Steamed Cod & Hot Tomato Sauce

Relaxing start of the week dinner ...

Monday dinners can be tough, what with so much to do when you get home from work after the weekend ... not least, cooking dinner.

When you have 10 minutes, or so, you can make up the sauce and just let it simmer on a very low heat until you're ready to cook the rest ...

Hot Tomato Sauce

Carton Chopped Tomatoes (400g)
Half Small Onion
Garlic Cloves (3-4)
Chilli Flakes
Olive Oil
Sea Salt & Black Pepper

Heat up some olive oil in a skillet. Olive oil does not tolerate high heat well, and one of the forgotten skills in Italian cooking is to keep the heat moderate or low and take your time. I repeat: take your time. Relax into the sauce.

Finely chop half an onion and soften in the warmed oil.

Lightly blend the chopped tomatoes so that you have almost a passata, but still with some structure. Pour into the skillet.

Slice the garlic cloves and add. I don't like to add garlic to the oil and onions since it can burn. I much prefer to add garlic later.

Sprinkle over some chilli flakes, add some sea salt and black pepper, reduce the heat and let it simmer ... it will be perfectly happy until you're ready to cook the rest of the dish and will improve with that time. Relax!

Steamed Cod

Cod Loin

Our cats eat fish. They love their fish! I get all the tail ends and offcuts from our local Chippy and all I need to do it remove the really big bones and steam the rest.

So, steamer on, I might as well steam some fish for us humans, too ...

I have a lovely loin of cod, thick, big flakes, gorgeous. Steamed, perhaps 10 minutes.

Salsa

Olive Oil
Lemon Juice
Spring Onions
Capers
Green Olives
Dried Oregano
Sea Salt & Black Pepper

Fish on sauce is a bit dull to the eye, so I made up a quick salsa of olive oil, lemon juice, shredded spring onions, capers, sliced green olives, dried oregano, sea salt and black pepper.

Serve

Sauce down first and gently lay the fish over, salsa over the top.

The fish falls apart in huge flakes, picking up the sauce and gaining an extra pique of interest with the salsa. This truly was a gorgeous meal!

Chilli Con Carne Lasagne

Friday night is Chilli Night!

I always make way too much, which is great since we've loads leftover for lunches with a baked potato, lettuce wraps, that kind of thing ... but recently, I've taken to making up a leftover Lasagne for Saturday night.

To make this you'll need the following: leftover Chilli Con Carne, tortilla and cheese sauce.

For two people, I find about 500g of leftovers is right, perhaps bulked out with some mushroom, aubergine or courgette. Three tortilla, too, so follow the madness in my Manioc Tortilla recipe. Finally, some cheese sauce for which I find about 100g let out with a little cream is just right.

Build your lasagne ...

Spread maybe a third of the cheese sauce into the bottom of an ovenproof dish, lay a tortilla and cover with half of the Chilli. Now, another tortilla, the other half of the Chilli, top with a tortilla and pour the cheese sauce over.

I like to split a chilli down the middle, de-seed and lay that over the top before committing to the oven for 20 minutes at 180C to heat through.

Once ready, serve out with green salad and enjoy.

Crab Senza Linguine

Prior to ancestral eating, my Crab Linguine was one of my wife's favourite dishes; a simple preparation of crab, chillies and lime over linguine.

Ancestral eating has knocked traditional linguine out and while I could use a rice-based replacement, a perfectly good and actually nutritious replacement can be found in juliennes of courgette or carrot ... but ... I think I've found a perfect linguine now.

Nosing around a Polski Sklep (Polish food store) near work I was reminded of something I actually found many months ago: a curious jar of what looked like noodles.

The best I could get out of the shopkeeper at the time was that it was celeriac. Upon translating the ingredients, it was, indeed celeriac, in salt, vinegar and sugar.  No drama - simply soak in water for an hour and we're good to go ...

Ingredients

Vegetable Noodles - Juliennes, spiralized or bottled
Crab Meat - Fresh or canned
Flavours - Fish sauce, spring onions, garlic powder, coriander & chillies
Fat - Coconut oil

How much? Well, one crab each or, say, 170g of meat per person. Noodles to suit your appetite, chilli and fish sauce to suit your taste, garnish as appropriate.

Method

Heat the coconut oil in a decent sized skillet, one which you can toss happily.

