Langustini tails with okra and grilled eggplant

All a good seafood dish needs is olive oil, garlic and parsley. You could argue for white wine, butter, creme fraiche but I like the pure taste. I use the same recipe for mushrooms: olive oil, garlic and parsley. It's hard to mess up, very tasty and allows to showcase the main ingredients rather than overpowering it.

Langustini
1 cup thawed or fresh cooked langustini tails
2 cloves garlic
2 tbsp parsley
1 tbsp olive oil
Juice of a half lemon

Heat the olive oil in a saute pan. Add the garlic and shortly after the parsley. Careful not to burn the garlic. If you do - and you will quickly notice the brown color of the garlic - start over again. It is not worth eating a bitter dish and wasting great ingredients. Add the langustini tails and saute for 2 mins. Squeeze half a lemon. Allow to reduce another minute. Serve hot.

Okra 
1/2 red onion
2 cloves garlic
2 cups sliced okra

Slice the okra diagonally. Heat olive oil (or oil of choice) in a saute pan, add the onion and cook until translucent. Add the okra and then the garlic. Saute for about 8 min or until cooked.

Time to grow

In my attempt to cut down my use of maple sugar and honey,  I started thinking about growing my own stevia. My grandmother has a stevia plant on her balcony in Switzerland and she will cut leaves to sweeten tea. I found a provider of organic non GMO stevia seeds on Amazon and then thought about how I could grow the stevia plant. I live in an apartment with no garden nor balcony. In winter, we get cold weather that would kill any plants grown outside. I recalled a conversation I had with my old boss who grew tomatoes in his apartment. After a short email exchange, I had my answer: a hypoponic gardening system, the Aerogarden.

Not only does it allow me to grow my own plants but also comes with seed kits. I started off (to try it out) by planting the classic herb garden collection: basil, dill, mint, chives, thyme and oregano. It's very entertaining to have an indoor garden. Everything is growing fine except the chives. I have hope they will catch up otherwise I will use the space to give the stevia a try.

New Year's Brunch featuring the perfect paleo pancake recipe

There is nothing better than New Year's Brunch. You wake up for a new year and with (usually) the need for a nice hearty brunch. I have experimented with several pancake recipes and recently found the perfect recipe which I have adapted a bit over time. The pancakes are perfectly fluffy, cook very fast and most important don't fall apart.

Perfect paleo pancake recipe
3 eggs
1 tsp olive oil
1 scoop Trader Joe's stevia extract (or 1 tsp honey)
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tbsp coconut flour
1 ripe banana
optional: fresh blueberries

Mix the dry ingredients together. In a separate boil, whisk the eggs with the olive oil and vanilla. Crush the banana in the mixture. You can use a hand blender for a smoother texture. Add the flour mix little by little to the batter until there are no more lumps.

I use a tbsp scoop to portion out the batter in my pancake pan. About 1 1/2 tbsp per pancake make nice small round pancake that are easier to flip and cook fast, about 3 min per side. The fresh blueberries are a very nice touch.

To finish up the brunch, I made poached eggs, bacon and sauteed grapes in bacon fat (recipe below).

Great way to start a new year!

Asparagus omelet, bacon and ... Grapes

For New Years day, I cooked brunch (recipe to follow soon) and I had these grapes that weren't all so pretty anymore but not bad yet. Now I love making compotes or fruit sauces. It's an easy quick dessert, I'll throw a cut apple, cut fruit or frozen fruit in a pan with some water, cinnamon and cayenne pepper and let it reduce. So I decided to cut the grapes in half and cook them in the bacon fat. The result was delicious! So delicious that I made it again this morning, although my grapes were fresh.

First I cooked my bacon in a pan and added the halved grapes (about a cup) as the bacon was nice and crispy. I removed the bacon and rested it on kitchen paper to allow for the extra fat to be absorbed. I wanted some onions in the dish; I used TJ balsamic glazed frozen onions. I added them with the grapes. The grapes and onions took about 5 min to be nicely cooked through.
The bacon fat gives the grapes a beautiful saltiness but the cooking process accentuates the sweetness. After removing and setting aside the grape/onion mix, I added my cut asparagus in the same pan. You could use fresh asparagus and sauté them for a couple of mins, but with the morning crunch, I used TJ frozen grilled asparagus. I defrosted them first and then sliced them diagonally. Finally I added my beaten eggs and scrambled them. The asparagus in omelet inspiration came from our friend Carlos who cooked us a delicious omelet when we stayed at his place over the holidays.

