Technically Paleo Breakfast Casserole

A breakfast of turnips and bacon.
Doesn't it just make you want to go out and plow the back forty?

This recipe is a variation of the "Primal Breakfast Casserole" from Mark's Daily Apple. His version uses breakfast sausage and not much else, although he mentions that you can add other things to it. I'm adding other things to it.

Breakfast sausage is OK, but it has two problems in my mind. First, unless you go to an actual butcher and have them grind sausage for you, chances are that your breakfast sausage has various non-paleo ingredients (mainly preservatives). I might still go with it, if it weren't for the second problem with breakfast sausage. Breakfast sausage isn't bacon. Since I'm a grown man who gets to pick whatever breakfast meat he darn well pleases, I'm going to pass on the sausage and go for some good quality bacon. Trader Joe's makes my bacon of choice for technically paleo cooking, but I won't say no to pretty much any bacon.

So, this is going to be a Bacon Breakfast Casserole. I've also spiced up the original recipe with a little onion and some peppers. I think they help steer the recipe away from brick-made-of-turnips-land.

One last thing before we get started with the recipe. Turnips come in a range of sizes. The original recipe just says "3 turnips," but some of the comments mention that two were enough. If your turnips are the size of baseballs, you'll probably need three. If they're the size of softballs, you'll probably only need two.

I didn't have time to stop by Trader Joe's, so I had to settle for an alternate bacon.

Ingredients
2 large or 3 medium turnips
1 small onion
2 jalapeno peppers
16 oz bacon
4 eggs
Salt and pepper to taste

Equipment
Vegetable Peeler
Food Processor (recommended. You can use a grater instead)
Large Bowl
Pan
8x8 Inch Baking Dish
Aluminum Foil

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and then start getting your vegetables ready. Use a vegetable peeler to remove the outside layer of the turnips, and then grate them. I recommend using a food processor for convenience, but you can use a manual grater. Put the turnips into a large bowl.

The resemblance to hash browns is not only visual.
This casserole will taste a lot like it has hash browns in it.

 
Dice the onion and set it aside.

If you can find a vidalia onion, use that. If not, use a standard yellow onion.

Remove the stem and seeds from the jalapenos, so that you're only left with the outside part of the pepper. Dice the peppers and set them aside.

Removing the stem and seeds significantly reduces the heat of the peppers.

Cut the bacon into small pieces. The pieces should be larger than bacon bits, but small enough that you could still put them on a salad if you wanted to.

Add the bacon to a pan over medium-high heat and cook it until it has browned. Remove the bacon from the pan and let it drain. A paper towel on a plate is probably the easiest draining setup for the bacon.

Bacon - The King of Breakfast Meats

Add the pepper and onion to the pan. If there is a little bacon fat left in the pan, then good, because it will help keep the vegetables from sticking. Cook the pepper and onion just until the onion is translucent. You'll need to occasionally stir everything to keep the onion from burning.

Don't brown the onion. What you want to do is technically called "sweating" the onion.

Add the bacon, pepper, and onion to the bowl with the turnips.

You should give the onions and peppers a minute or two to cool down so they don't scramble the egg.

Beat the eggs in a small bowl, and add them to the large bowl with everything else. Even with the bacon, I'd recommend adding a large pinch or two of salt at this point. You should also get out your pepper grinder and add a generous sprinkling of pepper.

Mix everything together in the bowl, then transfer it into an 8x8 inch baking dish.

If you flatten the top a little, it will keep any stray turnip strands from burning.

Cover the baking dish with some aluminum foil and bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes. Then, uncover the dish and bake for another 20 minutes to brown the top of the casserole.

The edges will be browned, just like you'd expect from any good casserole.

