wasn't terrible in the end - like I said, it stayed quite moist, and the dusting of thyme, garlic powder, salt and pepper I gave it before roasting gave it decent flavor. I wish I had thought to marinate it for a while, though. Loin is just so bland. Oh, well. A cheap chunk of protein for lunches for the week isn't a bad thing!

bacon-wrapped chicken thighs

I was flipping through "Practical Paleo" the other day, looking for inspiration for this week's menu, when I came across her recipe for bacon-wrapped chicken thighs. I say recipe...it involves wrapping chicken thighs in bacon and, uhhh...baking them. Not exactly complicated, which is fine by me. I cooked the thighs at 375 for about 35 minutes - they stayed juicy, but the bacon didn't crisp up how I wanted so I ended up blasting them at 475 for about 10 more minutes as well. It's times like this I wish I had a broiler! The bacon was still tasty though, don't get me wrong.

Wrap me in bacon and call me hungry.

That's actually kabocha squash there in the back. Normally I roast it in slices, but I wanted to try cooking it whole this time and mashing it, just to see if it would work. When it first came out of the oven, I was a little worried that I had created a disaster since the squash was quite dry and powdery, but the addition of a couple tablespoons of butter smoothed it right out. I had dusted the squash halves with garam masala before cooking so the resulting mash was not only nutty and slightly sweet but also had a nice spice to it.

The salad is just spring mix and halved grape tomatoes tossed with a simple vinaigrette of extra virgin olive oil, a little balsamic vinegar and about a teaspoon of stone-ground mustard.