#30MinuteMondays Archives - Page 3 of 3

Spiced Beef and Sweet Potato Bowls with Crispy Eggs

September 22, 2015 By Becky 10 Comments

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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.

Lebanese Lemon Chicken #30MinuteMondays

September 14, 2015 By Becky 42 Comments

Fast and flavorful Lebanese lemon chicken with shallots, fresh herbs,
and a touch of turmeric–a comforting paleo dinner for fall.

There was a touch of fall in the air this weekend, especially in the early mornings. So, even though the highs will be in the 80s all next week, I’ve decided it’s time for fall comfort food. And this Lebanese lemon chicken fits the bill exactly. The flavors of lemon, rosemary and thyme hint at cooler weather, but the dish is fast enough not to heat up your entire house if the temperatures outside are still hot.

This recipe is inspired by the Lebanese chicken dish I had for lunch from the hot bar at Whole Foods last week. I don’t do well if I grocery shop hungry, so when I arrive at the store not totally full, I get something to eat from the prepared foods section and sit down and eat it before doing my shopping. Whole Foods’ version of this dish was made with bone-in, skin-on chicken, and also had potatoes, olives, and a few other ingredients. I loved the overall taste of the recipe, but wanted to simplify it a little.

Grilled Pork Chops and Peaches

September 8, 2015 By Becky 4 Comments

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Grilled Pork Chops and Peaches #30MinuteMondays | acalculatedwhisk.com

You’re less than 30 minutes away from this healthy paleo meal of spice-rubbed pork chops and grilled peaches served with bitter greens and avocado.

How was your weekend? Whether or not it was a long one, I hope it included lots of time spent doing your favorite things. Mine did: I spent time cooking, baking, swimming, sleeping in, and eating burgers. I couldn’t have asked for much more!

It’s been about two weeks since Ben and I moved to Chattanooga, and I’m so happy to be here. I’ve only had three full days of work so far, so it’s all felt a bit like a giant vacation. We’re staying with my future sister-in-law and her husband and my three future nieces, and they are all so much fun. The girls are eight, six, and three years old, and make me want to have my own children YESTERDAY. They love to help me cook, which is a welcome change since so often I’m alone in the kitchen.

On Friday we made chocolate pudding. I’d made the recipe before (I just substitute tapioca flour for the cornstarch to make it grain-free) and knew it only made 6 servings, but figured we could stretch it to feed 7, 3 of whom are not full grown. Right when the girls and I had finished the pudding and were looking for cute little cups to put it in, Ben announced that his parents and brother would also be joining us for dinner. That raised the total count to 10.

Faced with the fear of not enough dessert, the girls suggested another batch of these brownies (similar recipe here–omit the cinnamon and cayenne and add a handful of chocolate chips for a kid-friendly, double chocolate version). I agreed. After baking the brownies, we spread our meager stash of chocolate pudding on top like frosting, added a layer of whipped cream, and sprinkled some more chocolate chips on top for good measure. The result was something so decadent that the eight year-old, who prides herself on usually being able to eat several servings of dessert, was satisfied after just one. When it follows the fear of not enough dessert, too much dessert is a wonderful thing indeed! The pudding brownies lasted for days in the fridge and made excellent snacks throughout the weekend.

Blistered Okra with Garlic and Cumin

August 31, 2015 By Becky 6 Comments

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

blistered okra with cumin and garlic 1 v3

This blistered okra with garlic and cumin is much healthier than fried okra

but just as addictive! It’s also paleo, gluten-free, and vegan.

How do you feel about okra? I always hated it in gumbo and other gummy preparations as a kid, but quickly fell in love with fried okra. Last year I even made a paleo version of fried okra that’s really good, but it’s not super quick to make.

My love for okra eventually expanded to include bhindi masala, an Indian curry where the okra is cooked with plenty of ginger, garlic, onion, and tomato, and there’s a recipe for that in my cookbook. While delicious, bhindi masala also takes a little time to make.

