recipe

Simple Basil Pesto

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

Pesto has an interesting history. Its name comes from a Genoese (Northern Italy) word that means to crush or pound, implying the use of mortar and pestle. In fact, the English word “pestle” has the same root. While pastes have been used in Italy since the Ancient Roman times, basil wasn’t introduced until later, from Africa (via India), and the modern interpretation of basil pesto dates back only to the 19th century. In fact, pesto didn’t even gain popularity in the United States until the latter half of the 20th century.

Basil pesto is great because it is a fool-proof way to spice up many pasta dish, or even sautéed vegetables. I often add a spoonful of it to many sauces, including alfredo or spaghetti sauce (blasphemy, right?) for a subtle extra kick.

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Colcannon

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

Although there are variations of potato/kale combos found all over Europe, I’m inclined to believe that the Irish variation, colcannon, is grandaddy of them all. First of all, the Irish basically own the creative rights to cabbage. The Romans introduced cabbage to most of Europe back in the day, except that when they got to Ireland it was already there! By tracing the word for cabbage linguistically, it appears that cabbage has been a part of the Irish (well, Celt at the time) diet since the Iron age. Potatoes weren’t introduced to Europe until the 16th Century, with the Irish and French being the first to really embrace them, and so colcannon came about sometime thereafter.

Although colcannon is treated as a St. Patrick’s Day dish here in the US, it’s traditionally a Halloween dish in Ireland. Some families would put a plate of colcannon outside their front door with a large chunk of butter in the middle to feed ghosts/fairies that were passing by. It also was closely related to marriage divination, in that trinkets (wedding rings, coins) would be hidden in the colcannon and the girl that found the trinket would be the next to marry.

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Lettuce Chips

It might sound crazy, but you can totally make lettuce chips. Google it. It’s a thing!

Lettuce chips have a distinct taste to them – they retain a hint of bitterness, and just about melt in your mouth. They’re impossibly delicate so you’ll probably end up eating them all in one sitting instead of trying to store them without crushing everything. My technique for cooking them involved a quick bake in the oven, but I bet you could get the same effect with a food dehydrator for a longer period of time.

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Roasted Pork Sirloin

I have a confession to make: it’s not often that I invent a recipe out of thin air. Usually I tend to re-create tried-and-true traditional dishes using a wide array of sources. However, with today’s recipe – a roasted pork sirloin – I made the whole thing up, mostly out of necessity. Although there are a lot of recipes out there for how to cook pork sirloin, many of them looked less than great, and there didn’t seem to be a universal approach to cooking this cut of pig.

I chose to tackle this dish for another reason, as well: it’s a fairly affordable cut of pork. That seems like a tragedy – to have an affordable, readily-available selection of meat available but no tasty method of preparation – and I wanted to fill that vacuum. Luckily, US Wellness Meats agreed with me, and let me try out one of their 4-lb. Pork Sirloin Roasts.

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Homemade, Sugar-Free Barbecue Rub

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

If you’ve taken a look at the ingredients list of your favorite barbecue rub, you may have been surprised to see that many commercially-available rubs have some form of sugar in them. There are definitely sugar-free rubs to be found, but wouldn’t it be better to just make some of your own?

This recipe is courtesy of my friend Jeremy, who has his own Kansas City Barbeque Society competition team, SeaDog BBQ. This rub has a nice, even taste with a hint of spice thanks to its use of chipotle powder.

Yields about 3/4 cup.

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Gluten-Free, Homemade Gyro Meat (γύρος)

Gyro meat, often referred to as doner or shawarma meat, is simply meat roasted on a rotating vertical spit and shaved off. Most Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern countries have some variation of this dish as a common street food. Depending on where you’re getting it, the meat can be made of lamb, beef, goat, chicken or a combination of meats. It’s one of my favorite meats of all time, and one that’s not easily replicated at home without a rotisserie setup. Lava Lake Lamb was gracious enough to send me some ground lamb recently, so I thought it was time to try and figure out how to make it on my own.

