Recipes

                                                        PALEO STARTER RECIPES 

VINAIGRETTE

There are so many kinds of vinaigrette, but all vinaigrette begins with the same foundation.

3 parts fat - for paleo purposes oil should be olive or coconut
1 part vinegar/citrus - apple cider, lemon juice, lime juice, orange juice (fresh squeezed only)
add ins to taste

If you are making enough for one salad, choose a spoon to measure three spoonfuls of oil and then use the same spoon to measure your vinegar or citrus.  Adjust to your taste and then choose add ins from the list below or make up your own.  Make sure to always use salt and pepper regardless of your add ins.

Add ins are only limited by your imagination.  Here are some of the things I've used:

• Dijon Mustard
• Mashed Avocado (just enough to give the vinaigrette some thickness)
• Roasted Tomatoes
• Herbs de Provence
• Cumin & Oregano (Cuban/Mexican flavor)
• Salt & Pepper (a must)
• Fresh Pressed Garlic

Store bought salad dressings will never be the same after you try your hand at crafting your very own yummy vinaigrette.  Once you find one or two that you like, it is easy to make them in larger quantities and keep them in Ball or Kerr jars, like your grandmother used to can tomatoes and jams.


BREAKFAST HASH WITH OVER EASY EGGS
Mornings are hard on Paleo, if you aren't used to getting up and cooking eggs for breakfast.  Here is a quick morning hash you can make ahead, warm in the microwave and add a over easy egg or two in the morning.

1. Brown an entire roll of sausage of your choice drain excess pour into bowl.
2. In the same pan saute a large onion 
3. Add a small clove of garlic with onion when it's almost cooked
4. When onion is almost brown, add back the sausage
5. Toss in all your add ins
6. Once everything is combined well and warm, portion onto a plate
7. Fry an egg over easy on med low in olive oil and place on top of plated hash.

Add ins:

• Handful of rough chopped spinach
• Fresh or roasted tomatoes
• Cooked chunked sweet potatoes
• Mushrooms
• Leftover veggies from last night

Once you top the hash with an over easy egg and break the yoke, the yoke will seep down into the hash and have almost a melted cheese effect.  We use hot sauce and spicy sausage at my house.



CROCKPOT PORK

1. Take a 4-5lb pork butt and cut it against the grain into 2-3 inch steaks.  
2. Rub each piece thoroughly with a spice rub of your choice.  You can go lots of directions with you spice rub.  I like Mexican Carnita style with cumin and garlic, but you could choose any dried spice profile you like and rub away. Using your imagination, with spice here is lots of fun, use what you like and be willing to take risks.
3. Sear the pork steaks in a skillet with coconut oil.  
4. Place the seared pork in a large crockpot with tomato paste (2 tblspns), 2 cups of organic chicken broth and the juice of a couple of limes. Make sure the meat is 3/4 covered with liquid.
5. Turn crockpot on high for a couple of hours and then reduce it to med or low and let it go all day or overnight.  Once I take the meat out of the cooking liquid, I like to shred it.  You'll have tender pork you can use all week in various recipes.

 Note:  Pork can be fatty.  Make sure you drain all the excess grease once your pork is cooked and before you serve it.  I like to take the drained cooking juices and reduce them in a saucepan on the stove for a nice table sauce that can be spooned on the pork.


PICO (and Guacamole) 

I am sharing the family pico recipe.  I am almost ashamed that it is so easy.  I get lots of praise for making this, hopefully you will too.

8 Roma tomatoes
2 medium onions
1 bunch of cliantro (leaves washed well and chopped)
2 jalepenos (ribs & seeds removed if desired) chopped finely
Juice of 2 limes
salt

That's it.  The secret really is to chop the onions and tomatoes roughly the same size and make sure you've used an adequate amount of salt.  You can also substitute mangoes, peaches and various other fleshy fruits in place of the tomatoes for a twist.  This pico can bring flavor to lots of meats and veggies that you may cook.  You can also add a few spoonfuls of pico to a mashed avocado, which gives you instant and yummy guacamole.  Fruit pico is great on fish.  This recipe is so very versatile.


