Zucchini Calfredo "Grande Style"

Yes, I'm back at it with this "Grande Style" thing again.  There is no more perfect accompaniment to alfredo sauce than fresh tomatoes, green onions and some ham.  That's just truth.

Now, I'm not going to take all the credit on this recipe.  There are several recipes out there in the internet that soak nuts and puree them into a paste to make the sauce.  I'm not smart enough to have thought that one up.  The recipe I started with came from Against All Grain here.  She's just adorable.  Too adorable.  Makes me want to punch her because she's way prettier than me.  But enough of my Evil Queen/Snow White complex.  Her recipe looked good.

So here's what I did

feeds 4-5
takes 1 hour soak time, plus 30 minutes more

Ingredients:

4 medium zucchini
1 cup raw cashews
1-2 cups ham
1 cup cherry tomatoes
4 green onions/scallions
1/4 cup parmesan (optional)
1 clove minced garlic
2 tsp dried basil
2 tbsp lemon or lime juice
1/4 tsp hot pepper flakes
a few shakes of nutmeg
salt and pepper

Method:

First things first.  Boil some water.  Pour 4 cups of your boiled water into a large mixing bowl and add the cashews.  Let them soak for an hour.

While that's going on, get everything else ready.  Slice your zucchini really thin with a mandoline or if you don't have one, go buy one right now.  You have an hour, after all!  Seriously, ok, chop your ham into small pieces, cut your tomatoes into quarters, chop your green onions up fine and dig out the parmesan from the back corner of your fridge where you'd forgotten all about it.

Get your blender out and set it up.  Now, pull out a cookie sheet.  Line it with a towel, then put some paper towels ontop of the towel.  Get your strainer out and stick it in the sink.  Pull out a frypan/skillet and leave it on the stovetop.  Now you're ready.  Did that take an hour?  No?  Go away and come back when its almost been an hour.

Alright, this goes sooo fast and easy.  Pull out a large pot and fill it with some water.  Bring it to a boil.  When its boiling, add your zucchini noodles and blanch for JUST 1 MINUTE.  Seriously, not a second longer.  Soggy zucchini is just gross.  Remove pot from heat, and pour zucchini through strainer.  Immediately run cold water over the zucchini to stop the cooking process.  Now spread your zucchini over the paper towels to dry.  You may want to lay some more paper towels ontop of it and help pat it even drier.  Your choice.  Let the zucchini go cold.  Don't worry about it.

Heat your skillet over med-hi heat.  You can saute the ham, but you don't have to if its cooked ham.  Up to you.  Ok, now lift your cashews out of the soaking water but don't discard the water.  You're going to use some of it.  Add the cashews to your blender, along with 1 cup of the soaking liquid.  Add your lemon/lime juice, garlic, basil, nutmeg, pepper flakes, salt and pepper and puree everything until it makes a pasty sauce.  It may look thin at this point.  Pour this into the skillet and heat it through to mix all the flavours, let it simmer for a few minutes--it will thicken.  If it gets too thick, add some of the nut water.  At the last minute, add your parmesan.  If it makes the sauce too thick, add a tiny bit more water.

Remove from heat and stir in your zucchini noodles, cherry tomatoes, ham and green onions.  Serve with extra parmesan and hot pepper flakes.

Some of These Things Just Ain't Like the Others!

Now, don’t get me wrong—there are a million benefits of adopting a paleo/primal diet and lifestyle.  The health benefits are awesome, indescribable at times.  The food is fantastic and the recipes are brave and creative and full-flavoured, but sometimes... I miss the foods I used to eat pre-paleo—not all the foods, heck no; I am eating WAY better foods now than I used to.  (Goodbye “foods from a box”)....  But you know—certain foods, special foods...  There are foods that just cannot be converted into a paleo-acceptable alternative.

Baked beans

Macaroni and cheese

Fettuccini Alfredo

Now you know what I mean.

Ironically, this is as much as Steve and I can think up.  3 things.  Because for everything else, where there is a will, there is a way.  We’ve been eating this way for so long now; we can’t recall what we’re missing.  Our taste buds have changed and we’ve become accustomed to how we eat.

