Crockpot Carnitas and Herbed Cauli-Rice

I have begun to suspect that there is a paleo advocate carefully camouflaged inside the Chatelaine Magazine recipe-creating staff....  And it makes me so, so happy.

We will infiltrate everything, everywhere, until we have taken over the world, bwa-ha-ha-ha....

Because in Canada, paleo is still mostly unheard of.  It is a secret world mostly known only to crossfitters, celiac-sufferers and mega fad-dieters.  And the Canadian magazine Chatelaine is distributed worldwide; according to Rogers Publishing, it has a readership of 3,280,000.  So any recipe they publish is going to really, really be seen.

Of course, they don't CALL those recipes paleo.  Or primal.  Or grain-free.

But they exist.  Oh, how they exist--just look a little closer.

And even better than that, of the non-paleo recipes they present, many of those recipes are no longer carb-centric either, lending themselves to easy translation into a paleo-acceptable meal.  Or so I find.  Is it just me?  You decide--go check it out here.

So it is that I came upon this recipe for easy crockpot pork carnitas.  With a pretty picture for herbed rice, too, which is apparently the way we're supposed to be serving out carnitas, if we're going to do it right.  (I want THEIR food photographer...sigh...see right pic; next time I'm just going to have to try to imitate their photo set-up)

Now, I've seen paleo carnita recipes out there before.  I've cooked a few of those recipes.  And while they were definitely tasty, they were also hi-effort.  And I'm a lazy cook.

So, a few small tweaks to the Chatelaine recipe, and voila, perfection and deliciousness happened.  And as for the herbed rice?  A quick google taught me that its just rice with fresh herbs and lime juice added to it.  Wow, how simple and tasty THAT turned out.  So here's what I did:

Crockpot Carnitas

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs pork shoulder
• 2 tsp chili powder
• 1 tsp hot red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp dried minced onions
• 1-2 tsp garlic powder
• 2 tsp coconut sugar
• pepper to taste
• 1 tsp cinnamon 
• 1 bay leaf

Method:

If you have regular grocery-store meat, trim off all visible fat.  Cut pork into large chunks and place them in your crockpot.  Add all spices except bay and toss to mix. Place your bay leaf ontop of the meat, cover and cook according to crockpot manufacturers instructions.  With my crockpot, it's 10-12 hours on low, or 4-5 hours on high.

Go to work and forget about it.

At the end of the day, give the meat a quick stir to re-distribute juices, if there are any.  Heat frypan to med-high, add some fat of choice and throw those meat chunks in just to slightly crisp them on the sides that weren't face-up in the crockpot.


Herbed Cauli-Rice

Ingredients:

• 1 head cauliflower
• 1-2 Tbs chicken broth
• 1/2 c green onions, chopped
• 1/2 c fresh cilantro leaves, chopped
• 1/2 c fresh parsley leaves, chopped
• 2 frozen cubes of fresh dill, or 2 tsp dill from those "tubes" or 2 Tbs chopped fresh dill
• juice of 1 lime
• butter, for frying

Method:

Rice your cauliflower.  In frypan on med-high, add cauliflower and chicken broth, cover and "steam" for a few minutes, until broth evaporates.  Add butter, lime juice, and all spices, cook for a couple more minutes until fragrant and cauli is cooked al dente.

Serve pork over herbed cauli-rice. I served mine with all the extra pan-juices poured over top because I'm like that.  I love my fatty-fat-fat.   Enjoy!

Tortiere, Two-Way

Ah, and so begins my Ode to Canadian Food.  Once I figure out what Canadian food is, anyways....

Tortiere (tor-tee-ay) pie is a very traditional French-Canadian meat pie.  It was typically served on Christmas eve, but due to it's ability to be made ahead of time and it's sheer simplicity, it seems to be served a whole lot more in many households around here--spreading well beyond the French-Canadian border and into Anglo-Canadian homes everywhere (and is one of the most available foods-in-a-box at any grocery store in any part of Canada).

So, tortiere is typically made with a mixture of ground meats.  Beef, Veal, and pork, most often, but sometimes game meat is in there, too, for an extra punch of flavor.  My mom made this a lot when we were growing up.  With all 3 kinds of ground meat.  Funny thing is, even though we ate almost nothing but pre-packaged box foods from the freezer aisle, THIS she made from scratch.  In our house, it was served at any time through the winter on a weekend, but especially Christmas eve, Boxing Day and New Year's Day because it could be prepped ahead of time, leaving my mom free to entertain/socialize with the rest of us.  My mom was no slave to the kitchen; she was (and still is) a social butterfly that to this day outshines anyone else in the room at a party.

When I grew up and moved out, I started buying the frozen-boxed variety of it because I couldn't stand making pastry.  Or being a social butterfly at a party.  It was never as good as home-made.

Turns out this stuff is ridiculously easy to make.

And I've found that I like mine made with nothing but pork like Montrealers do it.  Easy-peasy.

