Om Nom

Alfredo Cream Sauce

2012-02-16T06:59:00.000-08:00

Ingredients:

Butter
Heavy Cream
Parmesan
Cream Cheese
Onion Powder
Garlic Powder
Nutmeg
Salt

Melt butter over medium heat in a sauce pan. This is the step where you'd want to add any fresh ingredients (except herbs), such as chopped mushrooms and fresh garlic and onion (don't add garlic and onion powder if you do this.) I'm not adding them in the "official" recipe, since this is for a uniformly textured "restaurant style" alfredo sauce – obviously, the traditional alfredo isn't actually creamy at all.
Add a dollop of cream cheese and pour in heavy cream, removing the pan from the heat if it's gotten too hot, and stir rapidly to blend and disperse the heat. Return to heat, on a lower setting if necessary.
Stir in parmesan slowly, allowing it to melt. This is what's going to give your sauce body.
Sprinkle in garlic and onion powder, salt to taste, and a dash of nutmeg.
It should be thick and ready to serve, but if you have to wait, turn the heat down to the lowest setting that will keep it warm and stir every 5 minutes, until you can serve it.

I like to serve this over broccoli and chicken breasts. It's best garnished with fresh parsley and freshly ground black pepper at the table.

Extremely Basic Marinara

2012-02-15T07:48:00.000-08:00

Ingredients:

Tomato Paste
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Garlic, chopped
Yellow onion, chopped
Water
Salt

Cook the onion and garlic in the olive oil on medium-low heat until the onion is well-caramelized, stirring every 5-10 minutes. (This takes me about 30-40 minutes.)
Sprinkle a bit of salt in, then stir in the tomato paste.
Add enough water to blend the tomato paste, then add the rest once you've thoroughly mixed it. (You could add all the water right away, it's just easier to get the tomato paste to blend with less water than it is when it's clumped in a big pot of it.) Your tomato paste can/tube/whatever should give you guidelines on how much to add. Remember that a lot of this is going to cook off.
Cover and simmer for 4-5 hours, until it stops tasting like watery tomato paste and starts tasting like delicious sauce.

So, this is my sicilian grandmother's sauce! When I asked my mother a few years ago what my grandma's recipe was, needless to say I was really surprised. She adds a bit of sugar, but I've found that's not necessary for the keto palate, as the onions are sufficiently sweet on their own.

I've dressed it up by adding spices at the onion-cooking phase, such as thyme, but it's not necessary and really just creates a different flavor (duh). This basic sauce is really quite good on it's own.

Cooking a tomato sauce, from scratch or paste, is always an act of faith. Every time I wonder if this is the time when it's never going to stop tasting like watered down tomatoes, but it always comes together in the end. If your sauce tastes like crap, then it's just not done, yet.

Since we aren't eating pasta, we serve this over spicy italian sausage with mozzarella melted on top.

Collard Greens

2012-02-14T08:05:00.000-08:00

Ingredients:

1 Bunch of Collards, washed and chopped
1 slice of bacon
1 plum tomato, chopped
1 chicken or vegetable bullion cube

Cook the bacon slice in a large, tall, lidded pot. (The kind you might use for a marinara sauce.)
Remove the bacon and set aside to cool.
Add the tomato to the pot and cook for a few minutes.
Add 2-3 cups of water to the pot, the bullion cube, and the chopped collards.
Cover and let simmer for about 45 minutes to an hour, checking up to make sure the water hasn't all boiled off and stirring every 10 minutes or so.

Pan-Seared Brussels Sprouts with a bit of Cream

2012-02-08T04:25:00.000-08:00

Ingredients:

Brussels Sprouts, fresh, halved
Bacon
Parmesan
Heavy Cream
Nutmeg
Kosher Salt
(Optional: Mushrooms, sliced)

Cook bacon (a slice or two, depending on how many sprouts you're making) in a pan over medium heat.
Remove bacon and set aside. Chop when cool enough to touch.
Add brussels sprouts to pan, sliced-part down when possible, in as uniform a layer as possible. If you are adding mushrooms, toss them in during this step, as well.
Allow them to cook, undisturbed, for about 5-6 minutes, or however long it takes to get them to start browning. Once they have a nice brown spot seared into them, start stirring, and add a small sprinkle of salt.
Lower the heat on the burner and keep stirring for a minute or so – long enough that it's still hot, but is safe to add a splash of heavy cream to the pan. Again, you just want a splash – enough to coat the sprouts lightly, but it shouldn't be pooling anywhere.
Sprinkle parmesan cheese on top and keep moving around the pan to blend.
Add the chopped bacon back into the pan.
Finish with a dash of nutmeg at the end of cooking.

