Ham & Cheese Soup

See that bread?  Link at end of this post...

I seem to be on a real soup faze lately.   Just like how in the summer I could eat salad-with-meat for all 60 days of summer, and when it starts to get cold, I could eat pumpkin in every single meal and beverage for 60 days straight, I have now slid over into soup season.

Yea, I say there's a soup season.  It comes after pumpkin season and it may stick around for a while because around here winter can last from November to April.

So it is that I have an entire Pinterest Board dedicated to soups.  Not just MY soups, of course, but all kinds of hearty, filling paleo/primal friendly stick-to-your-ribs soups.  And if that isn't alone enough to satisfy you, I also have several paleo biscuit recipes throughout the boards.

This soup idea came after I'd boiled down a ham bone into a crazy-thickly jelled broth, then asked my helpful husband (cough, cough) to pour it into ice cube trays to freeze.  He did that, and when he ran out of ice cube trays, he poured a whopping 3-4 cups into a giant tupperware container and froze that, too.   What the heck does one do with such a large container of ham broth?  I mean, the ham cubes make great flavour-boosters, but several cups of it?  Ham soup, I say!

Now, typical ham and cheese soup is full of potatoes--and I'm not totally against potatoes, and you can totally use potatoes, but it just so happened that I had a bag full of sunchokes in my fridge (ever tried sunchokes?  See my note after the recipe).  I'm still using up all the odds and ends that came in my final CSA boxes.  I think I have enough radishes and beets to last an entire year now...

The creamy part of this cheese soup is a simple roux that gets thinned back down, it's so easy-peasy and yes, I DID use real cheese.  Not a lot.  But no milk or cream (you could totally use cream if you wanted to).  And you could probably get away with chicken stock if you needed to, too (but you'd have to add seasonings because it has a lot less flavour than ham broth)--but I wanted to use up some of my ham broth (which is the tastiest, I must insist) and leftover ham.  Because soup is all about using up leftovers, and basically making something from nothing.

Do not skip the roux.  Do not just add tapioca to the coconut milk to thicken this soup.  Browning the butter first makes a HUGE taste difference.  You CAN, however, skip the cheese and still have a pretty nice soup, just saying, but real cheese totally makes it awesome.  Imagine Swiss, or Gruyere cheese, even.

Alright, so here goes...

Ingredients:

2 cups ham broth
2 cups water
1 cup leftover ham, chopped
1/2 leek, rinsed and chopped -white part only- (or 1 medium onion)
2 stalks celery, chopped
3-4 sunchokes (peeled and cubed) or 1 medium potato
3 Tbs butter, divided
1/2 can full fat coconut milk (or full-fat real cream)
1 Tbs tapioca starch
1/2 c grated cheddar cheese, or cheese of choice

Method:

First, pull out a heavy-bottomed soup pot or dutch oven.  Heat to medium.  While it's heating, chop your leek, celery and ham, and peel and chop your sunchokes.  In pot, melt 1 Tbs butter and saute leek and celery until tender and leek is growing translucent.  Add your broth, water and sunchokes and bring to a boil.  Let it simmer until sunchokes are tender.

While that's simmering, make your roux--Heat a frypan over medium heat and add butter.  (Measure out coconut milk, cheese and tapioca, have it ready since this part goes fast) Let the butter sit in the pan, stirring occasionally, until it just barely begins to turn amber-brown.  Then, stirring constantly, sprinkle your tapioca starch in, and keep it moving in the pan.  It will immediately begin to thicken.  Be ready to thin i back down with the coconut milk, still stirring.  It will thicken A LOT.  You may want to remove it from heat halfway through to slow it down while you keep mixing it.  Remove from heat if you haven't already, and stir in your cheese.

When sunchokes are tender, stir in your ham and cheese sauce.  Don't worry, as you stir it will mix in and become thick and smooth.  Do not boil at this point.

Voila!

Honestly, ham broth is so flavourful (and often salty) that I didn't need any spices whatsoever.  It was perfect.  I kid you not.

