green curry salmon with kiwi salsa

Trying desperately to pry myself away from obsessing over another ethnically accurate meal, I instead managed to produce some sort of dreaded fusion cuisine. Totally don’t care. At least I didn’t make mac and cheese-filled potstickers. Plus, kiwi salsa? You know I have an affinity for fruit salsas, and this one is no exception. I mulled over somehow incorporating coconut milk, which if you’ve got a genius idea, I’d encourage and like to hear about it. I saw some recipe that puréed kiwis with coconut milk, but that seemed a shame. Then I considered poaching the salmon in coconut milk, but ohhh the crispy skin (bacon of the sea). I dunno, sometimes I want to mash together every possible delicious flavor that I think would go well together. Best to just step it back. Like that dumb jewelry rule for ladies that I consistently flout.
I got a cold the other night. Started with that nasty drip burn in the back of my throat, then an achy neck. I felt kinda junky the next day, just real droopy and achy. But lo and behold, the following day? Good as new. I can’t definitively say any reason, I suppose, but I’m putting my money on eating so freaking well this past month. I’ve noticed in general that my cold frequency has gone way down since I started eating paleo, but duration is one thing that’s really easy to notice. I distinctly remember being out of commission for like a week with colds that I used to get back when I lived in Boston. So.awesome. I’m totally on a Whole 30 high. Probably like those fats on The Biggest Loser feel after eating well (questionable – Jennie O??), exercising the crap out of themselves, and getting off all of their meds. I think I should set a goal to become a trainer on that show. Or gain 200 pounds and use my charming personality to gain a spot on it.

Tags: curry, kiwi, paleo, primal, salmon, thai

shakshouka with lamb meatballs

I had wanted to wait to make this until I found merguez. There are actually some promising locations that I’d like to scout out at some point, but none of them are particularly close by and the other day I was feeling frazzled about what to make and I couldn’t think of anything else but this, so I just decided to make do without driving all the way across the city. I was also briefly obsessed with trying to make this one Maharashtran Curry recipe. I just knew that if I settled on making that, that I’d spend hours hopping from one Indian grocery to the next in the vain hopes of finding obscure spices. Then I’d come home, headachey, crabby, having wasted all of my good daylight for taking pictures, and then still have nothing to show for it. I’ll just have to casually stop by if ever I’m in any of those ethnic, uh, sections of Denver. I’m sure they’re very nice. I have eaten at a few Ethiopian places to maybe know otherwise. (But OMGOMGOMG I love Ethiopian food.)
You know what else I love? Getting my hours at work cut, and finding out about it by being flippantly handed a new printed-out schedule as the last item at a staff meeting. “Oh by the way, here are some new hours, thanks everyone back to work.” New hours, what like we’re open longer? Open on weekends? What? Oh. OH. I see. WTFFFFFFFFFFFFF What boss does that?? THE WORST ONE. It’s like out of an office-based comedy. Except it’s real. I know you’re not supposed to compromise yourself on the interwebs but I hope any future employer (hello? hi!) would sympathize with me. Seriously, anyone want to hire me? I’m very nice. And I can cook. For you if you’re nice, too. I will also try extra hard not to talk about politics.

Tags: eggs, lamb, moroccan, north african, paleo, primal, shakshouka, tunisian

cuban pork roast + mojo and chimichurri

It’s been a very garlicky weekend. I’m sure I smell great. It’s also been a very Latiny weekend, filled with yuca, chorizo, cilantro (homemade) mayonnaise, mojo, chimichurri, lime, guacamole, plantains, jicama, burro bananas, and of course, this pork. And then there was the decidedly very down home Americana activity of smoking bacon. My lord I love our smoker. Waiting for the pork belly to defrost, then cure, then smoke was 100% worth it. Holy crap. Let the bacon eating commence! Duh, already started. Garlic and applewood smoke. The smells of a very productive, delicious weekend.
I’m a little wary that this dish is just a liiiiiittle too similar to my carnitas post. Not to knock the Cubans (they should be knocked on about everything else except food), but this is a citrusy, crispy, slow-roasted hunk of pork… just, there are no mountains of lard. Which is good because since doing the Whole 30 I’ve been struggling to keep my jars of animal fats filled. Maybe I should get around to clarifying all the butter I have lying around. But really, this is a different dish from carnitas. It’s incredibly lime-y and garlicky and smidge oregano-y.

Tags: chimichurri, cuban, mojo, paleo, pork roast, primal

perfect roast chicken

In case you didn’t have a one foolproof way to roast a chicken, you will now. Think of this as your starting point for a million different ways to season and spice it. It’s really a technique post, as opposed to a recipe, but I think those are fun. A lot of times I get carried away with thinking about flavors and side dishes that I don’t pay as much attention to little details as I could. Plus, if you really kick butt at perfectly cooking a hunk of meat (or vegetable), then you don’t even need much seasoning. Think a perfect rib eye. Salt is a wonderful thing.
Did you know that I have a Facebook page? I don’t know why I’m excited about it, but I kind of am! If you’d like to hear from me aside from my lame once a week posts, you can like me there. I would like to post more than once a week, but for some reason I can’t get it together to do so. Being super picky has its downfalls. Such as, I want to make a rendang recipe, but it means that I have to travel all over town to try to find some certain ingredients that I’m not content getting canned, jarred, or dried versions of. I just don’t see much of the point of posting a recipe that has a main component not right. It’d be like making Garlic Chicken! and using garlic powder. Barf. And go to hell.

