dinner Archives - Page 4 of 9 - A Calculated Whisk

Stuffed Avocados with Shrimp and Mango

May 5, 2016 By Becky 12 Comments

Stuffed avocados with shrimp and mango are simple, quick, and crave-worthy, especially when topped with a spicy jalapeño aioli!

I’m having a really hard time writing this post because there aren’t any fixings for these stuffed avocados left, and I’m craving them so badly. They check all the boxes for my top practical considerations because they’re healthy, fast, easy, and filling. And they check all my flavor and texture boxes because they’re creamy, savory, spicy, and sweet with a little bit of crunch from the scallions. They’re pretty much all I’ve wanted for dinner ever since I first dreamed them up.

My fiancé Ben loves these, too. He’s not too hard to please with food because he’ll eat almost anything besides sweet potatoes or cooked apples (I know, right?), but it’s rare that he gets super excited about a food.

However, after the first time we had these stuffed avocados with shrimp and mango, he made a point of telling me twice that he really liked them. (And in case you don’t know Ben, “I really liked those” is Ben-speak for “Those are the best things I’ve ever tasted!”) He hasn’t said so many good things about one of my recipes since last time I made the millionaire’s shortbread from Paleo Planet.

The premise for this dish is simple: it’s an avocado boat stuffed with a shrimp and mango filling accented with scallions and topped with an easy jalapeño aioli. The aioli is creamy, heart-healthy and delicious thanks to its main ingredient: avocado oil mayo from Primal Kitchen, which I buy from Thrive Market (affiliate link–I earn from qualifying purchases). It has only a handful of wholesome ingredients: avocado oil, cage-free, organic eggs, organic vinegar, salt, and rosemary extract. No sugar or canola oil in sight!

It’s kind of weird for me to be whipping up a mayonnaise-based sauce because I’ve never been a fan of mayo, but this one is so good and unlocks so many epic paleo sauce possibilities. Since I try to limit my dairy intake and I’m allergic to coconut, there are so many creamy sauces out there that just don’t work for me.

I first used this avocado oil mayo last year in an awesome green goddess dressing, and I’ve been hooked ever since. This jalapeño aioli is even better because it’s nice and spicy, and in addition to being great with these stuffed avocados with shrimp it’s also epic with baked sweet potato fries.

Thai Basil Noodles with Beef (Drunken Noodles)

May 2, 2016 By Becky 16 Comments

Who needs takeout when you can make your own gluten-free Thai basil noodles with beef in less than 30 minutes?

How do you feel about fat noodles? My love for them runs pretty deep. I was a fan of pad thai when I first tried it and I still think it’s really tasty, but the minute I took my first bite of pad see ew I switched camps.

Something about those wide, flat rice noodles really does it for me. And lately, with my growing love for spicy food, thai basil noodles (otherwise known as drunken noodles or pad ki mao) have become my new favorite.

I made these thai basil noodles with store-bought rice noodles, but if you don’t eat rice, I’ve got a solution for you. Check out my paleo pad see ew recipe, which uses homemade tapioca flour crepes cut into strips instead of noodles. They’re really delicious and a great stand-in for rice noodles if you’re avoiding all grains. Add the homemade noodles at the end of step 4 below, after the eggs are scrambled in–they’re soft to begin with so they don’t need much time cooking with the rest of the ingredients.

This thai basil noodles with beef recipe is quick and weeknight-friendly, which is what I’m all about lately since things are so busy at my day job. I see kids starting at 8:30 in the morning until 6 or 6:30 in the evening, and since they’re half-hour appointments and I’m booked pretty much back to back, I often see 16 or 17 different children in one day.

In fact, I almost feel like I’m leading a double life: from Monday to Thursday when I work, my brain is filled to the brim with speech and language therapy thoughts and what else I need to be doing to help all of my kids. And from Friday to Sunday it’s food, photos, more food, and more photos, with a little bit of writing sprinkled in.

When I get home at the end of a work day, I can barely bring myself to preheat an oven or make anything that takes longer than half an hour. (I also can barely stay up past 9 pm. Is that normal for someone who’s thirty? I can’t even keep my eyes open long enough to watch Game of Thrones when it’s actually on! Please tell me I’m not alone here.)

Mole-Spiced Hanger Steak with Strawberry-Avocado Salsa

April 18, 2016 By Becky 6 Comments

Hanger steak is seasoned with an irresistible mole-inspired dry rub with a hint of chocolate and served with a refreshing strawberry-avocado salsa. Thank you so much to ButcherBox for sending me grass-fed meat for this post!

Wouldn’t you be thrilled if a giant box with of a wide variety of cuts of grass-fed meat showed up at your door, just chilling over some dry ice and waiting for you to defrost as you please and get creative in the kitchen? I think any paleo or real-food cook would love it, and that’s why I’m so excited about ButcherBox.