**So, what are sunchokes AKA Jerusalem Artichokes?...  They are not even related to artichokes.  The somewhat ginger-root-like knobby beige tubers, sometimes with a slightly pink tinge, have stark white flesh inside.  They are very low in starch, almost flavourless, and incredibly versatile.  Sunchokes can be eaten raw, something like jiicama--but where they really excel is boiled and mashed as a potato replacement--or at least, as an addition to potato to reduce the amount of starch.  Because sunchokes are VERY high in inulin--that "pre" biotic that they put in yogurt these days (and pretty much everything else) this high-fiber food can cause some (ahem) gas and bloating when your body isn't used to it.   Introduce it slowly to your diet (this soup is a relatively small amount).

Sunchokes can be grown right here in Ontario--and in fact, all over North America, even though most of us have never heard of them before.  They are not only rich in inulin, but also iron, potassium, phosphorus and vitamin C.  So don't be afraid of them.  I think you'll learn to love them.

And the bread?  That's a paleo sweet potato bread from Wholefood Simply.  She's got some great stuff on her site, so check her out!

Easy Tomato Soup

Alright, so now that my husband has declared this is "favorite soup right now", I guess I have to post the recipe, right?  I mean, it DOES totally taste like Campbells "Healthy Request" Tomato soup, after all.  And it takes all of 10 minutes to prepare.  And it is so rich and creamy tasting that you could just eat the soup as-is for a light meal--but imagine it with crumbled bacon and some shredded swiss, if you eat dairy at all.  Or bacon and green onions, if you don't.  This stuff is amazing and versatile and uses basic staples that you probably already have in your kitchen all the time.

But I can't take total credit for this recipe.  This recipe was originally posted by Canadian Living Magazine, and can be found online here.  And as you can easily see, all I've changed is the fat I use (I love it made with butter) and I use home made chicken bone broth in place of the stock they suggest.  And I add a bit of cream at the end.  Because when I was a kid, and ate Campbells' Tomato Soup quite often, we always added milk to the can instead of just water.  I find that adding cream to this recipe takes me right back to that memory. 

So here's my version
Serves 4

Ingredients:

1/3 of a Spanish onion, or 1 cooking onion
large pat of butter, for frying
4 cloves minced garlic
1 28-oz can of chopped tomatoes
1 5-oz can tomato paste
2-3 cups bone broth (I use chicken)
salt and pepper, to taste
1/4 cup heavy (35%) cream, optional
bacon, green onions, sour cream, yogurt, cheese for garnish, all optional

Method:

In large Dutch oven (or heavy-bottom soup pot), over medium heat, sauté onions and garlic until onion is translucent.  Add tomatoes, tomato paste and bone broth, and simmer for about 10 minutes.
Using hand blender, remove from heat and blend until smooth.  If you don't have a hand blender, pour (carefully) into food processor and puree until smooth.  (Be careful to add it slowly--you don't want to crack the casing, now, do you?).  Return all to pot.  If using cream, add it now and heat through, if necessary.  Add garnishes after serving.

Taco Salad Pizza

You can never have pizza too often, not in our house.

I think that since switching to a paleo-styled diet, we may have it a bit less than we used to (pre-paleo), but we do still have it regularly--generally, as often as I am "on" with eating cheese, lol.

So, back to my love of pizza!  There are just a million ways to make it--paleo has liberated me into experimenting with just about everything I can get my hands on.  For pizza, there's the toppings--pepperoni or hamburger-style or many veggies ontop (with pesto!), or tandoori chicken or buffalo-wing-flavored chicken, with any type of cheese you could imagine.  And there's also crusts to consider:  The almond flour thin-crust pizza (here), there's cauli-crust pizza (here), there's meatza, and if you're especially lazy, you can serve pizza toppings over a baked sweet potato (here).   I even had a fabulous cauli, kale, and carrot crust, thanks to fresh4five here.  The variations continue with this post, too!  (And I have more variations on this one in the near future, so just wait and see!)

I recently received my quarterly edition of Kraft's What's Cooking Magazine (Spring '13 www.kraftcanada.com)....  And this (below) is what I saw on their front cover.  I know, cruel, right?  Not as cruel as their dessert issues, let me tell you.  I saw this one and immediately thought I could paleo-ify this!  It combines two staples from our household--the taco salad, and pizza.  What's not to love?

It was easy, really, and I already owned all the staples in my house to make this with.  (Don't let the list of ingredients fool you, it's not hard at all).  So here's what I did:

Ingredients:

Taco Meat

The magazine image at Kraft....