 Notes

• The jalapenos don't make the casserole very spicy, but you could replace them with an equal amount of red bell pepper if you're concerned about it.
• Turnips have a bad rep, probably because they're associated with hard times. The truth is that turnips are like more delicious potatoes with fewer carbs and more nutrients.
• I added about 1/2 tsp of salt and about 1/2 tsp of pepper before baking the casserole, and it came out just right. If you know that your bacon is particularly salty, you might not need that much, but because the dish is mostly turnips, you're almost definitely going to need a little extra salt.
• According to Mark's Daily Apple, you can double the recipe and put it into a 13x9 inch baking dish. The 8x8 inch version was enough for 4-6 servings, though, so I'd only double it if you've got some serious company for breakfast.
• You could try other ingredients in this if you wanted. Some good ones to try are: mushrooms, ham, spinach, or diced, cooked broccoli. Just don't add so many ingredients that you overflow the baking dish.
• Like all good casseroles, this one can be made ahead of time and reheated.

Barbecue Pulled Pork Shoulder

The deliciousness to price ratio on pork shoulder is very high.

A lot of people have a problem with calling anything "barbecue" if it doesn't spend time in a smokey pit. Of course, I've also met people who call three hamburgers on the grill a "barbecue." Let's just all agree that the term is poorly defined and leave each other alone about it.

In the meantime, here's a recipe for pulled pork shoulder that can sit next to any barbecue joint's best with pride. It's totally, eat-it-every-day-if-you-want paleo, and it's delicious. I do like the smokey flavor of real barbecue, so I add some liquid smoke to the crock pot. It won't replace a real smoking session, but it adds a lot of flavor, and you don't have to tend a fire all day.

This is also a great potluck dish. I know I'm not the only one who struggles to find good healthy food at the office potluck. I also can't be the only one who doesn't want to be known as "the guy who brings that weird food to the potluck." This dish is a perfect solution. It makes a lot for a pretty cheap price, and most people will love it. If you bow to the social pressure and plunk down a package or two of rolls next to it, you can even avoid the "what exactly is the paleo diet?" conversation. (You don't have to eat the rolls)

Your apple juice doesn't have to be in a little box, but it made more sense to me than buying a whole bottle.

Ingredients

1 whole pork shoulder, bone in.
1/2 cup apple juice
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 tsp liquid smoke

For the rub
3 tbsp garlic powder
2 tbsp smoked paprika
2 tsp mustard powder
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp onion powder
2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon

Equipment
Crock Pot
Large Bowl
Jar with a lid (or other container for the rub)

Combine all of the spices in a jar and put the lid on. Shake the closed jar to combine the spices into a dry rub.

This particular jar also has a lid with holes that makes it easier to shake spices onto the meat.

Pat the pork shoulder dry with a paper towel. This will help the spices stick to it better.

Leave that layer of fat intact for now. It will help keep the meat moist.

Cover the pork shoulder with about 3/4 of the rub. You should actually rub the spices into the meat a little to help them stick. Save the remaining 1/4 of the rub for later.

Try and get an even coating of spice over the whole surface of the meat.

Place the rubbed pork shoulder into the crock pot. Add the apple juice, vinegar, and liquid smoke to the crock pot. Be careful and avoid rinsing the rub off of the pork shoulder as much as possible by pouring the liquid in at the sides of the crock pot.

Put the lid on the crock pot and set it on low heat for at least 8 hours. If you have the time to cook it for 10-12 hours, even better.

There will be more liquid in the crock pot than when you started. The meat contributes some as it cooks.

After the shoulder has cooked, remove it from the crock pot and place it in a large bowl. Remove the large bone. Also, if there is a layer of fat on the top of the shoulder, remove that at this point as well. Using one fork in each hand, shred the meat into small chunks. While doing this, you may notice gristle in certain parts of the shoulder; remove as much of it as possible.

Shred the meat into stringy pieces. You don't want too many big chunks left when you're done.

Once you've shredded the meat, taste it and decide how much, if any, of the remaining rub you would like to add to it. Mix the rub into the meat to season it evenly.

Notes

• A whole pork shoulder weighs between 7 and 10 pounds, so this recipe makes a lot of pulled pork. It freezes well, though.
• The pork will be good by itself, or you can add a little of your favorite barbecue sauce to it. You can find a very simple recipe for my favorite technically paleo barbecue sauce in my post about beef short ribs.
• I like to serve this with cauliflower rice and collard greens.
• A lot of recipes will tell you to remove the layer of fat from the top of the pork shoulder before putting it in the crock pot. I like to remove it afterwards for two reasons. First, I think it helps keep the meat moist. Second, I think it's easier to pull it off after the meat has cooked.

