the daily paleo

Recipe adapted from thekitchn.com. I removed the toxic ingredients (vegetable oil, euw), corrected the meat ration (no main course for multiple people should have less than 2 lbs raw meat) and added other clarifications.

3 to 5 pounds beef crosscut shank, ~~fat trimmed away~~ (I used 3 shanks; note that the weight includes the bones)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
~~Vegetable or peanut oil~~ Olive oil
10 to 12 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
2 medium yellow onions, peeled and roughly chopped
1 large stalk celery, roughly chopped (or one large carrot)
1 bay leaf
1 rosemary sprig
750 ml bottle inexpensive red wine
4 cups beef or chicken broth (beef is best, chicken will do)
2-3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar (don’t skip this)

1. Bring the defrosted shanks out of the fridge, cut them out of the packaging, and dry them thoroughly.

3. Heat a wide, heavy skillet (cast iron or enameled cast iron ( I used a Le Crueset dutch oven) over medium heat and coat the bottom of it with olive oil.

4. Liberally salt and pepper the shanks and sear them in a single layer until both sides of each piece of meat have a dark crust.

6. On the stove, turn the heat down to low and put the vegetables into the same pan. Cook at least 15 minutes, scraping up the fond, until the onions begin to color.

7. Add bay leaf, rosemary, red wine and broth to the pot, bring to a boil, them simmer for 15-20 min, until about 1/3 reduced.

8. Carefully pour that over the meat in the slow cooker, add the balsamic, and cook on LOW for at least 8 hours. I cooked today’s batch for 12.

10. With a slotted spoon, carefully remove the meat and bones; make sure you get the marrow chunks (which may have slipped out) because they are delicious. Once the marrow is rescued from the bones, remove them from the dish. Clean them to use for stock.

11. Pour the sauce through a sieve or strainer, discarding the solids, if you’re fancy. Ignore the straining if you’re not.

12. Chill the meat and sauce separately. Skim the congealed fat off the sauce after chilling.

May 15

My ears always perk up when I come across someone else with a surname starting with “Kn-.” It’s fairly common in the part of Pennsylvania where I am from, but pretty rare around here.

Turns out young Ian is also a Pennsylvanian-turned-Brooklynite, so when his first cookbook, The Farm: Rustic Recipes for a Year of Incredible Food, started to get so much press, I felt duty-bound to check it out. He was practically family.

The book’s recipes, approach and narrative voice all struck a chord with me. Even though I’d never heard of him, it was clear he had chops and cred; Ian had worked his way up at Gourmet magazine, starting in the test kitchen and impressing a very serious lineup of professional foodies. All that was awesome, but while perusing his just-released book, I turned the page to see that my personal favorite meatloaf recipe, which I’d gotten off Epicurious.com (repository of most of the Gourmet magazine recipe trove), had been originally written, years ago, by none other than Ian.

This recipe contains an amazing secret puree that is worked in with the ground meat - a mash-up of bacon and prunes. I KNOW! Sounds weird! Tastes like heaven! (I leave the bread crumbs out.)

What to make first? Something crunchy and seasonal, I thought. Early spring vegetables were just in, always an exciting time for an enthusiastic cook. I was never a radish girl, until I finally tasted fresh, local French breakfast radishes, and realized radishes aren’t always bitter and angry-tasting. Apparently the French eat them with butter, and that is obvious proof of their impeachable good taste.

Ian did it one better by whipping butter with minced cooked bacon, shallots, lemon and a bit of caraway.

Preparing the bacon butter for a party, I found myself licking it off the beater of my KitchenAid. I bet you will, too.

1/4 lb. bacon
1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 small shallot, finely chopped
4 bunches radishes (about 2 lb.), trimmed, leaving 1” of stem
Kosher salt and black pepper

Pulse raw bacon in a food processor until it is finely chopped, or finely chop by hand. Cook bacon in a 10” cast-iron skillet or other heavy skillet over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until it is browned, about 8 minutes. Stir in caraway seeds and cook, stirring, until caraway is fragrant. This will take another 30 seconds to 1 minute. Remove skillet from heat and let cool to room temperature.

