Butternut and Beef Curry

Today at lunch, I was again faced with this meat from the broth pot and no idea what I was going to do with it.  One daughter suggested soup again.  After two days of very fine tasting soups I didn’t think any of us (except her) would want soup again… She suggested that I do something curry like.  (She once spent an entire summer mastering the art of curry making.)

Before GAPS, curry always meant something with rice or a flat bread.  So when I think of curry I have to rethink it, attempting to capture the flavors we love in a way that suits our current dietary needs.  Recently, I have begun to try to get more fiber into our diet.  (One of those stopping to evaluate what we need to tweak moments…)

Also, as you could guess by now, I do not cook from a menu but use what I have on hand.  This usually means the meats I pick up on sale, the veggies I get for a good price, or stuff that I grew myself.   I had a bumper crop of winter squash this year and we are still just making a dent in the pile.  So after very little thought, I decided that butternut squash would make a fine thicken agent for my curry.

I am trying to incorporate a bit more palm oil into our diets (good source of Vit E) so I started with a palm, coconut, butter, and seasame oil blend.  I tossed in one small sized squash cut up in fairly small pieces.  Along with this I added a small onion, about a quarter of a green pepper (I did not want this to be on overpowering flavor) and a handful of sliced mushrooms.  I let this cook for a few minutes until the squash was done.   Then I added in the meat and about a cup of broth.  Next came the spices: salt, pepper, 1/4 tsp of powdered ginger, a good dash of paprika, and a couple good dashes of curry powder.   I let it all simmer for a few minutes and called the family to lunch.

I told them that I felt like lunch was not going to be very exciting and suggested that the “curry” would probably be good with the French Cream that I put on the table.  I hadn’t eaten any yet when one daughter piped up with “this is good!”, and quickly the other two concurred.  I put a little French Cream on mine and when I tasted it I was surprised at how good it was.

Don’t you love it when a meal comes together better than you expected?

 

Pasilla Beef and Lentils

This is definitely a Mexican meal but without the usual Tex-Mex flavor.  This one has no hot peppers, cheese, or traditional salsa that Americans usually consider “Mexican food.”

This is a good meal to be made with a cheap roast or a lesser grade of beef.  I have found something in one of my local stores that is called “soup meat” which works very well for this particular recipe.

This is a crock pot meal that gets cooked while I sleep.  I put this on in the evening before bed using my low setting.  After putting the meat into the crock pot I add three or four dried Pasilla or Anaheim peppers, salt and fill up the crock with water.   We have the broth for breakfast.

For lunch, I fry up a large onion and an 8 oz box of mushrooms in a coconut and palm oil blend.  While the onions and mushrooms are cooking I put the peppers (minus the stems) in the blender with some stock. I grind them up into a sauce–if the mixture gets too thick, I add a bit more stock.

Once the onions and mushrooms are done, I add in the chopped up soup meat and then pour the sauce over it.   To this I add at least a tbsp of cinnamon, a tsp of ginger, a tsp of paprika and salt.  Stir it all together and let it simmer for a several minutes to blend all of the flavors together, then add in 3-4 cloves of crushed garlic.

And like everything else I cook, this recipe is open for change and altering.   On a different day I might add cumin and lime juice; add chocolate for mole sauce or peanut butter for a peanut mole sauce.  The sauce could even have a little honey added to it to sweeten it-in that case it would taste more like B-B-Q sauce.

This meat dish is perfect served with lentils and lacto fermented tomato salsa, but I think if you tasted it you would find that it is also well suited to just about any veggie combination.

    

 

Scrappy Pate

Well, I have been at it again. Attempting to figure out what to do with the leftover stock pot meat.  Last time, I thought I might try to give my patties a sausage flavor.  Well, last night I wasn’t in the mood for sausage and not really in the mood to do anything extra (like standing around frying patties) but I had this stuff to do something with and a meal that needed to be prepared so I set out to try sausage….

But I got side tracked in the process.  I put all the “scrappy” meat into the food processor with an onion and ground it up until it was a less than coarse.  I tasted it to figure out what kind of sausage seasonings would be right for this mixture.   I decided that this was pretty good as is and decided that it was time for me to try the meat pate’  mentioned in one of the GAPS/SCD books.  So I added some salt and pepper and ground it up until it was totally smooth.  I then scooped it out into a nice small serving dish topped with fresh parsley and sat it in the fridge to chill.

With the rest of the mid-day leftovers we had a simple meal using what I had on hand and I didn’t have to spend a whole lot more time in the kitchen. I really think the ginger root that I added to this particular pot of stock made this taste so good.  I frequently use ginger root in my stocks but not always.  We couldn’t really decide on a name for this concoction. So we decided Scrappy Pate would work okay. 

In flavor, it was akin to liverwrust which was odd since it didn’t have any liver in it.  My kids all learned to enjoy liverwrust while we lived in Germany so there were no grumps about it. They thought it was good.  

We decided it could be used as a veggie dip.  Or chilled and sliced into nice little slices that can be served with a salad or put on a cracker.  (We haven’t talked about making those yet, but we will…)  One could add in cooked veggies and make a molded salad to be eaten with one of the approved special mayo’s or mustards. 

Will I be making this again?  Most assuredly.   It was simple to make and used up the leftover meat efficiently.

 

Scrappy Burgers

 

GAPS and SCD both require a lot of bone broth and meat stock.  I am not one that likes to waste food. With the cost of food rising, I am attempting to learn more and more inventive ways to make this diet affordable.   At times frugality can almost be a game to me.  Today was one of those days.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I make about a gallon of stock daily and that requires bones and meat.   Some days we have a meat roast or chicken.  But other days I use other stuff. Because of where I live, it is culturally not wierd to find trotter (pig feet), neck bones, and other various bones at affordable prices.   I have tried various ways to use the meat and gelatin off these bones in the past and I usually come up with something akin to meat cooked with onion and mushrooms.  While with the right seasonings this is not anything to really complain about it does get boring.  So today, I decided to try something different.

