slow roasted pork shoulder

I keep meaning to get back to regular posting, but 4-month old babies keep you surprisingly busy. ;) There's not much time for cooking, much less writing blog posts! Luckily this pork shoulder has minimal hands-on time and will feed a small army. You prep it the night before you want to eat and just stick it in the oven the next morning.

SLOW ROASTED PORK SHOULDER

serves: lots

ingredients:
8-10 lb pork shoulder
3 small onions or 1 large onion, sliced
2 oranges, peel left on, sliced
6 cloves of garlic, minced
1 T fennel seeds
salt and pepper

method:
Place the onions and oranges on the bottom of a roasting pan. Score the fat side of the pork in a diamond pattern and place it on top of the onions/oranges. Rub the garlic and fennel into the pork and season with salt and pepper. Cover and marinate overnight in the fridge. The next day, uncover and roast at 275 degrees for 7-8 hours.

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The pork will be almost meltingly tender and the fat nice and crispy. You can serve it right away with the juices from the pan. Leftovers firm up in the fridge and are great browned in a skillet with a little lard. Put it in lettuce wraps with pickled hot peppers and olives. Or you can add some cumin when reheating and use the meat for taco salad along with your favorite toppings. Leftovers are also great in hash. It's very versatile!

before:


after:


*recipe from Wegman's*

Pumpkin Sausage Soup

PUMPKIN SAUSAGE SOUP
serves 6

ingredients:
1-1.25 lbs bulk breakfast sausage (if you want to make some yourself, I have a recipe here: http://cavemanfood.blogspot.com/2009/03/turkey-or-pork-breakfast-sausage.html)
1/2 a large onion, minced
1/2 cup mushrooms, sliced
1 small cooking pumpkin, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks (or one 15-oz can of pumpkin)
4 cups chicken stock
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried thyme
pinch of dried rosemary
1 tsp paprika
pinch of red pepper flakes
1 tsp sea salt or to taste
2 T butter or some other more paleo cooking fat
1/2 cup coconut milk

Heat the butter in a heavy deep pot and saute the mushrooms over medium-high heat until golden. Remove from the pot to a small bowl, leaving the butter. Add the onions to the pot and saute them until golden, then remove them to a separate bowl. Add the sausage to the pot and brown it until it is cooked through and looks tasty. Remove the sausage from the pot and set aside.

Add the pumpkin to the pot and deglaze with the chicken stock. Add the onions back in and simmer until the pumpkin is soft, about 10 minutes. Puree the soup (a hand blender is easiest, but a regular blender will do). Add in all the remaining ingredients except the coconut milk (don't forget to add in the cooked mushrooms and sausage!), and simmer for 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the coconut milk.

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That's the hard way to make the soup. :) The easy way is to cook the onions, mushrooms and sausage all together at once and use canned pumpkin, saving some steps and a dirty blender. The easy way makes perfectly fine soup, but it won't have the same layers of texture and flavor that the harder version does.

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recipe adapted from: http://www.recipezaar.com/Low-Carb-Pumpkin-Sausage-Soup-106467

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.

One Local Summer Week 6 - Pork Chili Verde

I got busy with holiday stuff last weekend and missed out on making a One Local Summer meal, so I'm getting back into the swing of it this week. We have lots of good local food in the house right now - picked up a freezer full of meat from my Polyface Farm dropoff this weekend, bought some nice fruit at the Columbia Pike Farmer's Market today, and I still have a few things leftover from my CSA dropoff last Monday.



This week it seemed like the farmer's market was full of peppers, squash and tomatoes. I already had squash and garlic at home from my CSA, so I went with the peppers today and decided to make some chili verde. I got peppers and onions from Westmoreland Vegetables (couldn't find a website for them) and tomatillos from another farmer's market stand that didn't have a sign and I don't know what the name of the farm was. The lard, pork and chicken stock are all Polyface.


