recipes

Yeah, it's my party and I get to be a dessert-making paleo deviant if I want to. For my birthday I decided to make some ice cream from The Ice Dream Cookbook. I first heard about this cookbook on The Healthy Cooking Coach, a blog by chef Rachel Albert-Matesz. Her husband Don writes another excellent blog called Primal Wisdom.

Yes, I know paleolithic humans didn't have ice cream, but sometimes we need to indulge. When I started doing paleo I tried a handful of paleo dessert recipes, with uniformly terrible results. It mostly involved dumping a bag of $12 nut flour in with some eggs and a pitiful amount of honey. The results were uniformly like insipid heavy omelettes. Maybe I just can't follow recipes to save my life. That coupled with the fact that I'm not exactly the best photographer in the world contribute to me posting relatively little on the subject.

But I tried Ice Dream and it's very good and while it might not be perfect, for those of us with non-paleo family and friends, it's better than serving up some Haagan Daaz. The basic idea is it's coconut milk made creamy and custardy with gelatin or agar and then sweetened with a variety of sweetener options coupled with stevia.

I hadn't liked stevia before this. Stevia, for the uninitiated, is a non-caloric sweetner made from the leaves of a shrub. It's sweet....but it also has a bit of a bitter aftertaste, especially to a super-taster like me. By itself, it tastes kind of horrible to me. But now that I've made some of the recipes from the Ice Dream cookbook I realize the secret it to pair it with small amounts of more delicious sweet things and other strong flavors. I've only made a few flavors from the book, but mango was one of the best. I couldn't taste the stevia at all.

The other sweeteners you pair stevia with are fruit, honey, maple syrup, or the less-preferable agave (because it's basically HFCS and has now been banished from the health foodie community). Yes, that does mean that there are carbs, but nearly half of commercial coconut milk ice creams and without nasty additives like carraggean.

A great thing about this dessert for me at least is that it's really satisfying. I didn't feel the need to eat much. It's sweet enough to be a birthday treat, but not too sweet.

You can try some of the recipes and see some luscious photos at Yasmeen Health Nut and Diet, Dessert, and Dogs.

Yesterday I face two cooking fears: small fish and frying. I was at the Union Square Farmer's market with a paleo friend yesterday. At the Blue Moon fishery booth I was about to get some sort of inoffensive seafood, maybe scallops. But then I saw my friend order something that was an unappetizing pinkish grey. It was monkfish liver. Not to be outdone in the adventurous eating department, I looked for something slightly more appetizing. My eyes alighted on a barrel of small iridescent blue fish with pearly eggs spilling out of their guts.

"What are those?" I asked. The fisherman answered "sparing." I had no idea what that was, but I ordered half a pound. It was a mere $2, but instantly I felt regret. What would I do with those? I'd never even heard of sparing.

Apparently they are smelt. Which I'd heard of, but never tasted. When I visited Madrid last year I had many fresh delicious sardines and anchovies, which I found much tastier than the canned varieties, but since then I haven't eaten many tiny fish. 

I didn't eat fish until I was 18 or so and didn't cook it until I was 19. My family always ate fish, but I thought it was absolutely disgusting and only fit for cats. I forced myself to eat fish when I went paleo because of the convincing literature on the health benefits. I definitely didn't like it and pretty much did my best to drown it in heavily-spiced sauces. Since then I've tried different types of fish slowly and always with trepidation. I've fallen in love with shellfish, but my relationship with oily fish is a little less stable. I usually try fish for the first time at restaurants, because at least they sort of know what they are doing...right?

Either way, I was stuck with these smelt and wasn't about to waste them. According to my Google searches...eating the whole thing was recommended. Pretty scary...the thought of eyeballs and brains and ugh.

Per some tips on paleohacks, I washed and dried the smelt, then dipped then in egg, and then in a mixture of coconut flour, almond meal, and my favorite spices. I'm pretty cautious about frying, but a good method I've found is just to use lots of heat, but protect yourself with a lid from the popping oil. I fried the fish in a couple of tablespoons of ghee until they were crispy. Then I seasoned then with a dash of salt and a pinch of lime.

And I ate them. I'd never eaten a whole entire fish before, but these were delicious. I totally forgot about eyeballs and other nasty bits. They were crispy and mild. I dipped some in my delicious homemade mayo and they were perfect. It's great to add another healthy, cheap, and fairly easy food to my recipe box!