Lamb Escalopes & Leaves

Hunting through an unfamiliar supermarket, I happened upon a couple of bags of lamb escalopes in the cheap section ... unable to open the bags to take a look, it was pot-luck but it worked out well. Home, I found a number of thin slices of lamb leg ready for the skillet ...

For serving, I grabbed a good handful of leaves, added some carrot ribbons, green olives, capers and cubes of feta cheese, black pepper, sea salt and some poppy seeds.

Mushrooms, sliced and sautéed in butter for garnish over the meat.

Gorgeous!

Haggis, Neaps & Tatties

Sunday dinner ...

Traditional Scots serving: Haggis with neaps and tatties, or mashed parsnip and potato. Greenage is tenderstem broccoli, peas and some baby kale which can be eaten like salad leaves.

Yes, Haggis is not Primal, but it is primal ... I mean, just how much more primal can you get: take all the offals left over and stuff it into the stomach then boil it. Granted, there is some barley in there, I think, perhaps oatmeal. The ingredients are pretty sparse, so I think I got a good one.

Bloody tasty, nevertheless ...

Lamb Liver Bhuna

It's the weekend, and I'm partial to a little (late) breakfast, but only at the weekend ...

Lamb Liver Bhuna

Lamb Liver
Large Onion, Garlic & Ginger
Ghee
Turmeric, Ground Coriander, Ground Cumin, Fenugreek & Asafoetida
Black Pepper & Sea Salt
Large Plum Tomato
Chillies

For two:

Take a large skillet and melt some ghee, caramelising off a large onion over a low heat with spices: turmeric, ground coriander, ground cumin, fenugreek & asafoetida (a teaspoon of the first three and half a teaspoon of the last couple), a couple of cloves of minced garlic and a good slice of ginger, shredded.

Raise the heat to medium and brown off the liver, chopped into chunks.

Add a splash of water and reduce fully.

Add a couple of whole chillies, simply sliced in two and a large plum tomato, cored and sliced into segments.

Cook on for several more minutes, turning frequently. Bhuna is a dry dish, so ensure that any liquid from the tomatoes is fully cooked out.

Sea salt and black pepper to taste.

Serve out with a light green salad.

Lamb's Liver

Gently fried in butter with leftover Taco salad and a chilli salsa ...

Jamaican Mutton Curry

Throw aside all notions of time! Mutton Curry is not to be rushed ...

 

Make up a big batch so that you have leftovers, but the general measurements I used were:

For the marinade:
600g Chopped/Diced Lamb, Mutton or Goat (Bones and all)
Spice Rub*
Sea Salt & Black Pepper
Scotch Bonnet Pepper
Ginger - Couple of slices
Garlic - Couple of cloves
Fresh Thyme
Cider Vinegar

For cooking:
Large Onion
Garlic - More cloves
Large Plum Tomato
400ml Coconut Milk
Potatoes

Put all the meat into a large bowl and pour over your spice mix (*turmeric, ground coriander and allspice, for me), enough to coat the meat. Use a little more if there are uncovered patches. Sea salt and black pepper now, give it a good massage.

Take a Scotch Bonnet pepper, cut in half and very carefully de-seed. Drop into the meat, along with a couple of cloves of garlic sliced in half, a couple of slices of fresh ginger and a few sprigs of fresh thyme. Fold in together.

Slosh over some cider vinegar. Enough to get the meat wet, but not swimming.

Leave for 24 hours ...

Retrieve the Scotch bonnet pepper, the garlic, the ginger and the thyme.

Brown the meat in batches, transferring the meat to a large lidded ovenproof dish.

Chop the onion and blend with the retrieved garlic, ginger, a couple more cloves of garlic, perhaps a little more ginger, half of the Scotch Bonnet pepper and a chopped up plum tomato.

Fry off this mixture to take the rawness of it and pour in the can of coconut milk. Cook through for a few minutes and pour over the meat, rinsing out with water. Add further water to the bowl if necessary just to cover the meat.

Lid on and settle into an oven set on low for the day, say 125C for something like 6 hours.