ButcherBox is a grass-fed meat subscription service that carefully curates a unique selection of cuts each month and sends them straight to your door, complete with informative cards showing where each cut comes from, explaining how to best prepare it, and detailing a delicious recipe to try with each one. I shared about my first box and what I did with it in this slow-cooker Cuban short ribs post, and now I’m sharing a delicious hanger steak recipe along with some info on my second box. All the meat I’ve eaten from ButcherBox has been exceptional, with such good taste and texture that it’s hard to believe it was ever frozen.

This month’s box contained hanger steak, four ribeye steaks, two pounds of ground beef, thinly sliced beef (perfect for stir-frying or pho), and a Scotch roast, and paleo bacon (if you’re interested in paleo bacon, too, you can get a package of it for free when you buy your first ButcherBox right here!). I was especially excited about the hanger steak because it’s so flavorful and so hard to find–it’s also known as butcher’s steak because butchers often keep it for themselves instead of selling it.

When I started thinking about how to season the steak, mole came to mind. Mole is an amazing and complicated Mexican sauce that’s usually served with chicken, and I’ve loved it ever since one of my students’ mothers first brought me a plate of it when I was teaching in Houston. I have a great recipe for chicken drumsticks with mole poblano in Paleo Planet, but I usually save it for special occasions because there are so many ingredients and it takes a while to make. I’ve really been craving the taste of mole lately, though, so I decided to use some of its main ingredients in a simple and easy-to-make dry rub.

Shrimp Burgers with Lemon Caper Relish

March 15, 2016 By Becky 12 Comments

These paleo shrimp burgers are a delicious and fun alternative to regular burgers, and are especially tasty on a sweet potato “bun”with lemon caper relish.

Three years ago Ben and I went to Jamaica and fell in love with the island’s food, weather, and laid-back attitude. (You can read about our trip here and here–but be warned that there are some bready photos, though, since that was before I discovered paleo. There are also crocodiles and caves!) One of the dishes I really enjoyed was a conch burger. It’s a seafood burger made with the succulent meat from conchs, which are giant marine snails. They’re hard to come by here in Chattanooga and I wasn’t sure how many of you would be excited about a snail burger, so I made shrimp burgers instead.

I’ve actually been working on this recipe on and off for over a year. First I had to perfect the burgers themselves. While all my attempts were delicious, I made multiple versions last year that completely fell apart when I tried to flip them. I ended up serving Ben and myself what was basically a pile of shrimp hash. It tasted so good that I almost leaned into it and changed the whole concept of the recipe, but in the end I really had my heart set on these being burgers, so I persevered.

I took a few months off because I was tired of defrosting shrimp and removing their tails. It really isn’t that hard, but after a while it can be a pain. Once it didn’t seem daunting anymore I jumped back in, and finally discovered the two keys to making sure these burgers stick together. First, you need to use a food processor to blend the ingredients, and second, the patties need to chill in the fridge for a bit before you cook them (that key tip is from America’s Test Kitchen via The Frugal Girl).

Paleo Chicken Piccata with Asparagus

February 29, 2016 By Becky 10 Comments

This paleo chicken piccata is an easy, quick, and super flavorful weeknight dinner. Adding asparagus makes the already delicious combo of chicken, lemon, and capers even tastier and more nutritious.

Do you see those little green leaves gracing the top of this paleo chicken piccata? Can you guess what they are?

If you guessed parsley I can see why, but they’re actually carrot tops. Yup, as in the lengthy greens that sometimes come with a bunch of carrots, making the whole shebang almost impossible to fit into one of those little produce bags at the grocery store (I’m not the only one who has trouble with that, right?!).

I’m not a big fan of parsley. While it looks nice as a garnish, I often find its flavor too assertive, and sometimes I can barely taste whatever is underneath. So when I was at the grocery store yesterday and they were out of organic parsley, my eyes landed on a gorgeous bunch of organic rainbow carrots with their pristine, frilly greens still attached. I had no particular plan for the carrots, but I knew exactly what I’d do with the greens: chop them up and sprinkle them all over this dish. I actually just snipped them with kitchen shears, which was much easier than chopping, and their delicate flavor was perfect here. This paleo chicken piccata is so flavorful already from the capers, lemons, and ghee that it doesn’t need an assertive herb on top. (This garnish won’t use up all of your carrot tops, but you can use the rest to make carrot top-kale pesto! It’s amazing. Of course, you can also just use parsley here if you like it more than I do.)

