Yummy Chicken (or turkey) Stock

You hear about the benefits of chicken stock, both nutritional and culinary, almost everywhere you look. I tried for years to make it part of my arsenal but I had some kind of mental block and never succeeded in making a stock that I thought tasted any good at all. I would try to hide it in things so I couldn't taste it. I was very happy to finally figure out how the heck to make good tasting stock, so I will share it with you!

YUMMY CHICKEN (OR TURKEY) STOCK



ingredients:
1 whole chicken OR 2 whole turkey legs (thighs + drumsticks)
2-3 chicken feet, scored, optional
any extra leftover bones you have kicking around, optional
1 carrot, cut into 1-in chunks
2 stalks of celery, cut into 1-in chunks
1 onion, quartered
handful of fresh parsley
10-15 peppercorns

Put the chicken or turkey in a stockpot and cover with water. Bring up to a simmer and then discard the now scummy water. Cover the bird with water again and this time add in all the other ingredients. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam/scum that rises to the top. Lower to a bare bubble and cook for 2 hours. You don't want the stock boiling because it will make the meat very tough, so make sure it really is a bare bubble. After 2 hours, fish the chicken or turkey out of the pot and pull all the meat off the bones and save it for later. Return the bones/cartilage/skin/etc to the pot and cook for another 2 hours. Strain, bottle, and refrigerate. If you're lucky it will turn to jello in the fridge!

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The key to this, I think, is the initial discarding of the water and cooking the meat with the bones for the first bit so that the stock gets a much meatier, nicer flavor. If you cook the meat too long though it won't taste very good, so that's why you take it out halfway through and then continue cooking the bones to get some more goodness out of them. I've also found this particular blend of veggies to be pretty yummy.

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

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. :)

Beef and Potato Stew with Saffron

I haven't been posting as much as I would like. I've taken some pictures of our food lately but I haven't had time to sit down and write anything up until today. Here is something we ate tonight. It is a delicious paleo beef stew with Spanish flavors. The original recipe is "Beef and Potato Stew with Saffron from La Mancha" from the book "Real Stew" by Clifford A. Wright. I had never used cloves or saffron in a stew before, but the result was amazingly rich and delicious. I think this may be my new favorite beef stew!



serves 4-6

ingredients:
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 large green bell peppers, seeded and chopped
1 medium onion, sliced and separated into rings
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2-1/4 lbs boneless stew beef
*1-1/2 lbs potatoes, cut into 1-1/2 inch chunks
1 T sea salt
1 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 bay leaf
Good size pinch of saffron threads
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup beef broth, optional
water
1-2 T arrowroot powder, optional

Layer the olive oil, bell peppers, onion, garlic, and beef into a stew pot in that order. Layer the potatoes on top of the beef. Add the salt, pepper, cloves, bay leaf, and saffron. Pour the wine and beef broth over and add enough water to come to the top of the potatoes but not cover them.

Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer until the meat is very tender, about 2 hours.

The broth is relatively thin at this point. If you would like a thicker stew, with the pot still on the heat dissolve the arrowroot in 2 T cold water and stir into the stew.

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*note: Some people don't consider potatoes to be paleo. I find them acceptable on my personal version of the paleo diet, but if you'd rather substitute a different root vegetable I think that rutabaga would work the best.

what I've been eating

I don't have any structured recipe posts for you after the flurry of last week, so I thought I'd just write about the dribs and drabs of what we've been eating lately. Hopefully it can inspire someone!

Turkey Soup: Remember the big pot of collards I made last week? Well I took the leftover cooking liquid and simmered some chopped up vegetables (2 teeny tiny potatoes, carrots, celery, and okra) until tender and then added in all the turkey meat I shredded off the wing that also had cooked with the collards. I added some parsley too. It made a really nice soup that we've been having a cup of with dinner for the past few days.

Apricot Glazed Lamb Chops: This is so easy it's almost criminal. The hardest part is going to the store and finding some apricot preserves that are made with all fruit and no sugar. Once you have your preserves in hand, mix 1/4 cup of them with 1/2 tsp ground ginger. Take enough lamb chops for two people and coat with half the preserves. Broil 5 minutes. Flip, coat with other half of preserves, and broil 5 more minutes. Ta da! Here is a picture of that dinner:

Also on the plate are a simple carrot salad (shredded carrots with parsley and olive oil vinaigrette) and some braised mustard greens with shallots, white wine, and celery.

Skirt Steak with Beer: This one isn't technically paleo, but it was pretty awesome. If you're going to be unpaleo, this is the way to do it. I marinated skirt steak for 24 hours in a mix of wheat-free soy sauce, rosemary, garlic, mustard, worcestershire sauce, black pepper, and dark lager beer (thus negating the wheat-free soy sauce but oh well). Sear it to death in a skillet so it has a nice crust but is medium rare in the center. Yum yum. I think we had it with the turkey soup and a raw fennel salad.

Pork Breakfast Sausage: I finally got around to making sausage for my husband to take to work so he's not eating all the crap that is in the breakfast meat available at his office. It's just ground pork with various seasonings that make it taste like sausage (key ingredient: sage). It's really good. I'll do a proper write-up on it soon. We've been having that for breakfast this week along with blueberries and walnuts.

Apple Fritter Things: I have these in the oven right now and I'm not sure how they're going to turn out. It's shredded apples held together with ground flax seeds and an egg and flavored with lemon zest/juice and cinnamon. You bake them first and then turn the oven heat really low to kind of dehydrate them. They're still in the oven right now. If they turn out any good I'll post the recipe this week.

Fruit Salad: Blueberries have been on sale so we're eating them a lot! I have hit upon my favorite combination of fruits for fruit salad: Pears and blueberries with cinnamon and lime juice. Heaven in a bowl! We also had cantaloupe and blueberries with lime juice and it was pretty good too. The lime juice really has an affinity for the blueberries, I think. I picked up something called "blossom water" at the store today that smells like flowers - I think it might be good on fruit salad too. Maybe rose water would also work! Hmmm...

That's it for tonight. Happy eating!

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