About an hour before you want to eat, remove the lid, add a touch more allspice and some peeled and chopped potatoes in good sized chunks. Test for heat and drop the other half of the retrieved Scotch Bonnet pepper if so desired.

Raise the temperature to 180C and let it reduce for the hour, turning in the darkened top ever quarter of an hour, or so until well reduced and concentrated in flavour. Test for seasoning, adding sea salt to taste.

Ready to eat?

Serve out into a bowl and enjoy, perhaps with some Rice & Peas if you're so inclined.

Keema & Pea Curry [Midweek Mutter]

Mutter? Mattar? Matar?

Depending upon the region of the Indian sub-continent, but we know them as peas, garden peas or petit pois.

Keema? That's minced meat - lamb, usually.

Curry is not difficult!

I cannot stress that enough. So many people see curry as exotic, difficult to replicate that restaurant taste, too complicated through use of a bewildering array of spices or simply through a lack of understanding of language.

Again, curry is not difficult and this Kashmiri favourite is one I have enjoyed practically my whole life after first enjoying a bowl from The Kashmir, Bradford's oldest and longest established Curry House, at the age of 5?

Let's get currying ...

The quantities listed will do for two people, or one hungry Yorkshireman!

Ingredients

1lb Minced Lamb
Ghee or Butter
Large Onion
Garlic, Ginger & Chillies
Spice Mix
Tomato
Frozen Peas
Water
Sea Salt

Method

This is a mid-week curry. It should be quick to make and so many of the corners are cut for one of those million and one ingredient with implausibly long method kind of curries you might enjoy making at the weekend.

Slice the onion and in a large skillet with some butter or ghee, warm the onions for about 20 minutes over a low heat until they begin to caramelise. If you've got the time, give them longer but 20 minutes is good. Remove from the skillet and place into a receptacle for blending later on.

Into the skillet, brown off the minced lamb. No fat needed, since lamb will release its own - just keep the heat down to medium and this will take around five minutes to brown and soften. Lamb mince softens quicker than beef in my experience.

Meanwhile, add garlic, ginger and chillies to the onion and blend. As a guideline, a couple of cloves of garlic, maybe a teaspoon of shredded ginger and a couple of chillies is good. More if you like more of any of those. Blend and add to the minced lamb in the skillet. Fry off for a few minutes.

Sprinkle over your spice mix. I tend to go with equal parts of turmeric, ground coriander, ground cumin, then a sprinkle of fenugreek and asafoetida. Stir in a fry on for a minute, or so.

Pour in water to cover, raise the heat to a gentle boil and reduce.

Pour in water to cover a second time, add in a good handful (or more) of frozen peas, quarter up a tomato, raise the heat to a gentle boil and reduce.

Garnish with fresh coriander leaf, freshly chopped green chilli and salt to taste.

Serve

On its own is fine, with some rice, perhaps some cauliflower rice, maybe just some steamed vegetables alongside. As you can see, I went with some tenderstem broccoli and a boiled egg.

Needless to say, you can add in pretty much any vegetable during the second boil: spinach, potatoes, mushrooms, whatever. Now you have a basic curry and a means of varying.

Enjoy your mid-week curry!

Lamb's Liver, Onions, Mushrooms & Gravy

What a way to start the day!

Tunnelling through the freezer draws looking for something to defrost for an evening meal, I happened upon a bag of something or other ...

... and then it twigged! It's leftover gravy.

With liver in the fridge ... check ... mushrooms available ... check ... and an onion ... check ... it's time to cook up some breakfast.

Using a good knob of butter, shredded onions are softened for a few minutes and pushed aside to make room for the liver, gently cooked on each side for a minute or two, then in with the mushrooms to soak up all the spare fat and the gravy (now defrosted) poured over.

Simmer for a short while to reduce and really thicken up, then onto a plate.

Wolf down without pausing for breath!

Lamb & Mint Chipolata, Black Beans & Colcannon

Happy St Patrick's Day!

More a meal that just came together than any forward planning ...