Another Mashed Fauxtatoes Recipe, with Cauliflower

2012-02-07T09:39:00.000-08:00

Ingredients:

Head of Cauliflower

Garlic Powder

2 tablespoons of Butter

2 oz. Cream Cheese

~1/2 teaspoon Kosher Salt

Fresh Herbs, or dried

Rinse a whole cauliflower and roughly chop it.
Steam the cauliflower. (We use our rice cooker as a steamer.)
Put cauliflower in food processor with a bit of garlic powder or a very small amount of cooked garlic (no more than one clove), butter, cream cheese, and salt.
Blend in the food processor until the texture is smooth.
Add fresh, chopped herbs and pulse until blended. You can use dried, and the herbs depend on the flavor you want to go for. Dill, rosemary, and parsley all work really well for this. A small amount of paprika also works really well to give a more traditional flavor, but isn't necessary.

Jalapeño-Bacon Burger Mince

2012-02-06T09:06:00.000-08:00

Ingredients:

2-3 pounds ground beef
1-2 fresh Jalapenos, insides removed and finely chopped
1-2 Slices of bacon, cooked and finely chopped
Minced Onion, about a handful
Frank's Hot Sauce, a few splashes
Red Pepper powder, ~1-2 teaspoons
Onion Powder, dash
Kosher Salt, ~1-2 teaspoons
Black Pepper, a few grinds

Thoroughly mix together, form into patties, and cook in whatever way you like to eat your burgers. A word of caution, though - they love to fall apart, so I wouldn't grill without lowering the amount of chopped ingredients or running them through a food processor first.

Our favorite ways to top it are either "Classic" style, with melted American cheese, a slice of tomato, pickles, onions, and low-carb ketchup or "Fancy" style, with sautéed mushrooms, melted Swiss cheese, and fresh chopped parsley.

Roast Chicken

2012-02-05T10:28:00.000-08:00

Ingredients:

1 Whole Chicken

Herbs, ~1 tablespoon each: Rosemary, Sage, Thyme

3-4 cloves garlic, chopped

3 tablespoons of butter

~1 teaspoon kosher salt

black pepper, a few grinds

Stuffing: 1 Whole Onion OR Tomato OR Lemon

Preheat oven to 425°F.
Take the chicken and rinse it off in the sink, including the inside, and pat dry.
Place it in a pan with an edge, like a casserole dish.
Melt 3 tablespoons of butter
Mix the herbs, salt, black pepper and garlic into the melted butter.
Rub the chicken all over with the butter mixture
Peel the outside of an onion and chop in half, then stuff it inside the chicken. If you don't have an onion, you can sub in a tomato or a whole lemon. You need to put something in there to help conduct heat.
Bake, uncovered, approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes, until internal temperature reaches a minimum of 74°C.

Non-Pro Pro-Tip: The first several chickens I roasted I kept accidentally cooking "upside-down" (that is, breast side down). When I finally "got it right," the breast meat was not as delicious and juicy! One thing that can be done if you want it to have a nice presentation is to cook it upside-down for most of the cooking and flip it near the end of the cooking. I'll just probably keep cooking them upside-down.

Chicken Parm

2012-02-04T08:15:00.000-08:00

Ingredients:

Plain Pork Rinds
Garlic Powder
Onion Powder
Red Pepper Flakes
Dried Herbs (Parsley, Oregano, Basil, Thyme)
Salt
Black Pepper
Chicken Breasts
Parmesan
Shredded Mozzarella
Sugar-Free Marinara (Either Homemade -will add recipe later- or Alessi's, which is the only commercial one I've found without sugar.)
Sliced Mushrooms (Baby Bella or White, whichever look the best at the store.)
Butter
Olive Oil
Optional: Fresh, minced garlic

Preheat oven to 375°F.
Blend pork rinds, garlic powder, onion powder, red pepper flakes, dried herbs, salt, and black pepper in a food processor until approximately the consistency of bread crumbs.
Rinse chicken breasts and pat dry. Then, rub the "bread crumb" mixture into the breasts to coat. (If you want to be fancy, you can do the whole dipping-in-egg bit to make it stick better, but I can't be bothered. I think it creates more time and mess than the result warrants.)
Melt butter with some olive oil in a pan over about medium heat.
When the pan is hot, add the chicken breasts and brown on each side for about 4-5 minutes.
Transfer breasts to a baking dish and bake for about 25-30 minutes, or until the internal temperature is at or above 74°C.
While the breasts are in the oven, add mushrooms (and minced garlic, if you are using it) to the chicken pan and cook fully.
Add marinara to mushrooms and cook it down so it's thick and pasty.
Once the chicken is fully cooked, pull it out of the oven and top each breast with a generous portion of shredded mozzarella and then parmesan on top of the mozzarella.
Put the chicken back into the oven and set the oven to broil.
Pull the chicken out once the cheese is melty and starting to brown, about 3-4 minutes.
Serve with the sauce either spooned on top, or on the side.