1 - 1 1/2 lbs ground meat--I used beef
2 Tbs salsa
2 Tbs tomato paste
1 Tbs chili powder *
1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tsp salt

Crust**
1 cup almond flour
1/2 c coconut flour
1/4 cup tapioca starch
2 eggs
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp garlic
2 Tbs olive oil
2 Tbs water

Other
2/3 c cheddar, grated
1 plum tomato, sliced
spring greens lettuce
ranch sauce (recipe here) ***

Method:

First, cook your meat; brown beef in skillet and when almost cooked through, add spices.  When meat is no longer pink, add tomato paste and salsa.  Turn off and set aside.

Preheat oven to 375F.

While meat is cooking, make pizza dough:  In large bowl, mix dry, add eggs, oil, and water and form into dough ball.  Place on parchment-lined cookie sheet or perforated pizza pan.  Slightly flatten dough with hands, then place another parchment over top of it and slowly roll out into a circle (or rectangle).  Bake crust for 8-10 minutes, until set but not browning.  (Prep your cheese, tomato, lettuce and ranch sauce here if you haven't already)

Remove crust from oven and spread with taco meat, grated cheese, sliced tomatoes, and place back in oven for 8-10 minutes more, until cheese is completely melted and crust is just beginning to brown.  Remove from oven, sprinkle immediately with lettuce and drizzle with ranch sauce.

Eat up and enjoy!  You can totally hold this crust in your hands to eat it.  I like mine with extra hot sauce, but you could top it with extra salsa, too.

A couple of notes:

* This spice blend comes from Mark's Daily Apple (here).  I don't make his taco shells, but the spice mix is PERFECT and I've used it a thousand times.
**  Because almond flour is expensive around here, I altered the usual thin-crust pizza for this recipe.  If you can afford it, go for the original.  This one is cheaper for me to make, though, and holds together just as good.
***  This ranch sauce is perfect, but if you don't have yogurt, just add a splash of lemon juice to the mayo and add the spices.  It's just as good that way.  And thin enough to drizzle.

Shrimp Creole

I got shrimp on sale a couple of weeks ago, and wanted to try something different.

I found this idea on Pinterest-- (original recipe here) but it wasn't yet paleo--and I preferred to make my own cajun spice blend (I've tasted some pretty horrible store-bought blends...).  A few changes...and voila--delicious and perfect!  My whole family loved this one--and it was done in about 45 minutes, which I love, too.

Ingredients:

5 Tbs butter
2 Tbs tapioca starch
2 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp dried thyme
1 cup celery
1 cup red, yellow, or orange peppers
1/2 cup onion
2 cups chicken broth (whatever you have)
1 cup tomatoes
1 Tbs Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbs cajun/creole spice blend (below)
1 lb raw shrimp
1/2 cup green onions

1 head cauliflower

Method:

First, prep everything because this doesn't take long:  Make your spice blend.  Chop onions, peppers, celery, tomato.  Thaw shrimp under lukewarm water, peel and de-tail.  Rice your cauliflower with a food processor.

In heavy-bottom skillet over medium heat, melt butter and continue to cook until butter turns a medium brown (takes about 10 minutes).  Sprinkle tapioca starch over butter and stir to dissolve and allow to thicken for a couple more minutes.  (You are making a roux).  Add onions, celery and peppers and continue to cook until onion is almost transparent.  Add garlic and thyme and continue to cook for 1 minute.

Add tomatoes, broth, Worcestershire sauce, and cajun spice.  Simmer for about 20 minutes.

While this is simmering, cook your rice; I prefer to cook mine for 8 minutes in the microwave with NO added water.  Set aside.

Once you broth and tomato mixture has simmered for 20 minutes, add shrimp, and continue to cook just until shrimp is pink and cooked through.  Sprinkle with green onions and remove from heat.

To serve this up like I did; spoon liquid into wide-mouthed bowls.  Using a half-cup measuring cup, press cooked cauli into the measuring cup, packing tight, then invert over middle of bowl.  Arrange shrimp around perimeter.

Can add hot sauce if you like things spicy.

Enjoy!

Cajun Spice Blend:

1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp cayenne
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp salt

Combine in small mason jar.  Goes with everything....

Bone Broth Tomato Soup

Sometimes I just want simple and filling--and in the wintertime, warm comfort food.

