Primal Challenge Day 3 plus steak fajita and tomatillo salsa recipes

weight: 135 lbs (no change)

breakfast: none


lunch:
*leftover beer-marinated steak
*salad - escarole, radicchio, endive, carrot, celery, cucumber, balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil and ground cherries - I've never had ground cherries before but I got them in my CSA and had no idea what to do with them so I threw them in the salad. They were good! Kinda tomatillo-y.
*roasted unsalted almonds
*mug of black tea

snack: none


dinner:
*beef fajita strips
*avocado tossed with sea salt and lime juice
*spicy tomatillo salsa
*sliced tomato with sea salt, black pepper, and exra virgin olive oil

dessert: none

For the fajitas I mostly used this recipe for the marinade: http://www.texascooking.com/recipes/fajitamar1.htm, but I added a jalapeno and a handful of cilantro and a splash of triple sec. I marinated 1.5 lbs skirt steak in it all afternoon, then patted it dry and seared it in a cast iron skillet for 5 minutes on each side. While the meat rested, I poured the leftover marinade back into the pan and let it bubble down a little as I scraped the bottom. Then I sliced the steak and tossed it back in the pan and heated it in the reduced marinade for about 2 minutes. It was great!

I also made some spicy tomatillo salsa because I needed to use up some tomatillos that we got in our CSA. I used this recipe from Rick Bayless: http://topchefs.chef2chef.net/recipes/rbayless/roasted-tomatillo-salsa.htm It is really killer! Super spicy and a great flavor. I think I followed it exactly, for once.

I've been having tomatoes as side dishes a lot because we get them in our CSA and cooked tomatoes give me heartburn.

exercise:
Went to the county parks and recreation website and found a public pool. Paid $8 and swam a few laps then soaked up some sun. Yay vitamin D! Also, I suck at swimming and found it unreasonably exhausting. I could only do 1 full lap without stopping. After that I had to stop halfway across the pool each time. Even so I only managed 4.5 laps. Well you gotta start somewhere, right?

Also I walked 1.5 miles. My butt is sore today from all the walking I did yesterday. Shrink butt, shrink!

Spicy burgers with basil mayonnaise

Made these spicy pork and beef burgers today from N1Kitchen.

They were yum! For the mayonnaise I took the idea and used my own mayo recipe (the one from The Garden of Eating), using half extra virgin olive oil and half cold pressed macadamia oil. I find 100% EVOO mayos much too strong and the macadamia cuts down on that nicely while still remaining a mostly monounsaturated oil. Too bad macadamia oil is so $$$ or I'd use it more often.

We had the burgers with shredded cabbage that I parboiled and then tossed with some of the basil mayo and some steamed broccoli.

We devoured it before I remembered to take a picture, but I thought the recipe was so good I wanted to share it anyway! We were licking the plates clean.

Coconut chicken fingers with spicy fruit chutney

One of the foods my husband and I really miss on the paleo or primal diet is breaded chicken. It's just soul satisfying comfort food for both of us. I do make a gluten free, grain free version of chicken fingers with almond flour sometimes, but tonight I thought I'd try something different. Keeping with the coconut theme I've had lately, I decided to dredge the chicken in unsweetened dried shredded coconut. I didn't want them to be naked, so I wanted to make a sauce, but pan sauce or gravy didn't seem right - so I decided to make a spicy fruit chutney. The result is a tropical dish that's just right for these hot summer evenings!



COCONUT CHICKEN FINGERS
serves 2

ingredients:
1-1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken breast cut into large strips (4-5 per breast depending on if they have the tenders attached or not)
2-3 T coconut flour
1-2 eggs, beaten (start with 1 and use the second if you start to run out)
1 cup unsweetened dried shredded coconut
1 tsp sea salt
coconut oil for cooking

Set up a dredging station with 3 bowls, one for coconut flour, one for egg, one for shredded coconut. Season the coconut flour with the salt.