Chile-Garlic Tilapia Fillets

Today's brilliant insight is basically
"Put some spices on some fish and grill it."

I don't like fish. Some seafood is pretty good - I actually like crab, shrimp, and lobster, but most fish falls somewhere on a continuum between 'disgusting' and 'tolerable' as far as I'm concerned. The problem is that fish is just so darned good for you. With that in mind, I try to increase my fish intake in various ways. Usually, I just try it in restaurants, but I've been trying to cook fish at home more often (heavily prompted by Miriam).

Through some (sometimes unpalatable) trial and error, I've found a few kinds of fish that I like pretty well, and I've figured out some ways to cook them that make them taste good.

One of the fish that I've found to be a consistent winner is Tilapia. Tilapia is a good fish for people who don't like fish. It has a really mild flavor and it's easy to cook. If you like the idea of sustainable fish, it's a good choice because it does well when farmed. It's also cheap.

I hesitate to call this a recipe. It's so simple that the word "recipe" seems a little pretentious, but I'll go ahead and treat it like one.

Ingredients

1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp cayenne pepper
2 tbsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
4 tilapia fillets
1 lemon

Equipment

Spice Shaker (recommended)
Grill Pan (recommended)
Oil (for the grill pan)


Combine the paprika, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, salt, and pepper into one container that you can use to shake the spices onto the fish. Try to get the spices well mixed together before applying them to the fillets.

The holes in the lid make it easy to apply the spices to the fillets.

Use a paper towel to pat the fillets dry. They don't have to be bone-dry, but you should reduce their surface moisture a little bit because it will make the spices stick better. Apply the spices evenly to both sides of the fish.

This advanced culinary technique is called "dumping spices onto the meat."

Apply some oil to the grill pan and put it over high heat. You need to make sure that it's well lubricated and very hot, or the fillets will stick to it and fall apart when you try to turn them. Place the fillets onto the hot grill pan and let them cook for 3 minutes. They will begin to turn white as they cook.

Once the fillets go on the heat, don't touch them. If you try to move them too soon, then they'll stick.

Flip the fillets onto their second side and let them cook for another 3 minutes. You want them to be done all the way through, but don't cook them so long that they dry out. Tilapia is flaky and white when it is done.

I like to use a very thin metal spatula to flip the fish. It's easier to get it under the fillets.

Remove the fillets from the heat. Cut the lemon into quarters and squeeze the juice of one quarter onto each fillet just before serving.

Notes

• This recipe would work with any mild, white fish. Trout would probably be a good candidate.
• The seasoning for this recipe is spicy. I like it that way, but if you don't, you can leave out the cayenne and double the paprika..
• Squeezing the lemon juice on at the end sounds like a throwaway step, but it really does make a big difference.
• I like to serve this with a very simple salad. It's a good summertime dish because it cooks fast and doesn't heat up the kitchen.
• You can do this on a grill, but I always have trouble with fish sticking to mine. I've had better luck keeping the fillets intact when I use a grill pan.
• Tilapia fillets aren't very big, so I usually plan on serving two fillets per person.

Tropical Macaroons

Delicious, and so paleo they're bangin' rocks together.

This is a recipe from Everyday Paleo that is apparently a part of their Easter menu. I suggest that you read the article in that link. It's got three other recipes in it that you might be interested in. (I'm probably never going to make the smoked salmon casserole, but that's because I don't like salmon, not because it looks like a bad recipe)

Anyway, the macaroons caught my eye, and since I already have a bunch of shredded coconut from the coconut macadamia shrimp recipe, it seemed like a good time to give it a try. I'm also deviating from the original recipe just a little by using canned pineapple. Since we'll be cooking it down anyway, there won't be much (if any) difference in the final product, and canned pineapple is easier to work with. Just make sure that you get the kind that's in 100% pineapple juice.

