Poblano stuffed chicken

These poblano peppers have been sitting in the refrigerator for a long time so I finally put them to good use. Using ingredients on hand this delicious dinner was made.

Ingredients:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
4 poblano peppers
3-4 cloves of garlic
1/4 onion
1/2 cup sun dried tomatoes
10 cherry tomatoes
handful of greens-spinach, bok choy, chard, whatever you have
salt
12-16 tooth picks

Method:

Roast the peppers. I did this by putting them under the broiler for about 5-6 minutes per side. Once all done place in a paper bag and seal it up quickly so the heat stays in the the skin begins to bubble up a little more.
While the peppers are sitting chop garlic through greens into little pieces. Mix all together in a bowl with a little big of oil from the sun dried tomatoes. Add a dash of salt.

Hammer the chicken breasts to about 1/4 inch thickness and set aside. Placing the chicken between plastic wrap is cleaner. A plastic baggie would also work.

Get your poblanos and peel the skin. It should come off rather easily but if it doesn't slip right off don't worry about it and leave it on. Cut along one side starting at the tip going up to the stem, then work around the stem removing seeds to keep the pepper whole. Lay one chicken breast on your work surface, lay the open poblano on top and fill with a few scoops of the mixture in the bowl. About 3 tablespoons per chicken breast. Make sure the pepper is at the very bottom of the chicken, closest to you, even hanging about 1/2 an inch off the chicken. Tightly roll chicken, pepper and stuffing away from you. Secure with 3-4 toothpicks. Repeat until all ingredients used up.

Bake for about 45 minutes at 350.

Roasted poblanos are the bomb. So good...and this goes really well with a little sour cream.

Lamb shoulder

A while ago I bought lamb shoulder chops at the farmers' market and had no idea what to do with them. I had never cooked lamb before and definitely not a shoulder. I found a recipe and have made it once or twice. Using lamb with rosemary, tomatoes, onions and kalamata olives you really can't go wrong. From memory this is what I came up with.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon cooking oil
2 lamb shoulders (look like pork chops, not some giant hunk of meat)
1 big onion
2-3 cloves of garlic
12 cherry tomatoes or a can on diced tomatoes
12 kalamata olives (or kalamata tapenade if it a pinch)
2-3 tablespoons rosemary

Method:

Heat oil in a pan over medium high heat. Brown the lamb on both sides, about 5 minutes per side. Set aside.

Slice the onions and chop the garlic. Add the onions and garlic to the pan to sautee. While they are cooking slice the tomatoes. I smashed them up a bit to get some juice out of them. A can of tomatoes works better because the juice makes a good sauce. Chop up the rosemary. Add the tomatoes and rosemary to the onions, mix it all up. Add the lamb to finish cooking with the onions and tomatoes in the pan. Since I had only kalamata tapenade I spooned a couple scoops and mixed it up to get the flavor. If you are using whole kalamata olives throw them in to get hot with everything.


Pile the onions on a plate and stick the lamb on top. I garnished with more tapenade. Bon appetit!

Quick and easy

This is our go-to dinner. Super easy, super fast, super delicious.

Ingredients:

chicken breasts
lemon juice
chopped garlic
herbs (either rosemary, thyme, parsley, or cilantro)
olive oil

2 zucchini
carrots

Method:

Using a meat tenderizer pound the chicken breasts so they are all a uniform thickness. Combine olive oil, some lemon juice, chopped garlic and a pile of herbs and pour over chicken in a dish or plastic ziploc bag to marinate. Slice the zucchini or other veggies thinly and place on a roasting dish and dust with some olive oil. Bake in oven at 425 for about 15 minutes. Then turn the oven to broil and make room for the chicken. Place the chicken on another roasting pan and broil about 5 minutes per side until done. The zucchini should be close to done and getting a little brown from the broiling, so keep an eye on it.

Easy and tasty. Sorry, no pictures. But, really my photos are so bad you shouldn't be using them as a guide anyway. Just try it and make sure it tastes good. It's a bonus if it looks amazing.

Salmon, olive, tomato salad

This week I am dialing in my eating with a goal to lean out a bit. My approach to leaning out is a low carb diet, consuming around 50 grams of carbohydrate a day. How does one do this? By eating real food and not tons of it. I haven't been super, super clean in my diet, especially concerning nuts. I eat A LOT of nuts. Although a better fat source than others, nuts are high in Omega-6s and are calorically dense, so I am adding more olives and avocados and minimizing nuts.