Add in the crab meat, your vegetable noodles (drained, if bottle preserved), chopped spring onions, chopped chillies, a touch of garlic powder and toss through.

Flavour with a dash of fish sauce. If using canned crab meat preserved in brine, skip the fish sauce.

Heat through and add a generous amount of chopped coriander, folded through.

Serve

Serve, lifting out with a couple of forks into bowls, gaining air and height. Garnished with more fresh coriander and perhaps a grind of freshly milled black pepper.

We had an Insalata di Caprese and a boiled egg alongside.

Zuppa di Pesce [Fish Hunter's Stew]

Fish Hunter, rather than Fisherman, since I didn't partake of any of the actual fishing, just hunting down the bargains at my local supermarket ...

I came away with some monkfish, cod, scallops and mussels.

At the time I had no idea what I was going to do with this lot, thinking most likely a succession of meals, but when I got home, I thought, "why not just bung it all into a pan with some tomato?".

... and so, that's what I did.

Ingredients

I decided to call this Zuppa di Pesce since it is in that tradition of simple Italian stews made the whole country over from whatever was left from selling off the day's catch married with simple local ingredients.

I did not shop for the ingredients ...

Again, in the same tradition, I used what I had.

You'll need ...

Fish - whatever you have, can find, can catch or can swipe from the cat
Sauce - Onion and tomato, that's a must ... any bulk you like, marrow, for me
Flavours - Garlic, fennel, tarragon, parsley, basil, black pepper and sea salt
Fat - Olive oil

Method

First, make up the sauce.

Chop onion and in a large skillet get it softening in a good glug of olive oil. Don't concern yourself about the oil oxidising, just keep it on a lower than boiling heat.

To the onion, add some shredded fennel and a sprig of tarragon.

Add in some chopped garlic, a little sea salt and some black pepper.

More herbs, so parsley for depth and some basil, shredded for aromatics.

Now, in with the fish ...

Cube up your larger, white fish and push into the sauce. It will now cook through.

You could push in your shellfish, put the lid on and serve just like that, but I cooked my scallops and mussels alongside, adding in at the last minute.

Scallops just want colouring up in butter, mussels de-bearded, washed and simply steamed open in a little white wine.

Serve

Combine the lot in your skillet, take to the table and serve.

How awesome is that? ... and who needs pasta?

Cod Italiano

... a made-up name if ever I heard one, simply Cod, in an Italian style.

Italian, how? Tomato sauce with some olives in, black olives, onion, garlic, oregano, chorizo and a touch of fennel. You could put mozzarella cheese with it, I guess, but I didn't (have any).

Make up the sauce, fry off your fish and steam some veggies for alongside ...

Lamb Chipolata [Anglo-Italiano]

Cruising through the supermarket on Friday night for a nice bottle of wine, I noticed big reductions on gourmet sausages. Selecting a number of high/total meat content packs, I have some venison sausages, some beef sausages and some lamb chipolatas.

Looking for something quick and easy on a Saturday night, I opted for the lamb.

What goes with lamb? Well, it's a heavy meat, often very fatty and really liked spikey flavours to cut through - balsamic vinegar, asparagus, feta cheese, mint sauce, all classic combinations.

I decided to go with a sort of Anglo-Italian approach: mint and peas, but also spinach and balsamic. Vegetable accompaniments are mashed potato, asparagus and shitake mushrooms.

When building up a simple dish like this, consider the ingredients. Consider how you can make each element special, full of flavour and an integral part of the experience.

Simple sausages can be sensational ...

• Sausages - gently fried in olive oil
• Mushrooms - very lightly fried in olive oil
• Mashed Potato - boiled until soft, mashed with minced butter and lots of butter
• Asparagus & Peas - immersed in boiled water, nothing more
• Mint Sauce - Chopped mint, balsamic vinegar and sea salt
• Spinach - raw

Yeah, that mint sauce is interesting, isn't it?

So, pretty much do that ...

Each element is made up in its own pan and kept warm so that the symphony rises to a crescendo when it hits the plate.

Simple guide, sausages on first, next potatoes, pour boiled water over asparagus and peas, make up the sauce, lightly fry the mushrooms, mash the potato, dress the plate with spinach ...

... and plate up, intermingling the cooked ingredients. Sea salt and pepper, mint sauce applied generously. Glass of good red alongside, heaven.

