cooking

Book Review (and Giveaway!) – Gather: The Art of Paleo Entertaining

Hey folks, I’m starting to get quite a collection of cookbooks (although it pales in comparison to this stash!), so I’m going to review some Paleo-minded cookbooks as I receive them, and give a copy away as well. If you have a book coming out soon, I’d be happy to have a look and run it through its paces.

UPDATE: Congratulations to Molly D. from Houston, TX, who won the giveaway. Thanks to everyone for participating!

I’m really excited about Gather: The Art of Paleo Entertaining, which releases next week. Personally, I think it is a huge step forward in the Paleo cooking world. Not only have Bill Staley and Hayley Mason created some really tasty recipes, they’ve upped the bar in terms of presentation and thoughtfulness. This is the first Paleo cookbook I’ve seen that I think can stand toe-to-toe with the best non-Paleo cookbooks coming out this year.

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Swedish Stew (Kalops)

Kalops is a traditional Swedish stew, first recorded in the 18th century. The word kalops itself is a cognate with the English word collops, which simply means “a slice of meat” – there’s actually some dispute as to whether the Swedish or English word came first. Either way, this stew is very similar to many English stews, but with a few Scandinavian twists: its signature flavor comes from a healthy amount of allspice, and it is commonly served with pickled beets. When carrots are added, the dish is called Skånsk Kalops, referring to the Skåne region (which is in Southern Sweden – perhaps carrots grow most abundantly there?).

Kalops is most often prepared with chunks of beef, but reindeer or elk are used as well. Personally, I thought it would be neat to make it with bison chuck roast, which US Wellness Meats recently sent me to try. It was pretty awesome. Overall, I loved this stew, and its characteristic allspice-heavy flavor gave it a warm, hearty, and very distinct taste.

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Please Vote for Me in the SAVEUR Best Food Blog Awards!

Folks, I basically flipped out when I found out that this tiny blog was chosen as a finalist for the Saveur 2013 Best Food Blog Awards, under the Special Diet category! SAVEUR is an incredible magazine and online resource, and one of my favorite places on the internet – so you can imagine my surprise when they gave a nod to little ol’ me! I’m speechless.

Okay, I’m not totally speechless, because I have a little more talking to do. I need your help. Although the Saveur editors whittled thousands of nominations down to us finalists, the winner is chosen by tallying votes, and it’s still anybody’s game: so please vote for me so I can win the whole thing!! I’m not joking when I refer to this blog as “tiny”, because I am tiny in comparison to some of my competitors, and every vote counts.

So please, rally the troops, grab your friends, and guilt-trip your families into voting for The Domestic Man on Saveur’s page. Please note that you have to register with Saveur.com first before voting. I realize that it’s an inconvenient extra step, but I really, really appreciate it. Voting ends at midnight, Friday, April 19th, so please hurry!

To vote, click here and then hover over one of the blog name and select “Register”, and fill out the form. Then return to the voting page and cast your vote.

Finally, I just want to say THANK YOU to everyone that reads this little nook of the web, and I hope you’ve enjoyed my recipes so far. I have a lot more to share, so stick around!

Roasted Garlic Cauliflower Purée

I must be reverting to some sort of baby food phase, because lately I’ve been really into puréed veggies. I think it’s the idea of eating familiar foods in unfamiliar ways. Either way you look at it, this cauliflower purée recipe isn’t the most innovative recipe I’ve created, but it serves an excellent purpose as an easy and mild-tasting accompaniment to robust dishes (which you’ll see in a couple upcoming recipes!).

It’s unsurprising that cauliflower is a close relative to broccoli, but until recently I wasn’t aware that it is from the same family (Brassica oleracea) as cabbage, brussels sprouts, kale, and collard greens. It was first brought to mainstream attention by some French cookbooks in the 17th century, although the plant itself originally came from Genoa, Italy.

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Gluten-Free, Grain-Free Chicken Pad Thai

It’s somewhat surprising, but Pad Thai, despite being one of Thailand’s national dishes, is from Vietnam. Originally influenced by Chinese cuisine, the dish was relatively unknown in Thailand until the 20th century. It actually was part of a Thai government campaign in the 1940s to create a national dish that both reflected the Thai spirit and also increased rice noodle production to help propel their economy. There’s a really interesting history of the dish to be read here.