That’s probably enough about the garnish, though–let’s talk about the paleo chicken piccata itself. This dish is so easy to make. Basically we’re pounding out chicken cutlets to make sure they’re nice and thin, dipping them in some seasoned tapioca flour, and pan-frying them in ghee and olive oil until they’re golden brown. Next we’re quickly steam-sautéing some asparagus in the same pan and making a quick sauce with chicken stock, lemon juice, capers, and a little more ghee or butter. That’s it, and dinner is served! I sometimes find chicken piccata too lemony, but the asparagus and ghee add some richer, earthier flavors here so that the balance of tart and savory tastes is just perfect.

Slow-Cooker Cuban Short Ribs

February 19, 2016 By Becky 20 Comments

These slow-cooker Cuban short ribs are rubbed with an irresistible mojo, cooked to fall-apart perfection, and then served with fried green plantains, rice, and avocado. Thank you so much to ButcherBox for sending me a box of amazing grass-fed meat for this post!

Here’s part three of my ongoing love letter to short ribs, which will forever be my favorite cut of beef (you can see part one, kratiem prik thai short ribs, here, and part two, slow-cooker short ribs, here). Up until a couple of years ago, I assumed short ribs were a cut of pork, perhaps a less lengthy version of spareribs, and had never thought to give them a try. As soon as I did, I was all in. Slow-cooked short ribs are beef at its very best: meltingly tender morsels with little crunchy bits, all of which are infused with spot-on savory flavor. I do love a good steak, but I’d choose short ribs instead any day of the week, and these slow-cooker Cuban short ribs are my new absolute favorite.

That’s why I was so excited to find short ribs included in the box of grass-fed meat I got from ButcherBox, a new company that delivers carefully curated boxes of meat straight to your door. I am beyond excited about their boxes, and really think you’ll love them. The mission of ButcherBox is to make grass-fed meat available to everyone, and they’ve taken all the work out of getting a wide selection of delicious and sustainably raised meats to cook with. You can choose how frequently you’d like a box delivered, and can also pick from the all-beef box, a beef & pork box, a beef & chicken box, or a mixed box containing all three. Each box contains 6-10 pounds of meat (enough for 15-20 individual meals at a portion size of 6-8 ounces per meal). The cuts are individually packed so it’s easy to defrost just one short rib or steak at a time or all of them, depending on your cooking plans.

Here’s what was in the all-beef box I got (the contents change from month to month, but always include two pounds of ground beef and several other cuts as well): two pounds of ground beef in one-pound packages, four boneless short ribs packaged individually (two pounds total), four top sirloin steaks packaged individually (about one and a half pounds total), and two pounds of stew beef. (Oh, and a package of sugar-free, Whole30-approved paleo bacon! If you order a box through this link, you’ll get a free package of paleo bacon, too!) The box also contains cards explaining what each cut of meat is and how to best prepare it, with a tried and true recipe using that cut on the other side.

Cider-Glazed Chicken with Roasted Cauliflower Rice

January 25, 2016 By Becky 20 Comments

This cider-glazed chicken with roasted cauliflower rice is an easy but gourmet paleo meal that comes together quickly. It’s also Whole30-compliant!

I’ve had a jug of local cider in the fridge since Christmas, and have been wanting to reduce it into some kind of sauce for a savory dish. The idea got stuck in my head right away, so even though I love to have a glass of cider on its own, I’ve pretty much just been saving it, biding my time until a great idea for something savory with cider sauce came along.

Serendipitously, I found the idea as soon as I started exploring Erin’s blog, The Spiffy Cookie, which was my assignment for this month’s Secret Recipe Club reveal. Erin has an index of all her gluten-free recipes, which made it really easy to find good candidates for me to adapt into paleo-friendly dishes. (I had to avert my eyes from all of her ridiculously good-looking desserts, but will be back to browse those once my Whole30 is over!) Before the gluten-free recipes page had even fully loaded, Erin’s cider-glazed chicken with browned-butter pecan rice caught my eye.

Pork Chops with Cranberry-Apple Compote (#30MinuteMondays)

January 11, 2016 By Becky 4 Comments

These paleo, Whole30-compliant pork chops with cranberry-apple compote are made for nights when you come home already hungry: they’re easy, satisfying, and fast. They can be ready in 30 minutes, and there’s a shortcut version that’s even faster!

I’m on Day 11 of my Whole30 and, at the risk of jinxing myself, it’s been smooth sailing so far! I’ve been drinking my coffee with homemade almond milk most days and occasionally making it into a chai ghee “latte” when I want something a little more indulgent.

I’ve gotten a little tired of having eggs for breakfast, but mixing in the occasional dinner for breakfast has helped make eggs seem appealing again the next day. And I’ve done a pretty good job of making big batches of meals like bacon and sweet potato chili and cracklin’ chicken so that I can have leftovers for the next day.

I’m not quite as on top of my meal planning game as I’d like to be, though, so there have been several nights when I left work already hungry and didn’t have any leftovers ready to just heat up when I got home. That’s where these seared pork chops with cranberry-apple compote come in.