So, here is my lunch (it's not fancy, but low carb, highish fat, high protein and easy enough).

Ingredients:

6 oz canned salmon
100g cherry tomatoes (about 7)
100g iceberg lettuce (it's what we had, pick a better green if you have it)
8 medium green olives

Put lettuce and salmon in a bowl, slice up the olives and tomatoes. Eat up.

Bruschetta Chop

Now that it's nearly the middle of September I am finally getting ripe tomatoes from my garden. With a huge bowl of yellow cherry tomatoes I decided to make a bruschetta inspired dish. After eating a bowl of it I thought it would be good on the pork chops sitting in the refrigerator, and I was right.

Before I got to dinner I tried a few failed experiments in making eggplant chips. My original hope was to bake little discs of eggplant that were firm enough, but not burnt, to hold a scoop of the bruschetta. Turns out eggplant is either burned to a crisp or too soft when perfectly baked. Raw zucchini slices would do nicely and taste delicious.

Ingredients for bruschetta mixture:
(Makes about a cereal bowl)

3-4 cloves garlic
5-6 sun dried tomatoes in oil (the jar from the store...I don't sun dry my own tomatoes)
1+ cup of tomatoes
1-2 tablespoons EVOO
2-3 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
s & p

Method:

Chop everything up and combine. Pour a little of the oil from the sun dried tomatoes into the bowl. Add a dash more EVOO if you need it. A splash of balsamic and some salt and pepper to taste. This stuff is seriously addictive. Make twice as much as you think you will want.

Use on meats, spoon onto zucchini or cucumber rounds as hors devours or just eat it straight. Use red, yellow and green tomatoes to make it pretty. Throw in some basil if you have it.

Here's how I used it tonight on my pork chops:

Heat lots of oil in a pan over medium high heat, cook chops on each side for a couple minutes then turn the heat down. Add some chopped sun dried tomatoes along with oil from the jar and some chopped cherry tomatoes to the pan. Add a dash of balsamic vinegar near the end. Cook until chops are done. Spoon bruschette mixture over and ENJOY!!

Curried Zucchini Soup

This time of year zucchini is copious. For $2 I bought enough zucchini to last a year, about 25 cups or about 7 lbs coming from 4 gargantuan zucchinis. So, what do you do with all this zucchini when you don't eat gluten filled zucchini bread? You make zucchini bread and give it to your gluten-eating friends. Then freeze a bunch more for future zucchini bread making days. Then you have to get creative because grilled zucchini
can get boring after a while.

Here's an easy summer soup to help empty the fridge of zucchini

Ingredients:
1 teaspoon or so coconut oil
1 onion
3 or so cloves of garlic
1 carrot
1.5-2 lbs zucchini
2 or so apples (I used Fuji)
4 cups chicken broth
1 cup coconut milk
1 tablespoon yellow curry
s & p to taste

Method:

Slice the onions, chop the carrots and garlic. Heat coconut oil (or other oil) in pot and sautee the onions, garlic and carrot. While that is cooking peek and chop the apples and zucchini. (If you are a slow chopper prepare everything before you start cooking so the onions don't get burned.)

Add the zucchini, apples, 4 cups of chicken broth, 1 cup coconut milk and about a table spoon of curry. Bring to a boil then lower heat and simmer about 20 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste, white pepper goes well. Once everything is all soft blend it all up and serve. It isn't very pretty, but tastes good.

Topped with coconut milk.

Kitchen Sink Scramble

This morning I wanted a Greek style scramble, but without kalamata olives or spinach it was hard to create. Instead I cleaned out the fridge and came up with this delicious scramble. This is a good way to eat a lot of veggies and free up some space in the fridge. The more you add the better...even throw in the kitchen sink.

Ingredients:

oil of your choice
about 1/4 cup diced red onions
small handful of greens (I used beet greens since I had no spinach)
some sliced black olives
1 heaping tablespoon capers
3-4 cherry tomatoes cut into sixths
about 1/2 cup left over salmon
3 eggs
pepper

Method:

Saute the onions in the oil over high heat. Slice the greens up finely and throw them in to cook up quickly. Remove the pan from heat to let it cool down (you don't want to shock your eggs by throwing them into a super hot pan. They will cook too fast and become tough.) Break your eggs into a bowl and stir them up. Return the pan to low heat. Pour eggs into the pan with the onions and greens, stirring to keep the eggs from cooking too quickly on the bottom of the pan. Add the sliced black olives, chunks of salmon and a few cracks of pepper. Stir to mix everything up. Add the tomatoes near the end so the get hot but not all squishy.