Using an electric mixer , beat bacon, caraway, and any fat from the skillet with butter, lemon juice, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper until bacon butter is light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Fold in parsley and shallot, then season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serve radishes with bacon butter.

May 11

May 03

Picking up my monthly meat share makes me feel like a superstar. This is how I walked home with my stash tonight.

Welcome to the May edition of Herondale Farm Meat CSA Recipes from a Person Who Lives on the Same Block as Beyonce’s Little Sister.

I am not going to repeat the Deluxe Steak Method I’ve been posting about since this blog started. Instead, here’s some delicious shit to put on your steak - ditch that nasty steak sauce, it’s full of additives, sugar and crap.

Argentinian parsley and garlic sauce. Totally addictive. Stupid easy. Don’t make it more than an hour ahead, though. It doesn’t keep. Put it on your porterhouse (Rob’s favorite cut), your sirloin (mine), or your T-bone Burnett - any steak that you grill, broil or sear in your heritage vintage cast-iron skillet.

I was pleased as punch to pull this out of my bag. Apparently I wasn’t the only one; I caught Corbett cradling his protectively after he finished his deadlifts.

Anytime you cook a roast like this, please take it out of the fridge and out of the packaging an hour or two before you begin cooking it.

This recipe has 802 reviews, zero bullshit ingredients, and good instructions. I wouldn’t use a baking sheet like they suggest (I’d use my vintage heritage Griswold cast iron skillet) but you are welcome to do so. Since I prefer medium-rare, I’d use my meat thermometer to take the roast out once it registered 135 in the center of the roast.

This nice lady has some how-to photos, a slightly simpler herb rub, and some thoughts on the differences in cooking times for grass-fed meat.

~~Pretty sure these are the same cut~~. Confirmed with the farm - they are the same thing.

We already talked about these here - option 1, the red wine recipe, is one of my favorite recipes of the year. Please try it.

After you suck all the meat off the bones, rinse them, and either make stock right away, or toss them into a ziplock and back into the freezer for stock later.

I adore the chops from Herondale. I went on a heritage Hungarian “Mangalitsa” pork kick when the meat first appeared in New York about a year and a half ago, and spent a small fortune on Mangalitsa pork chops. They cook up red, like beef, and are very delicate tasting.

Chops are the perfect weeknight supper. Regardless of your participation in the CSA, you should always, always, always have some in your freezer.

I always cook mine in a hot, dry cast-iron skillet, and I’ve never felt the need to brine them. I told you about my foolproof method here. On the side, I love cold raw sauerkraut straight from the jar. Oh my god. I’m getting emotional.

Cabbage season is kind of over, but if you’re attached to it the way I am, you might not care. So you could also serve your chops with braised red cabbage with bacon.

Guacamole is another natural side dish for pork chops. Dave Byrd makes a killer guac.

This time of year, I’d saute up some asparagus to cuddle up to my chops. You should try that.

(Note: sub olive oil for vegetable oil. Actually, if you even still OWN vegetable oil, give me the five dollars back.)

What I usually do with Italian sausages is fry them for breakfast, split open. Best thing to make with them?

2. Grate them on the large holes of a box grater (or use the grating attachment on your food processor.)

3. Over medium-low heat, heat enough duck fat in the bottom of a cast iron skillet to liberally cover the surface of the pan.

4. When the fat is melted, crumble the potato shards into the pan, salt them lightly, and stir to coat. Flatten them with a spatula.

5. Cook for a few minutes until they begin to brown and clump up. Let them get a bit crispy, then flip and repeat. Cook them until they are as brown as you like, tasting repeatedly because the flavor will amaze you.

Well, that’s it for this month - the last month of the current Herondale meat CSA cycle. Sign up via the gym if you want in for the new cycle, which begins in June and runs through November.

In closing, Solange Knowles thanks you for your patronage. She’s just another neighbor here on Union Street, where we chillin’ with the stinky gingko, the Brooklyn pigeons, and fifteen pounds a month of grass-fed heaven.

