Acorn Squash With Sausage Stuffing

Bowls you can eat are always more fun than bowls you can't

I know what you're thinking. "Isn't acorn squash more of an autumn dish?" Well, let me tell you something - I'm a rebel. I don't let myself be constrained by the seasons. Strawberries in winter? Apples in the spring? Acorn squash in July? You bet. Someone, somewhere, is growing everything all the time. I know that eating local is all the rage these days, and it's a movement that I generally support, but I'm not going to let the fact that my acorn squash was grown in another hemisphere deter me from enjoying it.

Besides, I had some italian sausage that I needed to use, and I haven't done a sausage stuffing in a while. You could certainly use something else to hold the stuffing, but acorn squash has always been my favorite vehicle for this.

Nutritionally, acorn squash is similar to sweet potatoes. It's got carbohydrates, but it's not going to send you spiraling into a sugar coma. Eating the squash along with the sausage stuffing helps, because the protein, fat, and fiber in the stuffing will cause you to absorb the carbohydrates more slowly.

This is one of those times when the ingredients have started hanging off the cutting board.
It always makes me worry that the recipe is too complicated.

Ingredients

2 acorn squash
1 carrot
2 stalks celery
1 small onion
2 cups mushrooms
1 lb italian sausage
1/2 cup pecans
2 cups cauliflower rice
1 egg
salt and pepper to taste


Equipment

Baking Sheet
Aluminum Foil (recommended)
Pan
Large Bowl


Preheat your oven to 350.

Cut each acorn squash in half from stem to tip, and scoop the seeds from the middle.

People tell me you can clean the seeds and roast them for a snack. People tell me a lot of crazy stuff.

Place the halves cut side up on a baking sheet covered with aluminum foil. Bake them for 30 minutes while you prepare the stuffing.

Pre-baking them makes sure that they get tender without burning the stuffing.

Chop the carrot, celery, and onion. You should aim to have roughly quarter inch cubes of each.

Fancy French cooking term for this: mirepoix

Cut the mushrooms into small pieces (just a little larger than the carrot, celery, and onion)

I used cremini mushrooms, but white button mushrooms are fine.

Place a pan over medium-high heat and add the sausage to it. If your sausage is in casings, remove it from the casings before adding it to the pan. Break up the sausage as it cooks.

I used mild italian sausage this time, but I think the hot kind is better.

When the sausage is browned, move it to a large bowl. Add the carrot, celery, and onion to the pan. Cook them until the celery and onion become translucent. (About five minutes)

You should be "sweating" the vegetables. That means if you see the onion start to turn brown, you need to lower the heat.

When the vegetables are done, move them to the bowl with the sausage. Add the mushrooms to the pan and cook them for about five minutes, until they are soft and browned slightly. Move them to the bowl. Also add the cauliflower rice and pecans to the bowl.

In my old age, I forgot to take a picture of the mushrooms cooking,
so here's a picture of everything in the bowl instead.

Allow the contents of the bowl to cool for about two minutes. Then, scramble the egg in a small bowl and add it to the large bowl with the other ingredients. Add a little salt and pepper, and mix everything together.

When they have cooked for 30 minutes, remove the acorn squash from the oven and add the stuffing to the middle of each half. Lightly pack the stuffing in as you add it, and mound it above the top of the squash.

Turn your oven up to 425 and bake the stuffed squashes for 15-20 minutes. When they are done, you should be able to insert the tip of a knife into the meat of the squash with very little resistance.

The top of the stuffing will brown a little.

Notes

• If you use the quantities in this recipe, you may be able to stuff three squashes instead of two. It kind of depends on the size of the squash and how high you mound the stuffing.
• Using aluminum foil on the baking sheet isn't strictly necessary, but it makes cleaning up a lot easier.
• I'd recommend using hot italian sausage for this recipe if you can. The mild kind is fine, but I think the hot kind would make things a little better.
• If your halves won't sit with their cut sides upright, you can use a little aluminum foil to prop them up. Just make little aluminum foil donuts and sit the halves in the middle of them.