Note regarding jalapenos:  I never know how hot a jalapeno will be.  Sometimes I can add 4 and it's mild and sometimes one is enough.  You'll need to taste as you go to see what level of hotness you are dealing with and just because the first pepper in the batch was medium heat, don't think the next one is the same.  Taste, taste, taste.



ROASTED VEGGIES

My lovely mother boiled every vegetable we ever ate.  Sometimes boiled squash and onions is good, but I found in my Paleo journey that all vegetable are amazingly yummy when roasted.  To roast a veggie:

1. cut them up
2. place them in a large ziplock bag
3. toss them in the bag with a few tablespoons of olive oil (less if your bag of veggies isn't full))
4. pour them out on a nonstick or sprayed cookie sheet
5. sprinkle them with dried spices, salt (I use coarse salt) and pepper
6. bake them at 350 until there are as done as you like them 

There are several tricks to roasting:

1. Chop veggies close to the same size, medium to small is best.
2. Don't crowd the cookie sheet.  Veggies need room to roast, if you crowd them, they will steam instead of roast.
3. Use spices liberally.  I like thyme a lot, but there are lots of spices to choose from.
4. Salt your veggies before roasting too.  This will bring out good flavor.  I use kosher salt when roasting, but any salt is fine.
5. Expect veggies to shrink when roasting.  I make two full cookie sheets of a vegetable for my family of four, but the added flavor is well worth the roasting process.

What can you roast . . . . broccoli, Brussel sprouts(toss with cooked bacon when they are done....yum), butternut squash, yellow squash, zucchini, asparagus, eggplant, tomatoes (remove seeds prior to roasting) ... your imagination is your only limitation.


LEMON/LIME OREGANO STIR-FRIED CHICKEN

Take a few pounds of cubed chicken and stir fry it in a bit of coconut or olive oil.  It is important that the chicken is seasoned with salt and pepper and that the pan is pretty hot, before you add the chicken.  I have learned the most important part of stir frying is not crowding the pan.  If you put too much in the frying pan, your chicken will steam, because there isn't enough room for the chicken to make contact with the pan for browning.  Sometimes, I even stir fry my chicken in batches to make sure I have enough space for each cube to brown a bit.  At a about the midway point of cooking your chicken, and it shouldn't take terribly long because it is in cubes, turn down the heat, and add chopped garlic and dried oregano.  Don't be shy with either if you like your chicken to have a lot of flavor.  Finish cooking the chicken through and before you take it off the stove,turn the heat back up and squeeze half lemon or lime over the chicken.  You'll hear a sizzle, stir a couple more times and then plate your chicken in a serving dish.

Lemon Oregano Chicken, Pureed Cauliflower & Almond Green Beans

PUREED CAULIFLOWER

Cauliflower is really versatile.  It is one of my go to veggies on Paleo.  I actually made a faux spanish rice out of it last weekend.  You can roast it (directions above for roasting veggies), boil till fork tender and eat, or boil till tender and puree.  You can use an immersion blender, a straight up smoothy blender or a food processor to puree cauliflower.  The food processor gives me the most velvety consistency, but all the methods mentioned will work.  You can flavor with clarified butter (ghee - butter with the milkfat removed - see video below to make your own), herbs, etc.   Don't forget salt and pepper are your most flavorful add ins.

The video below that shows you how to take sticks of real butter and clarify it, which makes it okay for Paleo cooking and eating.  The clarifying process takes the dairy out of the butter, making it "paleo" rather than dairy, which is a Paleo no-no. 

 http://allrecipes.com/video/40/how-to-clarify-butter/detail.aspx


ALMOND SAUTEED GREEN BEANS

I like to use fresh skinny green beans for this recipe, not the flat pole beans, although they might work just as well.  First I boil the green beans until they are to my desired done-ness.  Some folks like them crispy and others are very clear they prefer them very done.  Do not cook them all day like many do in the south, just until done.  I strain them and put them on a kitchen towel or paper towels to dry.  As it gets closer to putting food on the table, I put the green beans in a frying pan with some ghee (clarified butter) and and sliced almonds and let them saute until hot all the way through.  Sometimes I let them brown a tiny bit because I think that enhances the flavor.  Salt and put in a serving dish.
ALTERNATIVE:  You may choose to leave out the almonds and put a bit of minced garlic to taste.  I used to only use garlic until I discovered I could use almonds instead and now I switch back and forth.