I've had it in mind to try home soaked beans for a while. After doing some reading, I settled on black beans, soaked 'em and boiled 'em. Intending them for later as refried beans with something Mexican on Friday, I settled them into the fridge ... but ... ended up using them as part of dinner this evening instead.

We were tired and wanted something quick, easy, tasty and slightly celebratory for St Patrick's Day and so, a pack of lamb and mint chipolatas came to the rescue as the core of the meal, these beans and some leftover wild garlic mashed potato with boiled savoy cabbage alongside.

Is it Irish? Not much, but I tipped my hat to them ... and my Guinness into the beans. I guess Lamb & Colcannon is a good enough nod and wink.

Lamb & Mint Chipolata

Into the oven at 180C for about half an hour.

Black Beans

Soak for 24 hours, changing the water once. One cup of beans to three cups of water. Once soaked and drained, boil for about an hour again in lots of water.

You can eat them at this point, or put them in the fridge for re-heating within a day or two.

I re-heated in pan along with a splash of Guinness (okay, half a pint), Worcestershire Sauce, some enoki mushrooms, a finely chopped chilli, half a finely chopped onion, black pepper and sea salt.

Cook on the hob for maybe 20 minutes to reduce the liquid and really soften the beans.

Colcannon

Simply combine mashed potato and boiled or steamed cabbage.

I had some leftover mashed potato and steamed some savoy cabbage to add to the party. Combine in a skillet with a little butter.

Serve

After about half an hour, we're good to serve ... beans down, sausages over, colcannon alongside.

n=1

Very tasty! Very tasty indeed and certainly a "do again".

I see beans, properly prepared, as useful in an ancestral diet, but a starvation food nevertheless. While meat, fish, shellfish, eggs and vegetables exist, why eat off the plate? Well, our ancestors did, so this in an ode to them.

Black beans are very nutritious and beneficial for digestive tract health, cardiovascular strength and blood sugar regulation. You can read all about them with a simple search on the internet, but perhaps qualify your search with the terms "paleo" and/or "resistant starch" alongside.

Soaked and boiled, perhaps chilled and re-heated, the health benefits do appear to dramatically outweigh any potential negative, and I say potential since the unhealthy phytochemicals are largely removed or neutered in the soaking and boiling.

Bloating? Gas? Wind? I'm happy to report none of the above.

So, I now have green lentils, Puy lentils and these black beans as potentially good sources of ancestral-friendly nutrition. The list is growing ...

Reading

whfoods.org: Black Beans
Free the Animal: Resistant Starch Dietary Guidelines

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.

Sino-Cymric Shredded Lamb

Probably about as bonkers as it can get, but how about a sort of Sino-Cymric dish for dinner?

Sino-Cymric? Hell, yeah, Japanese Welsh Fusion! It's so out there it can't possibly have been done ...

The Welsh: Lamb. Shoulder of, boned and rolled around a fascine of sage, thyme and rosemary.

The Japanese: Wasabi, Yuzu, Rice Vinegar & Chillies.

On purpose? Well, no. We'd been out for the day, got back about six without enough time to cook this joint, but I have a cunning plan ...

To do this, get hold of the following:

• Lamb joint - boned, rolled and stuffed with herbs
• Garlic & Lemon
• Yuzu, Rice Vinegar & Chillies
• Potato, Butter & Wasabi
• Vegetables - Sprouts, Carrots & Peas

Lamb

Place your joint on an oven-proof plate, garlic bulbs alongside, lemon wedges, too. Salt over.

Cover with kitchen foil and commit to the oven at 180C (350F?) for a good hour and a half.

The lamb will now be technically cooked, but pretty tough. It really wants another couple of hours at a lower temperature to soften up, but we didn't have the time ...

So, out it comes, allow to just cool off and now get in there with your hands, peeling off all the sinews and membrane.

Shred with the fibres and you'll have a pile of meat.

Lamb like this is still very fatty and can be overfacing unless paired with sharp and spiky flavours. We'll be doing a Wasabi Mash, but let's cut through the meat itself.

In a skillet, load in the meat and pour over some rice wine vinegar and some yuzu juice. Chillies, too. Gently heat through while you prepare your vegetables and top up with a little water here and there.