Basic Cauliflower Rice

A simple, useful substitute for rice.
Cauliflower rice - for when you don't want a bowl full of sugar.

I've already posted a recipe for Fried Cauliflower Rice, but I wanted to lay out the steps for the basic version. I've got two reasons for this. First, cauliflower rice is a nice side item to have in your repertoire. It works well with barbecue (For example, pulled pork in both regular and strawberry flavors) and lots of other southern style dishes. Second, I'm lazy. I have a few recipes in the pipeline that use cauliflower rice as an ingredient, and I'd like to be able to just say "2 cups of cauliflower rice" with a link to this post instead of listing cauliflower as an ingredient and then describing how to make it into cauliflower rice every time.

Nutritionally, cauliflower is awesome. It's a cousin to cabbage and broccoli, and eating more of it will make your momma proud. It's kind of bland, so it's good to add a few spices to it when you make it into rice, especially if you're planning to eat it as-is instead of using it as an ingredient. If you're using it as a substitute for rice in a recipe, you need to remember that rice has starches that thicken liquids, whereas cauliflower rice often contributes some liquid of its own, thinning things out.

This ingredient list almost feels silly.

Ingredients
1 head of cauliflower
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tsp garlic powder

Equipment
Food Processor (Recommended)
Microwave
Microwave-Safe Dish With Lid


First, trim any green leaves away from the bottom of the head of cauliflower. Then, cut the cauliflower into pieces that are small enough to fit into the shoot of your food processor. Use your food processor's grating disk to grate the cauliflower into very small bits.

If you don't have a food processor with a grating disk, see the notes.

Place the cauliflower into a microwave-safe dish with a lid. Add the salt, pepper, and garlic powder, and mix everything to distribute the seasonings. Microwave, loosely covered, on high for about 7 minutes.

"Loosely covered" means lay the lid on top of the dish, but don't seal it.

Notes

• If you don't have a food processor with a grating disk, you can use a handheld cheese grater instead. Trim any leaves from the head, but leave it intact otherwise. Then just start grating it like a head of cheese. I recommend using the smaller holes on the grater for this.
• Cauliflower varies in size, but on average one head of cauliflower will make between four and six cups of cauliflower rice.
• Loosely covering the dish as it cooks lets the cauliflower steam a little, but doesn't let it collect water in the bottom of the dish.
• I know this is a really short, simple post. Don't worry, though, I've got another one coming very soon.

Paleo Eggplant "Lasagna"

If the cheese is your favorite part of lasagna,
this might not be your favorite. If you like the other stuff,
you're in for a treat.

My understanding from listening to people who've actually spent time in Italy is that the food isn't actually all pasta and cheese. You wouldn't know it from looking at what's on the menu at the average Italian restaurant here in America, though. Everything's a carb-fest with a side of melted mozzarella.

That means turning Americans' favorite Italian dishes into something paleo can be a bit of a challenge, and the results are never quite the same as the original. The classic example is spaghetti-squash-spaghetti. Sure, it tastes good, and it can help get you past a pasta craving, but no one would claim that it tastes like regular spaghetti. I guess what I'm saying is that if you bite into today's dish thinking it's going to taste exactly like lasagna, you're going to be disappointed. If you're interested in something that's in the same general family as lasagna but is delicious in its own way, you should keep reading.

From this angle, you can't really see the onion and garlic, but they're there.
I also had to add a second can of tomato paste when I realized that one wasn't going to be enough.

Ingredients

3-4 eggplants
2 green bell peppers
1 medium onion
4 cloves garlic
1 to 1 1/2 lbs italian sausage
2 cups sliced mushrooms
2 6oz cans tomato paste
3 tbsp dried italian herbs (2 tbsp for the meat and vegetables, 1 tbsp for the sauce)
salt and pepper to taste
About 1/4 cup of salt for the eggplant


Equipment

Draining Rig
Pan
9x13 Casserole Dish
Mandolin (recommended)

Start by slicing the eggplants length-wise. You'll need to remove the top of each eggplant, and the slices should be between and eighth and a quarter of an inch thick. I sliced mine with a mandolin, and I recommend using one if you've got it. Lay the slices out on a draining rig and liberally salt one side. Wait one minute, turn the slices over, and liberally salt the second side.

