Pork and Baby Bok Choy Red Basil Curry

Me, my buddy Clinton, and his sister, Shannon went out to Thai last night, and I had everything I needed to make some bomb Thai food again tonight, so here it is.

Pork and Baby Bok Choy Red Basil Curry

Boil 3 russet potatoes, cut into 1/16ths, with 6 carrots cut into 1/4"+ rounds, for 15+ minutes. In a ton of olive oil, saute 6 minced cloves of garlic, a pinch of red pepper, black pepper, and 1.5p of thinly sliced pork loin. Flip after 5 minutes, and only turn once. Cook for ten minutes. Remove and cut into strips.

In same pan as pork was cooked in, cook an onion, and add 1/2t ginger, lemongrass, cinammon, black pepper, 1T dried basil, 1t granulated garlic, + salt TT. Add only the thickest part of 6 bok choy heads. Add red curry, .25c fish sauce, 2.5c water, .5t celery salt, stir and simmer. Add drained and dried potatoes and carrots. Combine. Add tops of bok choy and wilt. Add can of coconut milk and simmer 5+ minutes.

100th Paleo Post

I made this a week ago and can hardly remember what goes into it, but here is my best guess:

Black Buck with Asparagus and Zucchini

Take 1.5p of ground black buck meat and saute with onions and garlic in olive oil (there is virtually no fat in this meat, so you need to start sauteing the onions and garlic in olive oil before you add the meat) Add 3-4 cut up zucchini, saute for a little, and then add 1.5 bunches of asparagus. Once cooked, cover in left over Arrabiatta sauce. Simmer and Serve.

Addendum: I don't personally know where this meat came from, it is part of what I thought was a bag of venison, but it was labeled "Black Buck". According to the Internet, Black Buck is an antelope species from Africa, so good luck recreating this gem.

Best Ham Ever

This ham was awesome, too bad it was completely dominated by The One Dish.

Super simple: take 10p unglazed, un-spiral cut ham, cover in huges amounts of black pepper, granulated garlic, paprika, and cayenne pepper. Sprinkle lightly with salt (Ham is pretty salty so go easy on it. Nothing ruins ham like too much salt). Rotisserie for two hours (I just used a noun as an action item, fuck you verbs!)

One Dish to Rule Them All

Precious

I was moved up a few weeks in the old "Bring a bag full of shitty bagels and cakes to work Friday" earlier this week as a sort of "End of the year, its all on you and your alleged awesome food, so don't fuck up the most relaxed time you will have all year with some crappy Cheese Biscuits & Syrup breakfast."

I had a ham in my fridge, so I agreed to take up the challenge now and not pass the buck until the 8th of January. It may have been the best professional decision I have ever made: this dish made waves in the Sloan space/time continuum. I truly have never seen such a reaction to anything I have ever done. I had wealthy, world-travelling people in their late 60s telling me it was the best dish they had ever had. And they are supposedly extremely picky people.

This is an "Almost Paleo" only because it has dairy (albeit an absolute ton of it).

The One Dish

This is an egg casserole, not a quiche or frittata. The process is a three stage progression of prep-and-cool, combine-and-chill, and then heat-and eat.

Prep-and-Cool
Each item here takes its own special method of preparation because you want the flavors to not combine before baking into the eggs.

Chorizo Spiced Bacon
My recipe calls for two pounds of this, so I had to make them in two stages of one pound at a time. Take bacon and cut into 1" squares, cook slowly adding chorizo seasoning (I just got it from a Tienda Mexicana, but you can make you own) and freshly ground black pepper. Once crisp, drain off fat on paper towels and let cool to room temperature.

Wilted Spinach
Boil about 2-3q of water. Take two heads of spinach and cut off stems and rinse very thoroughly of all dirt. Once the water is boiling, remove from heat and place spinach in water and cover with lid for two minutes exactly. Drain and rinse with cold water to stop cooking. Let cool to room temperature and chop coarsely and reserve.

Sauteed Baby Bellas
Take about 20 oz of baby bella mushrooms and quarter them, this will leave you with big enough, obvious enough, pieces for those insane co-workers to pick out should they choose. Anyway, saute in olive oil until tender, drain and cool.

Combine and Chill
Make sure you get a huge bowl for this, these quantities are huge. Take 24 eggs and beat until very well combined. I have actually been considering posting on how important beating eggs truly is, I see what is happening out there in Omletland and it makes me sad that people don't take the time to beat the shit out of their eggs. Anyway, beat the shit out of them. Then add 4 cups of full fat milk. Mix.