(the squash isn't in the picture, I forgot it in the fridge! it was green and just about the size of my forearm)

PORK CHILI VERDE

ingredients:
2 T lard
1 onion, chopped
2 poblano peppers, chopped
2 cubanelle peppers, chopped
2 Anaheim peppers, chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, minced
6 tomatillos, chopped finely
1 green summer squash, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 lb ground pork
2-4 cups chicken stock (depending on how thick you like it)
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp dried oregano or 2 T fresh oregano
1 tsp sea salt

Heat the lard in a Dutch oven and brown all the vegetables except the squash and garlic until they start to get soft. Add the garlic and cook for a minute until fragrant. Add the pork and cook until no longer pink. Add the chicken stock and seasonings, bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer for 1 hour.

Some good non local toppings: fresh cilantro, diced avocado, lime juice



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For dessert I cracked open that big ole watermelon you see up top and cubed it up and we went to town. Seeds everywhere. Ugly, but good. :)

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!

One Local Summer - Week Two

I kind of slacked on One Local Summer this week. I was expecting an abundance of veggies from my CSA, which just started this past Monday, but instead all I got was a handful of salad greens, some garlic scapes, and a head of Chinese cabbage. It's been a rough, wet spring here in Virginia. So I headed to the farmer's market on Saturday (yesterday) morning to get some goodies for this week's local meal.



My planned meal included spicy chipotle chorizo made from free range buffalo and pork from Cibola Farms. I also picked up some red potatoes and curly kale from Pleasant Fields Farm. I was going to cut the potatoes and sausage into chunks and roast them together and serve them on a bed of braised kale. Alas, my meal was not to be. My husband and I decided to go to The National Zoo today and ogle the cute animals, which delayed lunch until 3:30 p.m. - a time falling squarely into what we refer to as "the black hole of eating." Neither of us was hungry for dinner in the slightest, so our local feast will just have to wait until tomorrow. Too bad the post can't wait for tomorrow, but OLS has a deadline. ;)

To see what other people in my region (Southern) have been up to, check out last week's roundup!

One Local Summer - Week One

Back in April I signed up for the One Local Summer event over at Farm to Philly. I thought it would be a neat way to challenge myself to really use more local and seasonal ingredients in my cooking. I'm excited to see what northern Virginia has in store for me this summer! We were pretty busy this weekend, so my first local meal was a pretty basic brunch we had on Saturday morning before heading off for the day.



We had bacon, eggs, and fruit salad with whipped cream.

The bacon I picked up at the farmer's market from a kind of local farm aggregate called EcoFriendly Foods. It comes from pastured pigs and is cured with just salt and sugar. It was definitely the best local bacon I've had so far, but not quite as good as the local bacon we used to get when we lived in New Jersey from Cherry Grove Farm.

The eggs were from Joel Salatin's famous and fabulous Polyface Farm. I joined their buying club a few months ago. Every month I place an order with them and pick it up from one of their northern Virginia drop off spots. I cooked the delicious dark yolked eggs in some of the fat left over from cooking the bacon.

The fruit salad was strawberries from Toigo Orchards and some not-so-local peaches (they came from Georgia via Whole Foods). I would have left the peaches out happily, but they were in my fruit basket and going bad, so into the salad they went. To top our fruit I whipped a little heavy cream from J-Wen Farm. Selling raw milk is illegal in Virginia unless you go through a cow sharing program, but the stuff from J-Wen is not homogenized and is just pasteurized rather than ultrapasteurized. The fruit was so naturally sweet that the whipped cream didn't require any sugar. I don't eat very much dairy at all, but I just had a hankering this weekend so I picked the cream up at the farmer's market.

And there you have it!

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.