This many slices take up a lot of room. I had to pull out my backup draining rig to hold them all.

Let the eggplant sit for about an hour. This will give the salt an opportunity to pull moisture from the slices. When an hour has passed, rinse the eggplant slices under cold water and set them aside.

The liquid that gets pulled from the eggplant is bitter.
Rinse it and the excess salt off of the slices before using them.

Chop the bell peppers and the onion into medium-sized pieces.

The pieces should be about the size of your thumbnail.

Mince the garlic.

The garlic should be as finely minced as you can make it.

Put a pan over medium heat. Depending on your pan and your sausage, you may want to add a little olive oil to the pan, but usually the sausage will have enough fat in it to keep it from sticking.  For this dish, you want the sausage to crumble like hamburger, so it needs to be removed from the casings. Slice all the way down one side of each sausage with a knife, and peel the casing away. Add the sausage to the pan, and break it up into small pieces as it cooks.

Your sausage should look like this when it goes in the pan, not like sausage links.

When the sausage has browned, move it to the sides of the pan. Add the peppers, onion, garlic, and 2 tbsp of the italian herb seasoning to the center of the pan. Allow the vegetables and seasoning to cook for about 2 minutes before stirring them into the sausage.


Adding the ingredients into the center lets them cook in the juice from the sausage for a few minutes.


After combining the vegetables and sausage, let everything cook for another minute. Set everything aside in a large bowl. Add the sliced mushrooms to the pan you've been using to cook everything else. Cook the mushrooms in the pan for about five minutes, stirring frequently.

Using the same pan for the sausage and the mushrooms will help the mushrooms pick up some flavor.

When the mushrooms are done, mix them in with the sausage, onions, and peppers. Combine the two cans of tomato paste with two cups of water, 1 tbsp of italian herbs, about a teaspoon of salt, and a few pinches of pepper. Stir the mixture to combine it into a tomato sauce.

I actually did mine in two batches, because it's a lot of sauce.

Get out a 9x13 casserole dish, and pour a little of the sauce in the bottom. This should just be a small amount to help keep the eggplant from sticking to the bottom of the dish.

I like a glass dish because it heats everything evenly. Any kind of casserole dish will work, though.

Lay out a layer of eggplant slices in the dish, and spread a little more of the sauce on top of them.

Try to cover as much as possible with each layer of eggplant.

Add about a third of the meat and vegetable mixture on top of the eggplant. Pour a little of the sauce on top of it.

Don't make this layer too thick, or things will fall apart badly when serving.

Repeat the layering steps two more times (eggplant, sauce, meat, sauce, eggplant, sauce, meat, sauce). Then finish with a layer of eggplant. Pour any remaining sauce over the top layer of eggplant.

It should end up looking sort of like lasagna. See?

Bake the dish uncovered at 350 for about 30 minutes. Then, increase the heat to 425 and bake for another 15 minutes. Allow the dish to cool for a few minutes before serving.

The sauce on top will caramelize a little. This is crucial to avoid an eggplant-in-tomato-juice flavor.

Notes

• Three eggplants were the right amount when I made this. If your eggplants are small, or if you slice them too thick, you may need four.
• You can assemble this dish ahead of time and bake it later. Just store it covered up in the refrigerator. If you do make it ahead of time, put the dish in the oven while it's pre-heating to 350. Then cook it like the original instructions say.
• Because it doesn't have any cheese to help bind it together, this dish falls apart much easier than traditional lasagna. I was able to serve reasonably intact pieces by letting it cool a little and using a nice big spatula.
• Your sauce may initially seem a little thick, but remember that the vegetables in this dish will add some water to the mix while they bake.
• I used a mild italian sausage, but I think that a spicy italian sausage would work even better. If you try it, please let me know with a comment.
• Miriam suggested that adding some black olives to this dish would be a good idea. If you like olives, go for it.