This was a very satisfying breakfast. I felt no need to have my mid-morning snack and I survived until 2pm when my meetings were or without feeling any negative hunger effects.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone! It's been a long hiatus for me, I've been travelling quite a bit for my work; last week I broke 5 weeks of being on the road. Since it's my first post of the year, I want to share not only a yummy recipe but also some thoughts on side benefits of paleo.

I find it quite interesting that since I started cooking paleo, I feel a need to continuous need switch up recipes and come up with new interesting food. If I look back at my non paleo cooking days,  there was a definite trend in my diet: rice! I love rice and practically grew up eating chinese food. White rice and then later brown rice had become a daily staple of my diet. It was easy to prepare 2 cups of rice in my rice cooker and then prepare veggies and meat to go along. I cooked a tremendous amount of asian inspired dishes: thai curries, indian curries, korean stews... On the other hand, my mom grew up in the italian part of Switzerland and thought me italian cooking. I love fresh pasta, ravioli, tortellini, and lasagna. 

Wheat and rice ... two of my previous daily staples are not part of paleo. I always tried to cook at least one vegetable along with meat or several vegetables on their own but it was rare for me to only make meat and veggies or just veggies except on nights I made a salad or potatoes. 

So back to my original thought, since going paleo, I switched from a diet consisting of staple meals with a little variation here and there, to a much more balanced and varied meal plan. Somehow not being able to use the same ingredients pushed me to reinvent my cooking style. Now I could have chosen some new staples and then continued cooking the same recipes over and over again: turkey salad for lunch, and fish and vegetables (both from the frozen section) for dinner. Now instead, to make it more fun or I guess more exciting to switch lifestyles, I have realized that I have been cooking with a lot more varied ingredients and following seasonal availability more closely. Although I would love to go fully locavore and seasonal, I believe it would be quite tough at the moment combining it with paleo.

Another benefit from paleo has been that my increased time cooking has helped me increase my knife skills, mise en place and refine my cooking techniques. Wait a second? Am I saying that spending more time in the kitchen has been a benefit?  Absolutely. I have always prided myself in being able to put together some very tasty meals in little time, a skill that my mom has always stressed upon as being critical when you have hungry children crying for food (or a hungry spouse). My switch to paleo has pushed me to consistently cook breakfast, lunch and dinner (or enough dinner for the next day lunch).  When you spend a lot more time in the kitchen, it pushes you to pay more attention to important details like mise en place. Do 3 trips to the refrigerator increase your prep time? Yes. Does having all your ingredients laid out and cut properly reduce your cooking time? Yes. Do better knife skills help? Yes. These are all logical answers, but it's not until one has to that one usually pays full attention to detail.

So back to the recipe: Leftover roast with seasonal vegetables. 

Ingredients

1/2 lb cleaned brussel sprouts

1/2 butternut squash cleaned and sliced

1/4 cup roasted pine nuts

a handful of raisins

Leftover meat (turkey, roast, etc.)

1 diced tomato

1/2 diced onion

1 diced garlic

a dash pepper

1/4 cup fresh parsley

Instructions

Start to make the salsa for the roast by cooking the onions until translucent in a pot with a little oil. Add the garlic and after a minute the diced tomato. Allow the salsa to boil then reduce to a simmer. Add the pepper and the parsley. You can add any other ingredients to flavor the salsa: red peppers, cumin, oregano. Put a pot of water to boil for the squash. Add the sliced squash and cook until squash is tender. 

Meanwhile heat 1 tbsp of oil (I like to use a flaxseed/olive oil blend or coconut oil) in a pan. Add the brussel sprouts and let them roast for about 5 mins. Once they are slightly browned, add about 2 tbsp of water and cover to allow the brussel sprouts to steam. This process takes about 10 extra minutes. I like to determine readiness by tasting or frequently checking tenderness. Brussel sprouts also release a very distinct aroma once they are done. Towards the end of the cooking time, add the raisins to allow them to soak up some of the juices. To serve, toss the pine nuts with the brussel sprouts. 

Finally heat up the roast slices in a preheated cooking pan. You can use a little oil or use the cooking juices instead. Remember you are just reheating the meat, do not overcook it and do not allow it to dry out.