The meat will soften and take on all these flavours.

Wasabi Mash

Boil some white potatoes.

When soft, mash with generous amounts of butter and mash in some wasabi to taste.

Vegetables

Steam 'em alongside the mash.

Serve

Put the lot together onto a plate, mash in the middle, mound the meat up on top and vegetables around the side.

Pulling the meat down through the mash and catching some of the sweet vegetables, gorgeous! Loved it!

Do again? Probably not, largely because I never do the same thing twice, but elements will make it into future dishes.

Liver, Onion, Bacon & Mushroom Salad with Waffle Crisps

Breakfast ... and just starting to get back to normality after the Christmas break and a first week back at work.

I've been shopping, so we have a fresh haul of food in and what better than a hearty breakfast to start the weekend?

Liver, bacon, onion, mushrooms and tomato over a leafy salad with pickled chillies, paprika, black pepper and Icelandic ash salt.

There's a waffle in there, too! Bird's Eye brand.

Potato waffles are pretty much just starch, in fact, the ingredients list as: Potato, Vegetable Oil, Potato Granules, Potato Starch, White Pepper, Salt & Stabiliser (E464).

So, pretty much all potato, no sugar, which is rare for processed foods and the role of E464 prevents the potato from being saturated with vegetable oil.  In fact, the vegetable oil is probably the only "bad" thing in there ...

... but let's just read a little more about E464.

From Wikipedia: "Use in whole grain breads Agricultural Research Service scientists are investigating using the plant-derived HPMC as a substitute for gluten in making all oat and other grain breads. Gluten, which is present in wheat, rye and barley is absent (or present only in trace quantities) in oat and other grains. Like gluten, HPMC can trap air bubbles formed by the yeast in bread dough, causing the bread to rise. Although it has not been widely studied, it is predicted that whole grain breads made with HPMC will have cholesterol-lowering effects."

Okay, so a gluten alternative ... akin to xanthan gum, or other such stabilisers?

I'm waffling on a bit here, but wanted to investigate these fully. Processed food? Yes, but "sometimes it is better to eat the wrong food with the right attitude than the other way around" Chris Kressler.

I'm not making excuses and certainly not trying to squeeze this in as "paleo" in the way that you see "Paleo Cookies" and so on. The paleo template is large enough an hegemony for each person to take as far as the want to, personally.

If this is a step too far ... don't! Leave it off the plate, but if you want some potato in there, simply slices of sautéed potato will do perfectly.

Let's get cooking ...

Grill the waffle. It wants to become crispy.

In a large skillet, fry off the bacon and once cooked through, toss in some shredded onion and cook through.

Pull to the side of the skillet while you soften some butter in the cleared space and fry off pieces of liver.

While one side is frying, pop a few mushrooms in cap side down. These will cook through and soften.

Retrieve the mushrooms, slicing into quarters and return to the pan on top of the onion and bacon mound. Flip the liver and cook on with half a tomato, fleshy side down also just taking on a little colour and warming through.

Retrieve the tomato, quarter and return to the skillet, folding all the food together.

Serve out over a handful of salad leaves, pepped up with a little black pepper, paprika and Icelandic ash salt (sea salt will do fine); cut the waffle through the middle to make two thin waffles, then corner to corner giving four crisps. Push into the dish.

Brown Sauce over, you've got breakfast. Gorgeous!

Turkish-Style Döner Kebab

It's Friday! The Mrs is out at her work Christmas "do" ... and I'm hope alone with a few beers and I'm hungry ... Let's have some junk food!

I could slide up to the Take Away, or I could make my own ...

The Turkish Döner is a huge kebab of spiced lamb meat, shaved and served in a pitta with salad. Not wanting to make a half-tonne kebab, I made a small approximation from lamb mince.

Take a pound of lamb mince into a mixing bowl and sprinkle over ground coriander, ground cumin, black pepper and sea salt. Squish it together, giving it a really good squeeze through your fingers - you want the texture to be mush.

Take a large onion and a couple of cloves of garlic along with a chilli, or two. Blend the lot and sieve off the excess water.

