Tag Archives: Dinner

My 10 basic building blocks of paleo eating

I love experimenting with new recipes & finding new ways to whip up delicious feasts. That said though, there are a few basic meals that I always come back to, most of which revolve around the building blocks in this list.

Combine them with each other, with other recipes you find or use these as the basis to create your own adventure. Nail this list of recipes, and the cooking world’s your oyster (or other shellfish of choice).

10 paleo building blocks

 

1. Cauliflower rice

You need a food processor or blender to make this one worth your while but it’s worth the purchase to have this alone in your arsenal. All you need to do is break a raw cauli into florets, whizz til ricey-looking & then toss into a hot frypan with your choice of flavours & cover for a few minutes until slightly softened. Picture B is a cauliflower fried rice I made with sliced chicken thighs, sliced omelette & assorted fridge-cleanout vegetables. Try it plain with salt & pepper & a squeeze of lemon to accompany fish, or experiment with sliced almonds & turmeric to replace a Moroccan-inspired couscous.

2. Zucchini noodles

Use either a standard veggie peeler or a julienne peeler (this is what I use) shred zucchinis into noodles. Let them dry out for 10-20 minutes or so & then throw them in a hot pan with some coconut oil & a sprinkle of powdered garlic (Picture C). Once you’ve got that down, indulge in these Comfort Noodles.

3. Garbage stir-fry

We covered this one in the breakfast round up but it’s a format you can whip out any old time. Clean out the fridge, slice everything evenly, stir fry in some coconut oil & call it a meal. Make sure there’s a serve of protein involved & if you’re throwing in any leftovers, make sure this is their final outing – only reheat food once.

4. Chicken thighs

While I don’t mind a tin of (sustainably caught) tuna on my lunchtime salads, I do love a good chicken thigh (Picture D). I cook up a batch in the oven on the weekend with S&P, a sprinkle of paprika & garlic and a drizzle of oil. Let them roast for 20 minutes or so at 220°C, until they’re crispy around the edges & cooked through.

5. Boiled eggs

I keep a stash of boiled eggs in the fridge at all times. Throw them in salads, have them as an emergency breakfast or scoff them with raw veggie sticks for afternoon tea. For a refresher in making perfect ones, check out this article.

6. Roasted veg

Cold salads are fine in the summer but they aren’t as appealing come blustery winter days. When you’ve got a tray of chicken thighs in the oven, prep a tray of veg to go in as well – brussels sprouts, fennel, zucchini, eggplant & tomatoes, not to mention starchier options like pumpkin & sweet potato, all get their delicious on in this scenario.

7. Mayonnaise

Queen of the condiments in my opinion, the humble mayonnaise can have some offensive ingredients when bought off the long-life supermarket shelf. An egg, some olive oil, a squeeze of lemon & your choice of seasonings are all you need to whip your own in less than a minute. Legit.

8. Meatballs

Whether you make balls, bangers or burgers, mince-y concoctions are cheap, tasty & portable. Like boiled eggs, they’re totally versatile & easy to batch cook. Melissa Joulwan has an epic collection in her book Well Fed 2 & on her website.

9. A slow-cooked bulk meat fest

Another one for the winter days, cooking up a big pot of melt-in-your-mouth meat is a beautiful way to get your house smelling amazing & your co-workers jealous of your leftover lunches for days. Pulled pork is always a favourite and don’t forget about cheaper cuts – they’re perfect for the slowcooker.

10. Guacamole

Like mayonnaise, guacamole is a top condiment to dollop on salads to up your healthy fat quota & shines as a dip with veggie sticks.

Week of eats: 16 Feb 2014

Every Sunday, I plan out & shop for the majority of our meals for the week ahead. Here’s the best-of last week.

To kick things off on this rainy Sunday evening, as promised here’s the Creamy Chicken & Tomato Pasta from Let’s Eat Paleo by The Merrymaker Sisters. I added in some zucchini & served it with sweet potato noodles & it was super tasty. Quick & easy to put together, this dish has already made the menu again for this week.

Creamy Chicken & Tomato Pasta

The recipe was for four people so we both enjoyed leftovers for lunch the next day. A few cherry tomatoes, a handful of baby spinach & a sprinkle of some leftover pomegranate seeds & it was the second best lunch I had all week.

