Asian Pork & Cabbage

I always add hot sauce.  Always.  That s#@% goes with everything.

Serves 6
Takes about 1/2 hour

Meat:

2 lbs pork tenderloin
2 tbsp tapioca or arrowroot starch
1 tbsp soya sauce (or coconut aminos)

Veggies:

half large spanish onion, sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp fresh gingerroot, minced
4 cups thinly sliced cabbage
1 carrot, thinly sliced
1 sweet red/yellow/orange pepper, thinly sliced

Sauce:

3 tbsp chicken broth
3 tbsp soya sauce
1 tbsp curry paste
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp chili sauce

1 tbsp sesame oil
Light-tasting olive oil for frying

Cut up your pork into thin slices.  Salt and pepper the meat.  In a large bowl, mix tapioca starch, 1 tbsp soya sauce and 1 tbsp water together and stire in your sliced pork. While this sits in the "marinade", prep ALL your other ingredients. Slice the veggies, shred the cabbage, mix your sauce.  Heat your wok.

Add a splash of oil into the wok, and before it scorches, add some of your meat.  Cook meat in batches until seared on all sides, but still a bit pink in the middle.  Set aside.  Add onions to the wok and cook until they begin to turn translucent.  Add garlic and ginger for a minute.  Then add rest of veggies.  As soon as they become tender enough for your taste buds, add the pork back into the wok.  Add your sauce and continue to cook until sauce thickens and pork is no longer pink and warmed through.

Remove from heat and drizzle with sesame oil.  Taste and add more salt, pepper and hot sauce to taste, if necessary. 

Cabbage Roll Stir-Fry

This recipe was one I used to cook my family over and over.  Of course, that was pre-paleo, so in order to keep  the recipe, some changes had to be made.  But the recipe had great potential; it cooked up in a half hour or less - and I'm a lazy cook, it wasn't fussy, it was stick-to-the-ribs hearty, everyone liked it and since the cabbage was shredded, it cooked up much easier on my teeth which meant I could still eat it with my braces.  The original recipe came from Chatelaine Magazine ( if you read these blogs regularly, you know I have a recipe-hoarding habit).  Before Pinterest (which I still haven't joined), I would tear out recipes from magazines, then glue them onto good paper and keep them in page-protector sleeves in a binder.  Then email became the more popular choice, so I have 2 email accounts--one is my regular email, and the other is for emailing myself recipes that I then move into email files under Breakfast, Dinner, Snack,  etc.  My email file storage is HUGE.

You can omit the honey if you're doing a Whole30, but if you're not, you'll find the tiny bit of honey really brings out the flavour nicely.

This recipe makes about 6 hearty servings
Takes about 1/2 hour
This recipe re-heats even better next day


Ingredients:

• 2 lbs ground pork or beef
• 1 cooking onion, or 1/3 spanish onion
• 1 green pepper, thinly sliced
• 1/2 head of cabbage
• 28-oz can chopped tomatoes
• 5-oz can tomato paste
• 1 tbsp honey
• 2 tbs apple-cider vinegar
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• red pepper flakes, to taste
• salt and pepper to taste 

Method:

Using a food  processor, shred your cabbage really fine.  Set aside.  Slice up your onions and green peppers.

In a very large skillet on med-high heat, cook your meat with your onions (about 5 minutes).  When meat is almost cooked through, add your tomatoes, tomato paste, vinegar, honey and spices, stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes to allow flavour to develop.


 Now, add your pepper and cabbage to the pan.  Cover and simmer until cabbage is tender (aboout 10 minutes--I like my cabbage soft).  You may need to add a splash of water now and then to keep things moist until cabbage beginns to soften.

Taste, and add red pepper flakes as needed.

It really was that fast and easy.

For variety, you could add mexican spices in place of the thyme and basil, making it into Beef Enchilada Stir-Fry.

Stovetop Beef & Cabbage Enchilada

Now, I found this recipe originally on Healthy Living How-To here http://www.healthylivinghowto.com/1/post/2012/01/winner-winner-beef-enchilada-dinner.html#comments 

This is how the idea started out...

The picture looked delicious, and I'm a complete sucker for all things Mexican.  Oh, how I have tried to re-create a grain-free tortilla, really I have tried.  But they always come out....dry as the sands of the desert, or just eggy like an omlette and it's just not right.  Then I found this recipe, and thought--hey, wrap the enchilada filling in cabbage?  That sounds brilliant!  So we tried it (and perhaps we are kitchen-disabled), but it took us an hour to get the cabbage cooked soft enough, to get them out of the pot without burning ourselves or shredding the cabbage leaves, and then rolled around the meat without tearing them even more.  They baked up fine, but then, with two of us in braces, we could not easily cut and chew those tough cabbage leaves and the kids, despite liking cabbage, just removed the meat from the filling and ate the filling because, well, because they could...