Dredge each chicken finger first in coconut flour, then egg, then shredded coconut.

Heat a bunch of coconut oil in a large heavy bottomed skillet over medium/medium-high heat. Cook the chicken fingers until golden brown on each side. Do it in more than one batch if necessary and keep cooked chicken fingers warm on a foil lined baking sheet in an oven set to the lowest setting.

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SPICY FRUIT CHUTNEY
serves 4

2 cups of diced and peeled plums or nectarines or a mixture of the two
1/4 cup lemon juice
juice of 1/2 a lime
1/4 cup chopped dried apricots
2 inches of ginger root, peeled and minced
2 small dried red chili peppers (or 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper)
1 cinnamon stick
1/4 cup sweet white wine
pinch of sea salt
pinch of stevia, optional depending on if your fruit is really sour (taste before you add!)

Mix everything together in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes until thick. Discard dried chilis and cinnamon stick. Can be eaten warm or cold.

Recipe adapted from The Garden of Eating.

Coconutty Fruit Salad

I've been enjoying coconut lately (as you can see from my coconut milk ice cream!), and I came up with this yummy application the other day. I hardly eat fruit at all in the winter since everything is out of season but apples and pears, so when summer comes around I like to have a little fun. I've used a specialty ingredient in this fruit salad, which is coconut butter. It's just like any other nut butter in that it's the whole nut ground up into a paste. The kind I get is Artisana raw coconut butter, which is ground at low temperatures and supposedly retains all the coconutness of the coconut (you know, enzymes, vitamins, fiber, etc). I don't even know if any other companies make coconut butter. Anyway, if you can't find this stuff, I would substitute some unsweetened shredded coconut and maybe a few tablespoons of coconut milk (or even better, if you get the kind of coconut milk that separates in the can into a thick cream and a runny liquid, use only the thick cream).



COCONUTTY FRUIT SALAD

ingredients:
2 heaping cups mixed fruit (pictured is a heaping 1/2 cup each of blueberries, strawberries, red grapes and pineapple)
2 T raw coconut butter
1/4 cup toasted almonds

Cut your fruit any way you want it. Roughly chop the almonds. Gently warm the coconut butter until it becomes runny, then immediately toss with the fruit and nuts. The coldness of the fruit will make the coconut butter harden back up and stick to it like a shell. Dig in and enjoy! I've had this as breakfast, snack, and dinner side dish in the past few weeks. :)

One Local Summer - Week Three

This week for One Local Summer I had a near miss that turned into a delicious hit! I love making great tasting food that's from local producers and also healthy and paleo - gluten and dairy free.



The star of dinner tonight was a roasted chicken from Polyface Farms. I rinsed and dried the chicken and then generously salted and peppered it inside and out. The outside I wrapped in bacon from EcoFriendly Foods and the inside I stuffed with two of the season's first peaches from Westmoreland Berry Farm. Into the oven at 425 for 30 minutes, then I reduced the heat to 350 and roasted it for an additional hour.

The plan was to end up with delicious bacon-wrapped chicken and some roasty peach chunks. My oven had other plans!

Now, I've made bacon wrapped chicken before and it's always turned out, but this time for some reason the bacon shriveled to itty bitty bacon cinders and became inedible. So not only did I have burned bacon, but I had flabby chicken skin. Erg. I removed the peaches from the chicken and noticed they were not roasty at all either. My plans had been foiled, but I thought there had to be some way to salvage this food. After a moment's pondering I set the bacon cinders aside and carved the chicken into two leg quarters, two breasts, and two wings. I put the chicken pieces on a foil lined baking sheet and put them back in the oven to turn the flabby skin crispy. What to do with the peaches...aha! Gravy!