Apr 24

Apr 20

This is what I woke up to this morning. The scent was gorgeous; a little vegetal, lots of ginger and garlic, all anchored in rich, beefy goodness.

My April bag from our Herondale Farm meat CSA had two hefty packages of English-style beef short ribs - enough for a whole recipe without supplementing from the butcher.

I promised y’all I’d make the Korean-flavored short rib recipe I found on NomNomPaleo, and yesterday I finally got my act together.

The recipe does require a pre-searing step before the meat goes into the crock (she broils them, actually, which is unusual) but it’s worth it. I lined my broiling pan with foil and the clean-up was minimal.

Coconut aminos have found their way into my pantry, so I already had a bottle ready for this recipe. But she also calls for coconut vinegar, which I didn’t have. A quick trip to the co-op solved the problem (it also cost way less than the bottles on Amazon) and I was very curious to taste this new addition to my admittedly large collection of vinegars. Predictably, it was tangy and delicious. You will not believe there’s no soy sauce in this dish when you taste it. It’s absolutely uncanny.

NomNomPaleo has an extensive photo how-to for this recipe; please click through to see it. Her pictures are way better than mine. Here’s the obligatory “before” shot:

1. Preheat broiler and line the pan with foil. Alternatively, line a baking sheet with foil.

2. Salt and pepper the ribs and place them bone side up on the foil; broil for five minutes. Flip and broil five minutes more.

3. Remove and stack them on their sides in the crock pot. I had to lay the fourth strip on top of the others; it made no difference in the final texture of the meat.

4. Put the pear, coconut aminos, garlic, ginger, scallions, vinegar and fish sauce into a food processor or blender and process until smooth.

5. Pour the sauce over the ribs, add the chicken broth, and cook them on LOW for 8-11 hours.

6. When they are finished cooking, remove the ribs and put them on a platter. Use a method you like for defatting the liquid. Here’s what I did:

poured all the liquid through a medium strainer into a gravy separator
discarded the solids
poured off the fat that rose to the top
saved the resulting smooth, defatted liquid in a glass jar to serve with the meat

You could also just refrigerate the sauce until the fat hardens, then skim it off.

7. When ready to serve, sprinkle with chopped cilantro.

Apr 19

i guess the name “daily” was a bit ambitious

Apr 08

Shiksa Brisket, or, A worthy cheat: Not-quite-Paleo tangy spiced brisket in the crock pot

Mentally, I reviewed the contents of my freezer. Most of what’s in there would horrify the attendees, I realized. The occasion called for decorum. I have some. Somewhere.

Brisket, then. Obviously. It was easily procured, even just a few days before Passover. I’ve only made it very rarely, maybe twice, but it seemed bulletproof, and surely that’s what everyone was expecting.

I quickly found a recipe I had admired long ago and bookmarked, but then further searching spun me off in a million directions. As a non-Jew, I had no nostalgic attachment to any preparation, but felt not making a nominally traditional recipe might disappoint some of the guests. I couldn’t decide. Soon, I had ten, then twenty potential recipes.

So I fell back on a trick that has served me well; I simply reverted to my first impulse, closed all the other browser windows, and made my shopping list.

This recipe contains quite a bit of sugar, which doubtless explains why it was the first one I wanted to make. The results were, predictably, outrageously good.

If you want to Paleo-ize it, leave the brown sugar out and use sugar-free ketchup. Proceed, however, at your own risk.

3 large onions, sliced
3 tablespoons olive oil
6 garlic cloves, peeled and halved
1 teaspoon paprika
2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 1/4 teaspoons black pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons onion powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
2 cups beef stock (unsalted or low salt; I didn’t have any homemade, so I used Progresso brand)
1 cup ketchup
1 cup Heinz chili sauce
1 cup brown sugar (light or dark)
8 to 10 pound brisket (I trimmed some of the fat off, and had the butcher cut it in half)

Make the sauce: Heat a large skillet over medium high heat and sauté onions in olive oil, stirring occasionally, until caramelized and most of liquid has evaporated, about 15 minutes. Add halved garlic cloves and saute for 3 minutes more. Stir in spices and seasoning (paprika, salt, garlic and onion powders, black pepper, cayenne, oregano and thyme) and cook for 2 minutes. Set aside.