 ...And then I remembered.  I've seen this game before.  My kids were masters at de-cabbaging a cabbage roll.  But then I also remembered (I can play this game, too)--I have a recipe that we all love and ate frequently before going paleo/primal--"Cabbage Roll Stir-Fry" by using shredded cabbage.  Good luck seperating the cabbage from the meat when it's shredded and cooked down!!  My cabbage roll stir-fry recipe is totally convertable to paleo-approved eating by just omitting the rice.  (Maybe I'll post that recipe sometime soon--it's my favorite take on the cabbage roll with only a half hour worth of effort...)   Was it possible to make this a half-hour meal?  You betcha!  I'm all about the speedy cooking.  I work a regular full-time job--and don't we all come home tired at the end of the day?  Who wants to spend hours in the kitchen after a full day of work??  So this idea for a one-pot stovetop beef enchilada with cabbage began...

Just a quick note--if like Mexican flavours, but you don't like spicy, the enchilada sauce that Vanessa makes (follow the link) is absolutely perfect.  It is delicious and she gets it dead-perfect.  But me?  I can't resist messing with a recipe.  I like fire.  My son dares me to make something hot enough that he'll actually admit is hot.  Even with everything I added to this, he still doused it in X-tra Hot Frank's Hot Sauce (and discovered the next day, for the first time, what happens when you eat something THAT spicy...lol)

Serves about 5 large meals.
Takes about 1/2 hour

The Enchilada Sauce:

1 5-oz can tomato paste

1 cup beef broth

2 tbs chili powder

1 tbs liquid from jarred jalapenos

1 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tsp chipotle

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp mexican coriander (optional)

2 tbs olive oil

Add all ingredients except oil to pot and bring to boil over medium heat.  Once it comes to a boil, remove from heat and stir in oil.  Set aside.

The Meat Mixture:

2 lbs ground beef

1/4 spanish onion

1 clove garlic

4-5 jarred jalapeno rings, minced with garlic press

2 tbs lime juice

1 tbs chipotle hot sauce

4-5 cups cabbage, shredded

1/3 c fresh cilantro/coriander

cheese, full-fat yogurt and avacado for garnish

In very large skillet or in a dutch oven, on med-high heat, cook beef, onion and hot sauce until beef is no longer pink.  Add garlic and jalapeno and cook for 1 minute more.  Add cabbage and enchilada sauce, stirring to combine.  You may want to add about a cup of water to keep everything moist until the cabbage begins to cook down.  Cover, reduce heat to med-low, and let simmer, stirring occasionally, until cabbage is tender.  Remove from heat, taste and adjust seasonings, if necessary, stir in lime juice and chopped cilantro, serve and add garnishes.

  

Enjoy!  Add more hot sauce if you like things spicy, like I do!  Just not too much.  Or you'll regret it the next day.  You know what I mean....

Cabbage Chop Suey

Woo-hoo--not only did this recipe "primalize" with ease, but I finally found the perfect taste to serve it with--Melissa Joulwan's Egg Foo Yong from her new e-cookbook "Well Fed". 

I've had this recipe for aeons.  My grandmother passed it onto me when I was just a teen.  She says she ripped it out of a newspaper that was featuring ways to cook cabbage--she suggested she'd gotten it sometime "around the war".  See the bacon?  There's no shortage of bacon, and at the time this recipe was created, the world wasn't on their low-fat craze, either.  Back then, people were smart enough to know they cook things with bacon.  Bacon makes everything better.

This recipe is ridiculously easy.  And tasty.  And just too unusual to serve with meatballs or roasted chicken.  Make the egg foo yong.  Surely you have leftover chicken somewhere?  It's like this savoury giant egg-pancake full of cooked chicken and shredded cabbage and spices.  Melissa is brilliant with flavors and spices.  Sure, Melissa used a pancake mould for hers, but I just whipped out my cast iron skillet and made one big one to serve over the chop suey.  Eggs and bacon for dinner.  It's economical and creative!!

Alright, makes enough side-dish for about 5 people.

Ingredients:

6 slices bacon, about 1/2 lb, chopped
1 onion (or 1/4 spanish onion), chopped
1 1/2 c celery, chopped

1 c mushrooms

2 c shredded cabbage

1/2 green pepper, chopped

1 1/2 c water

1 1/2 tbs arrowroot powder + 1 tbs water

1 1/2 tsp soya sauce

1/2 tsp worchestershire sauce

Directions:

Alright, so once you're done chopping everything into bite-sized pieces, and shredding your cabbage, whip out your frypan and cook up the bacon.  If there is tonnes of fat, you can drain some off, but you don't actually need to if you don't want to.  Add onions, mushrooms and celery.  Once onion is translucent, add your cabbage and green pepper along with water.  Simmer for 10 minutes until cabbage is tender.  While that is simmering, mix arrowroot and water in a small dish.  Measure out your soya sauce and worchestershire sauce in another little dish.  When your cabbage is soft enough for your liking, add the arrowroot and water, stirring as it thickens and coats the cabbage/vegetables.  Then add soya sauce and worchestershire sauce, stirring just until blended.  Remove from heat and serve!

Serve egg foo yong directly overtop, and don't forget to make her special sauce!  Have I said it enough?  Don't sweat the marginal amount of soya sauce I use.  Unless you have a soy allergy.  Then use coconut aminos.  Voila.