To make the gravy, I took the peaches from the chicken cavity and heated them in a small saucepan with a good spoonful of drippings from the roasting pan and 1/4 cup sweet white wine from Rose Bank Winery along with a pinch of salt and about 1 inch of cinnamon stick. I put the heat to low, covered it, and let it simmer while I went to work on the veggie sides. I don't know if Rose Bank Winery can be considered local to northern Virginia, but we used to live about 3 minutes away from this winery and we bought a whole case of the wine that we're still working on! So it was local to us at one point. :)

To get our leafy greens in for the day I made some braised kale from Pleasant Fields Farm. First I sauteed some baby onions from our CSA in the chicken/bacon drippings, then added the kale and a little water, covered, and let it braise for about 15 minutes.

To add some freshness to the meal, I made a quick cucumber salad using crispy little Persian cucumbers from Toigo Orchards. They are so snappy and delicious! I tossed them with some chopped orange mint from Red Rake Farm, a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, and a splash of rice vinegar. Red Rake Farm is one of my favorite stands at the Arlington Farmer's Market. It's all organic and their produce looks more "real" to me than some of the other places for some reason. And the owner, Peter, is always ready with a smile and story. Much nicer than shopping at a grocery store!



Once the veggies were ready, the chicken skin was crispy and the peaches were nice and broken down for the gravy, and dinner was served! I think everything tied together very nicely - the crispy chicken skin with the sweet warm peach gravy, the tender kale, and the cool fresh cucumbers. My husband even ate the bacon cinders and said they kind of tasted like pork rinds. Success!

Salsa Pulled Pork

This is probably the easiest recipe I'll ever share with you, and also one of the most delicious and rewarding!



SALSA PULLED PORK

ingredients:
1 jar of your favorite salsa
1 pork tenderloin

Quantities are not exact and don't matter anyway. Put the pork into a crockpot, dump the salsa on top, and cook it on LOW for 6-8 hours. When you're ready to eat, just shred the meat with two forks.

The meat is tender and delicious and people will think you put some serious effort into cooking, but it just couldn't be any easier.

Meal idea: broiled pesto shrimp

This post is more of a meal idea than an actual recipe. It's really quick to put together and have a dinner in minutes! The basic premise is to thaw out some frozen raw shrimp, toss them in pesto, and broil them for 3 minutes (or until they turn pink). That's it! You're done! For pesto, I usually just throw whatever herb we have that looks good into a food processor along with whatever nuts I have. Tonight I had a big bunch of parsley, so I threw that in there with a handful of walnuts and a few green onions for bite, lemon zest and juice and a pinch of red pepper flakes for kick, and extra virgin olive oil to thin it to the right consistency. If you really like pesto, you can make a lot at once and freeze it in an ice cube tray, then pop the cubes out and store in a baggie - this way you can grab both the shrimp and the pesto from the freezer at the same time and make this even more of a convenience meal.

I had some extra pesto tonight so I chopped up some zucchini and yellow summer squash, tossed them in the extra pesto, and broiled them too. We also had a fennel salad on the side. Just thinly slice a fennel bulb and dress with extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice. You can add some minced parsley, fennel fronds, or lemon zest if you want to get a little bit fancy.

Chicken and Kale Sofrito (aka kale con pollo)

Ok, I know it's not much of an excuse, but I haven't been posting because I lost my camera. Again. I visited my family and left my camera in the back of my mom's car. I just don't like doing blog posts without pictures! They're the best part!

I've also been experimenting with a very high fat/very moderate protein diet (The Optimal Diet by Dr. Jan Kwasniewski, aka "Polish Atkins") and I've been eating dairy for the past two weeks, so you probably didn't want to hear about what I was eating anyway. ;) I think my experiment with that is over...I did lose a pound or two, but I forgot how oogy dairy makes me feel.

Anyway, here is a nice dinner you can make. The recipe is just a loose guideline; this is really a dish you just want to feel out.



CHICKEN AND KALE SOFRITO (aka kale con pollo)

I love watching Daisy Martinez's cooking show on PBS, and I kind of made this up based on general principles from her style of Puerto Rican cooking.

