March 27, 2013

It was Colonel Mustard, in the dutch oven, with the leeks

Since we're heading out of town this weekend for Easter, we needed to find a way to use the rest of our share food.  We turned to the interwebs, as always, for inspiration, and came up with pork chops with a mustard sauce, roasted turnips, and salad.  So let's get started...

Start by slicing up your carrots, celery, and leeks.  We included the leaves from the tops of the celery too.  Because of all the layers in the leeks, a lot of dirt can get in there.  Once you slice them, you'll want to place them in a bowl with water, and swish them around, separating the layers.  All the dirt will sink to the bottom of the bowl, and you'll be left with clean leeks!
Then we melted some butter in the dutch oven, and threw all the veggies in there to soften.  Once they've cooked down a bit, add your whole grain mustard and almond milk.

Once everything's had a chance to mix together, nestle your pork chops into the mixture.  We also added a couple bay leaves, some parsley and thyme.  We threw a lid on it and let it cook for about 15 minutes.  While those were cooking, we roasted up some turnips with a bit of grated red onion on top.
We also threw together a quick salad with our creasy greens, some carrots, red onion, and the rest of the pate we had leftover from our rainy day soup & salad dinner.  With a simple dressing of olive oil and champagne vinegar, we were ready to eat!

March 25, 2013

It's a Wrap!

On a cold, rainy night like tonight we were looking for a quick, easy, healthy, tasty, and comforting meal.  We were hungry for some delicious pot stickers like we had at Chinese New Year, but we wanted to keep it Paleo, and use some of our share ingredients, so decided to make some Asian lettuce wraps.

Essentially, we used the recipe for the pot sticker filling.  We started by mincing up some ginger, garlic, and scallions.  
That was all mixed with some ground pork, salt, white pepper, sesame oil, a little soy sauce, and a dash of Chinese cooking wine.  Next we chopped up our shitakes from the share, and tossed it all together.
We cooked the mixture in a pan with a bit of coconut oil, and it was ready in no time.  While that cooked, we julienned some carrots to wrap up in the lettuce, and chopped up a little more green onion, and some cilantro to garnish.

We tore the leaves from the head of bibb lettuce to use as our wraps, and set up a little station to build our wraps.  Just spoon in some pork and mushrooms, add a few carrot sticks, top with some green onion and cilantro, and you're good to go!


March 22, 2013

Chicken & Kale Curry

It's always tough for me to get motivated to cook dinner on a Friday night.  I'm usually tired from the work week, and would rather just go out or order in.  But we're watching what we eat, and it can be difficult when you go out since you don't have complete control over what goes into your food.  Luckily we found a simple recipe for a chicken and kale curry.  I don't think it took us more than 30 min. to throw this bad boy together.

Start by mixing together your spices; curry powder, tumeric, coriander, ginger, salt & pepper.  I didn't have any dried ground ginger on hand, but I did have a jar of wet ground ginger in the fridge, so we used that instead.  And instead of black pepper, we used white pepper, which is often found in Asian cooking.  Then just toss in your hunks of chicken and evenly coat them with your spice blend.  You can let it sit and marinate while you prep your veggies.
Speaking of veggies...you'll need to dice up an onion and some tomatoes, and de-rib your kale.  To make it even easier, you could just use grape or cherry tomatoes and toss them in whole.  But we had the tomatoes from our share, so they just got diced up.
Once that's done, heat your pan with a bit of coconut oil.  If you don't have any, you can use whatever oil you have on hand.  But the coconut oil helps impart a subtle coconut flavor on the dish.  Toss in your onions and let them cook for a few minutes, until soft.  Then throw in the chicken and let it brown up.
Once the chicken is browned, add in the kale and let it wilt down.  It should only take a few minutes.  Then you can add in your tomatoes.  Once the tomatoes have had a chance to cook down a bit, you can add your coconut milk.  This will thicken as it simmers, and becomes your sauce.
At this point, we tasted everything and decided to add a dash of cayenne for some heat, and a little more salt.  Once the sauce has thickened to your liking, you're ready to serve!  We topped it all with a little green onion and called it a night.
Using the coconut milk, as opposed to coconut cream, let the spices be the star of the show.  The coconut was very subtle, while still adding nice flavor to the dish overall.  It's a great, quick, Paleo-friendly meal that we'll be adding to our rotation.

