gluten free

Instant Stew

First of all, sorry about that title. Just like the elusive free lunch, there is no such thing as an “Instant Stew”. You see, I recently asked my Facebook followers what dish they’d like to see me develop, and I received several requests for pressure cooker and stew recipes. We use (and love) an electric pressure cooker called an Instant Pot, so that’s what I used for this recipe (and hence the name).

At its heart, this dish is similar to many of my other stew recipes, but with a new approach. When it comes to simple weeknight recipes, many folks like the idea of crockpot stews (wherein you leave the ingredients to slow-cook while away at work). But I’ve found that more often than not, the vegetables become too mushy and tired after a long simmer. This is where a pressure cooker really shines, as it shaves a multi-hour recipe into just over an hour, making it a potential weeknight option with superior texture.

If you want to make this dish without any fancy (awesome) gadgetry, I’ve also included stovetop instructions below.

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Chicken Parmesan (Grain-Free)

Parmigiana is a method of Italian cooking wherein breaded, fried cutlets are layered in cheese and tomato sauce. Originally made with eggplant (Melanzane alla Parmigiana), breaded chicken and veal cutlets are popular as well. There is some dispute as to where this dish came from; logic would dictate that the Northern city of Parma started the craze, but Southern regions Campania and Sicily also stake a claim in this dish. A common misconception is that the dish got its name from its inclusion of Parmesan cheese (despite the fact that mozzarella is the most common cheese used in this dish); but like Chicken Parmesan, Parmesan cheese got its name from the fact that it is produced in the city of Parma.

While Chicken Parmesan is fairly well-known in the US, it’s of monstrous popularity in Australia, where it is called Chicken Parm, Chicken Parma, or even Chicken Parmy. Their take on the dish usually includes french fries, and was named the #37 best food in the world by CNN Traveler a few years back.

My take on the dish is surprisingly similar to the way I made it while working as a line chef many years ago; the only thing that’s changed is the breading ingredients. While plain tapioca or arrowroot starch works well for its first dusting layer, mixing the starch with some potato starch for the outer breading layer gives the outside a crisp texture. If you’re looking for a really authentic, slightly rough texture that only breadcrumbs can provide, you could toast your favorite gluten-free bread, cool it, then blend to make breadcrumbs. But as you’ll see from the pictures below, this simple preparation is pretty awesome, too.

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The Safe Starch Cookbook

UPDATE: This eBook is now available, check it out!

Hi everyone, hope you’re having a great holiday! We decided at the last minute to spend our Christmas at Disney World (one of the perks of relocating to Florida). I’m in a giving mood, and so I wanted to share some news with you folks: I’m proud to announce that I am releasing a new eBook soon, called The Safe Starch Cookbook.

Along with compiling over 60 of my favorite carb-centered recipes, I used the eBook as an opportunity to put together all of my thoughts concerning this grossly misunderstood macronutrient. I discuss the historical precedence for starch consumption, the cost-effectiveness of mindfully incorporating starches into your diet, and some ideas concerning portion sizes and food timing. Not just a big carb-fest, I designed The Safe Starch Cookbook to teach you about the judicious use of starch to increase meal satisfaction and balance macronutrients to overcome cravings.

The recipes are divided into four main categories: rice, potatoes, noodles, and other starches (starch flours and starchy vegetables). The eBook is an interactive PDF, and will work on any PC, tablet, or smart phone. I wrote and designed the whole book from scratch, and I’m really proud of it; to get an idea of the design, here is a sample recipe for Bangers and Kale Mash.

The Safe Starch Cookbook will be released through this site on February 1st, but it is available right now as part of a really cool package called The Family Resolution Revolution Bundle.

This bundle features a ton of resources to help your family kickstart their health, including cookbooks, meal plans, eGuides, and annual digital subscriptions to Paleo Magazine and Paleo Living Magazine. It also comes with over $200 in discounts for Paleo-friendly products, too. All told, the $39 bundle comes with more than $1,000 worth of content. If you’re looking to grab some great resources for the New Year (and get early access to The Safe Starch Cookbook), this is a great way to do it. The Family Resolution Revolution Bundle only runs until January 4th, so be sure to check it out!

Please note that by clicking on the above link I receive a commission of the bundle sale.

I have another project in the works, but I’m not quite ready to share it yet – but soon! For now, let me know what you think of The Safe Starch Cookbook, and enjoy this time with family and friends.

Apple, Bacon, and Duck Breast Salad

I love the idea of a good salad. They are simple to put together, and can be immensely satisfying under the right conditions. For me, a salad should be about varying tastes and textures, while still fairly satiating; after all, nothing’s worse than sitting down to 15 minutes of chewing and not feeling satisfied. In terms of satiety, duck breast is pretty high up there – it only takes a little to feel full, especially compared to something leaner like chicken breasts.