Jamaican Ribs

I really like ribs, but I hardly ever eat them since they're almost always covered in some kind of sweet sugary sauce. They intimidated me for some reason, so I never considered cooking some myself - they just seemed like they required a lot of equipment I don't have, like a grill or a smoker. Well I finally got over my fear of cooking healthy sugarless ribs at home with the following recipe. It uses a Jamaican inspired marinade followed by slow oven cooking to produce some nice tender ribs with a pleasing herby crust. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did!



serves 2

ingredients:
1.5 lbs pork baby back ribs
1 T dried thyme
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground or crushed coriander
1/2 cup water
2 T extra virgin olive oil

Combine all the ingredients in a plastic bag and marinate for at least 1 hour, but 3 hours is better. Preheat the oven to 290 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with foil and lightly oil it with some extra olive oil. Lay the ribs on the baking sheet and cover tightly with foil. Bake for 2 hours. Remove from the oven and drain any liquid. Heat up the broiler. Broil ribs meaty side up for 5 minutes to crisp up.

You can double this easily and make some tasty leftovers. I had some leftovers for lunch the next day and they were great.

Recipe is adapted from Eating Stella Style by George Stella.

This recipe is part of the Natural Cures Healthy Recipe Blog Carnival over at Hartke is Online!

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.

Rendering Lard

As time goes on I have been pondering more and more the role of vegetable fats in paleo/primal eating. The only vegetable oils I use are extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, and to a much lesser extent palm oil, but I use them a lot - especially the olive oil. I cook just about everything in it and I also pour it all over my salads and steamed veggies. Before paleo I used to joke there was butter in my veins - now I joke they run with olive oil! Is this a good thing though? Olive oil is far more processed than animal fat and has a far different fatty acid profile. I have a hard time imagining vegetable fats being a big part of our ancestor's diets unless they happened to be lucky enough to live in the land of coconuts. Anyway, I'm not about to give up olive oil for salads, but for general cooking purposes I've been considering making the switch to animal fat.

I joined the Polyface Farm buying club recently and I was excited to see that they had pig fat for sale for $1/lb. Perfect for making lard! I thought I read it came in 5-lb bags so I placed an order for one. Well, when it was delivered, I ended up with a 14.5 bag of fat! Turns out they come in approximately 10-lb bags (not 5-lb) and the one I happened to get was a little overfilled. Folks, this is a lot of pig fat.


My package of fat taking up half the sink!

My sister (who you may remember from her guest post) came to visit me this weekend and we decided to have ourselves a lard rendering party. Fourteen and a half pounds is a lot to render at once, so we let it thaw just a bit and peeled some pieces off the top to work with and put the rest back in the freezer.

First, my sister diced the fat up.


Then I took my enameled cast iron Dutch oven, put it over very low heat, and poured in about 1/4 inch of water (to prevent scorching) and started adding the diced fat. We started out with adding just one layer across the bottom, and when it started melting we added a bit more, repeating the process until finally everything was in the pot. After a little time and some stirring, the fat started rendering out and looking like this:


This bubbling pot of wonderfulness smells FANTASTIC. You can't imagine how good it smells unless you've done it yourself! We left it over very low heat, stirring occasionally, until most of the cracklings started to sink to the bottom. Once that happened (it took several hours), we poured it through a strainer into a container to cool. This stuff is pure liquid gold.


After chilling out overnight in the fridge we ended up with a container of pure white lard ready to be used in any and all cooking applications. We also have an incredible snack - the leftover cracklings!


For her help in the endeavor, my sister is going back to school with a jar of our delicious pastured pork fat lard with which to cook and scandalize her low-fat roommates. :D

Turkey or Pork Breakfast Sausage

My husband likes sausage for breakfast, but it's hard to find pre-made breakfast sausage that isn't full of questionable additives, fillers, and/or nitrates. This breakfast sausage recipe is really easy to make and contains none of those iffy ingredients. I make up 1 or 2 pounds at a time and keep them in the fridge for up to about a week. If you want to make up even more at a time, you can freeze the patties in an airtight container separated by layers of parchment paper.



