So, I thought I would just share a few of the delicious things I’ve been cooking/eating lately! I find that people often look at the list of keto-friendly foods and comprehend it just fine, only to go, “okay, great, so what do I make with that…?” At first it can seem bewildering, confusing, and very, very limiting. But in fact, there is TONS you can do with these ingredients! Here are just a few, in case it helps inspire your own cooking! If I used a recipe from somewhere, I’ll link it (note: this is not a monetized or affiliated blog!) If not, I’ll just describe my process! Feel free to ask for details in the comments, if you like!
These cheesy, garlic muffins. So good!! I used this recipe. As you can see, I did not possess parsley at the time of their baking, but they still turned out deliciously!
This keto meat pie. I used this recipe. I didn’t have (and couldn’t find) ground lamb, so I used a mixture of ground beef and ground pork. The shell of this meat pie is made with almond flour and psyllium husk powder, with sesame seeds to give it an interesting texture. It’s divine!
This coconut flour keto “naan”, slightly singed in the second photo! In the first, I served it (to myself!) with fried eggs and bacon, slathered in butter. In the second, I made a grilled cheese, pictured here with a rare fruit indulgence – a perfectly in-season blood orange. 🙂 For the naan, I used this recipe. Sometimes I make it with the garlic butter, but more often just with butter. For the recipes on this site, you can change the number of portions you want to make. For this, I also lower it to “2”.
Speaking of bread-like substance, this keto garlic “bread”. I used this recipe, which is essentially the same thing as the fathead pizza crust that I’ve made and referenced here before. It works amazingly as garlic bread! This is half the recipe here. The only thing wrong with the recipe is the amount of butter needed for the topping – it’s not nearly enough. Use 3-4 tbsp, not 1! Once tbsp of butter with make a thick, unspreadable paste with your parsley, parmesan, and garlic!
This asparagus leek soup. My own recipe. 🙂 I chopped (and thoroughly washed) a fresh leek, cooked it on the bottom of the soup pot with fresh garlic, tossed in half a bunch of chopped asparagus, grilled it all, then filled the pot with water (around 4-5 cups), added concentrated chicken stock, sea salt, and pepper, let it cook until the asparagus was soft, partially blended it with an immersion blender, and finished it with heavy cream.
I’m calling this Asian-inspired chicken zoodle soup. I personally loathe the word “zoodle”, but it does save a syllable or two here… For this one, I started by making a batch of chicken bone broth in my slow cooker. I took aside a couple of portions for the 6-day fast I’m planning for next week and kept about 2 cups of it for this soup, augmenting it with water and concentrated chicken stock. In a separate pan, I grilled fresh garlic, fresh ginger, onion, chili flakes, and a broccoli-sprout slaw in a mix of olive and sesame oil, then added it to the chicken broth with some very spicy chili oil, along with about 2 cups of chicken breast chunks from leftover rotisserie chicken, and let it simmer. About half an hour later, I added half a zucchini’s worth of spiralized zucchini noodles, then topped it with green onions and cilantro. It was SO GOOD!
Bacon cheeseburger casserole. I read half a dozen recipes for this, but didn’t like any one of them to use exclusively, so no link for this! I took about 5 strips of bacon, cut it up and cooked it with onion, then added around 1.5 lbs of mixed ground beef and ground pork and a package of taco spice. When the meat was cooked, I added chopped pickles and grape tomatoes to the meat, along with around 1 cup of shredded cheddar. Then I packed all this into a casserole dish (no need to grease it) and poured in a mixture of: 1 cup of whipping cream, 2 eggs, 3 tbsp tomato paste, 2 tbsp Dijon mustard (grainy is the best!). Then I topped all of that with more shredded cheddar and green onions, and baked it at 400 F for 20 minutes. This is my current favourite dish – it tastes exactly like a bacon cheeseburger, only without the wholly unnecessary bun!