Leftover Creamy Chicken & Salad

While I put together the Creamy Chicken & Tomato Pasta dish, I let a pot of Chocolate Chili simmer ready for a speedy heat & eat dinner the next night. A day in the fridge to sit and flavour-mingle is the key to getting the most deliciousness out of a dish like this I reckon! This recipe is available online but I totally recommend Well Fed 1, the cookbook this is also in. (And FYI, the leftovers of this one took out favourite lunch of the week)

Chocolate Chili

Breakfast seems to be the biggest gripe new-to-paleo people post about online: “How do I do breakfast without Pop-Tarts, Coco-Pops & Wonderbread?” Behold the whatever-is-in-the-fridge scramble: sliced up leftover tomato-y meatballs, a handful of kale & 2 eggs scrambled with a plop of coconut milk. I’d have that over some sugar-laden cereal any day!

Kale & Meatball Scramble

One of the best cookbooks of last year would have to be Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi. We’ve made a lot of awesome dishes out of it & I was surprised we hadn’t given this particular recipe a spin yet. Braised Eggs with Lamb, Tahini & Sumac was an absolute ripper of a dish which Michael could not get enough of. Toasted pine nuts & pistachios tangled with spiced-up mince & roasted tomatoes, topped with eggs: Sold.

Braised eggs with lamb

Finally, although Valentine’s Day is a bit of a non-event in this household, I couldn’t resist making a chocolatey extravaganza for dessert on Friday night. This Coconut & Chocolate Tart was simple to put together & when topped with some figs & crushed macadamias, went down a charm with my Valentine. (Pro tip: drizzle coconut butter on top… Yeahhhh)

Coconut & Chocolate tart

Hope you’ve got some delicious things planned for dinner at your place this week!

Pan-Roasted Chicken With Lemon-Garlic Green Beans

Pan-roasted Chicken & Lemon Garlic Vegetables

While I love strong flavours, saucy dishes and recipes with 37 different ingredients, sometimes a one-pan wonder of chicken and potatoes is just what the evening needs. Especially after a vicious vertical run. Well, it could’ve been more vicious in length (3.9km, not too shabby!) but it made up for it in verticality? climb – check out that terrain map!

Hill run

Screenshot from MapMyRun iPhone app

After following a Pinterest link to a recipe that didn’t sound as delicious as it’s picture and then hopefully clicking on to another pretty picture, I found this recipe  for Pan-Roasted Chicken with Lemon-Garlic Green Beans.

lemons

The housemate offered up his chicken breasts for the greater good and we picked up some good-lookin’ green beans, red spuds & lemons from the supermarket.

beans

We missed out on making our usual trek to the local farmer’s markets on the weekend as we were in downtown Lithgow  for Team Frog‘s go-kart race – a race which they won, might I proudly add! We also befriended a whole herd of goats and a pony.

Lithgow

The sights of Lithgow: The goat, the horse & the grass

If you’re looking for a bang-it-in-the-oven one-pan-wonder, this chicken dinner is your winner. While I followed the recipe pretty much to the letter, you could quite easily mix it up depending on what is floating around in the crisper. We likened it to the slightly healthier version of Nigella’s Spanish Chicken which The Lad & I simply adore & most definitely should make again soon.

beans & potatoes

Pan-Roasted Chicken with Lemon-Garlic Green Beans

Slightly Adapted from Real Simple

Serves 3-4

Ingredients

  • ~6 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 lemons, 1 thinly sliced, 1 juiced
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • generous sprinkling of salt & pepper
  • 3-4 good handfuls of green beans
  • ~8 small red potatoes, quartered (I used slightly bigger spuds & so only used about 4 and just cut them into small wedges)
  • ~700g chicken breast – we had two very large skinless, boneless breasts so I just sliced those up into tenders

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 230 degrees Celsius. Coat a large baking dish with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil & arrange the lemon slices in a single layer in the bottom.
  2. In a large bowl, combine the remaining oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and pepper; add the green beans and toss to coat. Using a slotted spoon or tongs, remove the green beans and arrange them on top of the lemon slices. Add the potatoes to the same olive-oil mixture and toss to coat. Using a slotted spoon or tongs, arrange the potatoes along the inside edge of the dish or skillet on top of the green beans. Place the chicken in the same bowl with the olive-oil mixture and coat thoroughly.
  3. Once coated, place the chicken on top of the beans & pour any of the remaining olive oil mixture over the chicken.
  4. Roast for 40 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through & the potatoes have softened in the centre & browned slightly on the edges.