Turkey or Pork Breakfast Sausage

ingredients:
1 lb ground turkey or pork
1 tsp onion powder or 1 T onion flakes
1/4 tsp each cumin, black pepper, nutmeg, oregano, red pepper flakes, and ground ginger
1-1/2 tsp poultry seasoning (or 1/2 tsp each dried basil, thyme, and sage)
1-1/2 tsp sea salt
1 egg, lightly beaten

Mix all ingredients together and chill for at least an hour to let the flavors meld. Form it into patties and saute until nicely browned on both sides. If you use turkey you might need to grease the pan a little, but if you use pork it should produce enough of its own fat.

Recipe is adapted from Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon.

What I've been eating: Feb 19, 2009

Once again I've been remiss in my blogging! My mom and little brother came down for a visit over President's Day weekend and they threw me completely out of my groove. That's ok, family wins out over groove any day! Anyway, the cooking has not stopped completely in the past week or so, so I'll dish out another bullet list of stuff we've been eating around here. Maybe I'll make this a regular thing!

Scotch eggs - Well, it's just me eating these. My husband wouldn't eat an egg if you paid him $20. Basically you hardboil some eggs and then encase them in raw sausage meat. Then you bake them in the oven until the sausage is cooked through. I grab two for a quick breakfast or lunch.

Shepherd's pie - Traditional shepherd's pie has a mashed potato crust. I made my crust with rutabaga and turnip and also added in some roasted garlic cloves. Yum yum. Sautee your veggies in a pan (onions, celery, carrots are good choices) and then deglaze with beef stock or red wine. Add in some ground meat and brown. Add some herbs for flavor (sage is good) arrowroot if you want a thick gravy. Top with your mashed root veggies and bake until bubbly!

Fruit crumble - As previously blogged here. This week's had blueberries, apples, and frozen strawberries. Topping was pecans, almonds, prunes, and a splash of pomegranate juice.

Pomegranate juice - As good as my eating is in other areas, I have yet to completely kick the diet soda habit. This week I finally found a drink that keeps the diet soda craving severely at bay. I fill a big glass up with water and then add maybe 1 oz of pomegranate juice. It's just enough to flavor the water but not enough to be too sugary. This drink helped me cut down from my usual one soda per day to maybe three sodas this week. Maybe soon it will be no sodas at all. :)

Pork chops and mashed celeriac - This is my favorite dinner we had recently. I coated some pork chops with grill seasoning and seared them in bacon fat. Then I made a gravy from the pan drippings with mustard, white wine, and some arrowroot to thicken. On the side we had mashed celeriac (celery root). I cubed a celeriac, boiled it until tender, and pureed it in the food processor with some roasted garlic cloves (I also used a little bit of butter, but if I wasn't going to use dairy at all I would have used more bacon grease or some olive oil). It was deeeeee-licious. The celeriac had a great texture, almost exactly like mashed potatoes but with a hint of celery flavor. We also had a side salad, but it was just filler for this meal. :)

Greens Series - Day 5 - Southern Style Collards

We've finally come to the end of my week of greens! I'm ending the week with a collard greens recipe that goes against every cooking instinct in my body. In general, I like to cook vegetables for a short amount of time in a shallow skillet with a minimum of liquid; these collards are cooked for a long time in a big pot of boiling water! The result is tender, smokey greens that go perfectly with Southern staples like BBQ. We had these tonight with BBQ beef brisket.


Southern Style Collards

ingredients:
3 quarts water
1.5 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 T hot sauce
1 tsp cajun or blackening seasoning
1 smoked turkey wing or drumstick or a smoked ham hock or shank
1 T olive oil or bacon grease
2 bunches of collard greens

In a stock pot, heat the water to boiling with the salt, garlic powder, black pepper, cajun seasoning, and hot sauce. Add the turkey wing, lower to a simmer, and cook for 1 hour.

Meanwhile, prepare the collards. De-rib the collards by folding the leaves in half and cutting along the rib. Stack the leaves and cut them into strips, then roughly chop them.

Add the collards to the pot along with the 1 T of olive oil or bacon grease. Simmer for a further 45-60 minutes.

