Most cooks will know about Five Spice Powder, that highly aromatic spice-blend used in many Chinese dishes. What is less well known, however, is that Indian cuisine also has a spice-blend known as "Five Spices" - Panch Phoron. One important thing to note about Panch Phoron - right at the start of cooking it must…
I'll have to be brief here, because as Björn and Benny so eloquently put it - "Day is dawning, and I must go..." Soon I'll be packing my case, and setting off on the long walk to the station, to catch a fast train, bound for London, the airport, and ultimately, the Home Kitchen. This…
Yet another dish that could easily do the business as a poster child for Paleo. Jam-packed with taste, supernaturally good for you, and yet ready in a jiffy, its one potential drawback is the cost of the main ingredient, pushing it into a "weekend special" slot. It's that good, there's one thing I know you…
The Paleovirtus womenfolk were having steaks. I'd had a largish lunch, and couldn't quite see myself managing a whole lump of beef. I wanted a salad, but something with a bit of body behind it, if you follow. I came up with this combo more or less on the fly. Salty and sweet, chewy yet…
Another great Friday Night dish, this - a one-pan special perfect for those evenings when you have the luxury of a bit of extra time to spare. Take last night, for instance. I strung the cooking of this meal out over two very lazy hours, punctuated by tea, a collection of 70s standards on the phone,…
"What, another spinach based salad? You posted a spinach salad recipe only yesterday, Keith!" Yes. Yes I did. Regular readers, however, may recall how much I deplore waste, and I had the other half of a pack of spinach sat in the fridge looking for a dish to make its home. I also had the remains of…
I once worked on a godforsaken industrial estate with all the atmosphere of a Jovian moon. The catering facilities were, at best, rudimentary and decidedly inferior, unless you had a thing about compressed gristle, margarine, and the kind of quadruple-processed carbohydrates a starving vulture would have turned his beak up at. This meant that if…
Mrs. Paleovirtus happened across these seaweed noodles in a Chinese supermarket when we were in Stockholm recently. We were doing the rounds, searching for a new gaiwan, when she spotted these noodles due to the packaging proudly boasting their meagre 2% carbohydrate content - a perfect match for her LCHF regime, and, after checking the…
One of my all-time favourite "Peanuts" cartoons features poor old Snoopy looking utterly crestfallen. “It’s hard to eat dog food", he says, "when your mouth’s all set for Shrimp Louie”. My cat can totally sympathize with the Beagle. This dish drives him to distraction. Once the chicken is out of the fridge, he transforms like…
A Happy New Year to one and all! If you dabble in intoxicating substances, I sincerely hope that right now it doesn't feel as though your eyeballs are trying to unilaterally declare independence, and tunnel out of the back of your skull. Shopping for our New Year's Eve dinner was not an overwhelmingly pleasant experience. You…
Every time I eat this dish, as I gaze down at my empty bowl, with a contented smile on my face and a pleasantly full stomach, I give thanks to the Great Shaman for bringing the unbridled joy of zucchini pasta in to my life. For is it not written thus... "Guard thee well against…
Regular readers of this blog might have come to the conclusion that over at Château Paleovirtus we quite like Indian food. Bit of an understatement, actually, that. We flipping well adore Indian food! We also firmly believe that you can have too much of a good thing. Chalk one up for being brought up Lutheran…
This was yet another one of those ad hoc culinary experiments. This one came about because both Mrs. Paleovirtus and I had a sudden, irrational, craving for seafood. We also wanted something quick. That seemed to suggest doing something with pre-cooked fish. No problem there, mon ami - our local food emporium has a series of…
This simple side salad goes supremely well with virtually any Indian dish you care to name. Many, many variations exist around the central theme of cucumber, onion, tomato, herb, and acid. There's also a sub-debate about the inclusion of finely chopped fresh green chillies, too, not to mention potential controversy when you even hint at introducing…
Sometimes, when you're cooking for a family, there are no "one size fits all" options. The head might not necessarily want to cook 2 separate meals, but the stomach has other plans. Last night was such an occasion. Mrs. Paleovirtus and Paleovirtus Jr. were both in the mood for a slab of entrecôte. I, however,…
The title says it all, really. Cucumbers are superb flavour sponges, that seem to have a made-in-heaven affinity with an acidic medium. In Northern England, for example, we often make a cucumber and onion relish by very thinly slicing those ingredients, and letting them sit in a bowl of malt vinegar for a good, long…
One of the things I love about Paleo is the way that once you have your head around the idea that the old rule book has been, in the words of Douglas Adams, "buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters" , anything goes. Eat what you like, when you like. Chicken…
This really is my kind of starter. It honestly doesn't get a great deal tastier or easier than this. The one drawback is that they are so good, it's sinfully easy to eat too many of them... Ingredients Medjool dates Pecan nut halves Method With a very sharp, small vegetable knife, carefully make a…
Menu planning can be a bit of a conundrum, and no mistake. Sometimes it feels as though you are trying to hammer too many square pegs into too few round holes. Everyone wants this, but no-one wants that. When exactly does "compromise" turn into "fudge"? In the end, sacrifices have to be made for the…
As with my earlier post about Sesame Seed Crusted Steaks, this is another recipe, albeit somewhat tweaked, from the book that Mrs. Paleovirtus got as a birthday present from Paleovirtus Jr, detailing many and varied ways of doing wonderful things to a good old slab of cow. It uses a garlic and herb jacked vinaigrette to marinate…