Mid-Week Bolognese

Just to prove you don't need four hours of simmering and all the other guff that Italianistas seem to advocate in order to elevate what is essentially ordinary to the level that it is ...

You'll need minced beef, onion, garlic, Worcestershire Sauce, chopped tomatoes, tomato purée, dried oregano, mushrooms, carrots, beef stock, sea salt and black pepper, and pasta.

Your pasta can be any veg spiralized or julienne grated, perhaps something gluten-free which is what I'm doing tonight with Mama brand Instant Rice Noodles.

Take a large skillet and brown off your minced beef - no fat needed, just enjoy the fat that is already minced into the meat. If you bought extra-lean, well, shame on you; drop in a good blob of dripping to get it moving. Give it a damn good splash of Worcestershire Sauce.

While the meat is browning, chop up an onion, peel and slice some garlic, quarter some mushrooms and dice up a carrot. Bolognese seems to enjoy a lot of garlic, so for a pound of meat (for two), give it four or five cloves.

One the meat is browned, soak up all the lovely juices with the mushrooms, add the chopped onion and sliced garlic, stir through, add the carrots and cook on for another couple of minutes. If the spirit takes you, add a generous glass of red wine.

Pour in a carton of chopped tomatoes, a good squirt of tomato purée, some sea salt, black pepper and pour in a good pint of beef stock. Sprinkle the dried herbs over - I don't measure, just sprinkle over.

On a medium to high heat, cook on, topping up with water as necessary. Cook it for at least half an hour, or until your minced beef is not chewy. A good hint here is to cook through well at the beginning.

Once the Bolognese is reduced, cook your noodles. Mine just need 60 seconds with boiling water poured over.

Serve out, noodles down, Bolognese over; none of that proper Italian stirring the pasta into the pan, this is the British method. We don't do it wrong, we just do it our way. Fresh herbs, if you like; parsley, in my case.

So, reasonably quick mid-week meal.

If you added wine to the Bolognese, enjoy a glass with your meal. If you're just opening a bottle to enjoy with the meal, shame on you for not opening it earlier and pouring a good slug into the dish.

However you do it, remember, it's simple, quick, rules are there to be broken, but do enjoy it afterwards, slurping it down hungrily, noisily and with a huge smile on your face!

Carborama!

Carborama! Yes, Carbonara, but not the usual ancestral style seeking a low-carb version – this is the carb version and a direct replacement, if you like, to regular wheat pasta Carbonara.

Paleo is becoming less carb-phobic and a real eye-opener can be had by reading the Jaminet's book 'The Perfect Health Diet'. On active days, energy from carbohydrate is perfectly acceptable.

Excited by finding some good rice noodles in my local supermarket, I had a play with them a few days ago and at the time, we both remarked that it would be fun to try them as a Carbonara.

So, here it is ...

Carbonara is an Italian pasta-based dish with an egg and cheese sauce. The cheese is usually parmesan or pecorino, both hard and give a salty taste to the dish.  The filler often comes in the form of pancetta, lardons, bacon and sometimes veggies. The meat and veggies are cooked in a heavy-based pan while the pasta is boiled alongside. The pasta, once cooked, is added to the meat and veggies, heat switched off and the egg sauce poured over to be cooked through in the residual heat.

The prep is minimal and the cooking time, for this, much shorter than when using wheat pasta. Five minutes of prep and five to cook should be about right. Quick and easy!

Debate

Even with the conventional version, there is some debate around the sauce as to whether whole eggs should be used or just the yolks. Even recipes where all the egg is used, a further yolk is often added for that gorgeous creaminess which brings us to the second debate which is around the inclusion of cream. To cream or not to cream; that is the question ...

Fatty dairy is perfectly acceptable to a Paleo+er and a Perfect Health Dieter, as is cheese. Let’s make the luxury version.

Carbonara Sauce

Grated manchego, a Spanish sheep cheese not dissimilar to pecorino, a couple of eggs, whole and no further yolk since our eggs do have large yolks, and finally, a good splash of double cream, a slightly fattier cream compared to heavy cream which folks from the US might be more used to.

So, that’s your sauce:  cheese, eggs and cream.