March 20, 2013

Kara Had a Little Lamb (Sausage)!

With March Madness getting underway, we opted for a quick and easy meal we could throw together in between games.  We found this recipe, and just made a few tweaks, as always, and paired it with a simple salad.

I was a bit surprised to get tomatoes in our share yesterday since it's still pretty chilly down here in DC.  We sliced up a few of them and topped them with some olive oil, salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme, garlic and parsley.  Then they went under the broiler for about 10 minutes.  We laid them on top of our salad and dressed with with a bit of olive oil and some white balsamic, for some added sweetness.
For the main dish, we started by slicing the sausage into whatever size pieces you want.  We had pork & lamb sausage on hand from our share, so we went with those.  Once those get cooking in the pan, just toss in your artichokes, and in our case, some sun-dried tomatoes.
I know, I know...the recipe says to use bacon, and you're surprised that we didn't...but the bacon was at Justin's, and that's where it stayed.  So instead, we threw in the sun-dried tomatoes.  I know it's not really an equal substitute, but it still ended up being quite tasty.

While the sausage finished cooking, we poached the eggs.  You'll want to fill the pot with just enough water to cover the eggs, and add a little salt and about a teaspoon of white vinegar to the water.  This will help your whites stay together.  Let your water get close to a boil, but just under to it is still and a little steamy.  Then just crack your eggs into the water and let them cook up.  They'll be done in minutes!

All that's left to do is pile your sausage, artichokes and sun-dried tomatoes into a bowl, and top with the egg.  We sprinkled a little black pepper and fresh parsley on top to garnish.

March 19, 2013

CSA Day!

It's that time again!  Woohoo!  Here's what we hauled home today:
Lots of good stuff to come as we jump back on the Paleo train.  Stay tuned!

March 18, 2013

CSA Recap

I know we've been a bit M.I.A. these last couple weeks, and we kind of fell off our Paleo wagon.  But with a new share coming our way tomorrow, we're ready to re-focus and get back on the Paleo train.
Here's what we made with our last share:
We still have an apple, a few green onions, and a couple potatoes left, but I'm sure we'll find a way to incorporate them into some upcoming meals.

March 17, 2013

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

No St. Patrick's Day can go by without having corned beef and cabbage.  But like we do with most recipes, we put our own twist on the classic meal.  With Justin's roots in Pittsburgh, and my brief year there, we both love Primanti Bros.'s sandwiches, so we used that to put our own spin on a NY Deli classic.  And to round out the meal, we did some baking; but not just any baking--we used some Paddy approved ingredients such as stout and bacon and made a chocolate bacon beer cake.

So let's start with the sandwich.  There wasn't much to it tonight.  We picked up a nice, crusty white loaf of rustic Italian bread, and cut some thick slices to toast up, and slathered on some whole grain mustard.  We warmed up some thickly sliced corned beef from the deli, and some leftover slices of mortadella.  Instead of the traditional coleslaw, we used our homemade sauerkraut for the cabbage component.  And for the potato component, we made some homemade fries, tossed in some rendered bacon fat.  Pile everything on the bread...meat, 'kraut, fries...smash!
It rivaled the real thing!