Tags: crispy skin, paleo, primal, roasted chicken

winter fruit, beets, and fennel salad

Hey, it kind of looks like a I’m posting a NewYearNewYou recipe. I might be. I may or may not have gotten on the Whole 30 bandwagon. Who are you if you don’t get on some sort of New Years bandwagon? One of those selectively self-righteous “Resolutions just set you up for failure” or “I don’t make resolutions, I make changes” jerks who read that in some lame article in some publication whose parent company also publishes an equal amount of newyearnewyou articles. New Years resolutions are fun. And if you fail and spiral into some depression then you need to lighten up! Or actually do good on a resolution for once because you’re probably worthless. That was harsh.
In any case, it only seemed fitting after my month and a half long debauch to go super clean. I stupidly got a subscription to the enviro-nut Whole Living (when I should have gotten a subscription to Bon Appétit since the subscription ran out at my work) as part of some Groupon-y 3 for $5 magazine deal, and they have this somewhat decent clean eating plan in it this month. But it calls for drinking vegetable and fruit juices for breakfasts. I don’t get juices at.all. What is wrong with the whole food item? It’s supposed to be too hard on your digestive system or something? It just seems preposterous. Plus, I don’t like drinking my calories. Smoothies and milk and juices and milkshakes (debatable, this is more that I just vastly prefer ice cream) and protein shakes and eggnog and punch and soda. I like beer, wine, and spirits for those that are begging to point that out. But I hardly drink at all. So far, just a lousy five days in, I feel so much freaking better. It was getting to the point that after every time I would eat some cookies I’d feel like a post-nasal drip thing. I don’t know what was causing it, but it was totally corrollated to cookie eating. Scary.

Tags: beets, citrus, fennel, paleo, pomegranate, primal, salad, winter fruit

fried plantains + avocado salad

I never want to see another Christmas cookie again. Or Christmas cake. Or Christmas pie. Or Christmas giant bowl of whipped cream. But namely the cookies. I baked like a madman and ate like an utter lard. I get to the point where I’ve stuffed myself so awfully and then I start to feel terrible about myself and then I figure aw fuck it what’s another 10 cookies going to do when you’ve already eaten 23. It’s really a pretty dumb mindset. And you’d think after years of reading stupid Shape magazine I’d be a little more rational. I can’t decide if coming to terms with my inability to control my Christmas dessert consumption and just swearing them off, until maybe Valentine’s Day sugar cookies, is a better way to go, or if I should strive to just be more reasonable when and if I do decide to eat some dessert. I guess I’d like to be able to just eat two cookies, but uh, yeah, probably not going to happen.
Anyway, enough about my lard tendencies. I did cook an amazing amount of food, and really awesome food, for Christmas dinner. And I have an amazing amount of leftovers, too. Joe left for the week, so it’s just me trying to make my way through most of a ham, like 4 pounds of roasted potatoes, several pounds of roasted sweet potatoes with a brown butter vinaigrette, and a mountain of my famous brussels sprouts. I’m going to have to make some sort of soup out of the rest of the ham and then freeze it. There’s just no way I’m going to be able to eat my way through it all. I was most excited about presenting to my friends on Christmas Day the roasted potatoes. If you’ve made that recipe I posted, then you know why. If you haven’t, then you’ve been eating crap roasted potatoes and I hope you feel sorry. We were eating at my friends’ house and so we carted all the food over there (they made their share of food too… it was a feast) and in a hurried we-gotta-make-it-over-there-in-a-timely-fashion move, I put the fresh out of the oven potato chunks in a big tupperware and drove over there. Piping hot potatoes give off condensation. Condensation makes gorgeous crispy potatoes soggy and disgusting. GAH. I can be excused for drowning my sorrow in Christmas dessert. I made a brown sugar cranberry walnut gingerbread upside down cake. I’m awesome.