How much? Well, I don't weigh or measure, but once stirred together there was probably about half a pint of the raw sauce. Weights and measures really are not essential; grate what you think is a sufficient amount of cheese on a fine grater and then crack in an egg, stir, crack in another until you've got a slurry. Splash of cream if you like and that's your sauce.

Meat & Veg

Your filler can be anything, even seafood - prawns work well. I went with bacon, mushrooms and asparagus for me. In a heavy-based pan just fry off the bacon, add in a little lard, fry off the mushrooms and last, add in the asparagus to warm through. Lower the heat to keep warm.

Tagliatelle

Meanwhile, cook the noodles. Mine need three minutes in boiling water and should then be drained. I simply switched the heat under my pan with the meat and veggies off and lifted the noodles straight out of the water and into the skillet. The small amount of water that the noodles bring is no big deal.

Combine

Pour the sauce in and fold through thoroughly until the cheese has melted and the eggs cooked through in the residual heat. That is important, since direct heat will scramble the eggs. Still edible, but not especially palatable.

Serve

Serve the dish out immediately from the pan and get stuck in!

Resources

http://perfecthealthdiet.com/the-diet/

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As an interesting observation, I ate this a good couple of hours prior to an evening of sports fencing after which I noted that I had not drunk as much water as I usually do and did not suffer that transient lag that I usually do after about an hour of activity.

Salmon Tagliatelle

Tagliatelle? Yes, that IS pasta!

There's nothing like a break from the old routine. I have been re-reading the Jaminet's 'Perfect Health Diet', a book I find absolutely inspiring, and was reminded of rice noodles.

Shopping, I found a pack of really good noodles, quite wide and the ingredients simple listed as: rice flour, tapioca flour and water. PHD-friendly, then. Living in the Ice Age-friendly.

If "safe starches" are not within your ancestral template then this is not for you ...

Ingredients

Let's just take a moment to spin round the food we're going to cook: salmon, rice noodles, double cream, watercress, pecorino cheese and broccoli. Sea salt and black pepper, too.

Salmon and broccoli is a no-brainer. Perfect partners. Salmon and watercress is a no-brainer. Perfect partners. This is looking good!

Cream sauces do need a little salt lest they leave the dish tasting a little flat. I pepped up my cream sauce with cheese - pecorino, an Italian sheep cheese which has a lovely salty tang and less of the pungency of parmesan which I find overpowering.

So, to work ...

Salmon

First, poach your salmon. Place the salmon is a pan and cover with boiling water. Add some sea salt. Leave it there for around 10 minutes, perhaps with a gentle flame underneath.

Watercress Sauce

Meanwhile, the cream sauce. Somewhere around 100ml per person is good. I use double cream which, I believe, is akin to heavy cream that folks in the US will be used to. British double cream is slightly creamier (around 48% fat compared to around 40% fat for heavy cream), but it doesn't matter - we're going to reduce it anyway.

Blend the cream with watercress. How much? However much you like. Use a lot if you want a really vibrant green sauce (like I did), or a little if you just want a hint. Blend a lot or blend a little - your choice.

Pour into another pan and gently reduce by a third. Just a gentle flame is good. If the cream becomes too thick, add a dash of the poaching liquor to let it our again - you really won't need much as a teaspoon will make a thickening cream sauce quite wet again.

Once the fish is poached, retrieve it, set it aside and steam or boil the veggies. You can use more than broccoli if you like, but I kept it quite simple.

After a couple of minutes of steaming, set aside. I like broccoli to retain its firmness and after even only a couple of minutes, the florets will be soft.

Tagliatelle

Drop the noodles into the water and follow the instructions. Mine suggested three minutes.

Meanwhile, grate some cheese into the sauce and add a little black pepper. The heat will melt the cheese, but do assist with with some stirring.

Serve

Noodles ready? Drain and pour them out into a wide-brimmed bowl.

Pour the sauce over, salmon on top and veggies alongside.

I'm sure you've noticed that if an egg was dropped in, this might make an interesting carbonara, of sorts. I still have some noodles, so that will no doubt be my next adventure.

Crab & Celeriac Linguine

Prior to paleo eating, my Crab Linguine was one of my wife's favourite dishes; a simple preparation of crab, chillies and lime over linguine.

Paleo eating has knocked traditional linguine out and a reasonable replacement can be found in juliennes of courgette or carrot ... but ... I think I've found a perfect linguine now.