To serve, scoop the greens out with a slotted spoon. You should be left with a pot full of flavorful broth called "pot likker" and a well-cooked turkey wing. You can shred the meat and save the meat and broth to make soup later. I'm eyeing up my leftovers to make a turkey and okra stew.



The original for this recipe is the work of the infamous Paula Deen: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/collard-greens-recipe/index.html

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So that's it for the Greens Series! I hope you've enjoyed it and maybe found some new recipes to try out. I've definitely been enjoying eating them all week. :)

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

Ham Hock and Cabbage Soup

With the weather cooling down, it's nice to warm your innards with some delicious fall soup.



6-8 small servings or 3-4 large servings

ingredients:
* 4 tablespoons bacon grease
* 1 nitrate-free ham hock (about 1 pound)
* 1/2 a large onion, chopped
* 3 celery stalks, chopped
* 1/2 a small-to-medium head of green cabbage, chopped
* 3 cloves garlic, minced
* 2 bay leaves
* 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
* 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
* 3-4 cups Chicken Broth
* 3-4 cups peeled and cubed pumpkin (or other winter squash)

Heat the bacon grease over medium-high heat. Add the celery and onions and cook til they start to wilt. Add the ham hock.

Add the cabbage, garlic, bay leaves, black pepper, salt, and cayenne. Stir and cook until cabbage is slightly wilted, 3-4 minutes.

Pour the broth in, bring to a boil, and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes.

Add the pumpkin, cover, and simmer 1 hour.

Remove the ham hock from the pot and remove the meat from the bone. Shred the meat and stir it back into the soup. Remove and discard the bay leaves.

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This makes great leftovers and I think the taste even improves with age.

Goes well with a side salad for dinner.

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I adapted this recipe from Emeril Lagasse's Ham Hock and Cabbage Soup: http://www.emerils.com/recipe/2775/Ham-Hock-and-Cabbage-Soup

Chicken Saltimbocca and Braised Escarole

serves 2

Chicken:
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
fresh sage leaves
1/4 lb thinly sliced prosciutto ham
olive oil

for pan sauce:
1/3 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup chicken broth
1 tsp arrowroot dissolved in 1 tsp cold water

Take your chicken breasts and slice them as thinly as you possibly can. If you can't slice them thin enough by hand or if your knife is not sharp enough, then just slice them as thin as they'll go and then pound them to 1/4 inch thickness or less. I got 4-5 thin slices out of each breast.

Lay your chicken pieces out and top each slice with several whole fresh sage leaves. Place a slice of prosciutto on top of each piece of chicken and pat it down so it adheres to the chicken.

Heat olive oil in a cast iron skillet over medium high heat. You want the pan pretty hot so that it will brown the meat without overcooking it (since it's so thin). Cook the chicken in batches, starting prosciutto side UP first. This will let the chicken contract a little without the prosciutto shrinking. Flip the chicken and let the prosciutto side cook until it looks crispy. Remove to a plate and finish up the rest of the chicken in the same manner, adding more olive oil to the pan if necessary.

Once all the chicken is done, add the white wine and chicken broth to the pan and deglaze by scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Once the liquid has reduced a little, stir in the arrowroot/cold water slurry and stir quickly to thicken. Serve the sauce over the chicken.

Escarole:
1/2 head of escarole, chopped and washed
2 T raisins
1/4 cup pine nuts
pinch of sea salt
1/3 cup white wine or chicken broth
olive oil
2 cloves of garlic

Heat a glug of oil over medium heat and add the whole garlic cloves. Once the garlic starts sizzling, add the escarole, raisins, pine nuts, salt, and liquid. Cover the pan, reduce the heat, and braise for 10 minutes. Remove the cover and let the liquid cook off. This results in plump raisins, but the pine nuts get kind of plump and soft too. If that's not to your taste, you can leave the pine nuts out and toast them in a skillet or toaster oven and then add them to the dish at the last minute.

Peppercorn Crusted Porkchops

serves 2
4 4-oz boneless pork chops
freshly ground black pepper
sea salt
bacon grease
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup chicken or vegetable stock
2 tsp Dijon mustard
pinch of arrowroot powder, optional

Heat some bacon grease in a large heavy skillet over medium high heat.