So I threw together this duck breast salad, paired with the opposing tastes of apple and bacon. Not too flashy, but it makes an excellent midday meal. There is a lot of good advice out there on how to properly cook a duck breast, but I really like my method: crisp it skin-side down in a skillet, then flip and transfer to an oven until it’s ready. It’s an easy process, assuming you have an oven-proof skillet. If you don’t, no big deal – simply leave a baking sheet in the oven as it heats, and transfer the breasts to the hot sheet instead.

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Seasoned London Broil (Flank/Sirloin/Round)

Note: after talking to the farmer that provided the meat for this recipe, I realized that this cut was actually top round and not flank. I apologize for the mix up, and I’ve updated the post accordingly.

Let’s talk about the cut referred to as “London Broil” for a little bit. Back in the day, flank steaks (taken from the abdomen of the cow) were prepared using a method called “London Broil” (marinated and broiled). Over time, stores started referring to the cut itself as “London Broil”, and then started to use that label for top sirloin (from the cow’s rear end) and top round (from the cow’s hind legs) cuts as well. Today, you’ll find all of these cuts labeled as “London Broil”, but rest assured that this recipe will work well for any of those three cuts.

We usually use these cuts to make beef jerky, because it is consistently lean and easy to slice. But the other day I decided to prepare it traditionally by marinating it overnight and throwing it on a hot grill. I was surprised by how flavorful the steak turned out, and in the end it was a lot of delicious meat with little hands-on work.

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Faster Pho

Pho is one of my favorite dishes of all time. It was one of my first meals when I moved to Hawaii nearly 15 years ago, and I’ve eaten it regularly ever since. To this day, if I’m feeling under the weather, I immediately reach for the nearest pho bowl that’s lying around (if only it was that easy).

I spent years working on a good recipe of my own, which I wrote in 2012 (confidently declaring it my “definitive recipe” – ha!). I then updated and improved upon the recipe for my cookbook. I love my cookbook recipe, and I would confidently put it toe-to-toe with your favorite bowl of soup. Unfortunately, it takes over 7 hours to make it from start to finish, since I make the broth from scratch. While spending a whole day making one soup is very satisfying (and slightly therapeutic), I wanted to put together a faster version with similar flavors, which I’m proud to debut today.

This dish first emerged as a Hanoi street food during the late 1800s, and was brought to the US in the 1970s by refugees after the fall of Saigon. The inclusion of beef in the dish is reflective of its French influence; prior to French colonialism, cows in Vietnam were mainly used for labor and not as a food source.

Be sure to scroll through to below the recipe text, because I also recorded a video of the recipe. Thanks to everyone for your feedback on my last video; I adjusted my side camera angle so that you can better see what’s in the pots, but since this recipe is basically just a lot of boiling, it’s not very exciting footage!

For this recipe I used the US Wellness Meats eye of round, oxtails, and marrow bones, all sourced from grass-fed cows. I pressure-cooked the oxtail and marrow bones to make broth; I then picked the meat off the oxtails and added it to the soup with some thinly-sliced eye of round. US Wellness Meats is currently offering 15% off all orders under 40lbs using the code “soda”, and the deal expires at midnight CST tonight (December 9th), so jump on it! Okay, on to the recipe.

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Easy Glazed Pork Chops

First of all, I want to thank everyone who bought my cookbook or spread the word about that crazy deal last week. The Kindle version of The Ancestral Table climbed from somewhere in the top 105,000 to the #12 book on all of Amazon! My time near the top of the list was short-lived, but it was pretty awesome knowing that my book made it into so many new hands.

We spent our Thanksgiving with Sarah Ballantyne and her family in Atlanta, and came home earlier this weekend with enough time for me to develop and photograph a few dishes. After the hubbub of a holiday meal, I was in the mood for something simple and straight-forward. Pork chops came to mind. These easy glazed chops come together in less than an hour and are impossible to mess up. Bear in mind that you’ll want an instant-read thermometer to make sure they’re perfectly done; we use and love this one.

Don’t worry about the cut of chop (bone-in, center-cut, etc) for this recipe. Any of them will work fine, although thick chops are preferred; thin chops tend to try out quickly and are best prepared with a marinade, like in the Lemongrass Pork Chops recipe found in my book.