Add a combination of 2 cups of almond meal and 4t baking powder slowly to the eggs (not ridiculously slow though, they combine pretty easily). Take 2 pounds of Monterrey Jack and 1 pound of mild cheddar and chop into pieces as close to shredded size as possible (I don't have a cheese grater, but this is probably what I would do even if I had one). Mix slowly into eggs. Add 24 oz of full fat cottage cheese, combine.

Now, take one bunch of leeks and slice in half, and then very very finely slice the white parts. I used my Farmer Fresh leeks and they were smaller than what you get at GloboStores (aka super markets), there were three in my bunch, but 2 standard ones would be equivalent. Add to mix. Very finely slice five Thai chilies and combine. Add mushrooms, combine, spinach, combine, and then finally, the bacon, in that order. Season with three huge pinches of salt and lots of black pepper.

Butter some pans (I needed three, a 13x9, a 12x12, and a 7x5) and fill with mixture. Chill in fridge for 3+ hours/ over night.

Heat and Eat
Bring to room temperature. Cover in paprika. Bake on 350F, uncovered, until done. I did mine all at the same time, I was expecting it to take 45m-1h, but it ended up taking 1.5h with the little dish finishing first.

Drive it to work and sit back and wait for a promotion. But seriously, I was so far behind with the additional cooking time needed that I couldn't even finish this dish.

The Return of the One Dish
Had I more time, once the dish had "set" I would have topped the casserole with slices of goat's cheese, and blistered grape tomatoes and then broiled it briefly.

It took me more than 1.25h to just think about how to do this dish, and yes mom, this was inspired by that silly casserole we make on Christmas with the Del Norte canned chilies.

Venison Sausage and Peppers

This is an all time favorite for me, right away. One bite of this and holy shit, I was hooked. This is obviously inspired by the classic Italian dish normally served with pasta. I just didn't put any pasta with this!

Step 1: Make arrabiata sauce: tons of olive oil, coat the bottom of a sauce pan with it. Tons of minced garlic, ten cloves at least, and a huge pinch of crushed red peppers, salt and pepper. A can of tomato sauce and a can of diced tomatoes, a little simmering ... and tada! Easiest, best Italian style sauce ever.

Look at all that oil (the dark red)

Step 2: Get your peppers going. Unlike most sausage and pepper dishes (made with super fatty cow or pork sausage) you have to cook your shit seperatly. Normally, you would cook your sausages so that the fat would collect in the pan and then you could use that to cook your onions and peppers. Not so fast with deer sausage though. There is no useful cooking fat in these sausages so you have to cook you onions and peppers in olive oil seperately. Slice 2 brown onions and four bell peppers into strips (the ratio of 1:2 is critial for fajitas as well), and saute in olive oil with 3 cloves of minced garlic, and a thinly sliced jalapeno pepper (with seeds).

Meanwhile, cook 6 links of venison sausage in another pan 5-7 minutes per side.

Once onions and peppers are limp and partially carmelized, slice and combone the sausage. Mix and simmer breifly. Place on plate and cover in Step 1 sauce.

Almost heaven

Step 3: Crush.

Mama mia

Veggies with Bison

So, since I found some bison, I figured I should cook it and eat it. Plus, since I need to eat more veggies, well, here you go:

Take bison and saute with garlic, onion, salt, pepper, and olive oil. Saute until done talking on the phone. Add spinach (I've done this with red cabbage + ground ginger as well). Eat until you realize your roomate wants some too. Add supplemental asparagus, cook until tender, eat again.

Post WOD Fuel

So, in conjunction with my plan to lift more heavy things in an attempt to get stronger, people have been telling me to dial in my post work out food. I don't really know what I am doing with this, but the basics go like this in my mind:

• Total carbohydrate intake depends on your level of destruction accrued during the Feet of Strength (FOS), the more the destruction, the more you need.
• Given a level of lean-ness, you will be able to handle more carbs if lean, less if not-so-lean.
• Take your post FOS fuel ASAP
• Make it a "Fast digesting" carb source: sweet potatoes, bananas, milk (according to R. Wolf), and even Gatorade if desperate
• Stick to strick Paleo when ever possible
• Finish with post FOS protien with an hour, hopefully a protien source with parents

I don't know the exact amount I should be taking post FOS, but I'm dialing in around 60-80g. I made about 5 sweet potatoes + 3 persimmons + a little water, with cinammon and cloves, and a little coconut cream. Each serving is 350ish grams, or about 60g+ of carbs.