This recipe is a long time coming, and something we’ve been cooking for years. For a while I was content with pre-made sauces like Mae Ploy’s, but I was never happy with its high sugar content and the fact that it has MSG in it. So I decided to work out how to make it from scratch, and I couldn’t be happier with the resulting product. This is the real deal.

And to make things even more interesting, for this particular photo session I thought it would be neat to try out Cappello’s gluten-free, grain-free fettuccine noodles instead of our usual rice noodles, and I was surprised by how well they worked! Instructions on how to make them with traditional rice noodles and zucchini noodles are included as well.

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Italian Sausage, Peppers, and Onion

With our extended winter this year (spring is finally springing in our neck of the woods this week!), I found myself craving comfort foods to help me get over the cold-weather blues. And for that very same reason, I decided to focus on an American classic for this week’s recipe – one that some might consider a quintessential comfort food. Believe it or not, it’s very hard to find any sort of origin or history around the combination of sausage, peppers and onion. It’s a staple food of Fenway Park, so it must be a Boston thing, right? But others associate it with NYC, and still more with Chicago. All I can say with certainty is that it’s of Italian-American descent, with fairly deep roots, and an easy way to make a quick delicious meal.

The word “sausage” originally comes from the Latin word salsus, which means “salted.” There is evidence of it being enjoyed in Italy as much as 2,000 years ago. That it has a long culinary existence isn’t so surprising; sausage is a perfect way of making sure every bit of the animal is used, and deliciously so. Here in the US, the words “Italian sausage” imply a seasoning based on fennel seeds and anise, and can be sold as either mild or spicy.

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German-Style Simmered Spinach

Who doesn’t love spinach? Besides kids, I mean. Actually, funny story, kids are more apt to eat vegetables if they watch Popeye. Personally, I despised it growing up, but now I love spinach in all forms – raw, blanched, or simmered (as in this recipe); it has a mild and unique taste with each preparation.

This recipe is modeled after the German dish Rahmspinat (“creamed spinach”), and it mostly true to the original except for the fact that this particular recipe is dairy-free. So I guess the more appropriate term for this dish would be Spinat. If you’d like to prepare it more true to the original dish, I’ve added instructions below!

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Gluten-Free, Grain-Free Beef Ravioli

When removing gluten from my diet a couple years ago, one dish I assumed I would never taste again was ravioli. Seriously, how could I pull that one off without flour? I’m sure it could be done, but it would take weeks, even months, of trial and error. I love ravioli, but frankly, not enough to put myself through that kind of ordeal. Luckily, a moment of genius struck me when trying to figure out something unique to make with my most recent batch of Cappello’s Gluten/Grain Free lasagna sheets. They did all the hard work for me; I just had to put everything together.

Ravioli has been written about since the 1300s, so logic dictates that it’s been around longer than that. It probably took a while to get the attention of the scribes, right? There are countless variations of ravioli, but since this was my first time making it in years, I wanted to style it after my childhood favorite – Chef Boyardee beef ravioli!

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Turning Your Kids into Real-Food Foodies

Earlier this week I wrote a guest post for my friends Matt and Stacy (aka Paleo Parents), here is the post for those of you that missed it:

Meet Oliver. He turned four years old last month, and has been eating the Perfect Health Diet version of Paleo (includes white rice and some dairy) since he before he was two. He loves Star Wars, Legos, and anything Disney. He has his ups and downs, but for the most part he’s a pretty adventurous eater, and I thought it would be fun to share what we’ve done to encourage healthy eating behaviors.

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Caldo de Langostinos (Mexican Squat Lobster Soup)

A few weeks back I did a guest recipe for Nom Nom Paleo, and I thought I’d share it here on my site for posterity’s sake.

Langostinos (Pleuroncodes Monodon, also called “squat lobsters”) are small, lobster-like crustaceans most often fished off the coast of Chile. They are found in abundance worldwide, but sadly, they are rarely caught for human consumption; instead, they’re used as feed in fisheries, mostly because they carry a certain pigment that helps color farm-raised salmon and trout. They have a sweet, shrimpy tasty to them and can be found for relatively cheap – so if you can get your hands on them, definitely give them a try.

This recipe in particular is modeled after a traditional Mexican soup, Caldo de Camarón, which is typically used with shrimp. If you don’t have any langostinos on hand, shrimp can be used with this recipe.

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