First of all, you have to make Daisy's sofrito and her achiote oil, which you can find here http://www.daisycooks.com/pages/recipes_detail.cfm?ID=1 and here http://www.daisycooks.com/pages/recipes_detail.cfm?ID=2 Sofrito is a wonderful fresh sauce/condiment made out of onions, peppers, tomatoes, garlic, cilantro, etc. The recipe makes a ton, but it freezes well. Achiote oil is just extra virgin olive oil gently warmed with annatto seeds until it becomes a deep amber color and picks up the flavor of the seeds.

Puerto Rican cooking would traditionally use rice as the base for this dish (arroz con pollo), but since this is paleo we're talking about here, I used a base of shredded kale instead. I just used one bunch of dino kale cut very finely.

So here are the ingredients for two people:
4 T achiote oil, divided
1 lb chicken drumsticks
salt and pepper
1/2 cup sofrito
jarred olive salad (mixed olives with roasted peppers, seasonings, etc)
jarred capers
one bunch of kale, shredded

Heat 2 T achiote oil, salt and pepper the chicken, and brown well on all sides. Remove the chicken from the pan.

Reduce the heat to medium and add the sofrito to the pan, deglazing with the juices. Add the remaining 2 T achiote oil and let the liquid cook off until the sofrito starts to sizzle. Add in some olive salad and capers to taste and a little of the olive salad liquid. Add the kale to the pan and stir to coat.

Nestle the chicken on top of the kale, put a lid on the pan, lower the heat, and cook for 10 minutes. In the last 5 minutes of cooking, heat the broiler up. Once the chicken and kale has steamed for 10 minutes, put the whole pan under the broiler for 4-5 minutes to crisp the skin up.

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My husband declared this the best chicken I've ever made. Hopefully it has inspired you to make something delicious with sofrito as well!

Bacon Mayonnaise!

I had been threatening to do it for weeks, and I finally did it. I took my leftover bacon grease and turned it into mayonnaise. I love mayonnaise, but I hardly ever eat it anymore because it's impossible to find a commercial brand that isn't made with a bad vegetable oil. I don't like homemade mayo made with extra virgin olive oil as it tastes far too strong. Light olive oil makes a palatable mayo, but light olive oil has undergone some pretty severe processing, making it not ideal either. Enter the bacon fat!



I didn't bother to strain my drippings which is why my mayonnaise is speckled, but the taste is still outrageously good. :) I'm not going to try to tell you how to make this stuff, because it's pretty finicky, so I'll direct you to the original recipe I used, which you can find here: http://bitten.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/25/introducing-a-recipe-contest-with-prizes/ The original comes from a book called simply "Fat" by Jennifer McLagan.

I had to go through some calisthenics to get mine to turn out. I started it in a food processor, but there was so little volume from one egg yolk that it wouldn't reach the blades. So I had to scrape everything into a blender. Then I had to add another egg yolk to get a good emulsion going. Then I had to add more lemon juice to cut through the extreme savoriness of the bacon. The end product is delightful though. :) I think I'm going to make chicken salad with it.

Taco Salad and Homemade Taco Seasoning

Taco night is one of my favorite nights. :) I love setting out all the different fixins in their little bowls and letting everyone go down the line and construct their own. Since I have yet to find a paleo version of a tortilla, I usually just do taco salad now. Big bed of lettuce, big scoop of taco meat, and then pile on the condiments. Cheese, sour cream and refried beans are out, so instead I set out things like guacamole, chopped tomatoes, chopped scallions, salsa, hot sauce, lime wedges, chopped cilantro, olives, even crumbled bacon (is there anything that doesn't go with bacon?).

The most problematic element in this equation is the taco meat. Those little premade packets of taco seasoning that you can get at the store are full of fillers and salt. Luckily, it's dead easy to make your own.