The main feature in this next plate is the spicy, bacon-wrapped chicken tenders. I mostly used this recipe, though I didn’t make the accompanying mayo – and this chicken is so good that it really doesn’t need anything with it! I would agree with the recipe author’s friends who said that it was too spicy, though, and I like spicy food! I would cut the amount of cayenne to 1/2 tsp next time. This is just one chicken breast here, served with green beans in a soy/sesame vinaigrette and almonds, with sauerkraut. (Which I loathe, but yay for probiotics!)
Let’s talk about breading: I had honestly never breaded anything in my life before this past week or two, but now that I’ve discovered that you can use crushed pork rinds for this, I can see it happening a lot more! For these next two dishes, I used a mixture of crushed pork rinds and parmesan for the breading itself. First we have these zucchini fries. All I did was chop up a zucchini, dip the pieces in egg, then roll them in the pork rinds/parmesan, and bake them on a wire tray. They were amazing! For the chicken thighs (which are skin-on, bone-in), I followed three steps: first I made a mixture of coconut flour, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, salt, and pepper, and shook the thighs individually in this mix in a bag. Then they got dipped in egg, then shaken a second time in the crumbs. Also amazing! The “breading” stays crunchy and is flavourful and really good!
Speaking of zucchini, I’ve talked lots about zucchini noodles before. If you don’t have a spiralizer yet, go and get yourself one. They’re wonderful. It takes me about 30 seconds (max) to spiralize an entire zucchini, which is enough “pasta” for two people. You don’t need to cook it separately: just make your pasta sauce (from scratch, ideally – tons of sugar in store-bought pasta sauces!) and throw your zucchini noodles in at the last second. If you’re concerned that they’ll bleed out a lot of water (which they can), you can salt and drain them for 20-30 minutes first, but I don’t find it makes a huge difference. It doesn’t affect the flavour. This is zucchini carbonara: a garlic, cream-based sauce with bacon, onions, and grape tomatoes, finished with the zucchini itself and an egg.
Sometimes one has a taco phase. These two dishes happened fairly close together, since I made too much meat for the first one. 😛 This first dish is a taco fathead pizza (recipe, if you need it, and you do!). You can barely see all the cheese that’s under this mountain of taco-seasoned ground beef, grape tomato, red pepper, green onion, and sour cream (added post-baking!), but it’s definitely there! This was so rich that I couldn’t finish it. The second is a classic taco salad, sans the actual taco: a mix of spinach, arugula, and red butter lettuce, topped with (hot) taco beef, cheddar, grape tomatoes, red peppers, green onions, and sour cream. I also tossed the greens in a very light vinaigrette here, mostly just because I didn’t have any salsa on hand.
These seedy crackers have been tweaked and adapted from multiple other cracker recipes. They’re amazing with an asiago dip! To make them, do this: combine 3/4 cup pumpkin seeds, 3/4 cup sunflower seeds, 1/2 cup ground flaxseed, 2/3 cup almond flour, 2 tbsp za’atar (a Middle Eastern spice mix consisting of mostly thyme, sweet sumac, oregano, and sesame seeds), 1 tsp sea salt. After mixing this, add 2 tbsp olive oil and 1 cup of water. Stir it until it’s about the texture of pancake batter, or a bit fluffy. Spread it as evenly as possible into a rectangle shape onto parchment paper on a baking sheet (you can square the corners with your spreading implement). Bake for 25 minutes at 350 F, then take them out and cut them into crackers (about 1″ square, or a little bigger), then return them to the oven and bake for another 25 minutes. They’re a bit brittle with the almond flour, but don’t fret too much – they’ll still taste delicious!
Last, but not least, I’ll leave you with this recent creation. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to eat chicken salad or egg salad, so I made a chicken-and-egg salad. With avocado. And grape tomatoes, on a bed of spinach and arugula. I typically make either chicken or egg salad with very few ingredients: just mayo, a bit of Dijon or mustard powder, salt and pepper. It’s really all you need!
On that note, I’m into my 50th hour of this current fast! 😛 More cooking projects to come, but not before Friday morning! Bon appétit, all!
The Fasting Life 