Jerk Chicken

Like BBQ, jerk chicken is one of those dishes that has
a thousand different recipes, each one claiming to be
THE authentic way of doing it.

For our honeymoon, Miriam and I went to Jamaica, where we stayed at a resort and basically made no effort to experience Jamaica's culture. To be fair, "Jamaica's culture" didn't have swim-up bars and all the pina coladas you could drink, whereas the resort did. This was well before our paleo diet days, so we ate a lot of junk, but one thing we ate that actually fits very easily into the paleo diet was jerk chicken. I'm not saying it did anything to offset the three pina coladas I usually drank along with it, but in and of itself, it's pretty good for you.

Jerk chicken is just chicken marinated in a particular kind of marinade, and then grilled. While I was researching this recipe, I stumbled across a website run by a Jamaican cultural center that claimed that the most authentic way to cook jerk chicken was over a fire made with "pimento wood." Pimento is what Jamaicans call allspice, so the site was saying that If I had any wood from an allspice tree, I should use that. I don't have any allspice wood, so I used charcoal. I do recommend that you make this chicken with the smokiest cooking method you can manage. Charcoal grilling is probably the best option, followed closely by grilling with propane.

There are a lot of ingredients in this recipe, but the food processor does most of the work for you.

Ingredients

6 green onions
6 cloves garlic
2 small onions
3 habanero chiles
4 tsp salt
4 tsp thyme
4 tsp allspice
2 tsp black pepper
2 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
4 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup lime juice
1/4 cup tbsp olive oil
Approximately 3.5 lbs of chicken (Roughly one chicken cut into pieces)



Equipment

Food Processor (recommended)
Large Zip-top Bag (recommended)
Grill (recommended)



Remove the white bulb end of the green onions and discard them. Cut the green onions in half and place them in the food processor. Remove the paper from the garlic, and place the whole cloves in the food processor with the green onions. Remove the outer layer of the 2 small onions and cut off their root ends. Cut each onion into four pieces and put them in the food processor. Carefully remove the stems and seeds from the habanero peppers and discard them. Place the peppers in the food processor with the other vegetables.

Try not to handle the pepper seeds very much.
If you do handle them, don't touch your eyes for about a day.

Pulse the vegetables several times in the food processor until they are roughly chopped. Add the salt, thyme, allspice, black pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger to the food processor.

The newer your spices are, the more flavor they have.
This might be a good time to replace that container of allspice that you bought back in college.

Pulse the vegetables and spices a few times to combine them.

You might need to scrape down the sides of the food processor if everything keeps trying to climb out.

Add the vinegar, lime juice, and olive oil to the food processor, and turn it on for about 15 seconds, until the marinade is a smooth, loose paste.

Not the kind of paste you used to eat in kindergarten.

Place the chicken and two-thirds of the marinade into a large zip-top bag. Close the bag and get as much air out of it as you can. Make sure that the chicken is evenly covered with the marinade, and place the bag in the refrigerator for several hours (overnight is even better). Save the remaining third of the marinade for use while grilling.

Plastic bags are the best container for marinating, because they hold the marinade right next to the food.

Grill the chicken using indirect high heat for about 30 minutes. Leave the lid of the grill closed as much as possible to promote smoking. Turn the pieces several times, and use the marinade that you set aside to baste them as they grill.

You should try to arrange the pieces so that the smaller ones are on the cooler parts of the grill.
Otherwise, they may dry out before the larger pieces finish cooking.

When the chicken has finished cooking, allow it to rest for about five minutes before serving.