Sometimes that comfort comes in the form of a hot bowl of soup.  As much as I love a warm mug of homemade bone broth, sometimes a bit of flavour variety is needed.  Sure, sometimes boiling broth with a scrambed egg dropped in with chopped green onions (egg drop soup) is divine, but is that all there is to life? I say no.  Eating should be an adventure.

This idea came from 2 places--first, a simple tomato soup from Canadian Living Magazine here, which I paleo-ified up and served to my family to great reviews, and this recipe by my low-carb-loving friend Danny at Primal North.  This soup is waaay better tasting than that canned stuff so many of us grew up on.  And it uses bone broth, so it's good for the guts, too.  Win, win.  And it's super-fast and easy.  What more can I say?!  So here goes.

Serves 1 very hearty bowlful.

Ingredients:

• 1 c homemade bone broth, preferably poultry
• 1/2 c tomato sauce (look for no-sugar-added brands)
• 2 Tbs finely chopped leeks (or onion, or shallots)
• butter, for frying leeks
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/2 tsp italian seasoning
• 1/4 c full-fat whipping cream (or coconut milk if you don't mind a bit of coconut flavour)
• sour cream/yogurt/bacon for garnish, optional

Method:

Saute leeks in butter until softened.  Add garlic and saute 1 minute more.  Add italian seasoning, bone broth and tomato sauce, simmer for 5 minutes.  Remove from heat, add whipping cream, stir.

Add garnishes, if using.  

*I tend to freeze my bone broth in ice cube trays, and in 1-cup servings (that I freeze, remove from their containers, then stack them in a freezer bag to store).  This made preparing this recipe especially fast and easy.  How do you store your bone broths?

See the white chunks?  My yogurt garnish sank to the bottom of the bowl ;( 

Taco Beef Stew

One of the things I like best about having bought a half cow is that I no longer have to eat ground beef every other day to keep the grocery costs down.  Yea, I love ground beef, too, but some variety is in order sometimes, you know?  So I play this new game now--I open the freezer door, jam my hand inside, and whatever comes out is what we're eating.  Really, that's a fun game, I swear it is.  You don't think that's fun?  Well, you're just dumb, then.

Ok, now there's a small problem with my little game.  I keep pulling out stewing meat.  Unlike ground beef (aka the most versatile meat in the universe), there's not a lot of fun things you can do with stewing beef....  Or is there?  Is it possible that I just haven't had the luxury of trying to figure out new and innovative things to do with stewing beef?  I think that's a challenge!  Challenge accepted, sir!

So last night, for my initiation into this little experiment, a little something familiar, a little something new.  There is nothing my family loves better than mexican flavours.  Think chili--and tacos.  Sure, I could have spent a half hour whipping up a batch of grain-free tortilla bread--but who wants that kind of make-work project?  This was stewing beef, as in, set it and forget it in the crockpot!

I love my crockpot.  There's an awful lot of stuff I can cook well with a crockpot, and certain food just lend themselves to the crock, don't they?  Like stewing beef.  So I've learned that when cooking in the crockpot, everything gets all moist (and watery) which isn't always what I want (unless I'm making stew, which I wasn't).  Enter tomato paste.  Universal thickener.  Problem solver.

Easiest recipe ever.

Does the spice blend look familiar?  It's the spice blend Mark Sisson suggests for tacos.  The best spice mix for tacos I've had so far, so I stick with it.  Its almost perfect.  I only add cayenne.

Serves 4-5

Ingredients:

1 lb stewing beef or bison
1 5-oz can tomato paste
1 Tbs chili powder
1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp oregano
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
dash (or two) cayenne

Method:

In crockpot, mix tomato paste and all the spices.  Cover and cook on low 10-12 hours, or on high 4-5 hours.  Crockpot temperatures and times vary.  These are the times that work for my dinosaur crockpot.

Serve with chopped avocado, shredded lettuce, cheddar (if you eat cheese), hot sauce, salsa, whatever!  I served mine over paleo "grits", too.  Just because I had a lot of cauliflower in my fridge and not so much lettuce.

Pumpkin Pie Custard

I have no idea why people ever started cooking pumpkin pie using canned pie filling.  Seriously.  Do you know how easy it is to make pumpkin pie?  If you ever buy canned pumpkin (not the pie filling, just pure pumpkin) and rip off the label and read the back of it--it's just pumpkin, canned evaporated milk (ewww), brown sugar, a couple of eggs and some spices (and of course a pie crust).  Ok, well, we choose not to eat a lot of those things.  So that does make the pie making experience a little more difficult.

