Lamb Chops with Vegetables

Lamb chops are delicious!

That small, delicate pack of meat, is so worth it. Lamb chops need little cooking - they can stand being a little pink in the middle.

Grill or grill ... as in under the grill/broiler or on a grill/griddle, depending upon your language. Around 6 minutes each side is perfect.

Sort your timings out and prepare some vegetables alongside ...

We had minted green beans and peas, red cabbage and beetroot boiled in bouillon, and some mashed sweet potato with parsley.

Green beans and peas? Yup! Perfectly primal ...

Avocado & Prawn Salad

Absolutely simple!

Cut an avocado in half, stone it and scrape out the flesh.

Place into a bowl with a good blob of soured cream or Greek yoghurt.

Sprinkle some prawns over, a squeeze of lemon juice, pinch of paprika and a good sized chilli, minced.

Pastures New

We're just in the middle of moving house ...

Tending to need something quick and easy to eat in the evenings, the great thing is these meals have been largely simple steak and greens.

I'll be back presently with new creations.

See you soon ...

Turkey & Mushroom Stroganoff

Another Stroganoff ...

Stroganoff is a Russian dish of sautéed meat and soured cream, or smetana.

Popular worldwide, Stroganoff has grown to incorporate many combinations of tastes, flavours and textures, from the inclusion of vegetables, mushrooms, pasta or rice, served inside crepes, as a topping to baked potato and made with almost any cut of meat, even sausage.

I have a few mushrooms in need of using up, a good turkey breast, and we're going to serve it over paleo pasta!

Stroganoff is a quick dish for which preparation is the key ...

Slice an onion and get it softening in a little butter.

Slice up some mushrooms and get them softening in butter.

Slice up some turkey breast and set aside until you are ready to serve.

Peel some carrot into ribbons and shred some spring greens, both absolutely seasonal, and spring greens quite firm in texture this late into the season. Set aside until ready to serve.

Chop some parsley and set aside until ready to serve.

Stroganoff comes together quickly and is best served fresh ...

Once the mushrooms have softened, pour over some cream or soured cream, stir in the softened onions and add a couple of cloves of minced garlic. Turn the heat right down and allow the cream to warm through, take on a little colour and reduce ever so slightly.

Now for the overture ...

Boil the spring greens and just before all the water has evaporated off, drop in the carrots. Switch the heat off - we don't want to overcook these while we're preparing the remainder of the dish.

Toss the turkey slices in a fresh frying pan or skillet with some coconut oil or dripping - turkey is very lean meat and works very well indeed with neutral flavoured fats like coconut oil and dripping. Use the heat to seal quickly and then toss in the creamy mushrooms, adding in some freshly milled black pepper and the chopped parsley.

Drain the vegetable ribbons and assemble a mount on a plate.

Spoon the Stroganoff over the paleo pasta.

Spinach & Cauliflower Stalk Soup

Yet another way with cauliflower stalks ...

Spinach is a phenomenal pack of all manner of nutritional goodness! I hesitate to use the term "superfood" since all real food is good, but it is one of those foods which provides so much in so little, it is worthy of the term.

Cauliflower stalks make a good bulking agent for soups and often, we're at a loss as to what to do with leaves and stalks trimmed off cauliflower.

Let's make a simple soup ...

First, chop and onion, toss it into your soup pan and soften it in some butter.

Take the good leaves and stalks reserved from previous preparation of cauliflower, wash them and chop them, tossing into the soup pan.

Add a couple of cloves of garlic if you like.

Soften lightly, then cover with bouillon or light stock - chicken would do well.

Raise the temperature and cook on until the leaves are really soft, topping up with water when necessary.

Once the food is all soft, blend it thoroughly with a hand blender.

Place a good handful of raw spinach into the soup and roughly blend. We don't want to cook the spinach too much, nor pulp it down - we want to see it as darker green speckles throughout the soup.

That's about it ... pour out into a bowl and enjoy!

Chicken & Mushroom Stroganoff

Stroganoff is a Russian dish of sautéed meat and soured cream, or smetana.

Popular worldwide, Stroganoff has grown to incorporate many combinations of tastes, flavours and textures, from the inclusion of vegetables, mushrooms, pasta or rice, served inside crepes, as a topping to baked potato and made with almost any cut of meat, even sausage.

I have a glut of mushrooms and some chicken to use up, and we're going to serve it over paleo pasta!

Stroganoff is a quick dish for which preparation is the key ...

Slice up some mushrooms and get them softening in a little butter.

Slice up some chicken breast and set aside until you are ready to serve.

Peel some carrot and courgette ribbons, both absolutely seasonal, and set aside until ready to serve.

Chop some parsley and set aside until ready to serve.

Stroganoff comes together quickly and is best served fresh ...

Once the mushrooms have softened, pour over some cream or soured cream. Turn the heat right down and allow the cream to warm through, take on a little colour and reduce ever so slightly.

Now for the overture ...

Drop the vegetable ribbons into boiling water and turn the heat off. We don't want to overcook these while we're preparing the remainder of the dish.

Toss the chicken slices in a fresh frying pan or skillet with no additional fat - use the heat to seal quickly and then toss into the creamy mushrooms, adding in some freshly milled black pepper and the chopped parsley.

Drain the vegetable ribbons and assemble a mound on a plate.

Spoon the Stroganoff over the paleo pasta.

Aubergine Buttered Egg and Prawn Crispbread

Crispbread? Bread? I know ... I know ... it's not "paleo" but it is absolutely gluten-free, made simply from rice flour and a little bit of fun for a starter now that the summer is just about starting to warm up.

Once you've done the strict '30 Days of Paleo' (capitalised) and then achieved those initial goals, paleo (miniscule) becomes your lifestyle and much of the strictness relaxes. That does not mean you let standards slip; more that you are happy to eat a little off trail every now and again, but when you do, you still make sure it is good, wholesome food.

This is one such dish ...

Begin by skinning and slicing some aubergine (that's eggplant, if you're wondering what an aubergine is) and soften it in some butter in a skillet on low. You don't want to colour the aubergine, just soften it and get it to soak up some butter. How much butter? Enough. If the pan is dry, add a little more butter. If it's swimming, skim some butter off.

Boil an egg for each person eating and get some prawns defrosting.

Once the aubergine is soft, mash it with a little sea salt and some white pepper until it is a soft pulp. Set aside to cool. Peel the eggs and set aside to cool.

Build the plate ...

Place the cracker in the middle. Feel free to use pretty much anything you can pick up - this is finger food. It need not be a gluten-free cracker or crispbread, it could be a slice of marrow, swede, nut-based biscuit, whatever - it's your dish.

I considered the aubergine to be too wet to put straight onto the cracker, but actually it would have been fine. Next time, I'll do just that.

In this case, I laid some sliced egg onto the cracker, smothered it in the aubergine butter and placed some prawns on the top. Garnish with herbs, chives in this instance, and a pickle alongside to offset the buttery flavour of the aubergine.