Add the onion mix to the meat and work through again.

Now, collect up the meat mixture and spread it out into an ovenproof dish into a layer about an inch and a half thick. It will shrink during the cooking ...

... into the oven set to 200C (400F?) for maybe an hour. it will shrink, the top will colour up and the juices will flow out, so flip the cake over after about 45 minutes and then cook on.

Remove from the oven and ideally, allow to cool. In an imperfect world, just slice it through as thin as you can and carry on, but if you did let it cool a bit, now slice it through really thin and pop the slices under the grill to give the appearance of those proper shaved Döners.

You weren't just sitting around while the meat was cooking, were you? You did make up some salad - lettuce, red cabbage, cucumber and tomato; bowl of sheep or goat yoghurt; Tabasco sauces at the ready!

You'll notice some pittas on the plate next to the meat ... yes, pittas!

Not paleo, not primal, not ancestral, absolutely neolithic, but ... first, it's Friday and who cares? Life really is too short. Secondly, I do have a sensitivity to gluten and will be belching up nuclear heartburn within the hour after eatnig bread. Curiously, none of these flat breads do that to me - not wraps, tortilla, Swedish flatbreads, pitta, none of them. n=1?

I'm not saying it's right, just not absolutely wrong. YMMV, naturally.

So, my Döner ...

Open up a pitta, push in some salad, some meat, some yoghurt and a damn good splash of Tabasco. Eat greedily, noisily, hungrily and enjoy the hell out of it! Down your beer, burp, smile, live ...

Lamb Kidney & Beetroot Salad

Full title: Lamb Kidney Over Spicy Beetroot Salad with Crispy Courgette Fritters and a Sumac Hinted Greek Yoghurt Dip.

Let's break that down ...

Courgette Fritters

First, the Courgette Fritters - these were a spur of the moment thing when I realised that I only had two small beetroots and the meal might be a little meagre. Given they're not a main part of the meal, they're optional - you can follow the link and have fun for yourself.

So, the main components of the meal are Lamb Kidneys, Beetroot Salad and a Sumac Hinted Greek Yoghurt Dip.

Greek Yoghurt Dip

You need: Greek yoghurt, lemon and sumac.

Most can be made up front, so the Greek Yoghurt Dip is simply Greek yoghurt with a good splash of lemon juice, then spooned into little dishes to sit at the side of the plate and sumac sprinkled over.

Sumac. Sub-tropical and temperate shrubs which grow predominantly across Africa and North America producing a reddish spice with a curious zesty flavour used in Middle Eastern cuisine, primarily.

Beetroot Salad

You need: Beetroot (one large per person), red wine vinegar, chilli, black pepper, sea salt and mint.

The Beetroot Salad is simply a case of peeling and grating beetroot, then adding flavours. One large beetroot each is good. Mine were kind of medium, hence the extra bite alongside with the Courgette Fritters, but one large per person is good.

Once grated, splash a little red wine vinegar over. Black pepper, finely chopped chilli and a little sea salt just lifts the flavours and permits the natural sweetness to really shine through.

Let that marinate for maybe ten minutes and fold a generous amount of chopped mint through. Spoon out onto your waiting plates.

Lamb's Kidney

You need: Lamb kidney (as necessary), butter and optionally, Sherry and cream. Wooden skewers.

Clean up the kidneys, removing the membrane around then and the fatty core. The fatty core is fine when slow-cooked, but fried off, it's best to remove it.

Cut in half so as to be manageable for skewering once cooked.

Melt the butter and fry off the kidneys. Through the cooking, they will release liquid. I tend to think they're done once the liquid has evaporated.

Skewer and lay on the beetroot salad. Serve and eat.

Optionally ...

Optionally, you can de-glaze the pan with Sherry and stir in some thick cream for an instant sauce to pour over. I didn't, but you can.

Naturally, you've spotted that this is skewered offals and more naturally suited to a barbecue or grill. If you want to do that, go ahead. Pre-soak the skewers in water so they don't burn, thread the prepared kidneys onto the skewers, perhaps interleaved with onion or pepper slices, and grill 'em.