Tags: avocado, paleo, plantains, primal, south american

bobotie

On Saturday, as part of my very successfully Christmasy advent activity roster, I went ice skating at the stuffy Denver Country Club for Joe’s company’s Christmas party. During a rip roaring raucous game of broom ball, I fell backward onto my right wrist. Did I forget to mention that I’m not the best skater? The only way I know how to stop is to run into the rink wall. I really had no business trying to play a game on the ice with some rather skilled skaters… In any case, using a knife to chop anything harder than an onion is pretty much horrible. Enter bobotie. Like the best meatloafy dish known to man, and which also includes minimal chopping. It’s an iconic South African dish that is served with this glorious chutney that I kind of cooked to a hard candy because I decided I wanted to take a bath and may or may not have completely forgotten that I was reducing the sauce on the stove top.
I don’t know much at all about South African food. I knew one guy from South Africa and I thought he was the worst person ever. But I like bobotie, so my thoughts on the country are turning a little. Not only is it a curry-spiced hunk of ground meat studded with dried fruit, but it’s topped with an egg custard. If you aren’t as poor as me, you will make this out of lamb. Or even a mixture of beef and lamb. Usually I seem to be able to find ground lamb on sale at my grocery store – the this-is-about-to-go-bad kind of sale. But there was none of that when I went shopping for this. I did get grass-fed ground beef for $3.97/lb. Thought that was decent. This will be so so so so so good with lamb. I love lamb. (PS please get me a microplane for Christmas, thanks God. And Tebow.)

Tags: paleo, primal, south african

world’s best brussels sprouts

So here it is, the much ballyhooed Brussels sprouts recipe. However, it’s not exactly the original one. I decided to lighten it up a bit… in the past two days I’ve consumed close to two dozen spiced molasses cookies that I made. I figured I could stand to not eat heavy cream and some pine nuts, which are part of the original world’s best Brussels recipe. I’ll tell you what to do if you want to include those two things. Really, though, the recipe as is is awesome. It’s the way I make them 95% of the time. Only if I’m bringing this dish to a party or something, do I add in cream and pine nuts. Not to mention that freaking pine nuts are like buying truffles. Kind of. Maybe like a 15th of the price, but still. Gah.
Why do workout clothes absorb only the worst smells? I mean, I generally stink – being kind of a Luddite about antiperspirant – but coupled with that, I’m wearing them when I cook dinner every night. I come home from the gym and am too lazy to shower right when I get home, so I start cooking dinner while wearing them and then after dinner finally get around to showering. My gym clothes end up in a pile in the hallway to wear again the next day (really, who washes their gym clothes after one wear? Pshh, they’re still good until they get positively stiff with dried sweat.) Then, when I put them on the next day after work, I realize how much they freaking smell like fat and sautéed onions. And then they get smellier as I get hot and sweaty in them, like I’m a Glade plugin or something. Everyone really loves me at my gym. The girl who smells like BO and, as was the case after cooking this recipe on a Wednesday afternoon, shallots and Brussels sprouts.

Tags: brussels sprouts, marjoram, paleo, primal

farmhouse butternut squash soup

Butternut squash soup is one of the easiest and best soups ever. Broth, squash, salt. It could be that simple. But what the heck would be the point of posting something like that. Instead, there is this moderately more fancy version that I like to make but that is still totally easy. It feels a little more rustic and has more complex flavors. Just a bit of tartness from a Granny Smith apple and a tid of apple cider vinegar. Oh, and then there’s nutmeg just to pull out the sweetness in case you were worried it would get buried with the apple and vinegar.
Did you realize that it’s December?? This means that each and every day I try to do something Christmas-y. (Un)fortunately, several of these activities will be cookie and pie-centric. It just has to happen. I ate so much winter fruit crisp at Thanksgiving that I was kind of hoping I’d get sweets out of my system, but in actuality it created a sweets monster. Total monster. I want to kill it, but Christmas is telling it to make pies and cookies. Basically, I want to create an edible version of marthastewart.com. So, having a soup like this around is a good thing, because what’s the point of eating a full, real meal if you’re just going to stuff yourself with dessert after. Dammit. I’m hosed.

Tags: butternut squash, paleo, primal, rustic, soup

coda alla vaccinara

Okay, when does it start to get obnoxious with my foreign language recipe titles. But I feel like this one is warranted, as it’s supposedly some sort of time-honored Roman stew. In case you’re wondering and haven’t translate-widgeted it yet, it’s oxtail. My first time making something with an oxtail! I’d seen it fresh before at my little meat market that I go to to get my kitties’ food, but didn’t have anything in mind for it at the time. So I went back this past weekend to get it – never a good idea there, because their stock of odd bits is seemingly unpredictable – but only found it in the freezer. No big deal, except I was a little impatient in letting it defrost fully before starting this recipe. Hey, I’ve got limited daylight hours to get some somewhat decent pictures. The stinkin’ oxtails defrosted quick enough in the pot.
Oxtail is a strange cut of meat. It’s mostly bone and some weird collagen, but it becomes super wonderful and fun to eat after simmering for hours. The end of the tail was my most favorite. The texture is hard to describe, but the bit of collagenmeat on them was delicious, and since the pieces are small you can pick them up with your fingers and they don’t go flying across the table, like some of the larger pieces did a couple times. Whether you try to use just your hands or a fork, those larger pieces are a little unwieldy no matter what.

Tags: italian, nasty bits, offal, oxtail, paleo, primal, stew