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Lazy Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls are often considered the most comforting of dishes, so much so that every Eastern European country wants to stake claim on owning the original recipe. While there is no definitive origin story, the prevailing story is this: members of the Russian aristocracy, visiting France in the mid-1700s, became enamored with their dishes of stuffed and roasted pigeons. Upon returning home, they ordered the dish to be recreated, and the closest they could come were the stuffed cabbage rolls we know and love today. This is evidenced by the similarity between the Russian words for stuffed cabbage rolls (Golubtsy) and pigeons (Goluby).

In recent years, a new phenomenon has sprouted up: Lazy Stuffed Cabbage Rolls. Regular cabbage rolls require you to par-boil the cabbage leaves and roll each wrap before roasting or simmering everything; the whole process can take hours. Instead, home chefs have been simply chopping up the cabbage and adding it to the filling, cooking everything at once in about 1/4 of the time. This is the variation we’re going to tackle today.

Be sure to check out the video after the recipe; now that we’ve relocated to a house with a larger kitchen, I filmed a short cooking demonstration of the dish. I’m still working out some production kinks, but if you like the video I’ll keep cracking at it!

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The Ancestral Table (Kindle version) on Sale for $.99, November 25th!

Great news! The Kindle version of my cookbook is part of a one-day sale next week, for only $.99 (normally $9.99)! If you’ve ever wanted to have a portable version of The Ancestral Table handy, this will be a great time to grab it; for example, I think it would be really convenient for you to have access to my recipes while grocery shopping. That’s worth a dollar, right? Nothing beats the feeling of flipping trhough a paper book, and truth be told navigating a Kindle cookbook takes a bit of effort, but you can’t argue with the price! (Also note that there is a “Give as a Gift” button on the Amazon site – hint hint.)

Bear in mind that most smart phones have a Kindle app which will allow you to access the book, so you don’t need an actual Kindle to enjoy my book while on the go. There are even Kindle desktop apps for those of you without smart phones. I actually don’t make any money off the book when it’s sold at this price – I’m just happy to get it into your hands and spread the word about delicious food.

This sale is part of a community-wide event, with plenty of other great eBooks on sale at the same time:

The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson
The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf
The Paleo Manifesto by John Durant
Beyond Bacon by Stacy Toth and Matthew McCarry
The Paleo Kitchen by Juli Bauer and George Bryant
Gather, The Art of Paleo Entertaining by Bill Staley and Hayley Mason
Everyday Paleo By Sarah Fragoso
Sexy by Nature by Stefani Ruper
Free the Animal by Richard Nikoley
The Paleo Girl by Leslie Klenke
The Paleo Sweet Tooth by Alison Russo
Decadent Paleo Desserts by Hannah Healy
The Modern No Nonsense Guide to Paleo by Alison Golden
The Everything Weeknight Paleo Cookbook by Michelle Fagone

I suggest checking out the event site; there you can sign up to be notified immediately when the books go on sale, so that you don’t miss the deal. Remember, the books will be on sale for one day only, Tuesday, November 25th, 2014!

Note that some of the books above will be on sale for $1.99 vice $.99 because of length, but we don’t know which books (if any) will be at the higher (outrageous! ridiculous!) price.

Stew for You (or Two)

Recently, I’ve been thinking about living a simpler life. The idea started when I visited Mickey Trescott’s new home in the Willamette Valley over the summer, but it really solidified when we moved all of our things from Maryland to Florida last month – over 14,000 lbs worth of belongings. As we started unpacking boxes, I couldn’t help but think that I just didn’t need so much stuff. The worst part about it? We’re still unpacking.

So for the holidays this year, we’re trying to not buy any objects for each other. Instead, we’re gifting experiences. So this week’s recipe is going to be a little different from your usual Tuesday post; I’m going to walk you through how to make gifts to hand out to people that aren’t stuff. A couple years back I made a few gallons of my barbecue sauce and gave it away as gifts. While I had a lot of fun with that idea, I wanted to do something more immediate and useful – wouldn’t it be better to just gift someone a fully-cooked delicious meal? And thus my idea of Stew for You (or Two) was born. The concept is simple: make a large batch of delicious stew, vacuum-seal it, and give it away as gifts.

I’m particularly in love with my Beef à la Mode recipe from earlier this year, yet I’m sure that its 3.5-hour cook time deters readers from making it often enough. Instead, imagine reheating a vacuum-sealed homemade meal directly in gently simmering water, offering an unbeatable experience in just 20-30 minutes. If you don’t have a vacuum sealer, a resealable mylar bag or Wrap ‘n Boil bag would work well, or even something like this IndieGoGo project would be great.

So read on for the stew recipe and sealing instructions, plus other gift suggestions. Let’s make Stew for You (or Two) go viral.

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