Coconut Beef Curry with Fennel Cucumber Salad

Hello again,

So this is an update on my progress and a few new tasty Paleo recipes I whipped up!
I've fallen off the bandwagon a few times lately, namely with potatoe chips (JUUUUST a few times) and soy milk in those tasty cappucinos that are so helpful during midterm season!

Curry beginnings

For a while there I was subsiting off of cabbage and almond butter, but I went and did quite a few rounds of shopping and along with my staples foods (eggplant, veggies and lots of fruits) I decided to get creative and picked up some fennel, beets, coconut milk and a bunch of new spices (coriander being my favorite!)

I started with a good easy coconut curry, grilling up some beef strips and combining a few veggies in my pan!
I added the coconut milk and some spices, using curry powder, cumin, chilli flakes, coriander, pepper, salt and chives, letting it cook up and reduce a little.
I served it over some fake rice (i.e. mashed steamd cauliflower) with a side of sliced cucumber!

The cucumber gave me a great idea for using my fennel, and I took a look at my favorite paleo recipe index on theclothesthatmakethegirl.com, where I found a delicious looking salad! The recipe called for paleo mayo as a dressing component, but instead I made a great emulsified one with mustard, maple syrup, lemon juice, salt and garlic in my blender! With a mandoline I sliced my fennel (GREAT FREAKING KITCHEN TOOL, i love these things) and cut up my cucumber. This was an amazing salad and the dressing really made it amazing. The key is to combine everything and then add the olive oil really slowly, drizzling it into the moving blender.

Chop the good fennel tops and sprinkle over the salad for a good garnish!

There's a few more posts on the way from my cooking adventures, but I hope you're all inspire to try these ones out. The curry is really good with all kinds of meat, and I've found the leftover coconut milk is awesome in teas and coffee as a dairy substitute!

Day Nineteen: Hearty Bison Chili

With a helluva work day coming up tomorrow (3 hours of class, followed by 8 hours of work, followed by a night out with the girls), I knew I needed to make something especially filling and easy that I could transport for easy eating!
In comes chili!
With some thawed lean ground bison, and half a can of chickpeas I simply tossed together a big ol' pot of delicious spicy goodness.
In a big pot get the ground meat going (you can use virtually anything, but I do like the taste of bison!), and add in whatever vegetables you can spare! I went with an onion, yellow pepper, zucchini, cabbage, and diced canned tomatoes (no salt added). Then I added garlic, 1/2 cup of chicken stock, 1 cup of water and a plethora of spices. Ginger, cumin, curry powder, chili flakes, black pepper, paprika and oregano were the main players, with a bay leaf thrown in for a little extra something!

Let it reduce, let the veggies get tender, and then enjoy! I put some fresh basil up on top for an interesting mouthful and a pretty picture:

Easy, quick, and utterly painless!

Day Eighteen: Squash Spaghetti and CHOCOLATE!

Hello again!
I got a comment a little while ago that I was missing a key component of the day: Dessert! I decided then to make a fully paleo version of chocolate balls, a sort of fudge-y round bite of heaven. But first I needed a good, healthy dinner!

Sauce cooking up!

On a tip from my friend Adrienne, I had bought a spaghetti squash in anticipation of using it as an innovative replaement for actual noodles. Using the rest of the tofu in my fridge (I know, terrible source of nutrients, soy = not good, but as a student, I couldn't justify throwing it out!) I started a delicious sauce. Chopping up mushrooms, zucchini, yellow pepper, cherry tomatoes, fresh basil and shallots, I seasoned the mixture with garlic, bay leaves, chives and black pepper. Letting the vegetables get a little softer, I cut my squash in half (TOUGH to do by the way), scooped the seeds out, and with the oven at 350 I placed each piece face down on a cookie sheet with a little water in it. This went for about 30 minutes, and I added a little more water about halfway through. The topping was then thinned with some chicken stock, before I let it reduce to give it the consistency of spaghetti sauce rather than stew.

Then I scraped out the insides of my squash and assembled my dish! Top with more fresh basil and black pepper to taste and there you have it! Paleo Spaghetti to warm you up on cold winter nights, of which we have many in Canada!

For dessert, as I mentioned, I made some really good chocolate confections. These dont really become hard, and are best kept in the freezer. This also helps them last longer because you don't see them staring at you every time you go into the fridge for a healthy (-er) snack! Very easy to assemble, the hardest part is keeping the batter off your fingers, as it can be very sticky. I find that once mixed, let it sit in the freezer for about half an hour, making it much easier to work with.

Chocolatey Goodness!

Mix a 1/4 cup of cocoa powder with 1/3 cup almond meal in a small bowl. In a separate bowl place 1/4 cup water, 1/8 cup maple syrup and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla. Slowly add the dry mixture to the wet ingredients, making sure to smooth out any lumps. I like to do this with a fork, but if you were going to make a larger batch you might want to pull out the electric mixer!
Once melded, add a large spoonful of almond butter and repeat the process. Chill the batter and prepare a bowl with some more cocoa powder and coconut flakes. When enough time has elapsed, make small ball shapes out of the chocolate, which should now be much easier to handle! Roll these shapes in the cocoa and coconut for a coating which is both delicious and practical: your balls will stick to the dish you place them in without it. Once you have assembled this, you're ready! Dig in guilt free (just don't go making anymore for a little while!)

I keep the quantities pretty small because I know myself, but if you have more self control I'm sure the recipe could easily be doubled, tripled, or made however big you want. Because these are raw, they keep for a long time, especially if you freeze them. Hypothetically you could keep them at room temperature, but they really don't stay as firm and become messier to eat. As a contribution to a cocktail party, just stick a toothpick in each one and no one will believe that there is no dairy in these babies!
I'm off to fall into a sugar coma, though to be fair it's a naturally induced one! Maple syrup sure is delicious!

Day Eleven: Stuffed Peppers

So day three of the beerfest, and I have indulged again in gluten-free beer, this time a raspberry pepper brew. It's ridiculously hard not to when you work in a microbrewery all the time and have still yet to try one of the homemade beers... this is making up for all of that (or at least, that's how I'm justifying it!) I got home and decided that I needed to remind myself how amazing no-starch food really can be, and therefore decided to make delicious Paleo Stuffed Peppers!

Now this was just a thrown together piece of work, without any real recipe, but as usual my spice cubby was instrumental in making this dish excellent! I combined my essentials: ground beef (President's Choice Free From variety), zucchini, mushrooms, tomatoe and onion. To this mixture I threw in garlic, steak spice and chili flakes for good measure just to get some heat in the dish. Hollowing out my peppers (I chose pretty yellow ones, but I imagine that all of the colours work just as well...), I left the lids intact as a pretty accent to the whole shebang. Preheating the oven to 350, I took an oven safe casserole dish and set my lidless peppers in the bottom, simply placing the lids in the spaces between them. These took a while, but not wanting to take any chances with having the meat come out uncooked, I let them go for a full hour.

Peppers roasting away!

I loved these! The sweetness of the pepper, the spice of the filling, and the general heartiness of the whole dinner was nicely offset by some avocado slices, giving the dish a TexMex type of feel.

Avocado and Stuffed Pepper!

With two peppers leftover, its all I can do to remind myself that I will want to have leftovers, rather than gobbling them up myself!
I need some sort of coping mechanism for those times when I'm not hungry, but eat because I am bored or because I know just how good things taste!

So far I've really found great, easy recipes that turn out beautifully, just like I wanted to; soon I think I'll reward myself at the halfway point with a crack at a real Paleo dessert, and see if my baking skills are up to snuff!