I'm planning on eating these post FOS.

Gigantic Piece of Beef a la Mitch

At one of the CFV BBQs my homeboy Mitch was pouring coconut milk all over his world famous tri-tips. I had never seen anything like this, nor had I ever considered anything like this, but his tips are great, and more importantly, they are universally loved. This was my first attempt at this chapter in the book of food.

Almost done, covered for the last time with coconut cream

Finished product

Take a gigantic piece of lean beef, coat in pepper, lots of red pepper, and salt. Cook, flipping like Mitch (i.e. when outside is semi-charred, flipping and basting, re-flipping and re-basting as required), until cooked through. On my gas grill (which is a pathetic substitute for an oak log Santa Maria BBQ), I cooked closed lid for 12minutes + Flip/Baste+ 12m +5+5 then open lid for 5+5. I let it rest for ten minutes and then crushed it.

It wasn't as good as Mitch's, but I learned a lot. Next time...

The Paleo Goes Gourmet

First Course: Romaine salad with Farmer Fresh yellow and orange tomatoes, served with my favorite sesame dressing. Paired with cheap champange.


Main Course: New York steak, cooked to order (by the birthday house guest who likes them ruined,... I mean, well done), blanched and sauted Farmer Fresh carrots and green beans, mashed potatoes and onions. Paired with cheap red wine (Charles Shaw!!).

Dessert: Almost Paleo dessert with Breyer's Brand ice cream, both chocolate and vanilla, topped with fresh raspberries and almonds.

Except for the dessert, this was high level paleo service.

Greens: Mustard and Kale

I have been trying to eat more greens, and this was a great showing. Take four strips of thinly sliced bacon and dice. Saute with three minced garlic cloves, ground ginger, salt, pepper, and red pepper. Cook until crispy. Add two heads of cut up greens: a head of kale and a head of mustard greens. Saute until semi wilted, still crunchy through some leaves and for sure crunchy in the stalks.
This worked very well with the beef. It takes some serious work to eat all those greens too.

Grilled Beef Tip

I may have mentioned recently that I kinda suck at cooking steaks. These pieces of beef turned out perfectly and they were all of different thicknesses, cooked on the same grill, and the same time, though flipped and taken off according to one rule: flip and remove at first blood.

To me this means that as soon as you see blood coming out from the top side, you flip the piece over. Then, as soon as you see the blood coming out the previously cooked side, you pull it. Let it rest for a little and then crush. I like my beef super rare, this was medium rare tending towards rare.

The recipe for this was just salt, pepper, sage and crushed red pepper. Delicious.

Cutie Spinach Salad

Another simple gourmet dish: take a bunch of spinach, cover with cutie clementines and some freshly cut onions. Coat with Lemon Dill Vinegrette (previously posted), and then season to taste. A word of advice: use as many clementines as you can, it makes it that much better.

Almond Crusted Snapper

This is super easy: beat an egg. Cover fresh, wild caught, red snapper fillets (how did I find this at Ralph's?) in salt and pepper. Dip into beaten egg and dredge in almond meal until coated. Cook in oiled pan for about 5 minutes per side. It's that simple, and man is it delicious.

Crack

These super ripe persimmons are like crack: you're hooked once you try it. I'm getting them ready to eat at the farmer's market downtown. And, they are cheap.

Meatball Soup

So I took those Bison Meatballs and made a soup. Take diced onions, minced garlic, and saute in oil. Add par-cooked potatoes, leeks and white carrots, and saute. Then, add a can of diced tomatoes, and a can of tomato sauce. Bring to simmer and add meatballs. Simmer for a little while to allow meatballs to absorb sauce. Add enough "Paleo Broth" to cover meatballs and thin soup out.

I didn't even eat this dish fresh! When you need supplemental meals, canning with these huge jars makes it easy: here is a gallon of soup ready for quick lunches or dinners in a pinch.

Bison Meatballs

These are great for viturally anything you want to make: spaghetti, sandwhiches, or while staying Paleo, used in soups and stews (as I used them), or finally you can eat them by themselves.

Mix together a pound of ground bison, 80g almond flour, six cups (fresh) of cut up spinach (wilted and drained), 3/2t ground sage, 1t cayenne pepper, 1t pepper, 1/2t salt. Form into golf ball sized balls (mine made about 21). Bake at 350F for 15 minutes.

These are really good eating too.