Blistered Okra with Garlic and Cumin #30MinuteMondays | acalculatedwhisk.com

When I scored some really beautiful okra at the farmers’ market, I wanted to cook it quickly in a way that would highlight its intrinsic flavor while minimizing its intrinsic gumminess. A little research indicated that cooking okra briefly over relatively high heat would be most likely to achieve those results.

I was so happy with how this recipe turned out! Slicing the okra lengthwise provides a nice surface for browning while preserving the attractive silhouette of the pods. (Did you know okra is also known as lady fingers? Move on over, cookies whose sole purpose is to make tiramisu!) The recipe starts with getting a cast iron skillet nice and hot, then adding butter or oil. Whole cumin seeds, garlic cloves, and dried chiles are added next, infusing the cooking fat with savory and subtly spiced flavor and a gentle, warming heat. The okra are added next and cooked for about ten minutes, turning a few times, until nice and browned. Add a hefty sprinkle of flaky sea salt and that’s it! Non-fried okra that you won’t be able to stop eating.

Curry Butter Shrimp

August 19, 2015 By Becky 34 Comments

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Curry Butter Shrimp | acalculatedwhisk.com

An easy and flavorful meal made from pantry staples, curry butter shrimp

takes ten minutes to make and is gluten-free and paleo-friendly.

I’ve kind of been boycotting grocery stores. Weekend before last I went to Florida for a wedding, and since getting back I have not set foot in one. I finished up my last week of my last internship for graduate school this past Friday, we’re getting ready to move down to Chattanooga this coming weekend, and I’m exhausted. Ben has been kind enough to pick up essentials like coffee, eggs, fruit, and bacon for us, but the eggs ran out yesterday.

What’s a girl to do without any eggs for breakfast and with a long day of packing ahead of her? The answer is definitely not grocery shopping. The answer is curry butter shrimp! Yes, I ate this at ten in the morning. No, I have no regrets. #dinnerforbreakfast may not be mainstream yet, but just you wait and see!

I didn’t do a 30 Minute Mondays post yesterday because I wanted to announce my cookbook (Paleo Planet is available for pre-order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and indie bookstores near you!). This is even better, though, because this is like 10 Minute Wednesday–not as alliterative, but much faster. Not counting the rice or cauliflower rice, this meal comes together in just ten minutes. (And, true confession, I didn’t even make this rice. It’s left over from the Indian food we ordered last night.)

Curry butter shrimp is a flavorful pantry recipe that requires almost no chopping (except for the cilantro–but if you’re really anti-chop you could just break that up into little sprigs). Melted butter or ghee is mixed with Thai curry paste to form a fragrant sauce for cooking the shrimp. A tiny bit of maple syrup and fish sauce add just enough sweetness and umami to complement the rich butter and spicy curry.

Pesto Shrimp Bake with Squash and Tomatoes

August 3, 2015 By Becky 25 Comments

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Pesto Shrimp Bake with Squash and Tomatoes #30MinuteMondays | acalculatedwhisk.com

I know this is a totally blasphemous thing to say in the food blogging world, especially in the middle of summer, but I’m really not a fan of tomatoes. They’ve grown on me since I was a kid, when I wouldn’t touch foods with them in it (including pizza, ketchup, and most of all anything involving raw or sundried tomatoes). I now really enjoy a good tomato sauce (like this bolognese or this garlic tomato sauce) and I’ll dip into a fancy ketchup if it’s got curry mixed in or something, but the appeal of raw tomatoes still largely eludes me.

My best experience so far has been with a couple of memorable caprese salads, including one at dbar, one of my favorite Boston restaurants, which is conveniently located just blocks from our apartment. A caprese salad with housemade mozzarella and tomatoes and basil from their rooftop garden was on the specials menu, and my mom and I had to try it. And, surprisingly enough, I didn’t hate the raw tomatoes.

Caramelized Salmon with Basil Chile Oil and Pickled Vegetables

July 20, 2015 By Becky 38 Comments

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Caramelized Salmon with Basil Chile Oil and Pickled Vegetables #30MinuteMondays | acalculatedwhisk.com

Broiled salmon, basil chile oil, and quick-pickled summer vegetables

team up for a fast and fresh paleo dinner with tons of flavor.

