Sweet Potato Zucchini Hash – AIP and Paleo

I had this amazing AIP lunch today, made up of only 5 ingredients:

1. 1/2 sweet potato
2. 1/2 zucchini
3. 1/2 cup leftover meat
4. 1 Tbsp coconut oil
5. salt

I tried this crazy-tasty combination and got myself a great fast lunch in just 15 minutes.

Here’s how I prepared it:

1. I peeled the half sweet potato and grated it
2. Peeled the half zucchini, took out the soft seeds middle part and grated it too. I also squeezed out all the water in it before cooking
3. I heated 1 Tbsp coconut oil in a medium pan on medium heat
4. I diced the leftover meat in small pieces
5. I put in the sweet potato, the zucchini and the diced meat in the heated oil and sprinkled some salt. I cooked everything for about 3 minutes, or until the sweet potato softened
6. I sprinkled over salt and some fresh parsley for extra flavor and voila!

All the process took me 15 minutes (preparing and cooking) and the result was really tasty!

Enjoy!

How to make Plantain Chips – AIP and Paleo

Plantains some of the few AIP compliant foods that can be turned into real snacks! Yeah, you saw it well, I wrote snacks! Plantain chips are made per a traditional African recipe (and South American), that combines the crunchy texture with a mildly salted flavor. Yum!

The difficult part for me in making plantain chips is that I didn’t actually find any plantains :))) – because no supermarket sells them in Romania. So I had to deal with what I had, and that is “barely green” bananas 🙂

But the result turned out great whatsoever!

Here’s how I made my “plantain” chips:

1. I used 5 green bananas and 8 Tbsp duck fat for frying
2. Peeled the green bananas and cut them into very thin slices (they need to be thin so that they cook well and don’t remain soft in the middle)
3. I placed all the plantain sliced in a bowl with enough water to cover them, in which I also added in 1 tsp Himalayan salt. I let them rest for 30 minutes in water
4. Heated 6 Tbsp duck fat in a larger pan on high heat and once the fat was very hot I turned the heat to medium-low. You need to make sure there’s enough fat in the pan to cover the plantains, as they will need to be deep fried
5. I placed the first batch of plantain chips from the water bowl on a paper towel to have the water removed a bit before frying (water in hot grease is pretty dangerous to be next to). I then placed them in the heated duck fat (after I turned the heat to medium-low, otherwise the fat would have sprinkled everywhere). Make sure there’s enough space between the chips, or else they’ll stick to each other, which we don’t want
6. I deep fried them for about 3 minutes on each side and them placed them from the pan to a paper towel to have the grease removed. You can get them out when they look crispy enough and their color becomes golden. Once taken out, sprinkle more salt over them while they’re still hot
7. I repeated the same steps with the next batches of plantains, adding in more duck fat as needed

You can also use any other vegetable oil for deep frying them, however I preferred duck fat in order to have them 100% AIP compliant (as olive oil is not normally used for deep frying). But if I think about it, you can also try frying them in coconut oil as well (which is also appropriate for deep frying).

The plantain chips are an AIP friendly snack that you can store for up to 2 days and enjoy a healthy crunchy snack anytime you need one. Aaaaand if you do find plantains instead of green bananas ( 🙂 ) it’s going to be even better!

P.S. The avocado oil in this post’s image was just used for the green salad that I combined the plantains with!

Enjoy!

“Ciorba” Turkey Soup – AIP and Paleo

Romanian cuisine is my favorite out of all the East-European cuisines. It is my national cuisine and because I appreciate it so much, I made a couple of tests in turning some of my favorite Romanian recipes into dishes that are AIP and Paleo Friendly.

In this article we’re going to talk about the Romanian traditional soup, which is called “ciorba” in Romanian. The “Ciorba” is a soup with diced pieces of meat and vegetables that we consume in Romania very often – almost on a daily basis. What we like the best about it is that it’s packed with lots of vitamins, it’s served as hot as one can resist and it’s made from all organic ingredients. In Romania we use the farmer’s market very much because it offers 100% natural produce and meat from small farms that don’t use any additives.

So here’s my AIP reinterpretation of the Romanian turkey “ciorba” 🙂

Here's are the ingredients I used:

• 1 lb diced turkey meat (I use chest)
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 white onion – chopped
• 1 zucchini – diced
• 3 liters filtered water
• 2 carrots – chopped
• 1 cup mushrooms – diced
• 1/4 celery root – chopped
• 1 medium parsnip – chopped
• 1 handful parsley
• 1 Tbsp Himalayan salt

And here's how I prepared my delicious turkey "ciorba":

• I used a larger pan and heated the olive oil on medium heat, then added in the onion, and stewed it for 1 min until it turned glossy. I then added in the diced turkey, mushrooms, chopped carrots, chopped, parsnip and chopped celery root and stewed together for another 8-10 minutes until they all combined. I stirred continuously to avoid anything sticking to the pan.
• After they all cooked together for 10 min, I added in all the water and the salt and let everything cook on medium heat for another 10 minutes.
• I then added in the diced zucchini and set the heat to medium-high and let the ciorba soup cook for another 10 minutes, or until the zucchini was tender (test with a fork).
• I removed the pot from heat and added in the fresh parsley for extra flavor.

The “ciorba” soup is served as hot as you can handle and you can store it in the fridge and serve for another 2-3 days.

I was very satisfied with my AIP reinterpretation of the traditional Romanian ciorba and to be completely honest, this is one of the dishes I highly recommend for the main course. Why? Well, because it contains just about everything the body needs for a daily first course.

I hope you enjoy the ciorba as much as I do and that you’ll let me know if you have any questions! 🙂