Now for the cake.  I'm usually not much of a baker, but since it involved bacon and beer, I figured I'd give it a shot.  We started by rendering down the bacon.  Once it was crispy, we poured off most of the fat, and then added in some Jameson, Boatswain chocolate stout (only $1.99 from Trader Joe's!), some maple syrup, and a bit of brown sugar to deglaze the pan and candy the bacon.  Once the liquid cooked down and resembled caramel, we poured it onto a silicone mat to cool.
Without cleaning the pan, we melted the butter and added a cup of the stout to start on our cake batter.  Once the butter was melted, we whisked in the cocoa powder.  In a separate bowl we beat together the sour cream and eggs, and then added those to the chocolate stout mixture.
Then we slowly mixed in the dry ingredients until everything was completely mixed together.  We poured half of the batter into a greased bundt pan, and then added in some of the candied bacon.
The rest of the batter was poured into the pan.  Before throwing it in the oven, I gave the pan a couple quick twists to make sure the batter was distributed evenly.  It went into the oven for about 45 minutes.
Once we turned the cake out onto a cooling rack, we let it cool while we made the maple glaze.  One of my Chirstmas presents that I forgot to mention here, was a subscription to Saveur, and the first issue I received was all about donuts, including about a dozen different glazes, including a maple glaze.  As always, we added our own twist though.

So into a pot went some heavy cream, powdered sugar, maple syrup and a dash of salt.  That was the original recipe.  But it wouldn't be St. Patrick's Day without some Bailey's Irish Cream.  So we put a bit of that into the glaze.  And since we used all of the chocolate stout for the cake, we added in a dash of Mothership Connection, a beer by Chocolate City Beer, here in DC.  It's a tasty Weizenbock that added a fruity sweetness to the glaze.

Once the cake cooled, we drizzled the glaze over the top, and added the rest of the candied bacon.
How good does that look?  The cake was light and fluffy, and tasted like a brownie, while the bacon added a little saltiness and cut the sweetness from the glaze.  We definitely took advantage of it being our cheat day, and hopefully Justin's housemates will eat the rest of the cake so we don't have to.  With corned beef, potatoes, and lots of beer it was a meal that could drive the snakes from Ireland, and drive some hungry people to the table!

March 14, 2013

Happy Pi Day!

It's not too late to go out and celebrate Pi Day!

We took advantage of Dangerously Delicious's Pi Day Happy Hour tonight...slices of their sweet pies were only $3.14, and we made it in just under the wire.  But first we started with a slice of BOG (bacon, onion, gruyere) quiche, and a slice of STF (sausage, tomato, fennel) pie.  Each came with a little salad with balsamic dressing.  So we started off with a pretty tasty, savory slice of pie, and we highly recommend both.  For the sweet slices, we went with a slice of mounds (coconut & chocolate), and their famous Baltimore Bomb (crumbly,melty Berger cookies & vanilla chess).

So, before the day is over, go grab yourself some pi(e)!

March 11, 2013

Homemade Kimchi

You've heard us talk about our homemade kimchi a few times (here and here), and we're finally spilling the beans on how we made it.

We used this recipe, given to us by my cousin, that came from The Lucky Peach.

We just had a head of regular green cabbage on hand, rather than the suggested napa cabbage, but from our previous experience, the green cabbage worked just as well.  Start by chopping your cabbage into big hunks.  You'll season liberally with salt and sugar, and let it sit in the fridge overnight.


Next, you'll want to whip up the seasonings.  In a food processor, puree the garlic, ginger, soy sauce, Korean chili flake, fish sauce, and brine shrimp.
Once that's formed a nice paste/sauce, dump it over your cabbage, carrots and green onion.  We also added some daikon to the mix.  Here's where you'll want to get in there with your hands to make sure the spice mixture gets into all the nooks and crannies of the cabbage.
Once everything is good and mixed, you'll want to stuff everything into a clean glass jar that can be sealed air tight.  We used the jars we picked up from Ikea, that we've also used for our sauerkraut.  Stuff as much of the cabbage as you can into the jar.  If you don't have a jar, you can also use a plastic container with a lid.  In our first attempt at making kimchi, we went this route, and it came out great!  The key is to make sure that the cabbage is packed in as tightly as possible, and no air can get in.
Then you just place it in the fridge and let it ferment.  After a week or so, it'll be ready to go!