If you do dairy goat cheese or feta would be good. Any fresh herbs would also go well, especially rosemary.

Bon appetit!

Fritatta thingy, Spanish omlete, egg pizza, quiche

It has many names in this house, but it's a simple summer dinner and great as leftovers.

Spanish Omelet, Egg Pizza, Fritatta

Ingredients:

1 Tbs cooking oil of your choice
half a large onion
2-3 cloves garlic
couple of zucchinis
good handful of spinach
handful of cherry tomatoes
herbs-rosemary, thyme, chives, basil
6-8 eggs
(goat cheese if you do dairy)

Method:

Preheat oven to 350.

Heat your fat in a 10 inch oven-proof frying pan. Dice up all your onions, zucchini and chop the garlic and herbs. Finely chop the spinach and quarter the cherry tomatoes. Saute the onions until soft and translucent, add garlic then add zucchini and spinach. While that is cooking crack your eggs into a bowl and beat. Add your fresh herbs (dried works too) and a few cracks of pepper. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and give it a quick stir to make sure the veggies are evenly distributed. Drop the tomatoes in (don't stir them in, it is prettier if they sit on top) then drop chunks of goat cheese if you are using it. Place whole pan in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes or until set (not runny in the middle). Top with a sprinkle of chopped herbs as garnish. Fresh out of the oven

Be careful!! The handle of your pan is HOT. You will inevitably forget this after you get it out of the over and are preparing to serve.

Egg pizza (named by my three year old) flipped onto the serving dish, garnished with chives from the garden.

Now the fun part. You can either serve it straight from the pan, which is easier but means putting a hot pan on the table, or flip it out of the pan onto a serving plate. Just scrape down the sides of the pan to loosen the eggs, getting underneath the eggs, then put a plate on top of the pan and flip. The whole things should come out in one go. Then place your serving plate on the upside down eggs and flip it again. Some work but it's pretty.

Bon appetit!

Blueberry Pancakes

Sometimes you just want pancakes. I have tried almond meal and coconut flour but this time created a hybrid coconut flour/almond meal pancake that was decent. Straight almond meal leaves a strange stickyness in my mouth and is just too heavy. Coconut flour is pretty good, especially with pineapple, shredded coconut and macadamias on top. Today I got creative and was pleased with the results.

Coconut almond blueberry pancakes

Food is hard to photograph

Ingredients:

1/2 cup almond meal
1/2 cup coconut flour
3 eggs
1-1.5 cups coconut milk
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons lemon juice (can substitute vinegar)
lots of cinnamon
1 cup blueberries
coconut oil or other oil for cooking

Method:

Combine the flours and sift to get rid of any lumps. Add the baking soda and lemon juice. (I actually didn't measure, just eyeballed it and poured, but you need the acid (lemon) to react with the baking soda to create fluffy pancakes. If you don't have baking soda and lemon use baking powder.) Mix in 3 eggs and enough milk to make it pancake batter consistency. Not too runny but not to thick either (More an art than a science). Add lots of cinnamon and any other spice you like (nutmeg, cloves, ginger). Finally, mix in your blueberries. The more the better.

Heat up a skillet over medium high heat and add some coconut oil until nice and hot. Spoon in the batter. I find that because the batter is usually thicker than normal pancake batter it doesn't spread out so you need to use the back of the ladle to push the batter around to make it thin enough. If you wait a second the batter in contact with the pan will cook together and make it easier to manipulate the batter without pulling the pancake apart. Cook for a few minutes before flipping it over and finishing the other side, maybe 3-4 minutes per side.

These were fluffier than the usual almond meal pancakes and the juicy blueberries provided enough sweet juicy flavor that syrup was not needed. My kids wolfed them down and the 6 reasonable sized pancakes were gone in now time. A slab of butter would have gone nicely though, but some delicious bacon had to suffice. Other good toppers are bananas and pecans, and any other kind of berry you have laying around. Try other variations too-blackberries, raspberries, bananas, apples all make good pancake fillings.