Of course, we’ve learned so much now that eating out has become harder instead of becoming easier.  Our stomachs have adjusted and – healed? -   it is no longer as easy as ordering a side caesar with a steak and maybe some sweet potato fries.  We go home thinking we ate pretty good, and two to four hours later, stomach issues begin.  Nothing hideous, just discomfort, and we realize that there was hidden crap in the food.  Maybe sour cream in the caesar dressing.  Maybe those fries were lightly floured when I thought they looked dipped in egg white.  And then 3 days of bloating begins.

We used to be so laid-back.  I called us primal, not paleo, because while at home we did everything we could to eat clean and appropriately, we would still have soya sauce and full-fat dairy and our butter and meat was not grass-fed.  And while I still want to be laid-back and not go to any extremes (isn’t never eating a grain or boxed/processed foods, sugars and starches extreme enough??) it would appear that my stomach has other ideas.

The bloating and discomfort have been returning lately.  The “food baby” look is back.  Slow weight gain, nothing major, but annoying.  First, I blamed it on my cheats—the weekly hakka meal that was full of wheat flour.  I had to say goodbye to that cheat meal.  It is no more.  I can no longer have wheat even as a small cheat.  My guts have only begun to heal a week after hakka, and I then I go and bombard them again.  I was still meeting the 80/20 rule, but I wasn’t doing my stomach any favours. 

And when that wasn’t enough??  I blamed my dairy.  I know I’m lactose intolerant, but I have always been able to handle yogurt because of the live bacteria, and my home made yogurt was DELICIOUS and FULL of active bacteria.  Seriously.  The recipe doesn’t work if there are not enough bacteria.  But I had to say goodbye to dairy, too.  Damned stomach.  It’s fussy. 

So I go through spells of experimentation.  I love to collect recipes, I hoard them.  I get all these recipes emailed to me, all the time, from Chatelaine Magazine, from Canadian Living, from Kraft Kitchens.  And 99% of them are completely inappropriate, but that 1% are almost there, or have the potential to get there, so I try.

Sometimes it works out, but some recipes, while tasty and grain-free and sugar-free, just don’t work so well.  Maybe they don’t have enough protein.  Maybe they’re too high in carbs.  Maybe they just aren’t filling which would trick the body into eating more than it should.  For example, I converted a recipe this week that was a cold overnight oatmeal.  Delicious?  Yes.  Grain-free and sugar-free?  Yes.  It contained nuts, chia, banana, almond milk and vanilla.  It was light and fluffy.  But who wants to eat light and fluffy?  I had to gobble down a hard-boiled egg just to feel fed.  The naturally sweet taste made me want more—and a whole banana is way too much carb for MY level of activity. 

So this week I had a hankering for fettuccini alfredo.  Crazy, I know—it’s 2 evils at once—dairy and grains.  So I made some adjustments to a recipe I’d made before with chicken and zucchini, and the recipe turned out delicious, everyone ate it without a word of complaint (a rarity in my house).  But did it taste like fettuccini alfredo?  No.  So we won’t call it alfredo because its not and never can be.  If you can do dairy, you can get really close, but I can’t. So here is my it’s-not-alfredo recipe.  You’ll definitely like it.  But don’t expect it to taste like alfredo sauce.

Zucchini Grand-Style

Feeds about 5

Takes about 40 minutes from start to finish

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs of chicken, light or dark, deboned and cut up small
• Fat of choice, for sautéing
• 4-5 zucchini
• ½ large Spanish onion
• ¼ c chicken broth
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tbs butter
• 1 can full-fat coconut milk
• 3 tbs arrowroot powder or tapioca starch
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• ½ tsp mustard powder
• Red pepper flakes, to taste
• Salt and pepper

Add-ons:

• Cherry tomatoes, chopped
• Green onions, chopped
• Bacon, cooked and crumbled

Directions:

Pull out your handy mandolin.  Slice your zucchini into thin spaghetti-like strips.  Place all the zucchini into a large strainer, layering with salt, and allow to drain over your sink or over a plate.  The salt will draw some of the excess moisture out.  Set aside.

Cook up your bacon and chop your add-ins, then set aside.