Pan-roasted Chicken & Lemon-Garlic Green Beans

This is an easy week night dinner that takes minimal preparation & delivers low-key deliciousness for big & small eaters alike. It’s going to take a pretty fussy eater to decline this one!

Chicken, Fennel & Olive Tagine

Chicken Fennel & Olive Tagine

The Lad had been wanting to cook something with fennel bulbs for ages & when I came across this recipe on Bon Appetit Magazine’s website, we were both keen to give it a whirl.

Our tagine is tucked away in the designated kitchen appliance corner of the storage room until we move to our new still-being-built unit. (Which hopefully won’t be too much longer if the sunshine can keep on keeping on! It’s lookin’ good!) So it kind of isn’t a Chicken, Fennel & Olive Tagine, more just a Chicken, Fennel & Olive Stew, but it was downright delicious regardless.

Fennel browning

I hadn’t cooked with fresh fennel before, only the dried herby stuff, and it was far more subtle in flavour than I expected.

The only alterations we made to the recipe as it is here, were to use dried chilli flakes rather than cayenne pepper (again due to the cayenne being boxed away for a near-future kitchen) and a little less chicken (4 thighs rather than 6).

Chicken Fennel & Olive Tagine - stewing

We also went a little over on the olives… We love our olives! (Especially the marinated olives at East End Enoteca where we had the most amazing meal I’ve ever had in the Hunter. A must go!)

Coriander

This post’s gratuitous photo of the greens

Dished up with brown rice and an extra coriander sprinkle, this was a quick cooking, delicious way of trying out fennel cooking for the first time. I think this recipe will definitely be making some reappearances in both our temporary and near-future kitchens.

Chicken Fennel & Olive Tagine

Cauliflower Pizza Base

Cauliflower Pizza Base 1

Oooohh pizzaaa! While my mouth thinks there is nothing better than the cheesey, often meaty, delicious shamble that makes up a pizza, unfortunately my belly strongly disagrees. The ol’ stomach doesn’t seem to munch down wheaty goodness quite like it used to & within an hour or two of eating such carby delights, the digestive complaints start, mostly by way of bloat, loud rumbles & swishy-wishyness.

So when I saw this Cauliflower Pizza Base doing the rounds on Pinterest, I thought it might be a tummy-friendly go-er. The Lad thought it sounded terrible. In his opinion, there was no way that cauliflower could ever replace flour & yeast in a pizza base without tasting a whole lot like, well, cauliflower. I do enjoy the occasional floret of cauliflower when it is dished up to me but, I had similar doubts to The Lad – could mushed cauliflower make a pizza base?

Cauliflower Pizza Base 2

The answer, my friends, is a resounding, man-approved YES! And we’ve made it twice since my first foray (I waited til I was cooking & dining alone for the first effort but, after seeing my fridged leftovers, he happily lapped up a slice)

Cauliflower Pizza Base 3

I followed this recipe pretty much to the letter but I only grated (no food processors here!) & nuked (2.5 mins was plenty) the one required cup of cauliflower per base. Also, since the first run, I’ve tried baking the base  both with a little oil & without. With the oil was a little greasy – like a take away pizza – & without the oil was fine & definitely not too dry. I’d recommend going without – the base stays moist enough & the cheese makes it all go nice & golden anyway.

Cauliflower Pizza Base Raw

The base: pre-bake

For the topping, I used Iowa Girl’s Spicy Sausage & Sundried Tomato Goat Cheese Pizza as my inspiration. I used the world’s best pizza topping – chorizo, naturally – diced as the sausage.

Cauliflower Pizza Base Topping

Meats, cheeses & greens – oh my!

It was deeeelicious. This is definitely worth trying out regardless of whether or not your belly can handle wheat! It’s a great way of sneaking extra vegies into your meals and it’s a helluva lot easier & speedier than waiting for standard from-scratch dough to rise. The whole pizza can go from fridge to plate in half-an-hour: while the base has its initial bake, get cookin’ on your toppings & it’s seriously ready in no time at all.

Cauliflower Pizza Base 5

Sesame Orange Chicken

Chinese food is a funny thing. The food I thought of as “Chinese” when I was growing up included spring rolls, beef in black bean sauce and anything else in the bain marie at the local bowling club’s all-you-can-eat.

Scorpions… Crunchy.

When I was in China though, the food was a whole other level of delicious & there wasn’t a soggy dim sim in sight. Peking duck, garlicky choy and every sauced up animal part you could imagine was on offer. While scorpion, testicles & starfish weren’t the most delicious options, they certainly opened up a new world of what Chinese food really has to offer.