Last week, while nosing around a Polski Sklep (Polish food store) near work for some roasted red peppers, I happened upon a jar of what looked like noodles.

The best I could get out of the shopkeeper at the time was that it was celeriac. Upon returning to work and translating the ingredients, it was, indeed, celeriac, in salt, vinegar and ... sugar.

Gah! No drama - simply soak in water for an hour and we're good to go.

So, this evening, I set about making up a small portion of Crab Linguine as a starter ... the main yet to be thought through. I tend to think on the fly as I cook and have little to no idea what will end up on the plate - it just happens. As it happens, the starter simply got bulked out and combined with the bare bones of the main course to make a single larger meal. We had cheesecake in the fridge for dessert.

You need a can of crab meat or a couple of dressed crabs. Something like 250g of meat for two. Of course, dressed or undressed crabs would be perfect, but canned is so much more accessible. Chillies, several, since this dish curiously can take a lot ... well diced. Linguine; be it juliennes of veg or these curious noodles of celeriac.

Having already used half of the jar, I had to bulk out with courgette, which I made ribbons.

To cook, it's simply a case of softening some of your favourite paleo fat in a large frying pan, warming the veg through, shredding the crab meat over and adding in the chillies. Squeeze of lime before serving and some fresh herbs, be it flat leaf parsley, coriander of here, dill.

It takes a couple of minutes, in reality, so I left that part of the meal until the end ...

The remainder of our dinner here was a half thought-through main course of cod steak over griddled watermelon with some garlic crushed potatoes for the Mrs, leftover curried rice for me ... over samphire.

The Crab Linguine made a perfect centre piece.

The cod was simply parcel baked in the oven for 20 minutes with a little butter while the potatoes cooked through, garlic added and the buttery sauce from the cod to wet it up. Crush with a fork. My rice was just fried through in goose fat. Samphire needs no more than a couple of minutes immersed in hot water while the Crab Linguine was cooked through.

Serve out in an appealing manner ... superfluous greenage over; pea shoots in my case.

I really do need to get myself one of these ...

Italian Meatballs

We don't eat meat often, preferring fish, but there's been this pack of minced meat sitting in the freezer which really should be used ... it's a half and half of beef and pork mince, and about a kilo in total (two pounds ... ish).

Put the meat into a mixing bowl and add the following:

• one chopped onion and several cloves of garlic (to taste) ... which I actually hand blended
• Parmesan or Pecorino cheese ... I used pecorino and grated about 4oz
• oregano ... dried is fine; a good teaspoon
• parsley ... fresh and chopped; several leaves
• generous splash of Worcestershire Sauce
• sea salt and black pepper

No need for breadcrumbs or rusk filler. Bread was only ever included to bulk out the dish - we have enough with the meat here.

Mix well and then form balls about 4oz in weight.

Assemble on an ovenproof plate and cook through for about 45-60 minutes at 180C (350F).

Meanwhile, make up the sauce ...

Again, chopped onion, blended, a carton of chopped tomatoes, sea salt, black pepper, wild garlic and a good glass of red wine ... a Milanese Sangiovese in my case.

Simmer for the remainder of the cooking time.

Ready to eat?

Spoon a little sauce into a bowl and place a couple of meatballs on top, more sauce over, olives alongside, more cheese over and garnish with parsley.

Pork & Mushroom Carbonara

What do you do when you have too many mushrooms, some sausages that need eating, a few spears of asparagus that are sorely wilting and a block of pecorino that really should be opened and eaten?

Easy! Carbonara!

Carbonara is an Italian pasta sauce based on eggs, cream and parmesan. I abhor parmesan, but, curiously, really like pecorino, a Sardinian sheep cheese.

Fattier, unpasteurized and fermented dairy represent the better end of the scale for ancestral eaters. If you simply do not "do" dairy in any form, this dish is not really going to work, but sausages and mushrooms fried up together with some good paleo fat will taste just as delicious.

As paleo eaters, we're also not bound by rules, so there is no reason why carbonara has to be put with anything that resembled pasta. No need to make courgette linguine, or such like, although that would be very nice, too.

I began by slicing some mushrooms and gently cooking them in a skillet with a generous amount of goose fat.

Meanwhile, I oven-cooked some 100% pork sausages.

