I spent some time in Prague last year and was introduced to česnečka (pronounced “chesnechka”), which is a simple garlic and potato soup.
I found that the soup tasted best with a mixture of my homemade beef stock, beef broth, and water. If you don’t have access to all three (my guess is you have easy access to one), improvise as needed.
As I was putting together a quick lunch the other day I made this simple soup, and didn’t take any pictures of the process because I assumed it wasn’t going to be a very noteworthy meal. Fortunately for me it was delicious, but unfortunately for you I don’t have any other pictures of the recipe other than the picture you see above. Regardless, I think I can still walk you through this dish without any visual help.
I lived in Hawaii for seven years, and I was lucky to learn a lot about Asian soups while I was there, and I feel that this dish accurately reflects the all-inclusive nature of Hawaiian (“local”) cuisine. This soup is a combination of many traditional dishes: I made a broth similar to Japanese shoyu ramen, but incorporated assorted Japanese fishcake from a dish called oden, and used wakame seaweed which is most commonly found in miso soup. I then used the same rice noodles used in Vietnamese pho and added fish balls, which you would find in many soups in Singapore and Malaysia.
I’m pretty sure that cheeseburgers are mankind’s greatest invention. I often imagine that if I had a time machine, the first thing I would do is travel to the Middle Ages with a perfectly-made burger and give it to a pauper and blow his mind. You think I’m joking, but I’m not. Cheeseburgers (with the bun) are probably the food I crave most, even after my palate shifted a few months ago. And truth be told, I still miss the fluffy/greasy bun associated with burgers, but I’ve come to appreciate bunless burgers as well.
I worked at a burger-centric restaurant for a couple years, and learned a couple tricks along the way. Here’s how I make a perfect cheeseburger.
image courtesy of Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Society
I usually find most conventional nutritional advice to be somewhat amusing, considering that a lot of it is driven by financial interest and not health. I’m not an expert by any stretch, but even with my limited knowledge I can see through most nutritional campaigns. What’s upsetting is that some of it can be potentially dangerous since most people don’t spend much time researching nutrition on their own and rely on easy-to-read columns and the like. I stumbled upon this article on Parents magazine entitled 10 Things You Need to Know About the New USDA Guidelines and found it so repulsive that I had to comment each of its assumptions.
NOTE: An updated version of this recipe appears in my cookbook, The Ancestral Table.
Many stores or butcher shops have beef marrow bones on the cheap, which make a dense and highly nutritious stock and excellent soup base. Although I’ve made my own stock using oxtails I’ve been wanting to try my hand at other soups, so marrow bones seemed like the best starting spot.
Before we dive into this recipe, let’s have a quick culinary lesson. “Stock” refers to a liquid that’s made from simmering bones, and “broth” is made from meat. You can use both, and as far as I know that’s still referred to as “stock”. Now that we have that cleared up, let’s make some food.
Those pancakes look great, right? Totally delicious, huh? Not really. Truth is, I know how to make a fine looking pancake (let’s chock that up to my brief stint at IHOP as a teenager), but these pancakes didn’t taste very good at all. I think it just goes to show that gluten-free substitutions don’t always pan out.
Despite my gross pancake experience, I thought that now would be a good time to give some pancake tips. You first want to concentrate on the batter, and my biggest suggestion is to not over-stir the mix. You want to make sure the batter is still a little bubbly, and let it sit for at least five minutes. Once you pour the batter onto a medium-heated and slightly greased pan, you want to flip it at the perfect moment: when the batter is bubbling and the edges are slightly dried. Once flipped, you only want to cook the other side for about 45 seconds.
Okay, let’s get down to business.
If you think that gluten-free breads taste good, I would say that you haven’t tasted gluten-free bread. Seriously, for a guy that’s not a huge fan of bread in the first place, gluten-free varieties are never fun: they’re either dense beyond belief or have a strange consistency. For that very reason, I’ve been leery of all gluten-free substitutes. However, pizza deprivation can drive a man to do some crazy things, and lately I’ve tried my hand at gluten-free pizza.
I realize that there are Paleo pizza crusts out there that are made with ground nuts, but I don’t have the courage to try one of those yet. Maybe later. I’m also sure that there are plenty of homemade crust recipes on the internet but I figure for now I’ll leave it up to the experts.
First, a word on how to cook a proper pizza at home. I’m not a big fan of tomato chunks in my red sauce, so I will buy pre-made pizza sauce or I will blend a spaghetti sauce if I’m in a pinch. Sauce from scratch is always an option, but I like to consider pizza a quick meal so I don’t like to put too much work into it. Jarred sauce will generally taste better if you simmer it for 30 minutes to reduce acidity before applying it to the crust. We also like to use a pesto sauce; we brush melted butter on the crust and then spoon pesto sauce on.
Cheese placement is essential! You want to evenly spread grated cheese (picture above) or lay out slices of mozzarella (picture after the break). When the pizza is fully cooked, you will want to broil the top to bubble and brown the cheese. Let it rest for five minutes before slicing.
I decided to look into KFC’s Grilled Double Down as a potential emergency meal. It sounds legit – bacon and cheese and sauce sandwiched between two grilled chicken breasts. I figured the sauce would have some banned ingredients (and it does – wheat, soy and corn), but I was disappointed to find that KFC’s grilled chicken contains all three of those Paleo-forbidden foods.
I decided to check out other “grilled chicken” options and this is what I found:
Burger King: modified corn starch, partially hydrogenated soybean oil
McDonalds: corn gluten, soy, wheat gluten proteins, partially hydrogenated cottonseed/soybean oils
Wendy’s: modified corn starch
Arby’s: corn flour, corn syrup solids
A&W: soybean oil
Chik-fil-A: soybean oil, palm kernel oil, soy lecithin
Chipotle: doesn’t say, although it mentions it contains soy
Hardee’s: soy, wheat, high fructose corn syrup
Jack in the Box: wheat, soy
Sonic: soy, wheat gluten
Taco Bell: modified corn starch, corn syrup solids, soy
So there you have it. Not one grilled chicken choice at any of these fast food restaurants is Paleo-friendly. I’m going to stick with Wendy’s Double Cheeseburgers when I’m in a crunch.
NOTE: An updated version of this recipe appears in my cookbook, The Ancestral Table.
Animal fat gets a bad rap this days, mostly because we’re scared of those totally-dangerous saturated fats. The old fast food joints used to cook their fries in lard (rendered pork far) or tallow (rendered beef fat, also known as suet) until the low-fat craze of the 70s forced everyone to use vegetable shortening (and their lovely, cancer-causing trans fats). I’ve looked around for animal fats to use in cooking but all I’ve found is partially-hydrogenated lard, and I’ve come to learn that the hydrogenation process, while useful because it allows for the lard to be kept at room temperature, also has trans fats. While we’re still searching for pork fat to render lard, our local Whole Foods has been more than happy to set beef fat aside for us as they trim their cuts down for sale. Within a day they had 10 lbs of beef fat for us, which I rendered into tallow the other day.
There are two ways to render fat – “wet” or “dry”. Dry rendering is simply leaving fat pieces to cook on low in a stockpot or crockpot until the fat has liquified (leaving cracklings for later), but the fat can burn and leave a bad taste in the tallow. I decided to do a wet render (which basically involves boiling the fat pieces until the liquid fat has been extracted). I found the whole experience to be surprisingly easy.
The Domestic Man 