Testicles. Yep, testicles.

The discovery of Shanghai cuisine was another highlight – hello to one of my favourite restaurants, New Shanghai. Once you go Xiao Long Bao, you won’t go back.

So given this excitement for what lies beyond the bain marie, it’s taken me a long time to come back for Westernised Chinese food. It’s actually taken me pretty much until this recipe – Sesame Orange Chicken – to attempt to cook it, let alone eat it.

I never deep fry at home (for a combination of health, taste & excessive oil usage reasons) so I ditched the batter end of this recipe & just opted for a good cornflour dredge instead.

Other than that and the addition of some greens though, our stab at Sesame Orange Chicken went pretty much to the letter.

The first time we made it (with lightly steamed beans for the greens), the sauce gathered up so quickly that what should’ve been sticky orange deliciousness turned into a bit of a glug-fest (albeit a very flavoursome one!)

Round One: Glug fest

With the Lad keen to give it another chance, Sesame Orange Chicken made this week’s menu in the hope we could do the recipe justice. This time, instead of the 2 tablespoons of cornflour in the sauce mix, we opted for 2 teaspoons worth. And we added in extra orange zest this round – if you’re going to be a bear, you may as well be a grizzly! This. Was. A. Winner. (A winner winner chicken dinner, if you will!)

Yummmm

The sauce was a ladle-able puddle of sweet yet tangy syrupy goodness. For greens, we went for some almost-faded broccoli (which chirped up nicely in some icy water) and the whole deal was dished out on a bed of white rice.

Sesame Orange Chicken, adapted from Blogchef.net

Chicken
2 chicken breasts sliced into bite-sized chunks & seasoned with salt & pepper
enough cornflour to fairly decently coat the chicken pieces
peanut oil for shallow pan frying
steamed greens

Sauce
¼ cup tomato sauce
¼ cup honey
2 teaspoons sugar
2 tablespoons white vinegar
½ cup water
2 teaspoons cornflour
1 teaspoon sesame oil
the juice of ½ orange
zest of one orange
sprinkle of garlic powder
sesame seeds

Step 1: Dredge chicken in cornflour & pan fry. Remove from pan when browned & cooked through.
Step 2: In a bowl whisk together sauce ingredients and pour into the wok to cook until thickened and bubbly.
Step 3: Add chicken & steamed greens back to the pan & heat together until everything is coated in syrupy sauce.
Step 4: Load up your bowl and say it with me “Oooooh yeahhh”.

My not so secret ingredient

After becoming a little infatuated with the Kung Pao Chicken recipe I found on Iowa Girl Eats (one of my most favey-faves) I decided tonight to mix it up a bit and make what I’ll call “Kind Of Kung Pao Chicken”. Which brings me to my not so secret ingredient…

…Cornflour! It completely changes chicken in stirfry/Asian-inspired dishes & adds a beautiful coating which, when combined with a good salt & pepper sprinkle & then lightly fried off in a combination of sesame & peanut oil, is bloody delicious!

So for this evening’s Not Quite Kung Pao, we did the cornflour/s&p dredge, followed by a light browning in the pan & a rest on a plate when done.

While this is happening, we got some quinoa & water in a saucepan along with the juice of half a lemon, a good sprinkle of dried red chilli flakes & a sprinkle of fennel seeds. For two super-hungry post-gym bellies, we shared 2/3 cup of dry quinoa which cooked up with 3 x 2/3 cups of water. Let that boil up & get all fluffy & delicious – just like rice but with plenty more nutritious goodness!

20120112-224534.jpg

Back to the oily, chickeny pan remnants, add a chopped red chilli & couple of garlic cloves. Sauté until fragrantly fabulous & then add in whatever veg you’ve got on hand. We opted for half a head of broccoli, a zucchini & a couple of handfuls of chopped beans. Once you’ve got the veg all in, throw the chicken back in and give it all a stir.

To that, get saucy with a few tablespoons of a) Chinese rice wine vinegar- about 4tbls b) soy sauce- about 5tbls and c) oyster sauce- a good little glug to the middle of the pan. We also threw in a solid handful of fresh coriander for good measure. Stir it all around until everything is combined, the chicken is a little saucy & the veggies have softened a little, or until it looks a bit like this…

20120112-224950.jpg

Mmmm!! Once it’s all cooked, get it on the plate & get eating! Deeeelicious!