I also made up the carbonara, which was three egg yolks (for two people), about 200ml of cream and sufficient grated cheese to make that into a thick paste. Ratios, weights and measurements are not too important - just make up an eggs, creamy, cheesy paste. You can hand-blend it for an extra fine carbonara if you like.

So, our sausages are about cooked, our mushrooms softening well and we've got the sauce ready.

Let's do some veggies ...

I had shredded cabbage and sliced carrots, both steamed, and some potato croutons, fried off in goose fat. You can tell, I like goose fat - if you have trouble sourcing this, just use your favourite paleo fat. An animal fat would be better than coconut here, for the flavour.

I also steamed the asparagus, ready to add to the carbonara.

Ready?

Plate up the veggies and turn your attention to the skillet.

Slice up your sausages and add to the mushrooms along with the asparagus, sliced. Raise the heat and stir in the carbonara ... the cheese will melt and you'll have a deep inviting creamy mushroom, sausage and asparagus mess to spoon into that bed of vegetables.

Beauty!

Insalata di Caprese

Simply, salad in the style of Capri, a simple salad of sliced fresh buffalo mozzarella, tomatoes, basil and seasoned with salt and olive oil.

I'm happy with some dairy, erring on the fatty and fermented style and for the most part from goat milk.

I'm always on the lookout for other sources of dairy: sheep, reindeer, buffalo, to name a small few.

Proper mozzarella is from buffalo milk, and this one was found in a very pleasant little Deli. It would have been rude not to ...

... as it would be to serve it any other way.

Often, this salad is served with slices of the cheese, tomato and basil all together, but I wanted to make more of a centre piece of the cheese, so the tomato and basil sat alongside.

Olive oil and balsamic vinegar over, and sea salt over the tomatoes, Icelandic ash salt over the mozzarella.

Very good indeed!

Shetland Crab Linguine

I picked up a couple of lovely Shetland dressed crabs from my local farm shop.

Dressed crab is very nice on its own, the white and brown meats separated and placed into the shell providing a really tasty little bite.

It can be de-constructed and made into a really fine starter: Crab Linguine.

But linguine is pasta, isn't it? Yes, it is. In Italian, it means "little tongues" ... we can make it out of anything; courgette is perfect, sliced into little tongues with a julienne slicer.

Let's get to it ...

Scrape the shell out, collecting the white meat and scraping the brown meat into a dish.

Squeeze a generous amount of lemon juice into the brown meat, a little black pepper and just a touch of cream (which is optional), stir together. This will be our sauce for the side.

Slice some juliennes of courgette and set aside with the white meat. In preparedness, minced a chilli and some fresh coriander.

Asparagus tips, thin cucumber slices and orange segments complete the salad, which can be made up on the plate in advance, cucumber down, brown meat sauce over, asparagus and orange on top, herbs to crown. I also sprinkled some Icelandic ash salt over.

Now to the linguine ...

In a skillet, soften some of your favourite fat - I used goose fat.

Toss in the courgette linguine, which will soften quickly, so be ready to toss in the crab meat, chilli and coriander. One combined, spoon out back into the shell, serving alongside the asparagus and orange side.

Tip: a little blob of the brown meat under the shell will stop it skating around on the plate.

Primal Lasagne

If there's an envelope to push, you know I'm going to push it ... Lasagne, anyone?

It may surprise you to know that Lasagne is actually British! No, really ...

Mentioned as Loseyne in 'The Forme of Cury', a 14th Century English cook book, where the recipe is recorded as:

"Take gode broth and do in an erthen pot, take flour of payndemayn and make therof past with water. and make therof thynne foyles as paper with a roller, drye it harde and seeth it in broth take Chese ruayn  grated and lay it in disshes with powdour douce. and lay theron loseyns isode as hoole as thou mizt and above powdour and chese, and so twyse or thryse, & serue it forth."

Easy ... so "sheets", cheese and something between them ...

Primal Lasagne!

Okay, so what the heck is primal about Lasagne, eh? Well, nothing, especially not since primal is most certainly not about emulating neolithic foods with alternative ingredients - that's just gluten-free.

Whenever I see recipes that emulate neolithic meals that are presented by simple placing the word "Paleo" or "Primal" up front, it gives me a smile - a smile is not a bad thing; a sneer is.