-But not impossible-

So with a few simple substitutions, you can have your pie and eat it too.  Really, you can.

I love pumpkin.  Pre-paleo, I loved pumpkin loaf with raisins.  I loved pumpkin-spice muffins.  I loved pumpkin ice cream with white chocolate chunks and graham crackers in it.  I loved pumpkin angel foodcake and pumpkin bars with frosting.  One day, I will find a way to make all of these foods work within the paleo-acceptable framework we all follow.  But for today, we'll stick to pumpkin pie.  Or in this case, for an even simpler twist, crustless pumpkin pie or pumpkin pie custards.  Just because I'm all about simple.

For this recipe, you're going to need either 8 4-oz ramekins, or 8 equal-sized mugs, or 8 4-oz mason jars, or anything else like that.  Heck, you could use bigger containers, but remember to cook them longer to compensate for that.

Now onto the recipe!

Makes 8 4-oz servings

Ingredients:

1/2 of a large 796 ml can of pumpkin (that's the only size can we get here in Canada)

1 can coconut milk

3 eggs

2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

pinch of salt

1/4 c maple syrup

Method:

Lightly oil ramekins with coconut oil.  Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

In large bowl, whisk eggs, then add all other ingredients, mixing until combined.  Divide evenly among your 8 ramekins.  Boil some water.  Place your ramekins into a larger lasagna-sized casserole dish and pour about 1/2 to 1 inch of boiling water around them.

Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 degrees and continue cooking for 20 minutes more.  Custard will still be very slightly jiggly.  Turn the oven off and just leave the custards in there for 5-10 minutes more, until set and no longer jiggly.

Remove with tongs to a cooling rack.  Sprinkle with a touch more cinnamon to serve.  Eat them warm or cool, eat them with real whipped cream (for the authentic experience), or with whipped coconut milk cream. For a real treat, serve them with squares of dark chocolate for scooping like we did right after the show wrapped up (what a shame we ran out of time taping before I got to explain them; they were the only recipe there that was 100% mine--but then again, I didn't even plug my blog once on the show, silly me....)

Wow your "non-paleo" family by serving these little gems surrounded with fresh berries.  They won't know you "paleo-ified" the recipe because they taste exactly like the real thing.

It really is that easy.  

You're welcome!

Brown Butter Lemon Chicken with Greens

Alright, so I veered into Cindiland and just cooked some chicken and some greens MY way and totally forgot about the recipe that I planned on following.  The end result was lightly lemony, tasty comforting food.  Nothing complicated.  Fast, easy and very well-liked by all.  Sure, you could return the chicken to the skillet and poach it in the (unthickened) sauce, and that would be classy and all, but I didn't want the coconut flour soaking up all the yummy sauce--I wanted lemon sauce on my bok choy!!

Uh-oh.  My Brit is showing again.  Things cooked in butter and sauce just taste better, don't you know?!  Rule number one!!  (Ok, Canadian Rule number one...)

So here's what I did...

Feeds 5-6
Takes about a half hour

Ingredients:
4 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts
coconut flour
2 eggs
garlic salt
black pepper
1 c chicken stock
2 cloves fresh garlic
1 tbs tapioca starch
5 tbs lemon juice
2 tbs butter

1 lb bok choy
1/2 bag green beans

Method:

Pound chicken flat.

Thoroughly wash, separate and chop your bok choy and green beans, set aside.

Crack eggs into a flat pie dish and whisk with a bit of water.  Sprinkle some coconut flour, maybe a half cup or so, in another pie dish and add a few shakes of pepper and garlic salt.

Heat up a large skillet to medium-high.  Add a fair amount of fat for cooking.  Set your oven to 180 degrees (just to keep chicken warm).  Lightly dredge your chicken pieces in egg, then coconut flour.  Place chicken pieces in skillet and fry, in batches, until browned on both sides and cooked through.  Remove to oven as they are done.  When all of your chicken is cooked, remove skillet from heat but do not wash it and do not turn off element.

Using a different skillet, heat it to medium.  Place your wet bok choy stems and green beans in the skillet and cook, covered, for a couple of minutes.  Add your greens and cook for another minute, until the greens start to wilt.  Cover, remove from heat and set aside.