In a large skillet over medium heat, sauté your chopped onion and garlic with a bit of fat just until onions become translucent.  Do not scorch the garlic.  While this is cooking, debone and chop up your chicken.  Salt and pepper the chicken.  Now, in the skillet; add your butter, coconut milk, broth, nutmeg, mustard powder and red pepper flakes.   Bring it to a simmer.  Add your chicken and let it poach for about 20 minutes or until cooked through.

In a small bowl, whisk your arrowroot/tapioca starch with a bit of cold water to dissolve.  Slowly add it to the chicken and sauce, stirring and allow it to thicken.  Honestly, you want this stuff as thick as possible, overtly thick, because the water in the zucchini will thin it back down.

Once your sauce is really thick, stir in your zucchini and let it just heat through.  Adjust to taste with more red pepper flakes, salt and black pepper. 

Serve it out onto plates, then top with add-ins.

Enjoy! 

Quick note—this recipe does not make good leftovers.  Re-heating the zucchini causes it to release more water, which turns the sauce into soup.  Unless you happen to like zucchini and chicken soup.

Zucchini Spaghetti with Chicken in Cream Sauce

Why am I so effin' hungry lately?  Hungry, headachy, achy, crappy, really.  Ok, achy because I keep hurting myself.  But we'll talk about that one later.  I think the body wants carbs.  Not grains, heck no, but 1 1/2 fruit a day just ain't cuttin' it, and neither is a handfull of nuts.  (Though that half cup of homemade coco cashew butter did it--but let's not do that one again or I will grow some cottage cheese thighs, ok?)  Pardon me while I go pop a B vitamin and hope that makes it all better. 

Anywhooo, many years ago, when I was in college in the little town of Lindsay, they had this awesome and corny restaurant called the Grand Experience and they made the best fettuccine Alfredo "Grand Style" ever--with deli ham and green peas and fresh tomato.  Everywhere I travelled around the province after that had me tasting fettuccine Alfredo in every tiny little mom-and-pop restaurant in every backwoods town.  (BTW, Wiarton used to have an awesome little place that not only did a great alfredo, but escargot as well... but I haven't been there in forever.)  So it spawned a love of fettuccini alfredo that came to a grinding hault when I became lactose intolerant.  Oh, how I missed it.  It wasn't the noodles I missed, but the silky, creamy texture. 

I found the original recipe idea for this on Family Living Simple, and I'm sure to adapt it again and again until I can make it "Grand Style" just like I remember (without the gut explosion that would surely come from that now).  So here's where it's at right now--

Serves about 5

Ingredients:

1 1/2 lbs chicken, light or dark, de-boned and cut up into small pieces
fat of your choice for poaching with chicken--I used chicken fat
3-4 zucchini
1/2 large spanish onion, chopped
1/4 cup chicken broth
2 cloves garlic
1 tbs butter
1 can coconut milk
1-2 tbs arrowroot powder, dissolved in a bit of water
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp mustard powder
red pepper flakes, to taste

Directions:

Do you have a mandolin yet?  Because you should.  It's really important.  Set the blades to cut the zucchini into really thin noodles--as thin as you can go, really.  Cut up all the zucchini and set on paper towels, add some sea salt to help dry them out a bit so they don't cook all soggy. 

Next, heat a large skillet over medium-high heat.  Add chicken, fat, and broth, then cover and simmer chicken until cooked through.  Move chicken to a plate and turn the heat down to medium.  Put the onions in the pan, stirring, until they become translucent and most of the liquid is absorbed.  Then add your garlic (not whole, silly--through a garlic press!)  And stir just until you begin to smell it cooking.  Now add your coconut milk and bring it to a slow simmer.  Now add your spices and pepper and salt.

Once it's simmering a bit, begin to add your arrowroot and water mixture, stirring it in and letting it thicken the sauce.  If you over-thicken it a little, that's ok, because the zucchini will thin it back dow a little bit.  But get it thick enough to coat the back of the spoon.  Add your zucchini and chicken to the sauce and heat through, stirring frequently, just until zucchini is hot and beginning to soften.  Don't let it go soggy.

Serve, and add more nutmeg and red pepper flakes if you think that's necessary. 

If you're feeling fancy, garnish with green onions and chopped fresh tomatoes.  One day, I will get it perfect, and rename it Zoodle Alfredo "Grand Style".  But not yet.  It's very tasty, don't get me wrong, but not quite like the "Grand Style" I remember just yet.....