Low-carb
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Recipe: Zucchini and roasted garlic soup
For those who know Mafalda (or some Spanish) here is the perfect strip for this post. Soup in summer. Enough said.
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Product review: Ferment It
These guys make, you guessed it, fermented products. Their current range includes: beetroot, apple & inca berry; kimchi; lime, mango & chili and the good old sauerkraut. You can buy them fresh OR you can get a bag of dehydrated mix + starter cultures to make your own. Last time I saw them at Eveleigh markets I grabbed a mixed pack for $45. I liked them all and appreciate the variety because certain flavours go better with certain dishes. For example, I like plain sauerkraut with bacon and eggs and kimchi with canned tuna or salmon and avocado. You might expect the fruit-containing ones to be sweet but they are…
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Recipe: Cauliflower plov
My introduction to plov, a very simple dish made with rice, lamb and carrots, was in an Uygur restaurant in Sydney. Turns out this dish is traditional also in Uzbekistan and Siberia. I wanted to make a low carb version based on what I remembered from Kiroran Silk Road and my trip to Russia, plus a few recipes from the internet. The result? Well, cauliflower doesn’t absorb liquids as rice does, so it was soupier and less oily in appearance than the real deal. I also used a ton of grated carrots instead of chopped, which made it a bit too sweet for my taste. So I kinda failed in…
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Recipe: Triple mushroom soup
Three things happened: my naturopath suggested getting more mushrooms (particularly shiitakes) in my diet, I read this article entitled “Smart Fuel: Mushrooms” at Mark’s Daily Apple, and I found dried chanterelles and porcini powder at Dr Earth. As a result, this soup was born.
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Recipe: Speck, beef & mushrooms
No fancy story behind this dish. I was browsing Feather and Bone‘s weekly list to order meat and noticed they had speck ends for cooking. They are cheaper than bacon and ham, and come from the same top-quality piggies. Mega win.
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Recipe: Crustless smoked trout quiche
This recipe was inspired by a Facebook comment from my great friend Oriana. I used to spend most Sundays in her house. We played, laughed, and dreamed about starting a band. We played outside with her cousin. We went to the shops to buy bread, ham, and milk for afternoon tea. We wrote silly things. Dad picked me up when I was tired, well fed and happy. Oriana left school to move to Tacna (city in the South of Perú) with her family and one day she decided to move to Norway – and became a great writer and cook in the process. “Naturally”, the only way we can keep…
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Product review: Lard & rendered beef suet from Feather and Bone
Feather and Bone is now selling pasture-fed pork leaf lard and rendered beef suet. Both are $12 per 300 gm jar, not cheap but worth every cent, in my opinion. Of course it’s cheaper to DIY at home but it’s way more convenient to buy it from the experts. Contrary to conventional wisdom, animal fats are not bad for you. I won’t go into the details here but you can have a read here, here, here, etc. What I will say, though, is that 1) saturated fat is much more stable than unsaturated fat (unstable fats lead to free radicals, i.e. DNA damage), 2) no natural food comes with just…
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Recipe: Crustless sausage & spinach quiche
I know, I know… this is getting kinda boring but we’ve been really enjoying the variety of breakfast quiches I’ve been coming up with. This crustless sausage & spinach quiche is easily customised to whatever ingredients you have available. For this one I didn’t even have to go to the market, as the sausages and spinach were already in my freezer. The snags were pork & ginger from Feather and Bone, the best quality you can possibly get: pastured-fed pork, no fillers (and therefore grain- and gluten-free), and amazing flavour. This recipe is gluten-free (depending on the sausages you use) and low-carb. This crustless sausage & spinach quiche is easily…
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Recipe: Crustless bacon & zucchini quiche
Crustless bacon & zucchini quiche is another egg-based breakfast recipe featuring Trunkey’s products. This time it was the turn of everyone’s favourite: bacon. I used a mix of nitrate-free smoked and plain bacon, feel free to use your favourite. This recipe is gluten-free and low-carb. Crustless bacon & zucchini quiche is another egg-based breakfast recipe featuring Trunkey's products.
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Recipe: Crustless ham, mushroom & spinach quiche
There’s a new pork stall at the markets. Trunkey’s pigs are not pasture-fed but at least they’re farm-raised with no added hormones or antibiotics. They sell the usual cuts and pork products but the thing that really got my attention was nitrate-free bacon (smoked and plain) and ham. Both contain only three ingredients: pork, water and salt. Lately we’ve been alternating our meat breakfasts (some kind of minced meat with different veggies and seasonings) with egg-based breakfasts. I make a big tray, cut it in portions and put them in containers so they’re ready to be reheated and consumed during the week. Here’s the recipe for the latest crustless quiche…