Lemon Dill Vinagrette

Here is a simple little dressing:

• 2T Rice Vineager
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1/2t ground ginger
• 1t dried dill
• 2t dried onion
• 1/4c canloa oil
• 1/4c olive oil
• 1t dijon mustard
• Salt and pepper to taste

Mix and enjoy.

Oregano Steak, or Oregon State Meat

This is easy. Heat cast iron (or Civil War era) pan with chili oil in it slowly till added crushed red pepper flakes crackle. Rub down T-bone steak with salt, pepper and green/gold dried oregano. Throw into pan for 5m per side for rare-semi-rare. If you see blood coming out of the cooked side, stop! The cast iron pan cooks this better than anything else I have tried. I'm not really that good at cooking top level steaks for some reason, and that really isn't okay with me. Solution: practice steak.

Practice

As Rx'd looks like this:

Post Rx'd, it was excellent:

Beet Greens and Bacon

Okay, back to posting a little more frequently...

This was really good and really easy. Saute, I can't believe I'm going to write this, three strips of cut up bacon in 1t of chili oil. That's right: cook your bacon in oil. Add a quarter of a diced red onion and saute for a couple minutes until bacon is cooked but not near crisp. Add 160g of cut up green beans and cook for 5-10 m. Add 400g of chopped up beet greens and wilt (this will only take 3 minutes). Season with salt and pepper.

Why all the grams? I bought a scale.

My Farmers Market Run

Last weekend I went to the farmers market determined to get back to eating way more veggies than I have been when trying to eat way more calories (I was eating tons more meat, avocados, and nuts and just couldn't eat all the veggies because I wasn't hungry and had no room left in my stomach). Anyway, I only had $16 cash so that was my budget and my goal was quality first, volume second, and diversity third. This is half the budget of my local delivery box, so I had to circle the market probably 5 times to determine my best course of action and here is what you can get:

• 540g Kale - $1.25
• 866g Romaine lettuce - $1.25
• 726g Green beans - $2.00
• 508g Leeks - $1.50
• 462g Leaf lettuce - $1.25
• 954g Beets (with greens) - $1.25
• 917g Guava - $2.25
• 1,438g Persimmons (super ripe, the 'Crack' fruit) - $4.00
• 779g White carrots - $1.25

This was 16 pounds of food for $16. This was a very good deal, but it took 1.15 hours to figure it out: not a very good use of time (although I like shopping for food). It would be tough to accomplish this value if I hadn't had the experience of living as a super poor person in Italy forced to subside on farmers market's cheapest foods. When I was out there in Milano I would walk the markets looking for the best deals, striving for $0.50 worth of whatever I could use. I could have easily spent $28+ on this food.

With all this being said, here are the reasons why Farmer Fresh to you is a better idea:

• Diversity: I normally get the same amount of veggies, but never two heads of lettuce, plus very similar greens of kale and beets. I bought all similar types of these veggies because the vendor was selling them for such a cheap price. If you lack diversity, you lack options, you can become bored easily and soon to fall off Paleo.
  
• Compliments: FFTY gives you things like herbs, citrus, garlic or ginger, and though those seem like small considerations, they really are not. If your herb is basil the menu options will take you from China to Italy. Cilantro? China to Mexico. Thyme, rosemary, chives, etc.? France to Germany to America North and South. How do you cook kale with no herbs? Its a big deal.
  
• Value: My time isn't worth this effort. Granted, this was a tough challenge and maybe I could have pulled off a FFTY box with practice, or in 30 minutes with $32 bucks but what would that mean? Equal physical monetary exchange, equal volume, diversity, and quality, minus a half hour plus travel time. You can't stack these cards to be equal or greater value than FFTY.
  
• Randomness: gone. There is no randomness here. Though seemingly random, this is truly controlled chaos with the appearance of randomness. Everything is known. Why? I can't make cost/value based decisions with out knowing the value of the thing that I am buying. For example, I could have bought a handful of white sapote, which I only knew what they were because of FFTY, but I had no idea of the value.
  Off the top of your head: how much are 9 golf ball sized white sapote worth (maybe 3/2 pounds)? I had $2.25 with me at the time. They wanted $1.75 per pound. I bought over two pounds of guava for my money because I knew that they would be $6 at Ralph's. That was not a random decision.

There was a lot of shit there, and way more choices than I get offered in my FFTY boxes, but none of them were memorable enough for me to, well..., remember. I do remember seeing persimmons on sale for $3+/p, green beans for $2.5/p, sweet potatoes for $2/p, heirloom toma....