My bone broth was made out of trotters and a chicken back with chicken necks and a couple chunks of ginger.  I pulled the meat out and let them cool. Then I picked off as much meat and gelatin tissue as possible trying to be very careful to not get any bones.  I put the bones in my freezer bag to be reused and then proceeded with my creativity.

In the food processor went all the scrappy meat.  I ground it up well, using a rubber spatula to push it down from the sides a couple of times.  I then added in two eggs and chopped it up some more.   I dumped this out into a mixing bowl and then folded in some chopped onions and green peppers, salt, pepper, paprika, and fresh parsley.   After that I stirred in a scoop of coconut flour to thicken the dough up a bit.

I fried this in coconut and palm oil following the same method as I did yesterday for the Mackerel Cakes.   I wasn’t sure how well it was going to taste.  I tried something similar to this one other time without much good to say about it.

Well, I gave my first cake a nibble to see if it was going to be edible.  To my surprise it was good.  I decided to add some fried onions and a honey sweeten mustard as condiments.  I feed them to the family asking what they thought and was rewarded with “it’s good”.  Even daughter number three who is a bit more reluctant with things like this said it was pretty good. (Not her favorite but okay.)

In looking back at the success, I think I would have to say that the trotters is probably what made these “burgers” successful.  Their gelatinous nature made the dough very sticky.  This gelatin is extremely good for the body, helping the digestive process.  But getting some GAPS people to eat it can be an exercise in futility.

I can think of all kinds of ways that I can build on this successful attempt.  I am thinking that approved sausage seasonings would make for wonderful sausage patties or links.  Also other veggies could be added to it like grated carrots, spinach, etc to make a protein rich veggie fritter.

Well, that was my cooking adventure for today….

 

Revisiting the Introduction Diet

My family has been on the GAPS diet for almost a year now.  We have had some ups and downs but mostly it has been extremely helpful and positive.  The past month, several of us have been having some problems so we are revisiting the introduction diet for a few days.  More broths and soups and less full meals.  In the past, we have found that just extra broth has helped with any gut problems but lately it has not helped as much, so we are going to have to eliminate somethings to figure out what it is that might be the problem.   I am returning to the books and food lists to see if I have let something slip in to our holiday diet that should not be there.    

Broth making is rather an art in the culinary world.  One has to learn how to combine types of bones/meats, spices and veggies.  Some of it depends on how much money you want to put into it.  Since GAPS/SCD diets require a lot of broth and since we are a family of five grown people we consume a goodly amount of broth daily.  I use a lot of soup bones because they are affordable and they produce a lot of broth and less meat.  As mentioned in an earlier post, we make a crock pot full of broth almost daily.

The one featured in this post consisted of pork neck bones, carrots, celery, kale, and onion.  I seasoned this with ground sage, dried rosemary, several cloves of garlic,a bay leaf, salt and pepper.

Breakfast Broth

Later in the day I combined what was left from breakfast with some venison broth.  Then I added in leftover venison and chicken meat, ground cooked pasilla-ancho peppers (found in the Mexican section of our local markets), lima beans, green beans, turnips, mushrooms and onions.  I added in a good handful of freshly chopped cilantro and a dash of cumin.  More salt and pepper.

Make Do Stew

It turned out to be fabulous!!  We some times call these concoctions “Make Do Stew” and usually (but not always) they turn out with that gourmet flavor.   Over the years, I have found a couple of things that help when combining broth with leftovers.  First of all, over cooking soups can make them come out tasting “well-blended or overly cooked”.  In other words they lose their fresh flavor.  Secondly, because cooking is rather like art one has to choose the content and spices with discernment.  When my children were little I used to tell them when they were working on an art project that  “more is not always better and you can do too much”.   Rather like working with crayons on paper, soups are liquid based and once you add something in they are not erasable.

Well, I am off to the kitchen….

 

Slavonic Steak

Slavonic Steak

When my Darling Hubby began having diverticulitis attacks it was always after having too much red beef- i.e. steak.   We have never done a lot of grilling but have always enjoyed a good charcoal grilled steak.  So after many months of not having anything grilled, let alone a steak…last weekend we had a special treat.  Grilled steak perfectly covered with a lot of garlic powder and salt.  Yummy!! 

We have some leftovers and so tonight, being it is Tuesday, thus our NCIS night, our special meal is going to be Slavonic Steak–or at least my rendition of it.  Bear with me while I share the story of how I learned about this special treat, it is one of my husband’s favorites.

Years ago when we were young, we were stationed in Hawaii and at that time there were still quaint places that one could go for a romantic evening.  The Crouching Lion was one of those places, built in 1927 it still had that feeling of times slower and less cluttered.  Because it was on the other side of the island from where we lived it was an enjoyable drive to what at that time was a rather remote area.  The food was not overly priced and the atmosphere was romantic which for a young married couple was perfect. I can still hear the sound of the steak coming out on the hot platter sizzling in the butter.  

 When I have leftover steak, which admittedly is not very often, I reheat it and serve it like the Slavonic Steak that my husband remembers.  It is very simple to do.  You slice your cold leftover steak and crush some fresh garlic cloves on to it, and drizzle a little lime juice over it.  After you have your meat ready, heat an iron skillet on high, toss in a good glob of butter (the hot butter is what makes this all work), scare the meat around in the skillet only long enough to get it hot.

It is fast, good, and something special.