Prepped and ready to saute

Almond Stir Fried Green Beans

ONION & SPINACH SCRAMBLE  (TOPPED WITH BACON)

If I am topping this dish with bacon, I begin by cutting the bacon in small pieces.  I take the pound of bacon and cut it in strips.  Half a pound is enough to fry up for my family when we are making this dish.  Once I've crisped the bacon up in the skillet, I put them to the side on a paper towel to drain.  I usually pour off some of the bacon grease and then fry up an onion in the rest of the bacon grease.  Once the onion is done to your liking, I add a clove of garlic and cook another minute or so.  At this point you can either put the onions to the side, or you can pour your whisked eggs into the onion mixture.  Either way, this is the time to scramble the eggs.  Once the eggs are almost done, I add in the onions, and a good handful of roughly chopped fresh spinach.  I serve this up with bacon crumbles on top.  This dish is great without bacon too.  Just use olive oil to saute your onions and garlic and then add eggs and scramble.  We frequently have berries in the morning when they are in season. 

SKIRT STEAK SALAD

 I used last nights almond green beans, arugula, vidalia onions, grape tomatoes to make a salad and we topped it with sliced skirt steak.  Skirt steak needs to be only a little cooler than room temperature before you grill it.  We prepare our steak by rubbing it with olive oil (flank steak is a lean cut of meat) and seasoning it with coarse kosher salt and lots of fresh ground pepper.   My husband, Philippe oiled, seasoned and grilled the steak and it looked beautiful! 

 

After allowing the steak to rest for at least 10 minutes. I sliced it.  If you cut a steak too soon, all the juices seep out and you are left with a very dry piece of meat.  Flank steak should be cut against the grain and at a diagonal.  I just arranged the steak on the salad, shook up the vinaigrette and added it to the top.  Every single bite was consumed.

Arugula Green Bean Skirt Steak Salad

SPICED MIXED NUTS

On ccup of Whole Pecans
One cup of Whole Walnuts
One cup of Whole Almonds

(Or any other 3 cup nut combination)

Place the cups of nuts in a dry nonstick skillet and toast until you can smell them browning.  Just 3 mins or so.  While the nuts are toasting, mix together 2 tsps of chili poweder 1 tsp of cumin and 1/2 tsp of garlic powder and some kosher salt to taste.  Once the nuts are toasted, add a tablespoon of olive oil and then sprinkle the mixed spices on top.  Toss together for a minute or so and then pour from skillet onto a plate to cool.  Once cooled, nuts can be placed into a ziplock bag or tupperware for easy access.


SAVORY SWEET POTATO PUREE

Bake a few sweet potatoes and roast a head of garlic at the same time.  Roasting garlic is just a matter of putting the garlic head into a heavy piece of aluminum foil and drizzling it with olive olive. Make the foil into a pouch for the garlic bulb. The insides of the garlic will squeeze out like toothpaste once you've baked it.  I also just through sweet potatoes in the oven at the same time.  I bake on 350 until they feel soft to the touch.  Make sure to put them on a cookie sheet or they will leak into your oven.  Once the sweet potatoes are baked, it is really easy to open the skin and scoop out the meat of the potato.  I then use either an immersion blender or my food processor to make the meat into a puree.  I also add a Tablespoon of clarified butter and I squeeze the roasted garlic into the mixture.   These sweet potatoes are not very sweet the garlic really switches the flavor profile from what we are used to eating at Thanksgiving in the south to a viable alternative to white potatoes.