Notes

• You may have noticed the three habanero chiles in this recipe. I won't deny that this chicken is spicy, but it's not as spicy as the three habaneros would make you think. Removing their seeds really removes a lot of the heat, and they're distributed across a whole chicken.
• If you're still worried that this will be too spicy, you can substitute jalapeno peppers for the habaneros. I wouldn't leave the peppers out entirely, though. I think the chicken wouldn't turn out very well with absolutely no spice.
• If you don't have a grill, you can bake the chicken in your oven. I would recommend doing it at 350 for about 25 minutes, and then increasing the heat to 450 for 5-10 minutes to sear the outside a little.
• If you don't have a food processor, you could make the marinade in a blender. To do that, you should put all of the liquids in the blender first, and chop the vegetables finely before putting them in. Set your blender to its highest setting, and it should work pretty well.
• The best way to create "indirect high heat" on a charcoal grill is to pile the charcoal in the middle and then place the chicken in a circle around the outside. On a propane grill, light all the burners but one, and place the chicken over the unlit burner.

Grilled Balsamic Eggplant

I think it's funny that I get better grill marks from my grill pan
than I do from my actual grill.

I love to grill. In fact, I just got a new grill that lets me use either propane or charcoal, and has enough total cooking surface that I could cook two sets of those massive ribs that flip Fred Flinstone's car over in the opening sequence of the cartoon. Before the new grill was delivered, I decided to have one last hurrah with the old one (which served me well for over five years despite much abuse). I wanted to grill some steaks, but I was presented with a common griller's dilemma. What kind of side item could I make that wouldn't have me running back and forth between the grill and the stove, hoping that one or the other didn't catch fire while I wasn't in attendance? I decided to pull out an old favorite that I learned to make from watching Good Eats. Alton Brown's eggplant episode is a good one, and it demonstrates a great technique for making eggplant that's simple and very grill-friendly.

I don't remember what Alton's eggplant marinade was, but I've always liked to keep it simple with just some balsamic vinegar. Brushing a little onto the eggplants a few minutes before grilling them gives them a nice hit of flavor without making you wonder why you're eating a vinegar sponge. The marinade isn't really the important part, though. The key to this recipe is in how you prepare the eggplant slices. By leeching some of the moisture out of them with salt, you remove some of the bitterness that eggplants naturally have, and make them more ready to absorb the liquid of your choice.

A simple set of ingredients are nice sometimes.

Ingredients

3 eggplants
about 1/4 cup kosher salt
about 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar



Equipment

Draining Rig
Grill or Grill Pan
Basting Brush (recommended)


Start by slicing your eggplants into half-inch thick rounds. Discard the stem end, and the last piece of the bulb end. Place the slices on a draining rig in a single layer.

As usual, my draining rig is some cake racks over a cookie sheet.
Paper towels don't work very well as a draining rig in this case, because the water can't drip away.
In a pinch, you could put the slices directly on your oven rack with a cookie sheet underneath.

Heavily salt the top side of each slice. Wait two minutes, then flip the slices and heavily salt the other sides.

Wait two minutes before salting the second side, because the salt will leech
a little moisture out and stick to the eggplant when it's upside down.

Let the salted eggplant sit and drain for about an hour. You will see liquid collect on the top of each slice.

That liquid has a bitter taste, and removing it will make the eggplant taste better.

Rinse the slices quickly under cold water to remove any excess salt. Pat them dry with a clean cloth or paper towel. Baste both sides of each slice with balsamic vinegar, and allow the slices to sit for a few minutes to absorb the liquid.

Placing the slices back on the draining rig is a convenient way to lay them out for basting.

Grill the slices over indirect heat (or medium heat if you're using a grill pan) for about five minutes per side. The eggplant should be tender when they're done.


Notes

• You can substitute lots of different liquids for the balsamic vinegar. I'd recommend something that's a little tangy and a little sweet.
• The quantities of salt and marinade that you'll use will vary with the size of your eggplants and how thickly you slice them. I used about 1/4 cup of each.
• Make sure to rinse the extra salt off of the eggplant. You need a generous coating to pull moisture out of the slices, but you will not enjoy the taste if you leave it on.
• If you have a larger grill, you can grill these while you're grilling some steaks. Put the steaks in the middle of the grill over the highest heat, and put the eggplant around the sides. If you cook your steaks to medium rare, the eggplant will be done at about the same time.

Chicken Cacciatore

The scientific name for the tomato is Lycopersicon esculentum,
which means "wolf peach."