Whichever way you do this, have fun ... they're offally good!

Breakfast Bacon ... Two Ways

Bacon. It's gorgeous!

I love the fatty bacon. Streaky and unsmoked. Outdoor reared and unfettled.

I don't eat breakfast through the week, but do like a spot of brunch at the weekends ... for which bacon gives me a lovely treat.

I've taken some leave this week to get the house in order (decorating and such like) and so, a good breakfast is in order.

So, a couple of ideas ...

Mushrooms, liver, onions and pickled gherkins - simply fry off the onions to soften in some lard, add in the mushrooms to soak up all the good fat and then toss in some bacon, shredded, and finally some chopped liver - lamb's liver for me. Prior to serving, some chopped pickled gherkins just to cut through. Serve over spinach leaves spiced up with cayenne pepper and black pepper.

How to top that?

Bacon, grilled and layed over spinach again, spiced with cayenne pepper and black pepper. Now, sliced mushrooms fried off in lard. Top that with pickled gherkin and pickled beetroot, garnished with cottage cheese and pea shoots.

Egg. Fried on the first one (not pictured) and boiled with the second (pictured at the top).

Let your imagination go ... empty the fridge onto your plate and breakfast centered around bacon need never be the same again.

Spicy Lamb Shanks & Parsnip Cream

It's still chuffin' hot and I've got these lamb shanks to eat. When it's hot, spicy food is good and smaller portions is good.

Lamb shanks are beautiful! Loads of really good, fatty meat full of gelatine in the skin and marrow in the bone.

What a great cut!

But, again, it's hot and I really don't want to be cooking all day, so ... lamb shanks are actually perfect!

First, the parsnip cream. This was actually a leftover from some dips the other night ...

Simply boil a large parsnip, blend with cream and chill in the fridge. Yeah, that's it. Eat with carrot and celery sticks. Leftovers accompany a dish like this perfectly ... chilled.

Now, the lamb shanks ...

In a large ovenproof dish (I use Pyrex), set out a good base of onion, garlic, ginger, chilli, sweet red peppers, some paprika, fennel, carrot and celery, settle the shanks over, pour a carton of chopped tomatoes over and top up with a light stock, like chicken.

Into the oven at 150C (300F) for four hours, by which time the meat will be falling off the bone.

Retrieve the shanks carefully and keep them warm in tin foil while you blend and then reduce the sauce. It will be naturally thickened with the gelatine, but that reduction will make a really fly sauce.

Serve out, sauce in a bowl, shank laid over and the cool parsnip cream alongside. Fresh coriander to garnish and a little crunch from red and green peppers.

Don't forget to winkle out the marrow from the bone.

Fillet Steak & Lamb's Liver

... because I can!

Breakfast, and the Mrs wanted Egg & Chips. It works different for guys 'n' gals, and she does seem to do better on the carbs than I do, so a good pack ahead of a busy day is not going to be an issue.

These chips were Jersey Royal Potatoes, simply sliced, par boiled and then fried off in goose fat. Easy enough. Fried eggs over, and she's done.

Me? I do like the fat, but I'd prefer a couple of things I picked up at the supermarket for an absolute song the night before ... a good sized fillet steak discounted from shy of £8 down to just over £2 and some lovely lamb liver for literally peanuts; 75p for 400g.

Plates were dressed with some spinach, sliced tomato, capers and a drizzle of olive oil, grind of black pepper and a little Icelandic ash salt.

Fillet steak, simply seared, liver, too. Liver down first, fillet steak sliced and placed over, rare, naturally.

I also had a few chips and a blob of leftover guac alongside.

Paleo breakfasting at it's very best. Does it get any better?

Power Breakfast!

It doesn't get much better than this!

Liver, onion, bacon, seaweed and a MEGA-egg!

All power foods. Yes, bacon is a superfood ... honest.

Simply fry off some shredded onion in your favourite paleo fat - goose fat, for me.

Add in some reconstituted dried seaweed.

Toss in some lamb's liver and good outdoor reared bacon.

