Pulled pork

It's a bit of work both up front and at the end, but in between you can let your slow cooker do the bulk of the work in this delicious recipe, based on one from the Ontario Pork website.

Ingredients

• 3-1/2 lb (1.75 kg) Ontario pork shoulder blade roast or picnic roast or equivalent cut
• 1/2 tsp (2 mL) EACH: salt and pepper 
• 2 Tbsp (30 mL) olive oil 
• 2 yellow onions, chopped 
• 4 garlic cloves, minced 
• 2 Tbsp (30 mL) chili powder 
• 2 tsp (10 mL) ground coriander 
• 3 bay leaves 
• 1/4 cup (60 mL) tomato paste (or 1 small can)
• 1 x 14 oz (425 g) can tomato sauce 
• 2 Tbsp (30 mL) spoonable stevia, or a dropper-full of liquid stevia, or equivalent sweetener of choice 
• 2 Tbsp (30 mL) coconut aminos 
• 2 Tbsp (30 mL) cider vinegar 

Instructions

1. Sprinkle pork with salt and pepper. In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat and sear pork until brown all over. Transfer to slow cooker.
2. In the same skillet, add onions, garlic, chili powder, coriander and bay leaves. Fry ingredients while stirring occasionally, until onions are softened, about 5 minutes. Add everything else, scraping any brown bits from bottom of pan; bring to a boil. Pour sauce over pork in the slow cooker, cover and cook on low until pork is tender, 8 to 10 hours.
3. Once cooked, transfer pork to cutting board and tent with foil; let stand for 10 minutes. With two forks, shred or "pull" pork.
4. Meanwhile, pour liquid from slow cooker into large saucepan and skim off fat. Bring to a boil over high heat and let boil vigorously until thickened somewhat and reduced to 3 cups (750 mL), about 15 minutes. Discard bay leaves.  Seriously, you don't want to bite into one of those.
5. Add the pulled pork to reduced sauce mixture and lower heat to simmer until hot, about 4 minutes.

Now, what to serve it on?  I recently tried some coconut-based "paleo" wraps from Julian Bakery (available here from Low-Carb Grocery), and while they're (a) a bit smaller than I'd like and (b) a bit sweet, they still do the trick.  (Full disclosure note - I have not received any compensation from either Julian Bakery, Ontario Pork Producers, or Low-Carb Grocery, or any other third-party, in relation to this or any other blog posting.)

Fall-apart ribs

You might have noticed I don't post on here a lot.  I had the best of intentions to do so, but this isn't my job.  It's not even my second job.  Or my third.  I haven't seen a penny of payment for this, in fact, so it's not a job at all.  That's not a complaint, I'm just saying - I guess I get out of it what I put in, right?

Anyway, since I started this blog, there's been a minor revolution in paleo - there are cookbooks (and I mean a LOT of them - I have a dozen myself, and I'll eventually start posting reviews here) devoted the the paleo way of eating.  In that respect, this blog probably isn't as necessary as it was, since there's lots out there now (a lot more blogs as well).  But I'm going to keep it, and I'll keep updating it when and where I see fit.  Like today, for instance.

Today, I want to tell you how I do ribs in the oven.  You might already know this, you might not, but the secret is this:  time.  Long time, low temperatures.  Here's what I do:

Ingredients

• 1-2 racks ribs
• barbecue sauce (lately I'm using Xyla brand, but I've also made my own)
• lots of aluminum foil (yeah, not environmentally friendly - try to recycle it!!)

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit, or the equivalent in Celsius.
2. For each rack of ribs, lay out a single piece of foil longer than the ribs.
3. Pour a bit of barbecue sauce down the length of the foil, lay the ribs on the foil length-wise, and pour some more barbecue sauce on top.  You can get pretty saucy now if you want.
4. Bring the edges of the foil up and crimp on top - if you need more foil because your ribs are too wide, make sure the seam is on top, not underneath. You want to make sure any juices don't leak out.
5. Lay the foil package of ribs on a baking sheet.  If you're doing multiple racks of rib, repeat with the other rack, and lay them side-by-side on the baking sheet.
6. Bake in the oven for at least two hours.
7. At this point, your ribs are technically done, and you have two choices:
1. "Crisp" them up on the grill with more barbecue sauce, or
2. Carefully drain the juices from the foil packets into a saucepan, thicken it on the stove by reduction, brush it onto the ribs as a glaze, and broil under your broiler for 1 minute.  Repeat three or four times until you have a nice thick coating of reduced-juice glaze baked onto the ribs.

Let them cool a few minutes, and dig in!  Napkins pretty much mandatory, by the way.

A nice little curry

I was trying to decide what to make for supper yesterday, and hit on the idea of making a curry. This may sound odd, but I'd never actually made a curry before. But, I looked at a few recipes, figured things out, and this is what I served last night over cauliflower rice...

 Ingredients

• One large yellow onion
• 3-4 Tbsp Coconut oil or olive oil or lard/bacon fat
• 4 chicken breasts, skin and bone removed, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 1-2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tsp curry powder (or more if you like it curry-er)
• 1 can coconut milk
• 1 small can tomato paste

 Instructions

1. Put the oil in a good-sized pan or wok. Quarter the onion and thinly slice it.
2. Put the onion slices in the oil over medium heat.
3. Once the onion is waxy, add the chicken and garlic.
4. Mix the curry powder with a bit of the coconut milk in a bowl.
5. Once the chicken is no longer pink, add the coconut milk and curry powder, bring to a boil, and simmer for about 10 minutes.
6. Add the can of tomato paste and simmer a while longer - it should be a nice, thick sauce.
7. Serve - best over either cauliflower "rice" or shirataki noodles.

Greek Village Salad

AKA "Horiatiki" or "Choriatiki", this is a favourite around here. Yes, it contains cheese, so non-milk paleo types will have to "just say no", but it's goat cheese, not cow cheese, okay? :-)

Ingredients

• 1-2 English cucumbers
• 1 sweet pepper (green or red)
• 1/2 pound feta cheese
• 1 Tbsp capers
• 1 Tbsp dried oregano
• 3 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 pint (small box) of "baby" tomatoes

Instructions

1. Chop first four ingredients into bite-sized (1/2 inch or 1 cm) pieces. Combine in a bowl with the remaining ingredients except the tomatoes. For best results, allow to in the fridge sit overnight.  Add the tomatoes just before serving.