Pound the pork chops to make them thinner. Coat each side with a little bit of sea salt and a liberal amount of black pepper.

Sear the pork chops for 2 minutes on each side and remove to a plate.

Add the wine, stock, and mustard to the drippings in the pan and deglaze. Reduce slightly until the sauce starts to thicken a bit. If you want it thicker, mix a pinch of arrowroot powder with a teaspoon of cold water and then add it to the sauce. Pour the sauce over the chops.

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These chops I served with pan roasted asparagus. I just put olive oil and bacon grease in a skillet over medium high heat and let the asparagus cook while the chops were going. They got a nice little bit of char on the bottom. This meal was a definite winner! I'll definitely be adding it to the repertoire. :)

German-ish Dinner?

Tonight we had bratwurst, braised broccoli rabe, and fried apples. I fried the apples in butter, which isn't really paleo, but you can do the same thing with coconut oil or lard or something and it would turn out equally yummy. :)


Sausages cooking. I simmered them in 1/4 inch of water for about 15 min, then drained the pan and let them get a little brown.


Apples frying. Just apples and butter, nothin' else.


Broccoli rabe before and after wilting down. I minced a shallot and sauteed it in olive oil until it just barely started to turn brown, then added a bunch of broccoli rabe, about 1/2 cup chicken stock, a pinch of salt, and a pinch of red pepper flakes. Covered it and let it simmer for 20 min or so.


Dinner is served! I actually only ate one of the sausages. We had some mustard with it too.

Pork in Pumpkin Mole Sauce

serves 3-4

note: the recipe contains cocoa powder, which is a questionably paleo ingredient - use with your own discretion

ingredients:
1 T of cinnamon powder
1 T chili powder or paprika
3 T unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp garlic powder or several cloves of garlic
1 14.5-oz can of pureed pumpkin
1/2 a large onion, thinly sliced
1 lb pork, chunked
2 chipotle chilis canned in adobo, minced
approx 1 cup of fresh cilantro, chopped
2 T raisins
4 T fat (lard, coconut oil, etc - whatever you have)
sea salt to taste

In a large pot or Dutch oven, combine the spices, garlic, pumpkin, onion, pork, and chipotles. Keep the pumpkin can and add about 2 cans full of water to the pot. Mix well and bring to a simmer. Taste and adjust with salt. Cook for 1 1/2 - 2 hours.

At this point you can refrigerate the mole to serve later, or you can continue.

When ready to eat, stir in cilantro, raisins, and fat and heat through for 5-10 minutes.

Serve with a green salad. Leftovers reheat well.

Recipe adapted from: http://forums.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=362685

Fennel Roasted Pork Loin

serves 2

ingredients:

1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 large fennel bulb, thinly sliced
1/2 large onion, chopped
1 T rosemary, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T fennel seed, cracked
large pinch of salt
black pepper
1/4 cup walnut pieces, coarse ground w/mortar and pestle (or you can put them in a plastic baggie and smash them with a meat pounder or a bottle)
zest of 1/2 a lemon
1 lb pork tenderloin

heat the olive oil in a skillet
saute the onions and fennel until they get soft, about 10 min
add the rosemary, garlic, fennel seed, walnuts, salt, and pepper and cook for 5 more min
add the lemon zest and cook for 2 more min
take off the heat to cool

butterfly out the pork tenderloin so it is flat
season both sides with salt and pepper
place the fennel mixture on the tenderloin and roll it up
secure with toothpicks

heat oven to 450F and roast the tenderloin until the thermometer says it's done (30-40 min).

I based this dish very loosely around this recipe: http://www.esquire.com/features/recipes-for-men/porkshoulder



Served with the pork tenderloin are mashed acorn squash (I just put a small acorn squash in the same pan as the pork and they roasted together, then I mashed it with a fork) and steamed asparagus.