TACO SEASONING

ingredients:
2 T chili powder
1-1/2 T cumin
1-1/2 T paprika
1 T onion powder
1 T garlic powder
2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

Just put everything in a container and shake to combine! To make taco meat, mix 3 T of the mixture with 1 lb of ground meat and salt to taste. Just brown the meat, add the seasonings and 1/4 cup of water, and simmer for 5 minutes.

Recipe is adapted from 500 Low Carb Recipes by Dana Carpender.

Strawberry Vinaigrette

Drive-by posting today. I had a very busy, yet fun, weekend getting together with my old high school crew who I hadn't seen in years. Getting back on track this week starting out with this interesting Strawberry Vinaigrette salad dressing I made today. It's so good it's making me look forward to salad this week!



I don't know if the picture does it justice, but it is super thick and creamy and it's a vivid pink color. I found the recipe here: http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/soupsandsalads/r/strawberryvinag.htm

Lamb Kabobs with Paleo Mint Pesto

Lamb and mint are a natural pairing and they go together perfectly in this dish. This was one of those dinners where you're sad when it's over because you're not still eating it!



LAMB KABOBS WITH PALEO MINT PESTO
serves 2 people for dinner with 1 portion leftover for lunch :)

ingredients:
~1.5 lbs lamb stew meat or boneless leg of lamb cut into chunks
any mix of your favorite kabob vegetables - I used chunks of zucchini and yellow squash, but tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, etc would all be good too

1 bunch of fresh mint (about 1.5 cups)
1 big handful of fresh parsley (about 1 cup)
juice of half a lemon
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic, peeled
1/2 tsp salt
pinch of red pepper flakes

In a food processor or blender, combine mint, parsley, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, salt, and red pepper flakes and turn into a coarse puree

Combine the pesto with the lamb and vegetables and leave to marinate 2 hours or overnight.

Preheat your broiler. Line a large baking sheet with foil. Drain the lamb and vegetables (reserving the marinade), place on the baking sheet, and broil 7-10 minutes or until desired doneness.

Recipe is heavily adapted from "5 Square Low Carb Meals" by Monica Lynn.

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In the old days I would have eaten this with rice, so instead I made up some cauliflower rice to act as a bed for all the delicious juices.

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CAULIFLOWER RICE
serves 2

ingredients:
1/2 head of cauliflower, grated
reserved pesto marinade
1/4 cup chicken stock
extra virgin olive oil

Heat 1-2 T of olive oil in a large pan and start to saute the grated cauliflower over medium heat. After the pan has gotten nice and hot, add the reserved pesto and the chicken stock. Continue sauteing, stirring, until the cauliflower is al dente. Don't cook it too long or it will turn to mush. I estimate this takes 5-7 minutes, but just taste it as you go and pull it off the heat when it's done.

Tahini Mustard Salad Dressing

I pack my husband's lunch every day, and about 99% of the time it includes a salad. Usually I just throw together some extra virgin olive oil with whatever vinegar looks good, but sometimes I like to change it up a little. This tahini mustard dressing is one of his favorites. It's super thick and creamy, but 100% dairy-free! The dressing is very versatile too. As well as using it for dressing salad greens, it's great as a substitute for mayonnaise in chicken/tuna salad or cole slaw. It's also delicious as a marinade for grilled or broiled chicken. It will keep for at least a week in the fridge, but it never lasts that long around here.



ingredients:
1/2 cup tahini
3/4 cup water
1/2-3/4 tsp sea salt
3 T apple cider vinegar or 1/4 cup lemon juice
2 T prepared mustard, any kind
2 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder

Just dump everything in a food processor and let it rip for a few seconds to combine. It will be very runny initially, but it will firm up significantly in the refrigerator. Enjoy!

Recipe adapted from The Garden of Eating by Rachel Albert-Matesz.

