Skewered Hearts [some stupid cupid joke]

...So I was chatting it up with the butcher, and I asked if he had any hearts.  "Hearts?" He said.  Then "<mumble mumble> Klashnokov."  And THEN, he started busting up laughing his ASS off.

... (?)

I still don't get it.  Whatever.  I hope it was good.  Because I bought a bunch of chicken hearts from him.  I've never tried them, but figured, Hey. They're lean, they're no fuss, and boy are they cheap. 

Blah blah blah Klashnokov.


[adaptations:]
Chicken heart recipes:  The first 5 I googled were to the tune of "throw a bunch in a frying pan with soy sauce."  Great.  Here's what I did instead.

• Marinate them in olive juice and thyme.  At Whole Foods, it'll come in one of those nifty plastic tins, so there's no need to sully your own tupperware.  (Nope, soy sauce is not Paleo.  It comes from legumes, and is high in linoleic acid stuff. So. Not an anti-inflammatory.  Olive juice, on the other hand---so long as it's not full of preservatives---is totally paleo.)
• Skewer the chicken hearts.  They are THE PERFECT SIZE AND SHAPE!  Little itty bitty perfectly ovoid pieces.  You know how when you skewer meet cubes, and the cube corners get all charred before the insides even cook through?  Ahem:  "Hearts don't burn.  They only break."
• Skewer them with balsamic-drizzled veggies. Typical grilling veggies apply:  onions, peppers, squash, etc.
• Smmmoke 'em.

[ingredients:]

• 1 lb chicken hearts
• olive juice
• thyme
• cilantro
• grilling veggies
• balsamic vinegar

[nutritional breakdown:]
f/c/p: 14g (35%) / 11g (12%) / 47g (53%)

(for about 6 oz. in cooked hearts and 2 cups of onions and peppers) 

[total dish cleanup:]

• chopping knife (for veggies)
• grill pan 

EDIT: I tried another batch of hearts today, and have this to conclude:  They definitely need to be grilled/braised/smoked/something in order to achieve "texturization".  This second time around, I simply sauteed them in a pan with onions, tomatoes and basil.  And while the olfactory combination worked well, it was a pretty moist dish.  And the hearts had a much more "hearty" texture this time around---akin to tough button mushrooms.  If you don't mind this, you're in luck; you can cook them any which way you like.  If you do, I say, turn the heat up.

Beet Yam Roesti...Rosti?. Roastey...

This roesti is inspired by a NYT diner's journal recipe. It used to make it into my prior-to-paleo routines, because it's one of those dishes that never fails to wow dinner party guests, and it's super easy.  Paleoizing it actually makes it even easier. Ridix. 

 

[adaptations:]

Several key paleoizing hacks:

• Instead of an all-out beet fest, I used a 1/3 ratio of sweet potato/yams. 
• Replace flour with arrowroot to hold it together.    
• Replace butter with coconut oil. 
  
• Here's how paleoizing makes it even easier: You really on't need even need the arrowroot, if you use enough yams, since they have a high sticky-starchiness to them.  You also don't need to melt any butter, since coconut oil relaxes pretty easy.

• Finally: Please, there's no need to fret over the whole flipping process.  After you've finished one side, stick the (oven-safe) pan in a 400-degree preheated oven.
  
  Since I only cooked for one, I just stuck the whole thing in a Pyrex and popped it into a a convection oven, and alternated between "bake" (for the underside) and "broil" (for the top).

[ingredients:]

• buncha beets, grated
• less buncha sweet potatoes and/or yams
• coconut oil
• arrowroot (optional)
• big smidgens of rosemary, thyme
• salt
• pepper
  
• cayenne pepper

[nutritional breakdown:]
f/c/p: 11g (13%) / 18g (62%) / 2g (58%)

(for a roesti with 2 2"-diameter beets, a cup of sweet potato, 2 tsp oil) 

[total dish cleanup:]

• mixing bowl
• grater / chopping knife
• pyrex pan

Kitchessential: Waterless Cooking, Lavender Thyme Chicken

Waterless Cooking:

I've only had two things that have stuck with me 9+ years, in spite of ~daily use.  (Unfortunately, neither is an Apple.)  One is my nifty waterless cooking pan.  If you've never heard of waterless cooking, the gist of it is:  Using very high grade stainless steel that cooks better tasting and better-for-you food, by:

• locking in heat and moisture,
• preventing metal leaching,
• thereby improving the taste of food,
• eliminating the need to add water or even oil during the cooking process
• improving the nutritional integrity of the food
• and, as an added bonus, making cleanup ridiculously easy, because of the lack of sticking.

The waterless cooking advantage for Paleo:

• We want oils, and we want good oils.  But cooking with oils can run the risk of over-heating.  And over-heating means a loss in spite of all our efforts behind ridding our pantries of the double-bond monsters and adhering to monounsaturated reserves.  (For an excellent geek-out on types of fats, and exactly why "trans-fats" have earned their evil title, see The Paleo Diet site's notes on fats and fatty acids.)  Cooking without water or oil allows me to add coconut/hemp/whathaveyou oil to the meat after the food has been removed from heat.
• This really shouldn't be a Paleo-specific reason, but waterless cooking just makes food---meat especially---taste better, since it tastes more like, well, itself, instead of a diluted version of itself.

The waterless cooking advantage for Laziness:

• It cooks meat straight from the freezer.  On those many days when I forget to defrost meat, the waterless pan trumps the oven and grill.  In 20 minutes, my chicken bricks are perfect, tender breasts.  
  
• Everything can go in one pan.  Since the food cooks in its own natural juices as well as those of any spices, there's no need to sauté, steam, fry anything separately.  In the recipe below, for example, I'm able to extract the delicate flavor of lavender with far more success than dry cooking otherwise.
  
• It's ridiculously easy to wash.  I soak it for a few minutes in hot water after cooking, and literally rinse it off afterward.

Lavender Thyme Chicken

[adaptations:]
From epicurious's recipe on Lavendar and Thyme roasted Poussins.

• I cooked it all in my Neova Pan, the less-cost-intensive line of waterless cooking pans, from Costco.
• I only used chicken breasts, because that's all I had in the freezer, but I bet it'd taste supremely better with poussins.
• I used some hemp oil (a non-cooking oil) to "wake up" the lavender post-cooking.
• As is typical with waterless cooking, a lot of juice came out during cooking, so I continued cooking some veggies in it.

[afterthought:]
Use a LOT of lavender.

[total dish cleanup:]

• 1 Neova pan
• 1 cooking spatula

Grilled Curried Salmon Tips and Coconut Kale

[adaptations:]
This was inspired by a NYT recipe, which probably also went towards inspiring Mark Sisson's.  Very little was changed, with the exception of:
 

• I didn't bother heating the coconut milk in order to make the kale get submerged enough.  I just watered it down before plopping in the kale.  This also meant one less pot and bowl to wash.
• I also used Salmon tips instead of steak/salmon fillets.  Because they cost next to nothing, and yet they're tasty all the same.  My (not Troy McClure) fish guys at Pike Place Fish sell it for $1.50 a lb. 

[ingredients:]

• salmon collars
• kale
• coconut milk
• lemon
• cayenne pepper
• salt
• curry powder

[nutritional breakdown:]
f/c/p: 9g (26%) / 25g (32%) / 33g (42%)

(for about 5 oz. of salmon and 3 cups of kale) 

[total dish cleanup:]

• 1 glass pan for marinating kale
• foil 
• tongs