Shredded Chicken with Jalapeno Cream

I bought a new cookbook the other and I'm in love with it.  Not that I wasn't in love my old cookbooks but...well...they were old.  Shameful, I know, to just abandon my old faithfuls for a new book with no grease or tomato splatters and a firm spine but I did.  My new book is wonderful, full of recipes that require no paleo tweaking and others that will require minor adjustments.  I bookmarked 10 recipes after a cursory review and got right to work on two of them today.  They turned out really well despite my botching of the second recipe rendering it a distant cousin of the recipe I started off with.  That's why I love cooking, sometimes you screw it up and yet things will still turn out just fine...most of the time.  Oh, the name of my book!  It's Eat Cuban: Recipes from Floridita by Andy Rose.

For the first recipe I decided to try a poultry recipe.  Now the original called for duck but I went with chicken.  Also I cheated big time and bought a rotisserie bird to save a little time.

Shredded Chicken with Jalapeno Cream Sauce

For the chicken:

1 rotisserie chicken, meat pulled and shredded

1 onion, sliced

2 garlic cloves, diced

1 bell pepper, diced

2T. fat of choice

4T sherry

2 roma tomatoes; peeled, seeded and sliced into strips

1T parsley, chopped

1. Heat the fat in a large skillet and add the onion, garlic and pepper.  Cook at med-low heat and sweat until soft.

2. Stir in the sherry and increase the heat to high until the liquid is reduced by half.

3. Add the tomato and parsley, stir to mix. Remove from heat.

4. Add the shredded chicken to the skillet and mix well.  (You may have to turn the heat back on to warm the chicken up.)

For the jalapeno cream:

1t. garlic, diced

2T shallots, diced

2T. fat of choice

2T sherry

1/2 C. chicken stock

1/2 C. coconut cream

1 to 2 jalapenos, diced

1T chives, chopped

1. Over low heat sweat the garlic and shallots in the fat until for about 5 minutes.

2. Add the sherry and increase the heat to high, boil for about 2 minutes.

3. Add the chicken stock and boil until the liquid is reduced by half.

4. Stir in the coconut cream and jalapeno. Reduce the heat to medium and cook until the sauce is reduced by half.  Remove from heat and allow to cool a little.

5.  Pour over the chicken mixture and mix well.  Top with the chives.

Asian Pork and Cabbage

I had been seeing recipes for Asian lettuce bowl and it made me think about eggrolls.  I decided that I wanted to try a cabbage roll with a crispy coating.  I gathered all my ingredients and pulled out some spices that I thought would make a tasty profile and set to work.  When it was all said and done I was really satisfied with the flavors but maybe a little disappoint with the texture of the rolls.  I just didn't get that really crispy crunch I was looking for.  I suppose there is just to much moisture in the leaves for the coating to remain crispy.  I only made 5 rolls in my test batch and I decided to just chop what was left of the head of cabbage and make burgers out on the filling.  The flavors were still there and the prep time was significantly reduced (although not nearly as pretty).  So, I'll probably still make this in the future but I won't go through the trouble of making rolls.

Asian Cabbage Rolls (or Asian Pork Burgers with Cabbage)

1/2 onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1t. minced ginger
1/4c. to 1/2c. white wine
1T. coconut aminos
1T. Red Boat fish sauce
3T. coconut cream
1 Star Anise ground (or about a heaping 1/8t. of ground star anise)
1/4t. ground ginger
1/4t. clove
1/4t. cinnamon
1/2t. white pepper
2 pound pork
1/4c. coconut flour
1/4c. almond meal
1 head of cabbage
1 egg

1. Start a large pot of water boiling.
2. Heat fat of choice in a skillet and add the onion and carrots.  Cook until the onion is soft.
3. Add the garlic and ginger and cook about 1-2 minutes.
4. Add the white wine and deglaze the pan (about 1 minute) then add the aminos and fish sauce. Stir to mix.
5. Add the coconut milk and cook, stirring often, until most of the liquid is gone.
6. Scrape into a large mixing bowl and add the spices.  Mix well.
7. Once the onion mixture has cooled a little, add the ground pork and mix well to incorporate all the spices.
8. Separate the leaves of the cabbage and blanch in the boiling pot of water until soft.  Remove and set in a colander to drain.
9.  To assemble: dry the cabbage leaves with a paper towel, scoop a spoonful of the pork mixture at the stem end of the cabbage leaf and roll up folding the edge in after the first roll.
10. Coat the roll in the egg mixture, then roll in the almond meal/coconut flour mixture.
11. Fry up in a skillet with the fat of your choice.


*If you don't want to go through the trouble of blanching the cabbage and rolling you can just chop the cabbage and cook in a skillet and make burger patties out of the pork mixture (I added some of the almond meal/coconut flour mixture to the meat just to have that flavor in there).  They aren't as pretty but just as tasty.

Coconut Carrots

This is a quick carrot dish that allowed me to use up the coconut liquid I'd been saving after skimming the cream out of the cans.  I don't usually cook with butter but I was at my parent's place and they don't have all the pantry items that I do.  So, I put a big pat in the skillet tonight.  If you don't use dairy I suppose you could use coconut oil which is probably what I would use when I'm at home.  I just peeled the carrots and sliced them in half length wise then cut them in half inch diagonal chunks.  I put them in the skillet with the butter and let them cook until they were starting to brown a little then I added about a quarter cup of chicken stock and the coconut liquid (which was reserved from two cans of coconut milk after removing the cream).  I covered it and let it bubble away until the carrots were soft then I removed the lid and let it simmer until the sauce was reduced to a thick caramelized cream.  Quite delicious!!