Cookout: Ratatouille

The end of August?!  The END of AUGUST?!  The temps are dropping…the peak of harvest season is upon us…and I’m cramming every last fun thing into this summer that I can.  August goals included a cookout.  Cook out we did!  Although the dish I made for this cookout (besides mozza stuffed burgers) was an oven creation.  Behold, ratatouille!

Before I get into the details, let’s give some major credit for this dish to Deb of smitten kitchen.  Her blog is fantastic, the photos are killer, and the recipes constantly impress.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that her photos are what make me drool over her culinary creations.  Lesson learned.  Step it up a notch on the photos and the presentation.

It’s worth noting that much of the beauty of this dish comes from the way the veggies are sliced.  I don’t think it would be quite as jaw-dropping if I had the thickness that comes from slicing with a knife.  2nd lesson:  the mandoline was a good investment.

Okay, I think we’re ready for the nitty gritty.  Deb uses pureed tomatoes, but I had a whole counter full of home-grown produce, so I wasn’t about to reach for a can.  I roasted these tomatoes in the oven (that’s right, the honeymoon with roasted vegetables is far from over), then let them stew and reduce on the stove for a bit with the onion and garlic.  A quick spin in the blender left them in a chunky puree.

Pour them down as a base for the rest of the veggies.

Using a mandoline (or a knife – you don’t need special tools to make great food) slice up some veggies.  I had a zucchini, some summer squash, and a variety of peppers (most sweet mini-bells and bananas).  I didn’t even cut myself on the mandoline this time!

Be fancy.  Arrange the veggies over the tomato in a circular pattern.

Continue until the entire tomato base is covered.  Hopefully you don’t run into any spacial issues.

S&P in liberal amounts over this dish.  A drizzle of olive oil doesn’t hurt either.

Cover in parchment paper cut to the size of your dish (hmm, this might be better as step number 1…).

Bake at 375* for at least 50 minutes.  I took the parchment paper off for the last ten minutes...oh, and I sprinkled the leftover cheese from the stuffed burgers on the veggies as well.

Serve warm, to good friends, especially outdoors on a cool evening.  If you feed them well, they’ll be friends for life.  (I like the chaos in this photo.  It's real.  It's life, happening.)

Sit back and relax.  Play a little croquet.  Take advantage of the last few days of summer.

Ratatouille (loosely based on this recipe)

Ingredients:

• 2-3 cups of tomatoes
• 1 small zucchini
• 2 small summer squash
• 1/2 an onion (roughly 3/4 cup)
• 2 cloves garlic
• 5 small peppers (you could use one or two large ones)
• S&P
• Extra virgin olive oil

Instructions:
1.  Slice the tomatoes in half.  Lay them face down on a cookie sheet.  Broil for 5-7 minutes until lightly blackened.
2.  Stew tomatoes on the stove for 15 minutes to slightly reduce.  Add the onion and garlic.
3.  Let the tomatoes cool slightly.  Blend the tomatoes until lightly pureed.
4.  Preheat the oven to 375*.  Slice the zucchini, squash and peppers on a mandoline (or slice thinly with a knife).
5.  Pour the tomato puree into a 9x13 pan.  Arrange the zucchini, squash and peppers in a circular pattern around the pan.  Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper.  (sprinkle with cheese if you want)
6.  Cover with parchment paper cut to fit the dish.
7.  Bake for 50-60 minutes.  Remove the parchment paper ten minutes before taking the dish out of the oven.

Note:  this dish does NOT give two-year-olds the strength to pull people around on kayaks, hard as they might try.

It was a lovely night, with lovely people and a lovely sunset.

And some lovely croquet...with a water trap!

Paleo Taco Boats

Sometimes a recipe is so tasty you just don't have time to take photos of it.  More likely, sometimes you are so busy that you just want food making to be DONE so you can eat.

Paleo friends, meet chicory.  Also known as endive.  I did not know they were the same thing until I started looking for endive hearts, and could only find chicory.  It's the perfect shape to make a taco.

Either way, you needed a use for all that Grilled Salsa Verde, right?

I had some thawed venison burger and cilantro that I needed a use for.

Seriously sharp cheddar and some peppers make it better. 

Grilled Salsa Verde

This recipe has moved!