Place brisket in a slow cooker, spread onion mixture over the top, then pour sauce mixture over the entire dish. Cover with the lid and cook it on LOW for 10 hours. (I had to cut each half brisket in half again, and stack the halves in the crock pot.)

When it’s done but still hot, skim off any large pieces of fat. Carefully remove the meat to a container.

Strain the sauce: Strain the liquid in which the meat cooked through a sieve and discard the solids.

Defat the sauce: If you have a gravy defatter, use it to pour off the liquid fat on top of the sauce. If you don’t, you can defat it after it’s chilled.

Chill the meat and sauce separately in the fridge for a few hours, until the fat on top of the sauce hardens. (It’s the bright orange stuff.) Then scrape it off with a spoon, and discard.

Reheat and serve: Put the meat and sauce into a large pot (I used a soup pot), cover, and reheat gently.

Apr 05

This month’s bag was full of everything I love. It’s like the goddess of meat owed me fifteen pounds of payback.

One of my favorite cuts of any animal. My bag had nearly four pounds of bone-in short ribs; cooking them bone-in provides for an incredibly rich sauce that is, not surprisingly, also terrifically good for you.

2. CROCK POT/OVEN adaption: Five-spice short ribs. Charlotte adapted a crock pot recipe for the oven. Two methods for the price of one!

3. CROCK POT CERTIFIED PALEO: Slow-cooker Korean short ribs from NomNomPaleo. This, friends, is what I’ll be doing with my short ribs. The recipe is dump-and-go, for one thing, and she provides all the substitutions right up front. Killer.

5. OVEN method, Provencale flavors: If you love herbes de Provence, olives, wine and tomatoes, this is the recipe for you. Just leave the flour out - you won’t tell the difference.

I’ve become very attached to this beef stew recipe, which is potato-less and illegally tasty:

My super-quick ground beef secret is that I love to make a batch of burgers by simply defrosting the tube of ground beef, pulling off fistfuls of meat, making them into patties, salting them, and frying them, naked, in a skillet. I make a huge pile of burgers, perfectly medium-rare, then stack them in Tupperware and heat them up at work one at a time, always with a big pile of ketchup on the side. Everybody always looks on enviously when I eat them.

1. Pastelón - this is the Puerto Rican/Dominican “lasagne” that is made with ripe plantains, otherwise known as the most perfect food ever bequeathed to humankind. Yes, it contains dairy. No, I haven’t yet convinced Ben @ Bierkraft to share his Paleo version of this recipe, but I’m confident I can do so. In the meantime, here’s a version I’m on fire to try.

2. Paleo Comfort Foods’ Farmer Pie - the photos show a disturbingly purple coating of cauliflower here. When I make it, I’ll use white or orange cauliflower, both of which are easier to find and more visually enticing.

First of all, let me say that I like my lamb medium-rare, at most. If you insist on cooking it harder than that, you are dead to me.

That means I roast it until its internal temperature, taken with a meat thermometer, is 120-125 degrees. After resting, it’ll register 130-135, and still have a beautiful, juicy pink glow.

Secondly, I presume that lamb roasts should be covered by a mixture of garlic + 1 herb, either rosemary or thyme. Using both is distracting. One at a time is just right. Freely substitute one for the other in any given recipe.

3. No-recipe guide for lamb roasts: Coat with your favorite spice/garlic rub, then roast uncovered at 400 for 20 minutes per (uncooked) pound.

There were a bunch of other staples in my bag; sirloin steak (my favorite!) and a juicy Porterhouse; a pack of bacon, and a pack of Italian sausage. We know what to do with these cuts. We have the technology.

And that, friends, is the April edition of KCAEP. If you have questions about the recipes in this post, or would like to share your success stories, please hit me up in the comments.