Tag Archives: pork

Super Porktastic Meatloaf

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This is another recipe from the NomNomPaleo ipad app ! Awesome.  Like usual, I kind of improvised the recipe, but you can see my trusty ipad in the photos to prove that I actually kind of read the recipe this time. You can see the full recipe on nomnompaleo.com too!

Bacon topped meatloaf. Pork on pork action with a side of spinach. Yum. Yes, I burnt the bacon because I got distracted. Whoopsie.

Super Porktastic Meatloaf from Nomnompaleo.com – Serves 4-6

  • 1 pound frozen chopped spinach
  • 1 tablespoon unsalted butter (or coconut oil)
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped yellow onion (from 1/2 medium onion)
  • 1/2 pound Cremini mushrooms, finely chopped
  • 1/4 cup coconut cream or coconut milk
  • 1/2 cup small-dice celery (from about 2 medium stalks)
  • 1/2 cup loosely packed fresh Italian parsley leaves
  • 1 pound ground pork (the original recipe calls for 1 ¼ pounds of pork, veal, or beef but I only had 1 pound of ground pork defrosted)
  • ¼ cup coconut flour
  • 1 medium garlic clove, minced
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more as needed
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper, plus more as needed
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
  • 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
  • 3-5 bacon slices
  • Tomato sauce, warmed, for serving (optional)

 

Chop your celery, shrooms and onion. Don’t get your iPad dirty.

Frozen spinach is your friend. One of the store-brands (Compliments) packages it in these nuggets rather than a brick. It is very handy to just use half a package instead of the whole thing.

Frying the chopped shrooms and onions

Coconut flour, nutmeg, spinach, pork

Added in the eggs and the blend of coconut milk, celery, that you mixed with your immersion blender

I baked it in mini loaf pans. With bacon on top. Mmm bacon.

And when I broiled the bacon I got distracted by a phone call. ARGH. So it burnt a bit.

I would venture a guess that this would freeze well uncooked and you could just pop it in the oven once thawed.

Italian Sausage Stew

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I love sausage. A lot. Italian, bratwurst, Polish, chorizo, garlic, fresh, cured, pepperoni, pepperettes… links, patties blablabla. I loooove sausage. Now, get your minds out of the gutter. I’m talking about the delicious, flavorful meat! My professed and unabashed love for sausage has been the butt of many jokes and many awkward moments.

Looking in my fridge the other day I had half a pound of ground beef, and half a pound of ground pork. I needed a recipe to use it up. Because I’m obsessed with Well Fed, I flipped through it in hopes of inspiration. Bingo. Italian Sausage Seasoning. Well Fed has this uncanny knack for making the simplest ingredients (lonely abandoned ground meat) into a flavour party. Seriously, what are you waiting for? Go buy it or at least read the 30 page free sampler.

Using these delicious sausage flavours, I created a thick stew, almost like a chili. Now, given that we got a dump of snow last night (ugh), it feels like this is an appropriate dish for today! Warm, spicy and stick to your ribs goodness.

Italian Sausage Seasoning from Well Fed

4 teaspoons dried parsley
1 tablespoon dried Italian herbs
2 teaspoons ground black pepper
2 teaspoons coarse (granulated) garlic powder
2 teaspoons paprika
4 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 1/2 teaspoons fennel seed (listed as optional, but in my humble opinion this ingredient is crucial in an Italian sausage! )

Mix these ingredients together and add a few spoons to your meat. I doubled the recipe and it filled a mason jar so I could use it again. Delish. You’ll want to mix it up well, of course.

Italian Sausage Stew

  • 1/2 lb of ground beef
  • 1/2lb of ground pork (you could use all beef or all pork if you wanted)
  • 1/2 a medium onion, chopped
  • 1 c of frozen chopped spinach or kale
  • one can of diced tomatoes (the large-ish ones)
  • one small can of tomato paste
  • vegetable broth, as needed

Add a few big spoons of the seasoning to your pan with the meat. Cook over medium heat until browned.

Add the tomatoes, paste, your frozen spinach (I used kale) and a bit of vegetable broth as needed to get your desired consistency. Simmer until reduced slightly and thickened.  Serve with freshly grated parmesan cheese. [I assume] this freezes really well. I ate this with a spoon, but you could also add some plain tomato sauce and use it as a sauce to top some zucchini noodles, butternut squash, or any other type of pasta.

 

Gluten Free Jamaican… tarts?

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I saw this recipe for gluten-free jamaican patties on pinterest, and after reading through decided that all the ingredients sounded good enough to me.  I became obsessed with making them. I thought about them constantly for two days until I went and picked up a scotch bonnet pepper and cream cheese so that I could make them.

I won’t write out all the ingredients and recipe, because you can find them on I Breathe… I’m hungry… and I actually did follow the recipe, but with one pretty significant change. That dough was a b@#h! I could not roll it out without it crumbling apart! It was pretty disastrous, actually. I was about to throw it out and just eat the yummy filling when I thought about cramming them into muffin tins to make Jamaican-patty inspired muffin tart things. Ahhh, success.

They aren’t incredibly pretty, but they sure did taste good. Here’s how the process looked.

Spices!

Scotch Bonnet Pepper. Yes, I am wearing rubber gloves, and you should too. If you don’t have them, go out and buy them before you dare cut into that pepper. A Scotch Bonnet is HOT. To quote my good friend Wikipedia, “Most Scotch Bonnets have a heat rating of 100,000–350,000 Scoville Units. For comparison, most jalapeño peppers have a heat rating of 2,500 to 8,000 on the Scoville scale.” If you get that heat in your hands or eyes it will hurt. Ask my mom about the time I cut a habanero pepper without gloves and then touched my face. She walked into me smearing sour cream all over my face to try to neutralize the burn. True story.

Pureeing the onion, pepper and garlic with some water

Adding the mixture to the meat

Spices added!

Making that “dough”. Ugh.

My improvisation

Ready for the oven. You aren’t cooking anything here, so really it’s just to heat it up and make the dough crispy.

I don’t think I will ever make these again, but if anyone does and gets them to look like an actual Jamaican patty, do let me know. The filling was delicious, however. It might be really delicious inside a curry flavoured Pure wrap .

Update: These froze pretty well. They were a bit crumbly, and I ate them with a fork, but no softer/crumbly than they were the first time around. I froze them in packages of two, took it out of the freezer the night before and thawed in my lunch bag overnight, microwaved one minute.