Yesterday was our first official day eating primal style although we really do pretty much eat this way most nights anyway. We typically don’t eat pasta, rarely have bread and only occassionally have rice so it’s really not much of a shift for us.
What was a shift for me was looking up recipes with no consideration given at all to the fat and calories. I started with this recipe for Coconut Shrimp and quite honestly I have never, in my life, cooked with coconut. FATT-E-NING amirite? The primal eating style not only allows cooking with coconut, but recommends it. Yowza.
I would absolutely try this recipe as written (with shrimp, der) but we had a couple of boneless, skinless chicken breasts in the fridge that had to be eaten, so I tried it with chicken and it was great. Here are the non-meat ingredients, taken from the page linked above:
- 1 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
- 1/2 cup almond flour
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2 eggs
- 1/4 – 1 cup organic virgin coconut oil for frying
(Coconut flakes AND coconut OIL OMG).
A couple of things:
- For two breasts (which I pounded out to flatten), I ended up with a little too much of the coconut/almond flour mixture.
- One egg would have been enough.
- I couldn’t find almond flour so I bought crushed (REALLY crushed) almonds. I’m not sure if there’s even a difference, but it worked just fine.
- I didn’t add the salt. I actually just forgot.
- There is no way, NO WAY, I used anywhere near a cup of the coconut oil. I purchased the oil for the first time yesterday and it came in a tub I found in the refrigerated section, so it was solid in the tub. I threw it in the pan about a teaspoon at a time and figure I used about three teaspoons.
The chicken browned up really quickly, but given that I never fry anything, I forgot that it would brown before it was fully cooked and the spinach was done and I was all “ACK NOW WHAT?” so I threw it in the oven at 350 for about 10 minutes and it may have been a tad overdone, but it was still really (REALLY) good.
As a side dish, I wanted to make spinach. I LOVE SPINACH a whole lot and I had it in my head to try something gomae’ish, but warm. Believe it or not, I actually had tahini in the cupboard (I think I once had an illusion I would make homemade humous HAHAHA YA RIGHT that happened).
I found this recipe for Spinach with Tahini – doesn’t get much easier than that. And yet I overcooked it when I misjudged the time it would take to fry+bake the chicken. That is your first warning about the picture I’m about to post. The second is that it’s just a shitty picture.
I told Andrew that I wanted to take a picture of our dinner, but he was starving, dinner was late, I am not yet a “quick on my feet” photographer and the lightening in the kitchen is horrible for photography (“photo-graph-ee”) apparently, so long story short, the photo sucks.
But, here it is: Coconut Chicken with Sesame Spinach (pretend the spinach is in focus, please).
I’ve just realized this theme doesn’t work super well with photos – it re-sizes them in a weird way, so I have to make them quite small. Time for a new theme, perhaps…
1. That looks YUMMY.
2. I like spinach too, though only raw. But—I don’t think I’ve tried it cooked since childhood. I should give it another shot.
3. I have tahini in my cupboard for THAT EXACT REASON.
Although I generally love spinach in any way, shape or form, I didn’t LOVE this recipe, I have to admit. I prefer just to melt some butter in a pot and then thrown handfuls of spinach in and cook it down. And drown in salt. Try it! Mmmm.
Now I have a hankering for spinach salad. I have a recipe somewhere with a dressing made with bacon dripping OH GOD IT’S SO GOOD.