Paleo Cauliflower Pizza Crust

So, in my quest for the best Paleo pizza, I started where any newbie would start:  the cauliflower pizza crust.  Well-known among the Paleo crowd, I have to say I was less than impressed.  I want a pizza I can hold in my hand, and the cauliflower failed to deliver.  Taste-wise it was okay, but not a pizza replacement.

The recipe is extremely basic:  1 cup of cauliflower that has visited the food processor, 1 cup of finely shredded mozzarella, 2 eggs, and 2 tbs of oregano.

I used purple cauliflower.  Because I can.  After steaming it, it needs to be well-dried before visiting the food processor.

Shred your own mozzarella.  Mozzarella in block or ball form has normal, natural ingredients - even the cheap kind.  When you buy pre-shredded, it has extra additives to keep it from clumping.  It's worth the extra three minutes to shred your own, I promise.

Bake at 450* for 15-20 minutes.

Kyle worked at a pizza shop in high school, so he's always in charge of the sauce.  I don't know what black magic goes into that sauce (he swears it's different every time) but it's the best sauce I've ever had.  Here's a picture of the magic, but I can't tell you what any of it is except for the crushed red pepper.

Anyway, top the pizza with sauce and stuff.  You don't need instructions for that.  Be creative.  Then bake it until the cheese starts browning - 10 to 15 minutes.

It tasted delicious.  How could it not, with all those amazing toppings?  However, it wasn't quite "pizza."  Maybe on the next try, I'll consult this blog post and see what her "great pizza experiment" results were.

Paleo Cauliflower Pizza Crust

Ingredients:

• 1 cup steamed cauliflower
• 1 cup finely shredded mozzarella cheese
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbs oregano

Instructions:
1.  Dry the cauliflower well (you might want to wait for it to cool).  Put in food processor until well processed.  Mix with the other ingredients.
2.  Spread cauliflower mixture out on a (bacon-)greased pan.  Bake at 450* for 15-20 minutes
3.  When pizza crust is browned, top with sauce, toppings and cheese.  Bake for an additional 10-15 minutes until cheese is starting to brown.

 

A Few of my Favorite Things

Harvest season is upon us! And with it brings much more important things to do than blog. Sorry,
world. Telling you all about the recipe I tried last night isn’t going to put food on my table this winter.

This is my first year with a real garden. Last year I did have a few plants in the ground, but it wasn’t
really planned and I didn’t really give it the effort it deserved. Anyway, I’ve been seeing things slowly
trickle in…first some summer squashes, then a few cherry tomatoes, finally a cucumber or two. And
always kale. But lately, that trickle has been turning into a flood!

It’s not really enough for a full canner load, which is why I was excited to see this article about small
batch canning on theKitchn. However, after perusing the Food in Jars site, I found not a single recipe for a small batch of pickles. They must all be in her book about preserving in small batches. Now, I know what you’re thinking – the all-knowing Google should be able to find me an adequate recipe. But the thing about canning is that you aren’t just throwing food in the oven for 20 minutes and then eating it. There’s germs and food poisoning to think of. You want something tried and true, quite unlike this disaster. So I found Small Batch Preserving on Amazon for a full $3.98. But I’d hate to add to my already overflowing recipe book collection without knowing what was in it…so I borrowed it from my local library.

So that’s why there’s no regular post today. I spent last weekend camping, Monday night unpacking and recovering, Tuesday night running errands, Wednesday night at a cookout, Thursday night canning (and still making an AWESOME dinner), and tonight I have a rehearsal dinner for a wedding tomorrow! I’m thinking Sunday might be a bridesmaids-recover-at-lake-michigan day. At some point, I’d also like to sleep…

In the meantime, here are some of the dark corners of the internet I’ve been lurking in:

For my engineering side: xkcd

For my foodie side:  smitten kitchen

For my humorous side:  Failbook.  Guilty pleasure :)

For my design side:  Trendir

For my procrastination side:  Friday Favorites

For my nautical side:  More Joy Everywhere

For my food preservation:  Pick Your Own - also a great preserving resource

For my Sunday afternoons:  PostSecret

And there you have it, people. When I’m not checking my stats on Blogger or posting pics of today’s
veggie harvest on Facebook, you’ll most likely find me hanging out with these guys.

Chipotle Meatballs with Guacamole

Okay, I made these over a month ago, and I even went through all the pics and edited my faves.  However, I completely forgot to blog about them!  Maybe it's just me, but eating Paleo has seriously increased my intake of meatballs.  For instance, Swedish meatballs and chicken meatballs and my fave so far, Greek style meatballs with fennel stew!  Well, today you get the promised Chipotle Meatballs with Guacamole!