Return chicken pan to heat element.  Add your chicken stock, butter, lemon juice, and fresh garlic to the pan and bring it all back to a simmer, scraping up the brown bits.  In a small bowl, dissolve your tapioca starch in a bit of cold water.  While stirring the liquid in the skillet quickly, add the tapioca and water mixture.  As soon as it thickens to gravy-like consistency, remove from heat and serve everything together. 

Korean Beef with Cauli-Couscous

I was going through my old cookbooks, trying to "thin the heard" and I came upon this recipe that I used to cook for my kids.  I just couldn't throw this one out, so I tore out the pages and threw the rest of the book out.  I do that.  Alot.  I have a binder full of torn pages containing recipes of all sorts, just waiting for the day that I feel inspired and confident enough to translate them into something more primally appropriate.  I'm not exactly an "intuitive" cook--I need the idea of a recipe as a jumping point to get started.  So I collect these ideas and I hoard them.  A friend once called me a recipe whore because I always seem to collect these recipes, but I never actually get around to cooking 90% of them.  At least not the dessert recipes, because I'd weigh 300 lbs if I did.

So anyways, the original recipe called for thin strips of fast-fry steak, something I could never cook right and have it still be tender.  But what if I used ground beef?  Less expensive, tender....  A few tweaks to make it more primally-acceptable...  And this is the result.  It has a slightly sweet, but mild flavour and it pulls together in no time (something I MUST insist on).  Despite the addition of hot pepper flakes, this dish is not hot at all and will not alarm small children's taste buds....  S'alright--I added sriracha sauce after the photo anyways, because I ALWAYS do that.


Now for the rice--who doesn't want a new way to cook rice?!  If you are at all like me, you cook mashed cauli, make cauli rice and put cauliflower into just about everything (we buy 3-4 heads of cauliflower per week).  But really, any other veggie in this recipe might overwhelm the delicate flavour, so a new cauli idea was needed.  I've roasted cauliflower before, whole florets, and loved it (not so much roasted broccoli).  So why not shred them before roasting?  The shredded cauli takes on a nutty flavour as it roasts in the oven, even more so since I tossed my cauli with sesame seed oil first.  I never liked real couscous, but this cauli-couscous I really liked.  Easy.  So here it is:

Serves approx. 5
Ready in 1/2 hour or less

Ingredients:
(For the Beef)

2 lbs ground beef*
5-6 green onions (scallions)
5 cloves minced fresh garlic
1/8 tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp hot pepper flakes
1/4 cup beef stock
4 tbsp soy sauce** + 1/8 cup water
2 tbsp honey
1 tbsp sesame seeds
1 tbsp tapioca
3 scoops stevia powder (equiv of 3 tsp sugar)

(For the cauliflower)

1 head cauliflower
1 tbsp sesame oil

sesame seeds, for garnish

Method:

First, prep everything; shred your cauli in a food processor with the grating tool.  Move it to a big bowl and toss it with the sesame oil.  In a separate, small bowl, mix your soy sauce, beef stock, honey, stevia and sesame seeds, set aside.  Chop your green onions.  Preheat oven to 475 degrees.

Spread cauli between 2 cookie sheets and bake 10 minutes.  Stir.  Return to oven and cook for another 5 minutes, until browning in places.

Heat large skillet over medium-high heat.  Add beef and cook, stirring, until no longer pink.  Add garlic and pepper, cooking for another minute until fragrant.  Add the bowl of soy sauce and whatnot you already mixed up.  Bring to boil.  In that now-empty small bowl, mix your tapioca starch with an equal bit of water to dissolve.  Throw your green onions into the skillet, then while stirring, add the tapioca and allow to thicken for a few seconds.  Remove from heat. 

Taste and adjust for sweetness. 

Serve over cauli-couscous and garnish with extra sesame seeds. 



*if you choose to use beef strips, slice your meat across the grain diagonally into 2-inch strips.  Cook steak with garlic and pepper for scant 2 minutes, allowing it to remain slightly pink.  Remove from heat before adding sauce to skillet, continue with recipe above... Add meat back in at end.  Do not overcook it.

**I hear that coconut aminos is slightly sweeter than soy sauce, that it is not a perfect substitute, but in this recipe, the sweetness might actually come through very nice.  Thought I do not own coconut aminos, if I can get my hands on some, I will definitely try to sub it in this recipe and see how it goes.