"Cacciatore" is Italian for "hunter," so chicken cacciatore is "hunter's" chicken. I'm not really sure if the idea was that hunters would make the dish while they were out hunting, or if their wives were supposed to have the dish ready when they came home. Either way, it's a pretty solid meal to have if you've been tramping through the woods after an animal all day. One source I found suggested that chicken cacciatore comes originally from renaissance Italy, but I find that hard to believe, given that a lot of Europeans thought tomatoes were poisonous at the time. If the original really was a renaissance dish, I suspect that the ingredient list was drastically different.

Regardless, modern chicken cacciatore has many variations in both ingredients and technique. Chicken is a constant, and tomatoes are pretty standard, but the supporting vegetables and herbs are all over the place. I needed to make a dish for a potluck dinner, so I came up with a recipe that fit my needs. First, it's easy. It's made in a crock pot out of ingredients that need very little preparation. Second, it makes a lot at once. This recipe was easily 8-10 servings. You could cut it in half without too much trouble if you're not making it for a group.

Canned tomato products are a lifesaver for any dish that you're going to cook a long time.

Ingredients

1 medium onion
1 green bell pepper
4 cloves of garlic
12 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1 8oz. package of sliced mushrooms
2 tbsp dried Italian herb blend
1 tsp salt
2 6oz. cans of tomato paste
1 14oz can of diced tomatoes



Equipment

Crock Pot
Medium Bowl

Start by chopping the onion into large pieces. Remove the stem and seeds from the bell pepper and chop it into large pieces as well. The pieces should be about the size of your fingertip.

Do not include any actual fingertips in the dish.

Finely mince the garlic cloves.

The finer you mince garlic, the more flavor it adds to a dish, so go nuts.

Cut each chicken thigh in half, and remove any large pieces of fat or skin that may still be on the meat.

You don't have to worry about removing smaller pieces of fat from the chicken.
Just try to get rid of any chunks of fat that have their own zip code.

Add the chicken, onion, pepper, garlic, and mushrooms to the crock pot. Also sprinkle 2 tbsp of dried Italian herbs and 1 tsp of salt on top of the meat and vegetables.


Before you add them, check your mushrooms just to make sure they don't have any dirt on them.

In a medium sized bowl, combine the diced tomatoes (with their liquid) and the tomato paste. Stir them together so that they form a thick sauce.

"Sauce" might be a little generous at this point, but this stuff will really improve while the dish cooks.

Add the tomato sauce to the crock pot. Try to evenly distribute the sauce across the top of the chicken and vegetables.

The juices from the other ingredients will mix with the sauce, thin it out, and make it delicious.

Cook everything in the crock pot on low for about 8 hours. When it's done cooking, gently stir everything to even out the sauce.

I put mine in a casserole dish for transport to the potluck.
Big mistake - it was too full and I got sauce everywhere.

Notes

• A lot of recipes for chicken cacciatore want you to brown the chicken in olive oil before braising it. I think that's a waste of time when making it in the crock pot, because any browning gets basically dissolved over the extremely long cooking.
• I used some cremini mushrooms for this dish, but regular white button mushrooms work just fine. You could also change things up with some more exotic types if you wanted.
• You can use other pieces of the chicken in this recipe, but I find that boneless, skinless chicken thighs are generally the best performers in the crock pot. White meat dries out too much, and I think drumsticks have too much connective tissue.
• I went with some packaged items in this recipe because I needed something I could throw together before work without a lot of hassle. You could certainly use fresh tomatoes instead of the canned diced tomatoes, and you don't have to buy your mushrooms pre-sliced. If you want to use fresh herbs, go for it. I'm pretty sure that Italian herb blends are mainly oregano and basil, with maybe a little thyme thrown in.
• If your sauce is really watery after you stir everything up, you can try adding about a tablespoon of arrowroot powder to thicken it up. Sprinkle it on top (to help avoid clumps) and then stir it in very gently. Let everything cook on low for another 15 minutes, and the sauce should get thicker.