Make sure you get free range, organic, non-GMO, grass-fed,  never-sworn-at eggs. Failure to do so will irreparably damage your health.

Ingredients
4 egg whites
3 cups finely shredded coconut (unsweetened)
2 tbsp coconut oil
1 20oz can of pineapple chunks
3 tbsp coconut milk

Equipment
Pan
Mixer
Large Bowl
Spatula
Cookie Sheet
Parchment Paper (recommended)
Potato masher (recommended)

Preheat your oven to 325, and go ahead and either grease your cookie sheet or cut a piece of parchment paper to fit it. I prefer using parchment paper because it makes cleanup so much easier, and cookies never stick to it.

Put a pan over medium heat and add the coconut oil to it. Drain as much liquid as you can from the pineapple chunks and add them to the pan. Standard sized canned pineapple chunks are a little too big for this recipe, so you need to break them up somehow. I recommend using a potato masher on them in the pan. You could also chop them with a knife after you drain them and before they go into the pan, but that sounds a little messy to me.

Be careful with the potato masher, or you might fling hot pineapple onto yourself. Part of the beauty of Technically Paleo is that I get to learn these things the hard way so that you don't have to.

Cook the pineapple until any liquid in it has evaporated, and it has turned golden brown. You'll need to stir it occasionally as it cooks. When it's done, remove it from the pan so that it can cool down while you make the rest of the batter. Hot pineapple will cook your egg whites. Then you'll have a nice pineapple and coconut omelet. If that's not what you're trying to make, let the pineapple cool.

This is what it should look like when it's done. The liquid is pretty much gone, and the pineapple has browned slightly.

In a large bowl, whip the egg whites with your mixer until they're stiff. Start on a slow speed for a few seconds, and then gradually increase the speed of the mixer. It will take a minute or two with a good mixer. When it's ready, it will look white, like uncooked merangue (because that's what it is).

See my spiffy stand mixer? It was a present from Miriam, and it gets used A LOT.

You can also do the "stiff peaks" test. If you pull your mixer directly out of the egg whites and turn it upside down, a little point of egg whites should be standing up on the beaters. If there's no point, you're not done.

See? Standing up straight. That means the egg whites are done.

Now, use a spatula to fold the coconut into the egg whites. When I say "fold them in," this is what I mean:

1. Put about half of the coconut into the bowl.
2. Use the edge of the spatula to cut down into the center of the egg whites and coconut.
3. Gently turn half of the batter over onto the other half, kind of like you're folding an omelet or flipping a pancake.
4. Add the rest of the coconut to the bowl.
5. Repeat step 3 about 10 times, while turning the bowl a quarter turn each time.

Being gentle like this preserves as much of the air as possible in the batter. The air is the only thing that will make the macaroons light and fluffy.

Be gentle.

Add the coconut milk to the pineapple and mix them together a little before adding both to the batter. Just like with the coconut, you want to fold this in.

You'll end up with a very loose, very dry batter.

Make little balls from the batter and place them on the cookie sheet. The balls should be about the size of a golf ball, and you should leave about an inch between each one. When you've filled up the cookie sheet, press each ball down a little. They should be kind of biscuit-shaped, not super flat.

How do you like my super-dramatic cookie angle?

Bake the macaroons for 20 minutes. They will firm up a little when they're done, and will have little golden-brown spots.

They're a little fragile, so be careful when you handle them.

 Notes

• The potato masher trick got the pineapple broken up into the right sized chunks, but I seriously flung pineapple all over myself by accident. You might want to mash the pineapple in the pan before you put the pan over the heat. That way, you'll at least only get cold pineapple on you.
• When you're forming the macaroons into balls, you'll have to press them together a little or they'll fall apart. Also be careful when you flatten them that you don't mush them into pieces.
• Usually, when a recipe asks you to fold ingredients into egg whites, it's super important that you don't stir all of the air out of them, because that air is there to make things light and fluffy. With this recipe, though, it's not actually that important. You're folding so much stuff into the egg whites that it probably doesn't matter what you do - they'll come out the same. It's still good practice to do it right, though.
• I'm going to go ahead and put these in the indulgences category, but only because coconut is pretty calorie-dense. Nutritionally, I'd say you should feel comfortable having one of these any time you'd feel comfortable with eating a handful of nuts.

