Food

Amendment to my BBQ Ribs Recipe

You may remember one of my favorite recipes, my easy BBQ ribs. Well, since posting the recipe last year (and a revised version this March), I’ve been slowly honing this dish, and I’ve made enough changes that I figured I should write a quick amendment post.

The biggest change is that after cooking, I have been letting the ribs rest for about ten minutes, and then cutting each bone away from the rack using a pair of kitchen shears. This step makes for a much cleaner and fulfilling eating experience.

I’ve also found that adding peppercorns to the apple cider/white wine mixture in the first part of the cooking process really adds a depth to the meat’s taste.

Loco Moco

NOTE: An updated version of this recipe appears in my cookbook, The Ancestral Table.

Loco moco is a Hawaiian dish and popular breakfast meal on the islands. It’s the ultimate breakfast meal prior to a big workday, consisting of rice, a hamburger patty, fried eggs, and brown gravy. Its unique mix of ingredients create a distinct taste that I’ve been missing lately, so I decided to whip one up the other day.

Read Full Article

Canned Spaghetti and Pizza Sauce

We had a ton of tomatoes from our backyard garden during our most recent harvest. Last year I canned tomatoes, but this year I decided to take it one step further and make and can my own sauce. When deciding on the consistency of my sauce, I decided to make a sauce that’s smooth and chunk-free; that way I could easily use it as a pizza sauce, and could then use fresh tomatoes (or a can of diced tomatoes) to add chunks to a spaghetti sauce.

Because the amount of tomatoes you have may vary, I decided to keep this recipe fluid; you could make this sauce with as many or little of those red, savory fruits as you’d like.

Read Full Article

Teriyaki Chicken

NOTE: An updated version of this recipe appears in my cookbook, The Ancestral Table.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, summer is a difficult time to write new recipes. We’ve spent a lot of this summer traveling or entertaining guests; when we are home, I usually prefer to grill something, and most of my grilling recipes are already on this site.

However, this has also been a good time for me to try out healthier versions of pre-Paleo dishes, like teriyaki chicken. I grew up in Washington state, where you’ll find an abundance of Asian restaurants selling “teriyaki chicken” – likely influenced by traditional Japanese teriyaki sauce, which is made with soy sauce, cooking wine, and sugar or honey. Hawaii has a similar dish, simply called “BBQ chicken”. Traditionally, the sauce is boiled down and thickened before marinating the meat, but it’s often too long of a prep to cap onto an already long marinating process (2-4 hours). Here’s how I make it at home.

Read Full Article

Chard, Amaranth and Lambsquarter Greens

I’m starting to find that bringing constant, new content to this site during the summer months is going to be difficult. Not only is my family much busier, but I find myself falling back on the same, tried-and-true meals as the summer heat kicks in – and they almost all include grilling. Since many of the dishes I love to grill are already on the site, I’m caught in a bit of a predicament.

Luckily, we signed up for a vegetable CSA share through a local farm which means that we’ve been getting all sorts of unexpected and new veggies every week. This basically requires me to find out more about each vegetable we get, and to research recipes to boot. This is one such recipe, although the same method can be applied to traditional greens (collard, mustard, turnip, etc).

Read Full Article

Gluten Free Fried “Saimin”

Saimin is a dish unique to Hawaii, and a marriage of the many cultures found on the islands. Chinese egg noodles are served in a Japanese broth with garnishes taken from Chinese (char siu), Japanese (fish cake), Filipino (adobo), Korean (won bok cabbage), and Portuguese (sausage) cuisine. My favorite saimin in Hawaii is found at Shiro’s Saimin Haven, which features 70+ variations of the dish (my favorite is “dodonpa” – 10 garnishes!). Likewise, fried saimin is a stir-fried version of the soup, and is also popular in many saimin shops. It’s a refreshing break from noodle soups and your everyday lo mein-style dishes. Unfortunately, saimin noodles are made with wheat.

To remedy this, I settled on sweet potato-based noodles, which as far as I know are a Korean invention. They are made with just sweet potato starch and water, and are similar to glass/bean noodles used in dishes like chicken long rice.

Read Full Article

Roasted Pork Shoulder / Butt

While in Germany last year, I came across a Bavarian dish called “Schweinshaxe” (pork knuckle), which is a ham hock that is boiled and roasted to a crisp. I enjoyed picking apart this barbarian hunk of meat, and I wanted to replicate the experience at home. Since uncured ham hocks are hard to come by, and most butchers would look at you funny if you asked for a pork knuckle, I decided to try out a different cut but with similar result.

I settled on a pork shoulder (same thing as a pork butt), which is easy to find and fairly marbled. Pork shoulder is the cut used in pulled pork, so I thought I would roast a shoulder in the grill but take it off before it starts to fall apart; the outer shell came out deliciously crispy and the meat was juicy and tender.

Read Full Article

Grilled Split Chicken Breasts

Split chicken breasts don’t get any respect. They’re a lot cheaper per pound than boneless, skinless breasts (granted, they weigh more) plus their bones give them a natural grilling “rack” to use, resulting in a better tasting cut of meat. I decided to try out a method of grilling split breasts that I had read about, and here are the results.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I prefer to brine chicken if I’m going to grill it, in order to retain as much liquid as possible. Although it definitely makes the chicken more juicy, it does take a little bit of preparation. I think it’s worth it.

Read Full Article

Gluten-Free Maryland Crab Cakes

NOTE: An updated version of this recipe appears in my cookbook, The Ancestral Table.

Maryland crab cakes are a little different from what you may be used to. They’re made with a smidgen of bread crumbs (or sometimes crushed crackers) which give them a slightly spongy consistency, unlike many of the hard-packed crab cake balls I’ve seen elsewhere. Also, Maryland crab cakes don’t have any onions in them; they’re basically just huge piles of crab meat.

Here in Maryland crab cakes are either fried or broiled, and I prefer the broiled method. I’ve seen a lot of recipes which call for baking then broiling the crab cakes; however, the internal temperature of a crab cake should be 160 degrees, so this method doesn’t seem very practical. I imagine it’s hard to guess the perfect temperature while a crab cake is being broiled at 500 degrees. Instead, I’ve chosen to broil the crab cake first to get the right crispiness, then bake it until it reaches the right temperature.

Lastly, for the bread crumbs I used Udi’s gluten free bread, which is made with tapioca starch, rice flour, and potato starch. I lightly toasted two slices of bread (this is a great use for the heels) and then blended them in my Magic Bullet. Worked perfectly.

Read Full Article

Paleo at Six Months: 10 Lessons Learned


image courtesy of Hanna-Barbera/Warner Bros.

Note: this was written in May 2011. Check out my one year recap post here, as well as my three-year recap post here.

So right now I’m hovering around the 6-month mark on my modified Paleo diet (which = “Paleo + some dairy + white rice”), and I thought that I should share a few musings and pointers.

Since starting the diet, I’ve lost a few things (besides fifteen unwanted pounds). Namely, I’ve lost post-meal tiredness, midday tiredness, and stomach issues (read: gas). For better or worse, I’ve also lost my taste for beer and most wines, mostly because they make me tired and give me headaches. I’ve gained a ton of energy, a much more pleasant and positive mood, and lately I’ve been able to exercise for the first time in over six years.

Here are some pointers that I wish I had known six months ago.

Read Full Article