Sunday, October 31, 2010

Fruit-nut "oatmeal" breakfast

Breakfast is by far my favorite meal. I wanted to try something different this morning. So I chopped up a cup of mixed nuts: walnuts, pecans, cashew and macadamia.
I split the crushed nuts in two bowls, added some freeze dried strawberries and blueberries and a sliced banana. Added a little almond milk and voila. A very satisfying paleo breakfast!

Clams with chestnut gnocchi

I love chestnuts. They remind me of my grandmother. She lives in Switzerland, in the beautiful region of Ticino. She has a beautiful stone house in the mountains overlooking the Lago Maggiore.
When we visited when I was young, I would run around and gather chestnuts, which my grandmother would use to bake cakes or simply roast.


Chestnut trees are beautiful. And chestnuts are fun to collect. We would use some to make little toys with matches: chestnuts pigs, chestnut sheep and goats. I took this picture last September when I visited. The tree to the right is the same tree I used to collect chestnuts from and to the left is the pumpkin patch.



When we started to eat paleo, I thought of chestnuts and how they are used in multiple recipes in the Ticino region: chestnut cakes, roasted chestnuts, boiled chestnuts, etc.
I was lucky to find chestnuts at Fairway market and used them to bake a chocolate chestnut cake. It took a long time to put together but it was very satisfying. It is not easy to find raw chestnuts but a number of places carry either canned or steamed chestnuts, like Trader Joe's.
I found chestnut flour after a bit of research at Buon Italia, in Chelsea market in NYC. Amazon sells it too.

Now back to the recipe: Clams with chestnut gnocchis.

The chestnut gnocchis are easy to cook:
100g of chestnut flour
1 large egg
1 tablespoon olive oil or coconut oil
1 teaspoon of dried herbs

Mix everything in a bowl, then coat your hands with flour and roll spoonfuls into equal size rolls. Once all the dough is used up, cut the rolls to form little gnocchis. Boil in hot water for two minutes.
The gnocchi come out a little sweet, it is a good combination for a salty dish.


For the clams, I adapted the following recipe from Food Network. I bought the clams at the Farmer's market in Union Square, they were delicious! The recipe called for 6 mins only in the broth. I let my clams cook a little longer, some of them needed at least 10-12 mins to open up. 

And here is the end result: 




Saturday, October 30, 2010

Snacks

To keep going between meals, I have two daily snacks around 10AM and 3PM. I keep a bunch of different easy snacks at home:
- organic unsweetened applesauce
- a bunch of different raw nuts
- beef jerky
- fruits ( fresh or dry, trader joe's have unsweetened freeze dried fruits)
- baby carrots

Along with those staples I like to come up with new snacks at home. Today I made us a tuna avocado salad: one can tuna, one avocado and one tablespoon mayo, all mixed together. It was really delicious and simple.

Quick 12 min Lunch: Smoked duck breast and portobello mushrooms with zuchini pasta

Yes you read right, just because it's paleo it does not need to be slow. And just because it's fast, it does not need to be bad/unhealthy.

I've found out in the last month that with the paleo diet, you need to listen your body. If you're hungry, eat.

This is a vert fast recipe for 2 people:

2 portobello mushrooms
1 large zucchini
1 garlic clove - sliced
tomato sauce - I used leftover sauce from a clam recipe I'll post later
1 tbsp olive oil or coconut oil

In a pan, sear the mushrooms in a little olive oil. While the mushrooms cook, slice the zucchini in strips. I bought smoked duck breast from d'Artagnan, it is very tasty. You could replace it with the cooked/smoked protein of your choice. Leftover chicken or turkey breast would work well.
Once the mushrooms are nicely cooked, add the tomato sauce and the meat and cook over medium/low heat. In a separate pan, heat olive oil  then add the zucchini slices and garlic and cook for 3 mins. Do not overcook the zucchini or it becomes mushy.
Serve the portobello mushrooms/smoked duck sauce over the zucchini pasta.
Enjoy!

Grass-fed beef chorizo brunch

The week-end is all about brunch. Yesterday I scouted the Union Square Farmer's market and found some grass-fed beef chorizo sausages from Grazin' Angus Acres from Ghent, NY.

I happen to love chorizo. It reminds me of merguez, a spicy North African lamb sausage commonly found in France. The southwest of France is next to Spain, we eat a lot of the Spanish chorizo which is a dried salami type sausage.

I had leftover coconut pancakes from yesterday's breakfast so decided to combine this all in one yummy brunch.

We had:
- coconut pancakes, from Mark Sisson's recipe in "The Primal Blueprint cookbook".
- chorizo sausages, cooked for about 8 mins. I use a fork to poke the sausage to allow the fat to come out;
- sunny side eggs, cooked in the sausage fat.

Delicious!! I'll take pictures next time but we were too fast to eating it all up!

30+ days of paleo diet and wanting more

I realize most people start a blog once they start the paleo diet but I was only compelled to start sharing my experiences and recipes now that I completed 30+ days of paleo.

It's been a surprisingly easy switch for my husband and I. For over a year, we had been eating mostly grass-fed meat, organic vegetables and whole wheat products. Eliminating grains, dairy and legumes seemed like a daunting task at first. I grew up in France... Tell a French person they are no longer allowed to have bread and cheese and as cliche as it sounds, it wouldn't go down well.

It all started when one of my husband's high school friends visited NY for the Tunnel to Towers Run in memory of Stephen Siller. Our friend is a firefighter himself and is extremely fit and active. Over lunch, he told us about Crossfit and the Paleo Diet. The Virginia firefighting squads all do the WODs and compare their scores. At first, we started comparing with our diet, finding that it wasn't all that different and Crossfit sounded like an awesome new workout for us to try. After a long night of drinking and scouting the LES, we woke up the next morning deciding that we would start eating paleo from that day.

It has been a great change. I feel more energetic, happier and less stressed. I am starting this blog to share tips and recipes. My parents are both great cooks and they taught me how to cook at a young age. Cooking paleo is a fun challenge. It's all about being creative and producing healthy tasty food.