Coconut Macadamia Shrimp with Chili Lime Sauce

Five look good on a plate. You'll want to eat more than that.

These shrimp are simple to make, delicious, and completely spirit-of-the-law paleo. If you want to eat these at every meal for the rest of your life, there isn't a pretentious paleo guru in the world who'll be able to say word one about it. Just eat a salad or something with them.

The sauce is mostly lime juice and spices, but it has a little honey for taste and a little arrowroot powder for consistency. Unless you mistake it for a beverage, you can pretty much have it any time and not worry about it. I definitely wouldn't put it in the indulgence category.

Ingredients

Coconut flour is a little hard to find. Also, don't mistakenly use sweetened shredded coconut.

For the Shrimp
1 pound peeled, de-veined shrimp
1/2 cup macadamia nuts (I used roasted and salted. If you use unsalted, you might need to add a little salt.)
1/2 cup shredded coconut (unsweetened)
1/2 cup coconut flour
1 egg
1 tbsp water
1/4 to 1/2 cup of coconut oil (for frying)

I know this picture only has three limes. That's because I took it before I realized that I'd need five.

For the Sauce
Juice from 5 limes
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp cumin
1 tsp honey
1 tsp arrowroot powder

Equipment
Food Processor
Two Small Plates
Small Bowl
Pan
Small Pot
Whisk
Tongs (to grab the cooking shrimp)
Some sort of draining rig (a draining rack or some paper towels on a plate work well)


The majority of the work in this recipe is in assembling the breading for the shrimp. Start by putting the macadamia nuts into the food processor and pulsing them until they look like coarse crumbs.

Food processors are absolutely key in the paleo kitchen.

Add the shredded coconut to the food processor, and pulse a few times, just to mix the coconut and macadamias together.

Do not over-process. You'll make a weird coconut macadamia butter that will be useless for anything I can think of.

Break the egg into a small bowl and add 1 tbsp of water to it. Mix the water into the egg like you're scrambling it. Place the coconut flour onto one small plate, and place the coconut and macadamia nut mixture onto another small plate.

If you put them in this order (flour, egg, breading), you can just go left to right with each shrimp. Fancy french people call this kind of thing "mis-en-place."

You're about to start frying the shrimp, so you need to put about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of coconut oil into a pan and start heating it over medium heat. It will become liquid as it gets hot.

You want enough coconut oil to cover the bottom of your pan about 1/4 inch deep. The actual amount will vary with the size of your pan. I trust you to do the right thing.

Bread the shrimp one or two at a time. 

For each one, do this: 

1. Dredge the shrimp in the coconut flour - you want a very light covering, not too much
2. Next, dip the shrimp into the egg.
3. Dredge the egg-covered shrimp in the macadamia nut and coconut mixture. You want some to stick to the entire surface
4. Put the shrimp into the pan

Repeat those steps until you have about six shrimp in the pan. Then it will be time to turn the first shrimp so that it can cook on its second side. Every few seconds, turn the next shrimp until all of them are cooking on their second side.

The three on the top have been flipped, and they're good examples of the color you want to see on both sides when the shrimp are done.

When the shrimp are a nice golden color on both sides (you'll have to lift them up to check the second side) take them out of the pan and put them either onto a draining rack or a paper towel to let any excess oil drain off.

Repeat the breading and frying steps until you've cooked all of the shrimp. Leave them to drain while you make the sauce.

There are only two steps to make the sauce.