As a recent salmon convert, I’m still a little bit surprised every time I bite into a piece of salmon and find that it’s totally delicious.

For so long the strange pink hue of salmon turned me off, but now I can’t get enough. My favorite way to prepare salmon is under the broiler, where it cooks in less than ten minutes flat. I love how the top of the fish gets nicely browned and even a little bit crispy (especially here, with the help of a sprinkling of maple sugar) while the inside remains perfectly tender. This caramelized salmon is inspired by a recipe from Lindsay of Pinch of Yum and it’s SO good.

Grilled Shrimp Skewers with Creamy Sesame Slaw

July 13, 2015 By Becky 8 Comments

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Grilled Shrimp Skewers with Creamy Sesame Slaw | acalculatedwhisk.com #30MinuteMondays

Quick and easy grilled shrimp skewers, creamy sesame slaw, and ripe avocado get together to form the perfect paleo summertime meal.

I know it’s been quiet on the blog this past week, but I’m back with another delicious and fast recipe for 30 Minute Mondays! You can grill or broil these shrimp skewers, and the vegetables don’t need cooking. That means if you grill outdoors, you can avoid heating up your kitchen and still end up with a delicious and balanced meal. That’s what summer is all about, right?

My fiancé and I have been down in Chattanooga for the past few days, checking out jobs, houses, and apartments. Even though I grew up in Boston, I’ve always felt like I’m a Southern girl at heart due to my mom’s Texas roots and all the time I’ve spent down there, so I’m really excited that we’re moving to Tennessee next month. I’m almost done with graduate school, and after we move I’ll get to start my job as a speech-language pathologist working with kids of all ages (and of course, blogging in the evenings and on weekends). I can’t wait!

Rainbow Salad with Grilled Chicken and Raspberry Walnut Dressing

July 6, 2015 By Becky 16 Comments

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Rainbow Salad with Grilled Chicken and Raspberry Walnut Dressing #30MinuteMondays | acalculatedwhisk.com

All the colors of the rainbow are represented in this quick paleo salad with a creamy, dairy-free raspberry walnut dressing.

I’ve been wanting to make a rainbow salad for a while now, but this seemed like an especially opportune moment. Summer produce is everywhere in all its resplendent hues, and more Americans are able to get married than ever before. Let’s celebrate with this salad!

This healthy salad has pretty much all the colors of the rainbow (if you kind of merge indigo and violet together) plus pink. Pink is my favorite color and it’s not really fair that it’s not a part of the official rainbow, so I made sure it was included by making a nice pink dressing. Despite how creamy it looks, the dressing is dairy-free–the creaminess comes from the walnuts and shallots, and the color is thanks to the raspberries. It’s inspired by the creamy shallot dressing from my pan-seared chicken, orange, and walnut salad, but this one’s even better because it’s pink.

Roasted Shrimp and Asparagus with Green Goddess Dressing

June 29, 2015 By Becky 10 Comments

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Roasted Shrimp & Asparagus with Green Goddess Dressing (Paleo) | acalculatedwhisk.com #30minuteMondays

Succulent roasted shrimp and asparagus are served with a tangy garlic scape green goddess dressing for an easy, 30-minute paleo dinner that’s also Whole30-compliant.

I’m kind of mad at myself because I missed the boat on ramps this year. At the photography workshop I went to in May we ate them at almost every meal (there’s a picture of them in this post), and when I got home I vowed to track some down so I could cook with them myself for the first time. However, I’m a lazy late-evening grocery shopper and there were never any ramps left. Before long, their short season had ended.

You’ll be relieved to hear that I am NOT missing out on garlic scapes.

While ramps are their own kind of plant and are usually foraged wild (hence their limited availability), garlic scapes are the flowering stalks of garlic plants that farmers cut off so the plant’s energy can be fully devoted to the bulb forming below. Garlic scapes are cool looking (see evidence above) and I like their name: it sounds like they’ve been trying to escape from the head of garlic, which is pretty much what they actually do.

