The Paleo Diet (that's capitalised) considered all legumes to be off the table - anti-nutrients and the organism's defence mechanism make them potentially bad for human consumption.
Not all legumes are the same!
Mark Sissons gives us the lowdown on legumes from a primal perspective and comes to a similar conclusion to Kurt Harris - they're okay, not ideal, but not bad.
Soaked, pressure-cooked and re-cooked, they're fine.
Let's give 'em a try ...
This dish is an onion, garlic, chilli, tomato and chorizo base with cannellini beans and scallops flashed in butter over cauliflower rice.
Let's get cooking ...
Begin with some good fat to soften some roughly chopped onions - I used pork fat collected from cooking.
Toss in peeled and sliced chorizo and allow the paprika to just colour the onions. Peeled? Yeah, the skin that chorizo comes in can be peeled off.
Add a couple of cloves of minced garlic, a carton of chopped tomatoes poured over along with a good half pint of water and the canned or pre-soaked cannellini beans.
Bring the pan to the boil and cook through on a good boil for maybe half an hour?
Add more water and toss in some green beans, reducing the water while you prepare the rest of the dish.
For cauliflower rice, don't bother with all that grating or food processing - it's much nicer just trimmed from the stalks and steamed so that it is just cooked but has not lost all its texture. Turn out into a bowl and break down with a fork into rice.
Boil an egg, too ... half a boiled egg over the top is perfect!
When you are just ready to serve, soften some butter in a frying pan or skillet and toss in some scallops. Cook enough just to colour - scallops are best soft and juicy with as little cooking as possible; over-cooked and they're like rubber!
Fold the scallops into the the rest of the dish, serving out over the cauliflower rice and garnish with shredded spring onions, half a boiled egg and some parsley.
Gorgeous!