1. Put the lime juice, red pepper flakes, cumin, arrowroot powder, and honey into a small pot
2. Heat the pot over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the sauce thickens and clears up a little (it will take about 1 to 2 minutes)

Notes

• If you cover the shrimp with too much coconut flour, the breading will separate from the shrimp. You want a very light dusting.
• Because I used salted macadamias, I didn't have to add any more salt to the breading. If you use unsalted nuts, you should probably add about 1/2 tsp of salt to the nuts when you put them in the food processor.
• Be careful when processing the macadamia nuts. You should just pulse them about 10 to 15 times. If you go crazy with the food processor, you'll very quickly end up with macadamia nut butter.
• I had breading left over. It was probably enough to do another 1/2 pound or so of shrimp.
• I've seen recipes similar to this one that said you could bake the shrimp. I haven't tried it, but my guess is that you'd want to do it at about 400 degrees, and check the shrimp after about 10 minutes. That's just a guess though.
• Shrimp don't take very long to cook. You're looking for the meat to go from blue and translucent to pink and white.

As-Paleo-As-You-Want-It-To-Be Chocolate Mousse

Channel the lame new Cookie Monster and think of this as a "Sometimes Food"

Like the title implies, this dish is kind of a "Choose Your Own Adventure" paleo dessert. It only has three ingredients, but one of those three is chocolate. Chocolate is an ingredient that skirts the edges of the paleo diet. Completely unsweetened chocolate is completely paleo as far as I'm concerned, but it's also not very useful without some other sweetening added to it. A more practical, but slightly less paleo option is to use a high quality dark chocolate in the 85-90% cocoa range. Look for one where the ingredient list is pretty much chocolate and some sort of sweetener, and you're doing OK for a treat item. If you want to go sweeter, you could use a dark chocolate in the 60-70% cocoa family, but keep in mind that the lower you go on the cocoa percentage, the less paleo this becomes (because the sugar will be increased). It's your food, so I'll leave it up to you. This time, I used an 85% cocoa chocolate, and the dish worked out to about 10g carbs per serving.

Ingredients
1 can coconut milk (not light coconut milk, regular coconut milk)
1 cup chocolate pieces (I broke a chocolate bar into little pieces. Chocolate chips would also work)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Equipment
Pot
Whisk
Mixer (recommended)

This dessert is essentially a whipped ganache made with coconut milk instead of dairy. If that sentence made sense to you, you can basically stop reading, because you already know what to do.

For everyone else, start by heating the coconut milk over medium-low heat. You want it to get warm, but don't take it to boiling. It will take about 2 minutes. It probably won't even be too hot for you to dip your fingertip in (depending on how sensitive your fingers are.) Chocolate melts at something like 90 degrees farenheit, so anything above that will work fine.

You could also do this in the microwave, but it's probably easier on the stove.

Add the chocolate to the pot and start whisking slowly.

If you can break a chocolate bar into pieces like this and not eat any before they go in the pot, you are not made of flesh and blood.

At first, it will look like you  have chocolate bits floating in coconut milk, but keep whisking and the chocolate will slowly melt and the mixture will even out into what looks like a thick chocolate sauce (because that's what it is).

Like chocolate gravy.

Take the pot off of the heat and mix in the vanilla extract.

I like Trader Joe's vanilla. Make sure you use real vanilla, not imitation vanilla.

 
Transfer everything into a container that you can put into the fridge for a few hours (because you need to put it in the fridge for a few hours.)

Depending on the chocolate you used, everything will set up in the fridge to a consistency somewhere between pudding and frosting. If you're happy with the consistency right out of the fridge, then good. If you're worried that your dinner guests will think you handed them a bowl of cake frosting, then get out your mixer. I have a cool stand mixer, so I dumped everything into its bowl and mixed it with the whisk attachment for about a minute. If you've got a hand mixer, you'll want to mix things for a minute to two minutes. You can also pour on the elbow grease and whisk everything by hand for about two minutes. The point is to lighten the mousse by getting some air into it. Don't work on it for too long, because the heat from mixing it will make it thin out too much.