I smile. I smile because they do it, I do it, we all do it. To some extent, all so-called Primal cooking is quite neolithic in itself. Substituting ingredients that are negative to our health with ingredients which are not is eminently primal ... and a good thing to do.

Here's how not to do just that ...

Jump to about 43 minutes in for the substitution sketch

I hope you had a laugh ... L&H are quite probably the absolute genesis of film comedy. Whatever they do is funny ... everything after is a copy of these guys' comedy genius. Stanley is a northern Brit, don't you know.

Back to it ...

I also smile because this kind of food is quite often comfort food - it should make us smile. Tonight, cold, snowing and next to a warming fire, a plate of comforting Lasagne with a glass of nice Chilean Merlot is just the ticket.

We should take time to smile. I have read, although I am hazy about the reality of it, that when we smile, our brains release happiness into our system. It's a nice thought.

Let's get to it ...

The filling is a simple ragu of minced beef, onion, garlic, celery, carrot and mushroom in a chopped tomato, puree and beef stock sauce. Slow-cooked for three hours, reduced, perfect!

The cheese sauce is cheddar - medium and mature, mixed, in a mixture of half cow cream and half goat milk. Reduce until thickened.

The "pasta" is a manioc pancake - a cup of manioc flour (Brazilian sour starch, as I buy it), half a cup of finely grated pecorino, a sheep cheese, four eggs and an inch off a stick of goat butter, melted. This made me three large (12") pancakes, nice and thick, too, so three layers in the lasagne ("thryse" in our Old English tongue).

You can make these up while the cheese sauce is reducing and thickening. Don't be tempted to use arrowroot in a dairy sauce - it will look disgusting!

Ready to put it together?

In a 12" square dish, some cheese sauce, some ragu, a pancake and then repeat two more times. More cheese sauce over the top and some fresh herbs. Pop it in the oven for about 15 minutes until crispy and brown on top, then serve out.

Of course, if you have a different shaped dish, perhaps oval, make smaller pancakes and put two side by side to fill the shape.

Better than pasta-based Lasagne? Not 'arf!

Aubergine Pizza

Communities on G+ has taken off and there is renewed talk of Pizza on the primal and paleo communities.

With all that talk, and some of the right ingredients in, I thought I'd have a go at something a little different ...

Aubergine as the base, sliced through and griddled, topped with pepperoni and buffalo mozzarella.

Buffalo milk has dramatically lower levels of the allergenic and downright nasty alpha S1 casein compared to cow milk. It's a good choice if you are happy with some dairy in your ancestral template.

No tomato? Nah, I didn't fancy it but might well next time.

Pepperoni? Yeah, I know ... what can you do?

It was fun. It'll probably be another year before I so it, or something similar, again.

Grilled Plaice with Saffron Sauce and Potato Gnocchi

Inspired by Paul & Shou-Ching Jaminet's Gnocchi, I had a go ...

Gnocchi is a kind of Italian dumpling usually made from semolina, but also can be made from potato.

Using flour as the gelatinous binder, this gives us a little problem as primal eaters ... potato flour is the obvious one, but I used gari - an African starch from cassava root.

Gari is sold powdered, more like crumbs than a fine powder or flour ... not a million miles from the size and texture of semolina. Perfect for this, I would think!

Bake one medium sized potato per person for a portion of gnocchi.

Once baked, remove the potato flesh, break it right down (a ricer is good for this, but I don't have one, so ... a fork) and leave it to cool.

Make up a tablespoon of gari per potato with a little boiling water and combine it with the potato.

This will form a stodge which can then be worked.

Knead and roll out into a long sausage on a gari floured board, cutting into inch pieces and then flatten with a fork (the fork you used above ... a potato ricer is no use for this bit).

Before we cook them, let's get the rest of the meal sorted ...

The saffron sauce is simply fish stock, reduced, cream, reduced until it is thickened and drop in some stamens of saffron. Keep it on a low heat that is enough to keep it warm but not reduce further and give it a squeeze of lemon juice just prior to serving.

The fish, simply gut, scale and fillet - plaice has fillets top and bottom, so don't just whip the top off and discard the rest. Lay the fillets on some greased tin foil and commit to the grill/broiler for a few minutes.

Meanwhile, gently place the gnocchi into boiling water. When the rise to the surface, they're cooked.

Now the fun bit ...