Greens Series - Day 2 - Spinach Pesto

I kind of like spinach, or at least I don't hate it, but I particularly dislike how mushy it gets when you cook it. Even just barely wilting it turns it too soft for my taste. Turning it into a pesto sidesteps the whole mushiness issue and is a nice milder alternative to an all-basil pesto. You can use pesto in lots of ways; as a salad dressing (cold or warm), an alternative to mayo in chicken salad, a way to add some zest to soup, a sauce for steamed veggies. Tonight I'm making split chicken breasts and I'm rubbing the pesto underneath the chicken skin.


Spinach Pesto

ingredients:
7 oz raw baby spinach (this is the size of the salad bags of spinach at my grocery store)
1 cup of fresh basil
1/3 cup walnuts
1 clove garlic, peeled
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

Place the spinach and basil in a food processor and process down to a coarse paste. Add the walnuts, garlic, and salt and process until the walnuts disappear. Scrape down the sides if necessary. With the motor running, add the olive oil in a thin stream. Taste it and adjust the salt level.



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Posts in the Greens Series:
Relaxed Kale Salad
Spinach Pesto
Baby Bok Choy with Ginger
Broiled Kale
Southern Style Collards

Almond Crusted Chicken Fingers

Sometimes you just want some nasty old fried chicken fingers, but as a rule they are flour-coated transfat-laden monstrosities. How to enjoy the crunch without all the badness? Almond flour!

serves 2

ingredients:
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, sliced into fingers
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup almond flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
1.5 tsp poultry seasoning
1 tsp dry mustard powder
1/4 - 1/3 cup oil for frying (I used palm oil shortening, but I wouldn't hesitate to use olive oil or coconut oil either - or lard if I had it!)

Heat the oil a large pan over medium-high heat (but closer to medium than to high - you don't want the almond flour to burn).

Put the beaten egg in one bowl and the almond flour plus seasonings into another bowl. Dip each chicken finger in egg, then in the almond flour mixture.

Cook the chicken in two batches until it is golden on each side.

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Notes:

I've only ever made this fresh for dinner so I don't know if it would keep well for lunches or not. I suspect it might get a little gummy.

Crushed pork rinds also make a decent bread crumb substitute but they get soggy very quickly after cooking so you must eat them immediately. Also, some people are kind of squicked by pork rinds.

These chicken fingers are great for dipping too. Good options are ketchup or flavored mayonnaise. If you want to get super fancy, you can make something like date mustard, but I don't make this all the time because, even though it is amazingly delicious, it's also quite carb heavy. I might do a proper post on date mustard sometime, but here is the quick and dirty version:

happy shiny bonus date mustard recipe!
1/2 cup dates with pits removed, 2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil, 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar, 1/2 cup water, 1 tsp salt, and 2 T prepared mustard; put all the ingredients in a blender and let it rip until it's smooth; pour into a small saucepan and simmer gently for 10 minutes; serve warm or cold. I got this fantastic condiment from a cookbook called The Philosopher's Kitchen.

Pan Roasted Cauliflower with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

serves 2

Cauliflower:
1/2 head of cauliflower broken up into medium sized florets
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and slightly smooshed
4 T (1/4 cup) extra virgin olive oil
sea salt to taste

You want to use a not nonstick pan for this in order to achieve the proper level of roastiness. :)

Heat the oil and garlic in a cast iron skillet over medium heat. Once the oil gets good and hot and the garlic starts sizzling, add the cauliflower in a single layer. Let it go without stirring for longer than you think you should. Peek under a floret and if it is nicely browned use a spatula to flip the florets and get a different side roasty. Once again, let it go until the other side is nice and brown. At this point, turn the heat to low, salt the cauliflower to your taste, cover the pan, and let it steam itself for 10 minutes. Voila! Perfectly tender, roasty cauliflower with the bonus of a few little roasty garlic cloves. Mmm.

This cauliflower goes perfectly with roasted red pepper sauce.