This whole recipe takes less than thirty minutes, and there’s even an abridged version where the compote is stripped down to its most essential ingredient. That version is in the recipe notes and can be accomplished in 15 minutes flat if you work efficiently.

Since they’re coated in a delicious dry rub made from the spices pictured above, these pork chops are also great on their own. Ben always has his plain because he’s averse to the texture of cooked apples (I’m all about that because it means more compote for me!).

The dry rub gets smokiness and a little heat from the paprika and savory earthiness from the cumin and garlic. There’s also sea salt, pepper, and just a tiny bit of cinnamon as a nod to the apples that are in these pork chops’ future.

Simple Roast Chicken with Carrot Top-Kale Pesto

November 20, 2015 By Becky 12 Comments

This simple roast chicken with carrot top-kale pesto is paleo, gluten free, Whole 30 compliant, and just the thing for chilly weekends.

Meet my new favorite weekend tradition: simple roast chicken with carrot top-kale pesto.

The routine goes like this: buy a local, free-range chicken and some fresh produce on Friday, roast the chicken with root vegetables and blend the greens into a pesto on Saturday, and make homemade chicken stock on Sunday. (Of course, you can start the routine any day of the week–that’s just what works best for me since I’m at work all day Monday through Thursday.)

I’ve been carrying out this roast chicken tradition pretty much every other weekend. I love every part of the process: buying what I need at the farmers market, roasting the chicken and vegetables, preparing the pesto, making the broth, and of course, eating what I’ve made (and sometimes even sharing it).

Since moving down to Tennessee and joining a winter CSA from Big Sycamore Farm, I’ve become even more obsessed with cooking with local ingredients and trying all different kinds of vegetables. So when I got a gorgeous bunch of carrots with all their vibrant greens still attached, I was determined to use the tops. I knew I’d read about carrot top pesto somewhere, and a quick search reminded me that the recipe is from Diane Morgan’s cookbook Roots (and is also available online via Culinate).

Roasted Rack of Lamb with Blueberry Sauce

November 11, 2015 By Becky 6 Comments

This post is sponsored by the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council in collaboration with Honest Cooking.

I’m a total berry fanatic, and I especially love blueberries. Whenever I go grocery shopping, I troll the produce section to see if fresh blueberries are on sale, and often end up buying them even when they’re not. I’m a fan of frozen blueberries, too, but until recently, I’d only used them in smoothies and desserts (this blueberry buttermilk ice cream being my all-time favorite).

When the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council asked me to create a savory recipe featuring frozen blueberries, I was almost instantly inspired to create this very dish: a simple roasted rack of lamb with an easy but vibrant sauce made with blueberries and crème fraîche. Blueberries pair really well with tart ingredients like lemon juice, buttermilk, and crème fraîche, and with my recently discovered love of lamb, putting blueberries, crème fraîche, and lamb together seemed like a no-brainer.

Chicken Apple Sausage with Kale and Roasted Grapes

October 23, 2015 By Becky 2 Comments

Today I’m sharing a quick and delicious fall recipe for chicken apple sausage with kale, spring onions, and roasted grapes right here on my friend Lauren’s site, Wicked Spatula. It’s a quick but gourmet paleo meal that hits all the right notes with sweet and savory sausage, juicy grapes roasted with shallots, hearty kale, and lightly charred spring onions on top. I like this just as much for breakfast as for lunch or dinner, and as a bonus it’s dairy free and Whole30-compliant.

We’re doing a guest post swap, so be sure to check out her paleo chocolate pumpkins muffins here on my site, too! Get the recipe for chicken apple sausage with kale, spring onions, and roasted grapes–>

Spiced Beef and Sweet Potato Bowls with Crispy Eggs #30MinuteMondays

September 22, 2015 By Becky 10 Comments

Spiced beef and sweet potato bowls with crispy eggs, fresh figs, and goat cheese: a unique and satisfying grain-free breakfast or dinner in less than 30 minutes.

This may seem like a strange combination of foods, but don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it. This quick spiced beef with sweet potatoes is delicious all on its own, but adding a crispy egg, a few fresh figs, and a generous dollop of goat cheese kicks things up several levels.

The spiced beef and sweet potatoes is a fast, pared-down version of my bacon and sweet potato chili, with a few slightly more exotic spices added in. Microwaving the sweet potato chunks for a few minutes while the meat is browning saves times and ensures even cooking. Coriander, turmeric, cardamom, and allspice give the beef and sweet potatoes just the right amount of fragrance and spice.

In case you haven’t had the pleasure of indulging in a crispy egg, let me sell you on it. It has perfectly cooked whites, a runny yolk, and irresistible crunchy browned lacy bits all around the edges.