Get some olive oil and sage (actually, I used dried sage and marjoram) just warming in a skillet and toss the gnocchi through. Add in some garlic and toss a few more times.

Serve out - fish, sauce and then the gnocchi scattered around.

Lovely stuff! Lightly crunchy on the outside and slightly chewy on the inside. Perfect with the sauce, perfect with the fish.

Breakfast Paezza!

On the back of junk food for breakfast that we enjoyed last weekend, here's a pizza, of sorts, this week ...

Not strictly a pizza, this is actually a thin frittata dressed as a pizza.

With these kind of meals, it is best to prepare all the ingredients beforehand.

We'll need some grated cheese, shredded bacon and onions, sliced mushroom, slices of tomato and some pepperoni.

First, grate the cheese - a mix of coloured medium and white mature cheddar is always good.

Next, shred some bacon and onions, which should be fried off in a skillet, after which a few thinly sliced mushrooms can be softened, coloured up and cooked through. Set both aside.

Take six eggs - this will make a good base in a 10" skillet. Beat them and pour into the skillet (something like 10" base is good). Here's the technique - keep lifting the cooked egg up and mess it up, mess it around. We're not making scrambled egg, but more like an omelette.

Before the egg has fully cooked through, drop in some of the cheese along with the shredded bacon and onion - this will for a kind of base. Cook on until the cheese begins to melt and the eggs are cooked through.

Remove from the heat - the residual heat in the skillet will harden the base, but we don't want it overdone.

Spread the mushrooms over, then distribute the tomato slices and pepperoni slices around. Yes, pepperoni ain't paleo, but then neither is cultivated vegetables nor domesticated meat ... which, in a roundabout way, I'm saying it doesn't really matter if it's a one off ... call it a cheat or call it just living, you choose.

More cheese over't top, some black pepper and settle it under the grill/broiler to cook the pepperoni through and melt the cheese.

Your paezza is ready! Enjoy! I did ... burp!

Italia! Paleo Finger Food!

I've often made a small Insalata di Caprese as an entrée or finger food, just one slice of tomato, a basil leaf and a single small ball or slice of mozzarella, black pepper over. Superb!

The colours of the Italian flag are represented in this little salad and the combination of colours, I find, quite striking.

Inspired ...

... and with some pepperoni in my fridge for some reason or other, the actual reason escapes me now, but it needs eating. What to do?

Warm some slices of pepperoni through under the grill.

Lay out on a plate and cover with a single basil leaf per slice.

Colour up sufficient scallops for the number of slices of pepperoni and lay one on each, a drop of chilli sauce over.

There you go ... canapes! Fun for a light entree, plate of finger food or just wolfing down a load.

<sarcasm>
Danger! Danger! There's nitrates in that deli meat!
</sarcasm>

To quote Sébastien Noël over at Paleo Diet Lifestyle: "If you’re concerned about the nitrates in bacon, you can easily find a nitrate-free bacon. Also know that nitrates are a natural compound found in much higher amounts in almost all vegetables."

Tagliatelle Paleonaise

Bolognaise, that faux Italian dish that we Brits do so wrong, but it's ours.

How wrong? Well, we make up a ragu, with beef mince, tomato, cubes of carrot; a Bolognese sauce, which we spell wrong and then put a mound over some boiled spaghetti, rather than fold the pasta into the sauce.

Let's take a quick look at the Paleonaise ...

In a heavy-bottomed pan, preferably lidded, begin by softening some finely chopped onion. I use one large onion for a kilo of minced meat.

Soften in olive oil if you want to be Italian about it, coconut oil or beef dripping since we're paleo.

Add in a good few cloves of garlic, minced. I go with 6 or 8 for a kilo of meat.

Drop the minced meat in and break it up, colour it through fully.

Pour in a carton of chopped tomatoes, a litre of beef stock and flavour with some oregano.

Cube up some carrot and toss these in.

Lid on, lower the heat and let that lot meld together for a couple of hours, more if possible. You may need to top up with a little water every now and again if you can't get the heat really low.

I've shown this before over spaghetti from julienned carrots and courgettes. The tagliatelle? Simply roll some large green leaves up and shred finely.

So, serve out the tagliatelle into a wide bowl and spoon the Paleonaise over in a mound.

Garnish with parsley and some grated parmesan cheese.