Now, I've made this recipe two ways--the "traditional" way, paleo-ified up, for when you have guests coming, for special occasions, for pleasing a family that feels robbed of their comfy carbohydrates from your pre-paleo days...  And I've made a simple pared-down low-carb weeknight version for those days when you just want food.  Real.  Simple.

Classic Tortiere

Pastry:

• 1 c almond meal
• 3/4 c tapioca starch
• 1/4 c butter, coconut oil or lard, softened
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp baking soda
• pinch salt
• 1Tbs cold water, to bind

Meat Filling:

• 2 lbs ground pork
• 1 1/2 c water
• 1 onion, minced
• 1 tsp savory
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp ground celery seed
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1 Tbs tapioca

Method:

First, get started on your meat.  In a big dutch oven or heavy-bottomed saucepan, add all ingredients except the tapioca.  Bring it to a boil and simmer it for 30 minutes, frequently breaking it up with a spoon.  Use tapioca, dissolved in a bit of water, to thicken into a gravy at the very end.

While you meat is simmering, work on your pastry.  Mix all dry ingredients in bowl first, then, using bare hands, work in butter until pastry is crumbly.  Add egg and cold water.  Form into a ball and set in fridge for at least 5 minutes, preferably 15 minutes.  Don't skip this step (like I did)--you'll be fighting with your pastry if you skip it.  I had to re-roll mine twice before I realized what I'd done.

Now pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees.

Ok, after it chills for a while, pull it back out and divide it onto 2.  Roll out your pastry between 2 layers of waxed paper or parchment paper.  Paleo pastry is definitely more crumbly to work with, so save yourself the aggravation and use some paper.  After your first piece is rolled out about 1 - 2 inches bigger than your pie dish, carefully loosen the top piece of waxed paper and then put it right back on, loosely.  Flip the whole thing over carefully, loosen the other side, then try to transfer it to the pie dish.  Don't worry if it STILL crumbles a bit.  It's the bottom and no one will see it.  Just press the crumbles back into place.

Pour in your prepared filling.  Then do the same pastry routine with the top layer, press the edges together, cut a few slashes into the pie to let steam escape, and stick it in the oven.  Bake for 30 minutes.

Sometimes paleo pastry darkens faster around the edges than traditional pastry.  You can carefully place a few narrow strips of tinfoil around the edges to cover them when they start to get brown, or just ignore it like I do.  It still comes out great.

Now, if you want the simple version, just follow all the meat steps the exact same, but skip the pastry.  As soon as you get your meat simmering in the pot, throw some cauliflower into another pot and simmer it up for some classic mashed cauliflower.


Know any other traditional Canadian foods?  How do you define traditional?  Canada is such a mixture of cultures that anything goes, and it varies by region.  Let me know what you think!  

Mustard & Rosemary Pork with Glazed Bok Choy

The inspiration for this recipe, oddly enough, originally came from a free "Our Compliments" magazine.  You know, the ones at the checkout that use recipes to pump up sales of their own brand of ingredients.  But hey, a little tweaking to make it paleo-friendly, and a fast, tasty pork dish was made! 

Ever eat bok choy?  It's a household favourite.  Taste-wise, it's somewhere in between spinach and celery.  The stems are very mild and stay a bit crunchy, the leaves hold a bit more of their shape than spinach--maybe more like swiss chard.  It's a mild green, great in stir-fries, and cheap year-round.  It's tougher, too--it doesn't wilt in your fridge after only 2 days the way spinach does.  So here we go:

Feeds 5-6
Takes about 1/2 hour

Ingredients;

Pork:

2 lbs boneless pork chops, about  1/2" thick (Mine were fat, so I butterflied them)
salt and pepper
1 tbsp butter, for sauteing
2 tbsp Dijon (I like to use spicy, grainy deli mustard instead)
2 tbsp fresh rosemary,  or 2 tsp dry rosemary
3 tbsp ground almond meal

Bok Choy:

1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic
1 bunch bok choy
2 tbsp water
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp lemon zest


Move your oven rack to its highest position and heat the broiler to high heat.  Mix almond meal with rosemary.  Butterfly your chops, if needed, and salt and pepper both sides.  In a skillet on medium-high, melt butter and brown pork chops on both sides until almost done.  Move to a baking sheet.  Spread mustard on the face-up side of the chops, then sprinkle with the almond meal and rosemary.  Broil until golden and finished cooking through.  Move to lowest rack in oven until bok choy is done.

Meantime, wash and chop your bok choy.  Chop your onions.  In a large skillet on medium heat, saute the onions, garlic and the stems of the bok choy until onions are translucent.  Add water and green leaves, cooking just until they begin to wilt.  Add honey, vinegar and lemon zest, stir and serve.

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.