I spent a lot of time researching how to make authentic gyro meat at home, and in the end I found that Alton Brown’s approach was just about perfect. It involves processing the meat to make a thick paste, which is then stored for a couple hours before being cooked on the grill using a rotisserie or in the oven using a meatloaf pan. I went with the meatloaf pan variation with just a few adjustments, and it was awesome.

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Homemade Tzatziki (τζατζίκι)

In the US, tzatziki is associated with Greek food (most especially as a sauce served with gyros), but the name comes from the Turkish side dish called cacık which features the same ingredients but is diluted with water. Although you can find it commercially (we especially like Hannah’s version), it’s a fairly easy sauce to whip up on your own using ingredients you might already have in the fridge.

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“Loaded” Baked Sweet Potato

Last week I participated in the first-ever Highbrow Cook Off, hosted by Highbrow Paleo (an online collection of citizen scientists, researchers, nutritionists, exercise physiologists, book readers, comedians, modern homesteaders, political analysts, hunters and huntresses, foragers, eaters of guts – eyeballs – and insects, devoted followers of OakOy and culinary explorers).

The rules were simple:
– only use the ingredients outlined
– use of pre-approved pantry items is unlimited
– only use minimal processing, and minimal kitchen equipment, as outlined
– keep track of how much you spend on the ingredients
– will not use more than 3 kitchen gadgets/utensils, and nothing powered except the oven or stove top

For this first iteration, the incorporated ingredients were kale, mushrooms, onions, eggs, and a tuber. After a little deliberation, I settled on the idea of a baked sweet potato, with the veggies/eggs as toppings. Turned out beautifully! I was so happy with the results I thought that I should share it here as well. Total cost of the meal was about $2.

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Polish Easter Soup (Zurek)

I wanted to come up with a special Easter dish this year, but I quickly realized that I couldn’t use your standard Easter meal ideas; I’ve already posted recipes for ham and lamb roasts this year. Instead, I settled on a traditional Polish Easter Soup called Żurek (also often referred to as Biały Barszcz – “White Borscht”). This soup uses a combination of pork (kielbasa sausage, ham, or in our case, bacon), boiled eggs, and veggies in a slightly sour and creamy (hence the “white”) broth.

There are quite a few challenges with creating a grain-free version of this soup. First of all, the soup is traditionally made by soaking and fermenting/souring rye bread as a soup starter. Instead, we’re going to create a “sour” taste by using another popular method – horseradish and sour cream. Żurek is also traditionally served in a rye bread bowl or with large chunks of rye bread as an accompaniment. We’re just going to omit that whole rye bread part; it didn’t make this soup any less delicious!

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Homemade Chicken Stock

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

There are four main benefits to making your own homemade stock:

1. It saves you money, especially if you use leftover chicken parts. As you’ll see in this recipe, even buying chicken parts specifically for stock is still cheaper than buying commercially-available stock.
2. You get to control the taste of the broth, especially how much salt goes into it – which in my case is NONE. I prefer to add salt to my dishes as I cook them, without having to worry about how salty my broth is going to make my dish.
3. You can make it as concentrated as you’d like, which helps you save valuable freezer/fridge space.
4. You have control over where the chicken comes from, and how it was processed, by purchasing your birds/parts from a local farm or from online vendors.

For this recipe, I used chicken parts from U.S. Wellness Meats; specifically, chicken backs and necks. I used these parts because they have lots of bones, which house a lot of nutrients that are imparted into the broth. U.S. Wellness Meats were out of chicken feet at the time of my order, so I got some locally. These are great because they are full of bones and collagen, which create a rich, flavorful, and gelatinous broth. Other options for chicken parts are leftover chicken carcasses (store them in the freezer after roasting a chicken, until you have a few ready to go), or whole stewing hens (older chickens that are too tough to eat using quick-cooking methods).

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