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Almond Shortbread

This weekend, I was craving something just a little sweet and with the texture of cake or a cakey cookie/brownie – fruit (citrus, primarily) and dark chocolate have been my main (though not solo) source of sweets since the beginning of the year, but sometimes I crave a different texture from fruit flesh and the snap of a chocolate bar. I remembered having come across a very simple almond shortbread recipe, and decided to give it a try.

My friend Marija posted it originally on her Facebook page, with a positive review accompanying it. This shortbread is gluten-free, appropriate for those following SCD diet, and a nice sweet treat if you are eating paleo/primal. It also gave me an opportunity to use delicious (and healthy) grass-fed butter and virgin coconut oil, along with some raw honey.

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Sugar Plums and Other Sweet Holiday Treats

sugarplums

Another recent Traditional Community Kitchen meetup I attended recently focused on healthy holiday treats – sweet things that contain unrefined, natural sweeteners, with flavors appropriate for the season. This event was seriously calling my name when I first saw it, as I have a major sweet tooth and have struggled with sugar for a long time (my struggles continue, but I’m working on it).

One way I deal with my bully of a sweet tooth is to still eat sweet treats but eat those made with natural sweeteners. That means maple syrup, honey, sucanat, and coconut sugar. I don’t eat much stevia, but I do like it in some cases. I also love to eat refrigerated medjool dates – keeping them in the fridge solidifies them a bit and gives them the texture similar to chewy caramel. It’s become a favorite treat of mine over the years.

By the way, dates are also great stuffed with cream cheese, wrapped in prosciutto and baked until the meat crisps up. Sweet, tangy, and smokey all in one little snack – perfect!

Anyway, my love of dates leads me to my new love of sugar plums. Yes, sugar plums – the treat of the same name from A Visit From St. Nicholas (The children were nestled all snug in their beds/While visions of sugar plums danc’d in their heads.). One of the main ingredients of sugar plums is dates, and I think that’s why I like them so much.

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Grain-Free Meatballs

meatballs ready to eat

Lately, I’ve gone to a number of meetups with the Traditional Community Kitchen. This is an official Meetup group based in NYC, and one that I help organize (I’m a Co-Organizer and to some extent the Social Media Manager). It’s been one of the most fun social groups I’ve been a part of in NYC, and I’ve met some delightful people there that have become friends. Everyone is really friendly and eager to both teach what they know and learn from each other.

If you are in the NYC area, and interested in cooking together – whether your orientation is WAPF, paleo/primal, grain- or gluten-free, vegetarian, or simply an overall curious person looking for more inspiration to eat whole, real food – I highly recommend joining this group and coming to one of our meetups!

So, one of the most recent meetups was actually a repeat event – making a big pot of meatballs. This recipe was originally developed by Hannah Springer here in NYC, and she shared it with one of our meetup members, who passed it on to the rest of us. We’ve all really enjoyed the resulting delicious savory meatballs (which I like to make on the smaller side), enough so to make them together again.

They are different from any other recipe I’ve seen for meatballs, in that they are free of grains. Essentially, they are all meat, with the addition of egg, cream, and a few other things. I’m not personally avoiding grains, but for those omnivores that are, this is a great recipe

I remember the first event – which took place at my home – to be really fun. This second event was a lot of fun, too, and held at another member’s home.  The four of us chopped onions and I was glad to talk about my favorite way of chopping onions, which I’m happy to say sped up the chopping process – chopping onions can be a painful experience, so getting through them as fast as possible is a real benefit.

We then mixed those onions with spices and some pastured lard, and fried ’em up. You can only imagine how wonderful the house started to smell while this was going on.

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Pastured Pulled Pork

Recently, I had the opportunity learn a bit about butchering a pig – how to take it apart and turn it into the various cuts you see in the market (or at the farmer’s market). A friend who has excellent knife skills and some butchering experience led the workshop, and was really great about explaining what the different cuts were.

We lucked out and had half a local pastured pig for the workshop, and I was also fortunate to be able to take home a piece of the shoulder cut, a boneless blade roast. This roast had quite the fat layer on it.

pork blade roast

Make that a delicious fat layer. Over the many hours it cooked, the fat basted the meat – and some dripped into the pan, leaving me some wonderful lard for future cooking.  Then there was the disintegration of any connective tissue during the long roasting process, making for meat that really just fell apart. It was a truly tasty transformation.

But first, I created a marinade for the meat.

pork marinade

In it was garlic, oregano, salt, ground grains of paradise, citrus juice, apple cider vinegar, and a little bit of bacon fat (for viscosity). I used grains of paradise – a species in the ginger family with a peppery flavor – because I ran out of regular black pepper.

After I created the marinade, I put it on the meat and let it sit for an hour in a glass pan, covered in plastic wrap, in the fridge, and then 30 minutes on the counter, warming up a bit.

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Turkey Chili

turkey chili

As I mentioned earlier, we chose to have our turkey this Thanksgiving in the form of turkey chili. We thought it would be a low-key way of incorporating the traditional bird into the meal, plus we are just big fans of chili. I’m happy to say that it worked out really well – delicious and virtually no stress in working with ground turkey, compared to a whole bird.

I actually made this with beef a while back, and I remember us liking it that way, too. So, if turkey isn’t your style, beef works well.

For a long time, now, I’ve been searching for a simple and tasty chili recipe, and I’m thrilled to have developed one that works well for our tastes. This isn’t a blow-your-head-off spicy chili, though you could probably add enough heat with chiles to make that happen if you’d like. It’s not a super thick chili (which has its appeal), and it’s not an overly soupy chili (a style of chili I find utterly unappealing) – for me, it’s just right.

My boyfriend loves it, and has been singing its praises on a daily basis since Thursday. I expect this will make its way into the monthly rotation, especially now that it’s getting cooler (though today it was 70 degrees in NYC!). I could also see doubling this recipe and freezing a bunch of it for quick meals after a long day.

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Naturally Fermented Ginger Ale – Update!

ginger ale in a flip top

Today I opened up my fermented ginger ale to see how it turned out. Well… the good: delicious! I love the smooth flavor combination of ginger, lemon, and sweet. It’s really nice.

The (sort of) bad: not very sparkly. But there was a little carbonation, and when I shook the glass and listened to the liquid, I could hear the bubbles effervesce and pop. My thought is that more carbonation can be encouraged by putting it in a more airtight container, a kind of “second fermentation”.

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Braised Beef Shank

braised beef shank and asian greens

Recently, I’ve been craving beef an awful lot. It’s been a strong craving, and when I feel a tug toward a food so intensely, I go with it. I figure my body is telling me it needs something in that particular food (it also happens with orange juice from time to time – obviously that’s about vitamin C). I had recently eaten a burger at Bareburger, then another burger at Sparrow, but it wasn’t enough. So, I decided to take out the big guns – a substantial beef shank I had in my freezer.

I actually ordered it earlier this year through my CSA but was holding off on cooking it – it was a large piece of meat and I was feeling a little intimidated by it (this is my past vegetarianism rearing its head). I originally bought it because I knew 1) I could learn about braising with it, and 2) that there would be a big marrow bone in the middle. I’ve been wanting to try marrow for a while, and though I’d kill two birds with one stone in cooking this shank.

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