Garlic scapes are milder than regular garlic with some fresher, grassier notes to their flavor–kind of like a cross between garlic, scallions, and chives. Here I used them to make a green goddess dressing with some fresh herbs and Primal Kitchen’s avocado oil mayo, which I just tried for the first time. I’m not a mayo person at all so I don’t foresee myself ever eating it straight up, but once some other flavors are mixed in to create a dressing or aioli, I can usually hop on board. (If you haven’t seen garlic scapes at your local market, don’t worry. You can substitute scallions and a clove of regular old garlic.)

Burmese Chile Prawns with Cucumber and Avocado Salad

March 23, 2015 By Becky 24 Comments

Burmese Chile Prawns with Cucumber & Avocado Salad--Easy, 30-minute paleo meal | acalculatedwhisk.com

Are you fast in the kitchen? I’m super slow. No matter how much I wish I could be an ingredient ninja, I just can’t seem to get things located and prepped very quickly. I took a knife skills class a few months ago, which helped a little, but I think the issue stems more from disorganization than a lack of dexterity.

I’m working on making more 30-minute paleo dinners to share here on A Calculated Whisk. To make sure I’m representing things accurately, I time myself as I cook, which really highlights my lack of culinary efficiency. For this recipe, I started timing, assembled most of the ingredients for the marinade, and then realized I couldn’t find a sharp knife to cut the lime in half. I paused the timer while I located a chef’s knife and washed it, because I thought you, my wonderful readers, were likely to already have a clean knife on hand. Several other misplaced items and dirty dishes slowed me down and I didn’t stop the timer every time, but I still managed to make this meal in JUST over 30 minutes (if you’re making rice, you may need an extra 3-5 minutes to get that measured and set up).

So, even if you’re less than speedy in the kitchen, like me, you can have this dinner on your plate in just about half an hour.

Today’s recipe comes from Sue at Couscous and Consciousness. I was assigned her blog for this month’s Secret Recipe Club reveal, and had so much fun browsing through her delicious recipes. (I was also excited to read that Sue is a yoga teacher. I love yoga and have been trying to do at least a few sun salutations every morning. I wish I could take a class with Sue, but she lives in New Zealand, so it would be quite a commute.)

Sue’s food is colorful, creative, and usually on the lighter side, so there were a lot of tempting options to choose from. She also has many internationally inspired dishes, which makes browsing her site really fun. For this month’s reveal, top contenders included bengali aloo with lemon turmeric aioli, roasted apricot gelato, and plum and cardamon cake. Even though I’m not much of a salad person at all, I also found myself wanting to try this salmon with green tea soba noodle, broad bean, and radish salad and this watermelon and feta salad with preserved lemon dressing.

Pan-Seared Salmon with Capers and Baby Artichokes

March 19, 2015 By Becky 6 Comments

Were you a picky eater as a kid? I was pretty much the worst. The only vegetable I would eat was broccoli, and it had to have cheese on top. Everything else I deigned to consume was white or golden brown in color: chicken fingers, macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese, french fries, and pizza without tomato sauce (read: dough with cheese). I wanted slices of American cheese melted on top of almost all my food. It was actually called “Becky cheese” over at my dad’s, where no one else ate it.

I remained picky through high school, when I invented a white pizza with broccoli and two kinds of cheese at my favorite local pizzeria. My friends and I called it “Becky pizza”, and it was fabulous (I still think something like it should be added to the menu).

I’m proud to say that things have really changed. Today I’ll try almost anything, and there are very few foods I don’t enjoy. However, until a couple of months ago, salmon was still on my “no” list. I found it too fishy, and something about its orange-pink hue didn’t sit well with me.

Recently I worked on a project where I had to make several salmon recipes. To my surprise, I ended up loving them! The key for me is to really crisp up the skin (and brown the other side as well) and serve the salmon with a flavorful sauce.