Sprinkle with chilli powder and serve over an egg.

How do you make an egg better? Make a MEGA-egg! Simply crack a fresh egg into collected egg whites (maybe you made some Hollandaise the other day) to make one huge egg.

That's it ... garnish with superfluous greenery if you like, otherwise dig in, be charged up and get about your day.

Keto-breakfasting at its very best!

Lamb Broth

When it comes to soups, there are no rules!

You need some liquor, some meat and some vegetables. Put it all together and that's soup. Rustic soup.

The catalyst for this soup was a lovely piece of lamb fillet that I found in the reduced section at the supermarket at a seriously knocked down price.

If that's all I had, I could simply pair it with vegetables and make up some stock ...

... but in the freezer, I had gold!

Some weeks ago, we'd had a Lamb Stew with a load of pieces on the bone. The lamb had slow-cooked all day and after serving, we had loads of liquor left over so the bones went back in for a few more hours of cooking. That was frozen.

So, from the freezer, we have some lamb bone broth.

I also collect all sorts of trimmings, stalks and what-not from vegetables to go into soup, which is usually puréed. All I'd collected was some tenderstem broccoli and asparagus stalks so they were easily topped, tailed and cut into small pieces.

Add some onion and garlic to the broth along with a carrot.

The lamb fillet needs almost no time to cook, so just slice it up and drop it in.

Reduce to taste, adding sea salt, black pepper and parsley for aromatics and flavour.

Last minute, brainwave ... it's spring ... Spring Greens! Shred some up and chuck 'em in.

Serve out into a wide bowl and get in there! Seriously nutritious broth full of goodness, full of texture and full of flavour.

Total cost? £1.24 for about half a pound of lamb, some trimmings, some leftover cooking liquor and a few veggies. Now that's good, frugal eating!

Warming Lamb Stew

WARNING: Chick Peas Ahead!

Why? Well, the ethnicity of the cuisine does call for them and it's worth an experiment every now and again.

... or, I don't know. I just did.

Aside from the chick peas, this is a perfectly good paleo Lamb Stew, so let's enjoy it for what it is.

Get a load of lamb pieces, on and off the bone, into the oven in a large lidded dish with chopped onion, garlic, ground cumin, ground coriander, black pepper, sea salt, topped off with water and a couple of bay leaves. Set the oven to low (say, 125C) and leave it in there all day.

The slow-cooking will give you really tender lamb as well as breaking down all the sinews and releasing the marrow from the bones. The onions will have almost completely disappeared while the garlic and the spices will have matured giving a really heady stew. That, in itself, is a perfectly good meal.

Maybe an hour from when you want to eat, add in some shredded savoy cabbage, cubed sweet potato, soaked chick peas and a couple of shredded chillies.

Serve out into wide-brimmed bowls and garnish with fresh coriander.

Warming, deep and sumptuous.

In hindsight, I would have preferred to have left the chick peas out. They really didn't add anything to what was otherwise a perfectly paleo stew.

n=1

Wind ... 'nuff said.

Liver & Onions with a Mushroom Gravy and Wasabi Greens

... much the same as last time I showed you this, but with a thick mushroom gravy and wasabi greens.

Wasabi greens are the tops from wasabi root, with just a subtle horseradish flavour; perfect for offal and a meaty gravy!

The gravy can be made up from a simple stock cube or from leftover juices of a slow-cooked piece of beef - mine was from brisket.

Set it to simmer with some chopped mushrooms, maybe a little sea salt just to bring the right saltiness and flavour out, celery salt adds further flavour and black pepper gives it the bite.

Meanwhile, chop an onion and set it caramelising in some butter or ghee.

Once the onions are softened, coloured and really sweet, thicken the gravy (if necessary) with a little arrowroot or whisk in butter and get slices of liver frying off. The liver takes no time, so plate up while it's cooking through.

Onions down first, some gravy and most of the mushrooms, and some of the wasabi greens.

Lay the liver over the top, spooning more gravy over and a garnish of wasabi greens.

Boiled egg alongside, naturally.

Perfect breakfast!