Now, place it into four serving dishes of your choice and enjoy. (Enjoy one of the servings, not all four)

Notes:

• Here's the rule on ganaches: the higher the chocolate to liquid ratio is, the firmer the ganache will be. My cup of chocolate pieces contained about 125 grams of chocolate. Depending on the types of pieces you use, you may fit more or less chocolate into the measuring cup, and you'll have to adjust on the fly.
• If your cooled ganache is way too thin, you can always reheat it and add more chocolate.
• If you whip the ganache like crazy and it's still too thick, you could reheat it and add more coconut milk.
• If you use 85% cocoa chocolate like I did, this will be an intensely chocolatey dessert. Serious chocolate lovers will really like it, but not everyone wants a mousse that intense.
• You could top this with some raspberries to cut the chocolate flavor a little bit.

Paleo Fried Cauliflower Rice (Alternate Title: Ricky Takes Crappy Pictures)



This is the first and last decent picture in this post.

 Before I even get started on this one, I've got a confession. This dish isn't "Technically Paleo." It's super close, and I'm going to tell you which ingredient to substitute to make it not just "Technically Paleo," but also "Seriously, Conforms-To-The-Letter-And-The-Spirit-Of-Paleo-Law Paleo," but as written, it does have one verboten ingredient - soy sauce.

Most soy sauce is vile stuff, made more from weirdly processed wheat than soy beans. The soy sauce I used isn't like that. It has exactly three ingredients - water, soy beans, and alcohol. No Gluten, no hydrolized wheat proteins. Since it has three ingredients, I know what they all look like, and I could, conceivably, put them together into their combined product without a laboratory, I'm OK with using a tablespoon of this particular soy sauce even though soy beans violate the "no legumes" rule. If you are not OK with it, you can still make this dish by Googling, purchasing, and using something called "coconut aminos" instead of the soy sauce. So, here's the recipe:

Ingredients

5 strips of bacon, cut into small pieces,
1 medium onion, diced coarsely
2 cups of riced cauliflower (steamed in the microwave or leftover from another meal)
1 egg
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 tsp minced ginger
1 tbsp soy sauce (or coconut aminos)
1/4 cup chopped spring onions

Equipment
Wok (Recommended, but a large pan will work OK)



First, cook the bacon over medium-high heat until it is browned completely (it should basically look like bacon bits). If you've got a spiffy electric wok like mine, that's about 350 degrees.

This bacon is not done yet. When it's done, you will want to eat it. Don't. You will burn yourself.

When the bacon is done, move it to the edge of the wok, and place the onion in the center. You will probably have plenty of bacon fat in the wok. Leave it there.

Sorry about the pictures this time around. I should have focused better.

When the onion is translucent, but not browned, move it to the side of the wok  and add the cauliflower.

The onions kept sliding back into the center of the wok. If that happens, just put the cauliflower on top of them.

Mix everything together and cook for about 2 minutes.

Starting to look like fried rice

Make an empty space in the middle of the wok, and add the egg to it. Scramble the egg.

Don't mix the egg into the cauliflower until it has cooked through. Just scramble it in the little well you made.

Once the egg is cooked, mix it into the cauliflower and add the soy sauce, garlic, and ginger.

Looking pretty good. Almost done.

Allow everything to cook for about 2 minutes, and mix in the scallions immediately before serving.

Notes

• A wok works well for this dish, because it allows you to cook one ingredient, and then move it up to the sides (where the wok is cooler) while you cook the next ingredient in the middle. If you use a regular pan, this method might not work so well. To compensate, you could cook the bacon, remove it from the pan, cook the onion, remove it from the pan, etc. Then toss everything back together and cook for a few minutes at the end.
• Because cauliflower has very little starch, it won't really brown the way that rice does. If you're waiting around for the cauliflower to brown, you're going to burn the onions, so don't do that.
• This is a basic fried rice that works well as a side dish. You could make it into a main dish by adding some more substantial protein. I've tried shrimp, thinly sliced beef, and chicken, and they've all worked out well. If you use any of those, you should cook them seperately first, and add them just before the soy sauce.
• This is a good way to use up leftover cauliflower rice. An average head of cauliflower makes about twice as much cauliflower rice as Miriam and I can eat in a sitting, so we always have plenty left over.