I know that's a lot of meatball recipes, but each one was so different from the others that it never seemed redundant.  Today's recipe comes from health-bent, which is a great resource for Paleo recipes!  I tweaked some things, so you can go over to health-bent or follow my recipe below!

Key in this recipe are canned chilis in adobo sauce.  The adobo sauce goes in the meatballs, and the chipotle chilis (plus more sauce) go in the chipotle sauce.  Almond meal is used rather than flour, along with some sea salt and fresh marjoram (aka sweet oregano).

I was so proud of myself for planning ahead and thawing some venison burger prior to making this recipe.  Then I unwrapped it and realized it was a venison roast!  So I started out with a straight-from-the-freezer brick of venison burger.

Ugh.  So much for planning ahead.  So it was a little extra work to thaw that so I could mix it with the egg mixture, plus some shredded carrots.

The meat mixture, when formed into 1.5-in meatballs, got baked for 15 min at 400*F.

Meanwhile, I prepped the sauce and brought it to a simmer on the stove.

I added some hot sauce to the guac, which made it a little off-color, but super tasty!

A delicious bowl of meatballs topped with chipotle sauce and served with guacamole!  Look at that steam...

Original recipe, and I highly recommend exploring the site for other recipe ideas.

Chipotle Meatballs:

• 1 lb ground venison
• 3/4 c shredded carrots (~2 carrots)
• 1/4 c almond flour
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbs chipotle adobo sauce
• 2 tbs chopped fresh marjoram
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• sea salt

Chipotle Sauce

• 1 c chicken stock
• 15 oz can tomato sauce + small can of tomato paste
• 3 finely diced chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
• 1/2 chopped red bell pepper
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 2 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• salt

Guacamole (you can tweak this any way you want; I never measure anything when making guac)

• 1 large or 2 small avocadoes
• 2 roma tomatoes
• 1 bunch of green onions
• 2 tbs lime juice + dash of lime zest
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• chopped cilantro if you have it on hand
• hot sauce to taste

Paleo Pasta: Spaghetti Squash

Wow...so it has recently occurred to me that I gave you a fab recipe for paleo chicken meatballs, but I left out the preliminary part of the "spaghetti" and meatballs!  Just a little bit cruel and unusual...

Well, fear not!  All your problems are solved today!  Go get your butt to the grocery and pick up a spaghetti squash.  Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Chop that squash in half and shell out the seeds and innards (discard innards).  I seasoned my seeds with a tomato-garlic mixture and some sea salt.  If you want it quick and easy, just salt on the seeds is perfect.

Place the squash halves face-down on a greased pan (bacon grease, butter or coconut oil are great oils for high heat).  Sprinkle the seasoned seeds around them.

Bake!  30 to 40 minutes, depending on the size of your squash.  If you're not sure what the size is, go for 40.  It'll work out just fine.

Voila!  You might have to wait for the squash too cool some before you can handle it, but in the meantime, you have delicious seeds to eat!  My guess is that the seeds will last for a few days in an air-tight container, but I've never had leftover seeds, so take that advice with a grain of sea salt!

Okay, this is the amazing part.  I couldn't believe it the first time I tried it.  Take the squash half and draw a fork through it to loosen up the "noodles" of squash.  Use the fork to scrape all the squash out of the skin.

It is so noodly and stringy!  Now, it bears mentioning that spaghetti squash does not taste like spaghetti.  The squash has a very mild flavor, and once covered in sauce and meatballs, that flavor is pretty well masked (although I don't think the flavor is bad at all).  The texture varies, some bites are a little crunchy but most of the "noodles" are soft.

How to Cook Spaghetti Squash:

1.  Pre-heat the oven to 350*F
2.  Cut the squash in half.
3.  Scrape out the innards and seeds. Discard the innards, but save the seeds for roasting.
4.  Season the seeds with sea salt, and if desired, other seasonings.
5.  Place the squash halves face-down on a greased pan (bacon grease, butter, or coconut oil work well).  Sprinkle the seeds around the halves.
6.  Bake for 30-40 minutes
7.  When the squash has cooled (feel free to snack on the seeds while waiting), draw a fork through the flesh and scrape it out of the squash skin.  The flesh gets stringy just like spaghetti noodles.

Serve with some sauce and these chicken meatballs!