Roasted Red Pepper Sauce:
1 red bell pepper
1 T white wine vinegar
1 peeled and slightly smooshed garlic clove
1.5 T extra virgin olive oil

Preheat an oven or toaster oven to 400 degrees and line a cookie sheet with foil. Bake the bell pepper until the skin starts to blacken, about 30-40 minutes. Pull the pepper out of the oven and use the foil to wrap it up into a packet. Let it sit steaming in it own residual heat for 10-15 minutes. Unwrap the pepper. The skin should be very loose and quite easy to peel off. Peel the pepper and discard all the skin and seeds.

Heat the vinegar and garlic clove in a small pan until it gets fragrant. Discard the garlic clove.

Puree the bell pepper, garlic infused vinegar, and olive oil in a food processor. You can add a little pinch of salt and some red pepper flakes or cayenne powder if you want a bit of a kick.

Keeps well for a few days in the fridge and makes enough sauce to use several times for different veggies.

Chicken Kabobs

Sorry for the blurry picture. My flash washes things out and sometimes pics without the flash don't turn out very well. :(

So this is more of a meal idea than an actual recipe. I had some tahini sauce leftover from our lamb meatballs from last night, and I had some bland old chicken breast sitting in the fridge, so I decided to combine them. I cubed up the chicken and tossed it in a plastic bag with whatever Mediterranean-y stuff I found in the kitchen...olive oil, red wine vinegar, sea salt, oregano, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, cumin. I didn't measure anything. I bet this would be great with just about anything you put in there. I let the chicken marinate for about 45 minutes and then I broiled it for 15 minutes. It was very good dipped into the leftover tahini sauce. For a side dish I put a zucchini through a spiralizer to make it like noodles and sauteed it in olive oil for about 10 minutes while the chicken was broiling.

Lamb Meatballs with Tahini Dipping Sauce and Cucumber Salad

serves 2

lamb meatballs:
1 lb ground lamb
1 small eggplant
1 egg
1.5 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp sea salt

Cover a small baking pan with foil and roast the eggplant for 1-1.5 hours at 375 degrees, or until the eggplant is soft. Remove from the oven, peel, and mash with a fork. Set the flesh in a strainer and let the liquid drain off.

Combine the mashed eggplant, lamb, egg, oregano, and sea salt in a large bowl. It will be pretty goopy. Form mixture into meatballs. I like to use a tablespoon measure - if made with heaping tablespoons you should get about 26 meatballs.

Heat a skillet over medium heat. If you use a nonstick skillet, no fat is necessary as the lamb will render out enough. If your skillet is not nonstick, you might want to grease it. Fry the meatballs on three sides until they are nicely browned.

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tahini dipping sauce:
1/2 cup tahini
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup water
1 clove garlic
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp ground cumin
handful of fresh cilantro or parsley or both

Toss everything in a food processor and let it rip til it's smooth. It's better to make this at least an hour in advance to let the flavors meld (I make the sauce after I stick the eggplant in the oven and then pull it out of the fridge at serving time).

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cucumber salad:
1/2 a large English hothouse cucumber
sea salt
red wine vinegar
extra virgin olive oil

Score the cucumber with a fork and then slice it into thin rounds.

Put the cucumber slices into a strainer or colander and sprinkle with sea salt. Put something heavy on top and let it drain while everything else cooks.

Right before serving, squeeze out all the remaining water and drizzle on some red wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil.

Over Easy Eggs with Fennel Cucumber Relish

serves 1

ingredients:
2 eggs
1 T olive oil

1/4 of a large fennel bulb, finely diced
2 inches of cucumber, seeded and finely diced
3 kalamata olives, diced
small handful of parsley, minced
zest of 1/2 a lemon
pinch of salt
1/2 T apple cider vinegar
1 T olive oil

Combine all the relish ingredients in a bowl and set aside. Heat the 1T olive oil in a small skillet over medium heat. Crack the eggs directly into the skillet. Once the eggs have begun to set, carefully flip them and try not to burst the yolks. Cook for a further 30-60 seconds. Serve the relish over the eggs.

Inspiration for the fennel relish was taken from: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/106594