Stuffing Pot Dinner

I found the original recipe to this "stuffing" on Caveman Strong, and even though Josee, the author, had not even tried it herself yet, I was determined to try it at my Thanksgiving dinner.  But then my appendix burst and I was in no shape whatsoever to start cooking up a storm, so I let my family all bring dishes of food, my husband made the turkey and stuffed it with old-fashioned bread stuffing (he makes an awesome turkey...) and promptly forgot all about this recipe.  Until Christmastime.  I was determined that I would have a paleo-approved dinner (in between stuffing my face with chocolates) so I hauled all the ingredients with me up to the cottage and cooked it up there.  It got the stamp of approval from several non-paleo family members, but the comment over and over again was, "there's so much in there that it could be a meal unto itself."  Well.  I freakin' love stuffing.  So why not?  It is a one-pot half-hour hastle-free dinner.  And it has everything but the kitchen sink in it.  So of course, me being me, I needed to go ahead and add a kitchen sink.  Ok, maybe not a sink, but I added even more stuff.  So here it is....

 

Serves 4 (as a main course)
Takes about 1/2 hour

Ingredients:

• 1 lb ground pork
• 5 slices nitrate-free bacon
• 1/4 spanish onion, chopped
• 1 c mushrooms, sliced
• 2 ribs celery, sliced thinly
• 2 tsp dried sage
• 2 tsp dried rosemary
• 2 tsp dried thyme
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 apples, peeled and chopped
• large handfull unsweetened dried cranberries
• large handfull pecans, broken up

Instructions:

Chop bacon and saute in pan over medium-high heat until it begins to brown.  Crumble pork into the pan and continue to cook until pork is no longer pink.  Add thyme, rosemary, sage, onion, celery and mushrooms and continue to cook until onions become translucent.  Reduce heat to medium.  Add apples, cranberries and pecans, stirring frequently until apples just barely begin to soften.  

Serve with gravy, if you have any leftover from the holidays.... 

Ok, it is so darned flavourful that it simply doesn't need the gravy.  The gravy is distracting from the goodness.  Oh, you didn't have gravy, anyways?  I do.  I freeze mine in ice cube trays then move them to ziplock baggies for flavour bombs later.  Well, good thing you don't need them here.  There won't be any leftovers.

Pork-Fried Cauliflower Rice

I used to make fried rice with real rice when the kids were little.  I had an old recipe turn from a Canadian Living Magazine that used chicken in it, and the sauce was flavoured with ketchup, mustard and worchestershire sauce.  But we no longer eat rice, at least, rarely, and our taste buds are a lot more grown up now.

I've seen a lot of paleo-fied recipes for this, but since I always seem tweak every recipe I cook, thought I'd just make this one as I went along and it suited our tastes just perfect.  This was one of those "whatever I have on-hand" recipes and I didn't have anything fancy in the house, just cauliflower and leftovers and a few pantry staples.  I did, however, use soy sauce in the recipe.  I figure, if Mark Sisson uses the stuff, then so can I.  But if you want to be more paleo than primal, by all means, use coconut aminos and adjust for taste because that will make it sweeter.  I also used ham "flavour bombs" instead of chicken stock--I save the juices from the bottom of the crockpot and freeze them in ince cube trays, then collect and label them in ziplock bags in my freezer.  I just so happened to have leftover ham juices from the same ham I was using in this recipe.  But chicken stock works just fine if you don't do that kind of crazy stuff.

(Serves 4-5)

Ingredients:

1 1/2 lbs of leftover meat--I love mine with leftover ham, but pork or chicken would be great, too
fat of choice for sauteeing (I used bacon fat because I love the flavor it adds)
1 head cauliflower
1-2 eggs
1/3 large spanish onion, chopped
1/2 small package button mushrooms (or get fancy, your choice!), chopped
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp minced fresh ginger
2-3 green onions, finely chopped
2 tbs soy sauce
2 tbs sesame oil
2-3 tbs stock--preferably chicken but whatever you have on-hand.
salt and pepper to taste
handfull of sesame seeds for garnish, optional.

Directions:

Heat a large non-stick frypan over medium heat.  This is not a good job for a cast-iron frypan, so if you use one of those, do so at your own clean-up risk...  Chop onions and mushrooms into small pieces, and chop/shred meat into small bits.  Break cauliflower into small florettes and throw into food processor and pulse until cauliflower is broken into small rice-sized bits.  Its best to do this in several small batches and set "riced" cauliflower aside in a medium bowl.

In fat, saute onion and mushrooms until about halfway done, then add garlic and ginger, salt and pepper, stirring frequently so the garlic does not scorch.  When onions are almost translucent, add meat to heat through.  When meat is almost done re-heating, move it aside to create a little open frypan space and crack the egg(s) in and just scramble them right in the pan.  Then mix them into everything else.  Add green onions.  Then add cauliflower, soy sauce and chicken stock (flavour bombs)--these keep your cauliflower from scorching as it steams just a little bit al-dente.  Stir frequently.  It only takes a few minutes to steam that cauliflower so don't over-do it.  When it reaches a texture you like (and under-cooked is better than over-cooked), remove from heat.  Toss in sesame oil and stir to combine.  Taste and adjust with salt, pepper, and a splash more soy sauce, if necessary.  As you serve this onto plates, sprinkle with sesame seeds.

This re-heats pretty good next day, too.